In this era, sharing our thoughts and ideas has become so convenient for all of us. Platforms for expression have become diverse. There is an unending flow of information left, right, and center and you just can't figure out if it's even adding to your intellect.
Have you ever thought about it? What does it mean to be wise? Let me put it for you; absorbing more and more information doesn't make you wise! Find out if you've been confusing it too. Keep reading!
The Maze of Information Overload: Struggle, confusion and finding a way out
1.The dilemma of knowing, a gift of the Internet
One of the biggest information resources in the 21st century is the Internet. It is the Gospel. The ultimate source of knowledge for everyone and for all. It's been branded as the Key and a promise: The one who seeks, shall find.
It seems like a treasure map to the Solomon's. A road to Eldorado. Endless heaps of jewels, gold. Unlike any of those, the path is short and the result is sweet. Just one click, one Enter key away.
One road leads to another one. But it begs us to ask the question, what if the road leads to another road? The treasure leads to another? Endless gold of knowledge yet no sense of satisfaction? One piling up on the other as we gaze afar, in a state of confusion. Unable to make sense of all we have and all we seek more.
It doesn't make you the King. Doesn't make you rich. It just leaves you empty-handed and lost.
A spoon to taste from every dish
This, my friends, is what information overload does to a person. Half-witted, half-cooked judgments. We constantly strive to churn what little we know about everything into a restaurant-quality food. A little bit of politics, a bit of theology, some opinions on religion on a few articles you read ages, a little bit of gender, race, and science for taste and voila!
Here is your Average Joe.
It doesn't satisfy one. The yearning for more remains but not in a positive way. There is a sense of acting up to know rather than being confident in your opinion. It's like having everything and then nothing.
Learn when to stop
We all know how did we get here but what should we do? The key is to understand when to stop. In search to find the biggest treasure, just pick up a jewel. Mold it. Polish it. Make the best of it. Pick up a favorite place. A book. An Idea. An area of expertise. Dive deep down in it and explore it to the best of your potential.
2. Is the Internet the culprit or an easy way to focus the blame?
Like every tricky situation in the world, when we solve one problem, it arises ten more. Questions in the answer to a question. The dilemma of knowledge makes it easier for everyone to point to the Internet.
The question is, is it really the culprit or an easy target to focus our blame on? Well for starters, the internet is a safe haven for all sorts of amateur opinions.
A pool of information to swim in
Millions of search results for something as "How to boil an egg at minus 13C" or something as deep as "What is the meaning of life". A place to find everything on everything. The ultimate invention to cater to a man's desire for knowledge and convenience. The sheer pleasure in lack of effort to gain access to a source of knowledge.
The problem arises with the confusion of knowing everything. A sports event in San Francisco, the super cyclone in Odisha, Elephants dying in Botswana, racially discriminatory laws in the US, the evolving crisis in the Middle East.
Find solutions, learn to process!
How to process all this that we receive? How to be sure that you know all that is put in front of you? How to process human experiences and natural events and come out as a wiser, saner human being.
The solution lies in weighing the pros and cons of using the tools of knowledge. Are these tools enough? While we fight our collective inability to process the unfiltered knowledge, it is important to create new tools to navigate the required information.
It's easier to shortlist
New apps and tools to benefit our community of knowledge seekers and teachers and creators. To narrow down our areas of interest which could fulfill our desire to seek more.
This sounds like a fair suggestion. To find out of this maze of information overload rather than bumps into never-ending walls and paths of knowledge that we come across in our way, luring us to a dead end.
3. The nonstop increase in Data: the future of human wisdom and the fight to evolve
But is this practical? We might ask ourselves while we look at the footages of Google's data centers in Greenland.
Hundreds and thousands of websites and portals and books. For the sheer human need of understanding metaphors, luring us to dead ends of heaps of knowledge and doing nothing good for our inability to process it.
The growing number of social platforms like an unwanted weed in the grass. With bickering adults and children claiming to know more and seek where and what they shouldn't.
Be brave enough to evolve
Everyone feels they must say something but nobody actually knows what it is.
The situation makes us feel doomed and all the practical solutions require one human trait to nullify all the others and that is to be brave.
While we strive for technology and convenience and oceans of safe havens of knowledge we created for our own, the situation demands us to ponder. The history of mankind tells us that its always in most testing situations, we challenge ourselves and dare to evolve.
The calamity of mediocrity and overdose of knowledge must force us to come up with practical personal solutions that eventually echo through our societies at large.
Give yourself a break; It's OK not to know everything
It is time for the fight for human wisdom to evolve.
It is time to take a step back. Ponder over what's necessary. To realize what to know and how much to know to form a judgment. To realize its OK not to know everything.
To finally making peace with what you know and what you seek to know.
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