Why Lies thrive in Mass Media, Looking for Consistency across Beliefs and Choices, & An Antidote Against Dissatisfaction
One Humor: Three Opinions: Two Thoughts
One Humor
Three Opinions
It is fashionable to be outraged about lies in mass media. News agencies, corporations, and — God forbid! — even politicians all seem to mislead us. And they get away with it! How is that possible? Niklas Luhmann has some answers in his classic book from 1995 titled “The Reality of Mass Media”.
What are “mass media”?
For Luhmann the key characteristic of mass media is that a few people communicate with a large audience. And there is not much interaction among the members of the audience.
Source: Why lies thrive in mass media
Be it reaching the airport on time, or completion of that critical project, or even getting those stupid nods of approval from friends, we are somehow evolutionarily wired to feel secure when we seem to be in control of things.
Want to check the veracity of this claim? Please observe your physiological response when your Uber driver chooses to cancel your ride to the airport when you are already running late. An unexpected event, irrespective of its magnitude, often manages to catch you off the guard. And the last thing you want in your life is to find yourself at the edge of some unknown cliff.
Source: Looking for Consistency across Beliefs and Choices
Everybody is familiar with the feeling that things are not as they should be. That you are not successful enough, your relationships not satisfying enough. That you don’t have the things you crave. In this video we want to talk about one of the strongest predictors of how happy people are, how easily they make friends and how good they are at dealing with hardship. An antidote against dissatisfaction so to speak: Gratitude.
Two Thoughts
See you soon
Piyush Kamal
Ex-IRS, Economist, and a Published Author who loves to play at the intersection of Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, and Philosophy.
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