The biggest problem with people are that people can be easily manipulated in a variety of ways, the easiest is through emotion. Emotion is what caused the anger on every side of the events happening at Mizzou and what happened at Yale. Emotion is also what causes people to act out violently, say hateful things to others and act in ways that are uncivilized to other human beings. It’s obvious that this week, millions were manipulated (including myself) through the massive security hole that is emotion.

A fact is that the world is constantly improving, it’s better to be a human at this point in time than any point in history. What lead to this truth is that humanity has consistently improved how it distributes, verifies and accesses information. From Gutenberg’s Printing Press to the Telegraph to Radio to TV and to the Internet, each improvement has created increased understanding of other cultures and an improved ability to communicate with anyone around the world.

These societal changes are viewed by most people as the cause of political activism and involvement, this misunderstanding is the biggest problem. Politics were, at one point, the best method humans had to organize and ideas that were then carried out for the benefit of society. We are reaching the point where technology will make politics obsolete, this will be one of humanity’s greatest achievements when it happens.

The ability to freely communicate this information is integral for this improvement. The necessity of journalists to have financial and social incentive to report on these stories, along with stories that require much more digging is higher now than ever. The value of those guardians of information who wish to rebel and free the information to the world is higher now than ever. Building and improving a method to ensure these events can occur freely, with no individual or group of individuals having the ability or power to stop them from happening is the key to true freedom.

Something I think about quite a bit is the slow demise of real journalism, the kind that requires lengthy periods of weeks, months or years of digging to expose an abuse of power or corruption. It’s something that rarely happens anymore as there is little financial incentive. The next step in the obsolescence process of politics is the creation of something to both incentivize and decentralize both journalism and the freeing of acquired information by friendly gatekeepers. The tools exist right now to make this possible, the resources and interest are both slowly increasing….

I make posts like these in hopes that just one person will understand what I’m talking about and find some sort of validity in what I’m saying. I hope they will take the next step and research historical change in Technology/Information Distribution as well as change in society. I hope they connect those dots to inefficient human tasks that were made obsolete, by something that improves things exponentially. I hope they realize that this country has spent centuries making heroes out of politicians, posting their pictures in classrooms and putting their faces on currency that we use to do absolutely everything necessary to exist. I hope they discover that every human has bias, very few realize they themselves have this bias and that there is no way to completely eliminate this bias.

I hope they begin to see how and why the information they receive is manipulated, then understand how to determine the likelihood that said information is not manipulated. I hope that they realize how little they know, how little I know and how almost every human thinks that their viewpoint is the right one.

Finally, I hope they come to a realization that I did a few years ago but more importantly I hope that they also understand that they likely could be wrong about this realization and legimately seek out ways to prove it wrong. I hope that this ends with someone I care about coming to me and telling me that they understand the importance of information and ask what they can do to help to cause this type of change.

I guess the first step is understanding that the answer isn’t really what’s important, the important thing is understanding what questions to ask.