BIG NEWS, LITTLE DIFFERENCE

I love the way the evening news will start out its program with some “big news” story that gets your interests. Then they start in telling you all the other news than that particular story. In some circles that type of approach is called a hook. And it works great and hooking your attention so you will listen to everything else in order to satisfy your curiosity.

Unfortunately a lot of times it seems like this “big news” story ends up being something that really isn’t that important and makes little difference to life in general. Yet you know what? The guys in the news department will end up trying the same strategy tomorrow and it will work again. Boy we can be such suckers for things like that when our curiosity is involved.

Of course this truth about this type of aspect to the way we handle such curiosity bait is no secret. It is used in different ways by politicians, lawyers, salesman and just about anyone who dangles a carrot of gossip for us to grab at.

So if it is such a common known fact and something we all out to recognize easily why do we keep falling for it? That is perhaps why I thought I would mention it in a posting.

See the plain fact is that you can’t have it both ways. You can’t on the one hand have a natural desire to learn all the juicy gossip that is out there and at the same time avoid having somebody victimize you for that desire. This isn’t a perfect world and there are no perfect people. There are way too many mean spirit and greedy people perhaps, but certainly not that many truly good people (if any.)

And that for me is the reason why this whole technique is so darn successful. See whether we admit it or not, we love to find out when somebody did something wrong because it helps us feel better about ourselves. That is why so often the big news is to me more prone to be of a negative nature. If it were good about somebody who is successful where is the joy in that for us in terms of feeling superior.

Now while I say that I am aware that somebody might voice and objection in terms of things like us rejoicing over a person being something like a hero. But again that is an exception. It isn’t something that happens every day. So because it is rare we can pretend to be happy so we don’t have to admit that we really love hearing about some big bad news in order to feel better.

Before I confuse anyone or make this sound vague in some way, I just want to say, hurray! I think we should regard this activity as a good thing. Why? Well shoot folks why not? I mean if you strip away our curiosity what you get is terminal dullness. And that means a lack of creativity and a lack of the type of thinking that can lead to progress and change.

So I regard this type of hook, even if it brings no substantial difference in life as a evidence of hope. For as long as we remain curious, suckers or not, there is a chance for us as a people and race to keep asking the kinds of questions that lead to progress. And that for me will always be better than being brain dead!