By design, our world constantly bombards us with phenomena to distract and divert our attention away from what's truly important (self-realisation). It is a choice whether we want to participate in, and proliferate the bullshit.
Better to spread positive, useful information, to counteract the forces of negativity, in my opinion, and be mindful of exactly what is being shared, if sharing anything that is weighted towards the negative.
These thoughts are the result of a brief conversation with an old guy who introduced himself as Peter McEwan (or McEowen?) yesterday, at Quarantine Bay, near Eden, New South Wales, Australia.
Peter McEwan, was perched on a bench between the holiday park and the beach, wearing a Balmain Tigers cap, and peering through binoculars at nothing in particular out to sea.
We greeted each other as I wandered through his line of sight, and exchanged a few words.
I asked if he sits there often. He said he did, dreaming. Then he offered me a go with his binoculars, which I gladly accepted and he asked, "Where are you from?"
I replied, "England" and he followed with, "I bet you're glad you're not over there at the moment..."
I was about to answer yes, when he continued, "They should get rid of..."
I nearly cringed with the expectation he was going to say "the immigrants" or "the Muslims", or barrage me with some old fashioned OAP racism; but no, he went on to say "...the media! And the people doing bad things."
"When has the news ever been good?", he turned and said, peering at me, without looking through his binoculars.
I left Peter McEwan soon after, continued walking along the beach, and reflected on what he had said.
My immediate thought was, who can argue with that?
If ever it is good news from the mainstream media, it's generally spurious information that has some hidden agenda behind it, or it's useless information to distract us from what's actually important.
The funny thing is, I have been thinking along these lines since moving to the Far South of New South Wales, a month ago.
Being this far away from most of civilisation, anyone could quite easily live blissfully happy, never ever seeing or hearing the news, watching tv, having internet access, or listening to radio.
I'm pretty certain I could, anyway!
Should we participate in sharing the news?
Life is fraught with do I/don't I dilemmas, and inevitably, the wrong path will be taken at some stage. But a smoother road exists during the 'waking up' process, for those who take time to consider the consequences of their actions prior to taking them.
There are some serial sharers of shite out there (mainly on Facebook). I don't want to be one of them, hence why up until recently, I've chosen not to post much at all on any social media platform. I've also been a blogging virgin, a photography philistine, and an incommunicative hermit, whilst undergoing the worst of the 'waking up' process, during the past few years.
However, on a daily basis on Facebook, I do share reports from UK Column, The Corbett Report, and a few other reputable independent media sources, in the hope that my friends and family in England (and elsewhere), will pay attention and switch off the propaganda propagated by the corporate media.
Should I bother, I often wonder?
I know for a fact that very few take any notice of what I post and the majority are more interested in the rubbish shared by serial shite sharers.
Steemit seems different.
So far, I've found myself impressed with the volume of interesting content... It seems to outweigh the bad significantly.
Please help keep Steemit a predominantly shite free zone and encourage worthy content producing minnows to proliferate.
Cheers. 👍🏻