The longer I live, the bleaker the future looks to me in terms of the quality of life.

I cavalierly stated a few decades ago, that the older we get the less we will be able to trust all the services we take for granted.

• Mass transit
• Healthcare
• Food quality
• Water quality

Over those years, this prediction became a horrible reality and then some.

We cannot trust our banking systems now, or the stock market. There are no real consumer protections like there were in the 60s and 70s. Keep track of packaging of groceries; the packaging is smaller but the prices remain the same or rise. That used to be a heinous fraud and consumer protections were in place to prevent it from happening.

Other production protection measures were in place to track the quality of items produced before they went to market rather than after the fact. Recalls were less likely in my youth than that of today.

Now, you also have to worry about what information is shared with you, whether it is a video or news item and who is the source of that information, has that information been doctored in any way to sway your point of view.

The quote above was written in 1850 in a work of fiction called The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether but is a fair warning for today’s false or misleading information engine.  Just the other day, I watched the journalist Anderson Cooper respond to an allegation that he falsified reporting on the last hurricane which hit the U.S. in the Carolinas.  It was footage of him standing in deep water while his cameraman filmed a few feet away in less than 2 ft of water. This picture went viral on various platforms where he was vilified for making much ado about nothing.

His response was adept in debunking the mislead allegations as to the source (a flood in Texas, several years prior to the current event), the science behind floods and the fact that the cameraman shown in the photo had died just a week or so prior.  He should not have had to do this, but there are people out there who feel the need to cause a rise in the masses for no other reason than to enjoy the show. People who like to watch the world burn.

Inciters so to speak.

I want to remind you that all people are lazy about fact checking what is fed to them on a day to day basis. I have fallen prey to the misinformation on occasion and felt the need to remind you to be vigilant that most of what you hear or see could very well be false and you are behooved to prove it before making any snap judgement. If you choose to be lazy then you become part of the masses (the herd of sheeple who follow the loudest noises) easily manipulated to respond in the manner that the informant wishes.

Check a variety of sources, check the backgrounds of the sources of the information to see what their true motivation is before assuming truth.

And even if you verify all the information is close to true; but the data has to do with a science of any sort, know that science is an every evolving discipline. What may be proven now could be disproved in a matter of months, years or decades.

The longer I live on this earth, the more I know that I do not know much. I am constantly searching for truth. So should you.

Listen carefully to what is said. Read everything with extreme scrutiny. Look for the faulty logic, the contradictions, and the outright lies hidden in the truth.  Know that a well crafted lie is woven within a series of truthful statements.