selective underloading

I'm a fan of education.  Really.  I'm a university student, and hopefully someday soon I'll be enrolled in a graduate program.  But in some areas, our world has progressed from education and begun to border on overload.

Information is available so easily and anyone can upload anything, that it's to the point where discernment is the most important skill of the age.  It's not whether the right information is out there, but whether we can find it, recognize it, and not get distracted by all the other clutter.

Additionally, because it seems all the information already exists, it's easy to use media as a cop out for thinking for ourselves.  Media seems to be say, "Don't develop your own opinion, just find someone else's you mostly agree with.  Who cares what it is you want your life to be?  Everyone else has it figured out, so just follow them."

I'm not just talking about academics and work here.  There's more at stake than that.  The proliferation of insane amounts of information in various forms of media makes it almost impossible for us to decide for ourselves what is real.  How often do we assume that the pictures we see on Facebook, the scenes from movies, or the headlines in newspapers is how life really ought to be?  It's insanely easy to feel like we're missing out or just plain doing life wrong.

I'm feeling inclined to purge myself from all these ideas and instead have some of my own.  I'm not saying NO to all media, but I think I'm going to take some time to be more selective about the kind I consume.  There's enough chaos going on in my head without hundreds of other opinions about how life and love ought to be to confuse me.

And yes, I recognize the irony of posting this on my blog.