The last two days were derailed by the heaviness of the world.

Today's piece is a reflection on recent news, the terrible dread of waiting on wartime escalation, the heartsickness of seeing how people rationalize atrocity, and the hard fact that this is just how humans have been for almost 3,000 years of written record.

We keep trying to do better not because it's easy or even likely, but because "trying" is only human, too.

#Humanism #Politics #War #MediaLiteracy
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/sitting-with-the-heaviness-of-the

What makes malinformation so effective is that most people are passive consumers of news media, so they'll pay attention more to the urgency with which news items show up on their feeds. They might not have media practices that allow them to quickly slot this flood of outrage into the bigger picture.

This makes people easy prey for the loudest actors.

A good defence starts with making whatever news you do consume *conscientious*.

Do not confuse vehemence on social media with proper reporting.

Not going to finish this essay before 10, but I do want to note a #MediaLiteracy concept we need to stay sharp around:

Malinformation.

It's not *inaccurate* intel, but it's intel blown out of proportion to dominate a news cycle or divert attention from another story.

When a political group has been found to do a Very Bad Thing, for instance, defenders will go on the offensive by signal-boosting smaller issues, flooding the feed with outrage over them instead.

It's propaganda, and it works.

Entirely possible that I'm a little bit toasted and pulling the midnight shift to get a newsletter piece finished before dawn and a new day's mucked-up work schedule of back-to-back Zooms from 10 to 8.

I still love you all very much!

One thing I know be true:

Even when many of us have diametrically opposing views - when some are war-bound, while others are peace-seeking; when some delight in the suffering of political rivals, while others strive for pluralist coexistence - we're all doing the best we can in any given moment, with the social inputs we've been given & the different info silos we consume.

We are all from the same planet, & face the same return to dust.

It's merely the messy middle that causes such despair.