Never Mind

There’s been an explosion. Sometimes I feel as though I’ve woken up from a pandemic coma to a decidedly stranger-than-usual world. Is it my imagination or does it seem like we are having an often disturbing glut of extreme events lately? Someone close to me made a comment the other day regarding the news. He told me that there were so many overwhelming issues that evening that he turned off the TV. A first for him. But it doesn’t end there. We are going through a rampant era of too much information, like what we don’t know can hurt us, and it is, at the very least, annoying if not massively time-consuming to keep up with. It’s also being blamed for spikes in anxiety, depression, health issues, and assorted feelings of ambivalence. We are being assaulted with a constant avalanche of topics that may or may not be based on solid facts, perhaps fake, and we are left to interpret narratives with our own limited understanding of them. Considering this, exactly whose opinions and emotions are we absorbing anyway?

Both social media and news bureaus are in the business of churning out headlines, and the stories that often don’t reflect those headlines in order to grab our attention, as much and as quickly as possible hence the contradictions, back-tracking, and general confusion that can ensue. There are also messages, often subliminal, to be found in areas such as advertising, movies, and even overheard conversations in the coffee shop that can push our buttons. There really is no escape short of moving to the silent middle of nowhere. One unfortunate effect of continuous babble is that we can become anesthetized to the really crucial events, the things that really matter. Life can seem like a staged action film with continuous and unexpected script changes. The reality of a situation may appear emotionally diluted, but we are still affected to different degrees by all the distractions, egos, heated opinions, and constantly changing perspectives. I can feel a headache coming on.

How much information can a brain hold? A few years back, scientists measured the amount of data that enters the brain. At that time the average person processed close to 74 GB of information a day, probably more at this point through TV, computers, cell phones, and many other sources. Only 500 years ago, that many GB of information would be what a highly educated person consumed in a lifetime through reading alone. That’s a lot of information to deal with and it’s no wonder that we can suffer from information overload which can literally cause our brains to shut down with side effects like confusion, anxiety, and stress. So why do we need to know so much? What’s the motive? Digital obsession and feelings of being left out can have something to do with it.

‘We get information into our brains through a process called encoding, which is the input of information into the memory system. Once we receive sensory information from the environment, our brains label or code it. We organize the information with other similar information and connect new concepts to existing concepts.‘

I’ve always been fascinated with how the mind works and will shortly begin another online course, this one from the University of Cape Town entitled, What is a Mind?. It’s basically a scientific and philosophical analysis of concepts for understanding our own minds. We usually respond to information either intellectually or emotionally. Our responses can change based on how we are feeling at the moment. Currently, there seem to be more emotional responses based on anger, fear, frustration, and lack of knowledge than intellectual ones. In light of too much information, we need critical thinking more than ever, particularly as a way of processing, sorting, storing, and discarding in a cohesive manner.

Oxford Languages Dictionary Definition Of Critical Thinking

1. noun The objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment.” Professors often find it difficult to encourage critical thinking amongst their students.”

What it all comes down to is a matter of focus and putting the separate pieces together. We need to sort out what’s worth our time and energy and discard or block what truly isn’t. We need to be proactive with the information we are absorbing. We need to do some fact-checking and approach everything with more intellectual attention than emotional considering that our emotions can change very quickly and are not always accurate interpreters of situations. We need to question our reactions, to figure out where they are coming from in order to understand how excess information is affecting us. We can also unplug, turn off, and tune in to each moment of our daily lives, spending less of our precious time in information overload. Think of all the wonderful things that we could be missing out on but we’ll never know unless we change the status quo. And learn to simply never mind.

Essay #96 by Jude Gorgopa, Reinvention Consultant and the Founder of Clout Et Cetera and The Fundamentals of Clout. Connect: judegorgopa@gmail.com & LinkedIn.

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