We're Talking Too Much

 November 25, 2023- Saturday 

There is a brief ceasefire between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas. This will probably only last three or four days because Israel is intent on destroying Hamas once and for all. At one point I would have said, “And who would blame them,” but now there are thousands of totally uniformed people who are blaming Israel. It just shows you how distorted the world has become. Now it is expected that 50 Israeli’s will be freed, and 150 Palestinians will be released. Why the disparity in numbers? One day we will be given all the details on the negotiations between the two warring groups and where the difference in the numbers developed, but it does appear to be unbalanced. Now we have news commentators getting involved in talking about the situation and one newsperson had this perspective. Does this mean the Israeli prisoners are more valuable than the Palestinian prisoners? What? Where did that come from?

This person has an education, yet they ask a question like this in a very difficult to understand situation. The absurdity of someone who says something as crazy as this to have something to talk about shows where our need for constant talk is coming. We really don’t need to talk this much.

Having been a health care manager for many years, I would work according to the philosophy you can’t communicate too much. Well, I think I need to modify that thought. We can definitely talk too much especially when we aren’t communicating. There are many people who just want to hear themselves talk and unfortunately for us, many of them are in the news organizations. Because of ratings or personal pathology, these people feel they need to find something outrageous to talk about. When that sickness sets in, what we the suffering public get are distorted thoughts and ideas coming from outer space and not logic or reality. A new mindset is unleashed on the world and there are enough uninformed people listening to half of the sentence to agree with the thought. The next thing we know, those people are demonstrating in the streets.

People don’t want to spend the time necessary to know what the facts are in each situation, and they are willing to commit to their half-read bullet point and get emotional about it. As people, we need to do better. We need to talk and communicate with facts and well-developed opinions. We have too many people reaching for the absurd to fill time so they can listen to themselves talk. Ugh.