November

A jaunt around the internet and a stroll through the library quickly reveals a vast smorgasboard of contradictions. Any issue from whether or not the player’s foot touched out of bounds to the meaning of life all have their supporters and detractors. Each side accuses all the others of misinformation.

Some arguments can be cast aside as unimportant. The player was out of bounds? Meh! Others have weight that cannot be ignored. What is my origin and destiny? I want to know the truth!

Misinformation is just a more modern expression for those old-timey words like “lie”, “falsehood”, “partial truth”, and “incorrect information.” Wrong answers have been around longer than standardized tests. Incomplete knowledge is a natural part of the human condition.

Misinformation is spread through ignorance and/or malevolence. Most of the time, motives don’t matter. When the road sign points in the wrong direction, we don’t care what twisted it. We just want to know the right road to take so we can get home.

Especially when it comes to the big questions of life and death, good and evil, we need to know how misinformation works and how to navigate through the fog to the clarity of truth.

First of all, truth is a statement that can be verified by reality. If any or all of the claim does not line up with the real world, then it is misinformation. The claim then needs to be trashed or trimmed.

Right now we are concerned with the deep things of life. Where did we come from? Where are we are going? What is my purpose? Will suffering ever end?

These questions require the complete picture of life. We need to dive into the inner workings of the human heart and we need to survey history from the mountain top. Physical, social, spiritual, we need to consistently fit all of the pieces of the puzzle together. Incompleteness leaves us in the state of misinformation in which we started.

This points us to a solution. If we start with universal truth and build our framework on that, then we maintain consistency and completeness from beginning to end. Shadows disappear when every corner of the room is well lit. Clearly seeing reality, all of it, is the antidote to the virus of misinformation.