A friend of mine, with whom I correspond regularly even if she is not ‘here’, yesterday sent a beautiful e-mail about how to survive in this highly materialistic, knowledge-driven, information-crazed world.
You know this friend—her name is Maria—pops up every now and then to send me new discoveries. I think her work is to rummage through the earth’s rich produce of books, religious tracts, inspirational magazines, and whatever it is written, pick up what she likes and what she thinks others—including this pen-pusher—will like and sends it to them, to us, through the wonders of the Internet.
She likes to prick everybody’s conscience by her God-given talent of picking up the most relevant and thoughtful quotes or words of wisdom coming from those who have ‘it’. All for free, except that you should devote precious time reading them.
I don’t have ‘it’—the wisdom—so I relegate myself today to what she found out. Drum roll, please. It’s Pastor Rick Warren.
You don’t know the guy? He is an inspirational writer-preacher and author of the blockbuster hit, “The Purpose Driven Life”. If you don’t have a purpose, at least get a life, will you? I am joking, of course, and at the same time not joking. Go figure that out.
Warren has an advice. He got it from the Books of Books:
“My son, be warned: there is no end of opinions ready to be expressed. Studying them can go on forever and become very exhausting!" (Ecclesiastes 12:12 LB).
I am warned. This quote hit me right in my gut. It’s seemed I received a Manny Pacquiao left hook that I almost got KO’d even while I am sitting. Relevant, this biblical instruction. Listen, or rightly, read.
“We live in the Information Age, where more and more people in the labor force are becoming "knowledge workers" involved in collecting, analyzing, organizing, storing, retrieving, or communicating information.
“Getting the right information is vital to your success. But do you ever feel overwhelmed by the information you're already bombarded with each day? You have good reason: We have produced more information in the last forty years than in the previous five thousand.”
Warren did the math. He said that within the U.S. alone, 50,000 books and 10,000 magazines are published each year. Researchers and scientists, he wrote, produce 7,000 new scientific papers and the average person is confronted with about 140 advertising messages a day, or about 50,000 thousand a year. I hope Warren included in these numbers the amount of trash mail that every American gets, from collection letters to credit card flyers to tourist promos that inundate the US postal service every single day. How about the garbage that passes through the Internet?
A friend of mine, a writer who doesn’t erase a single e-mail whether it’s a spam or a condom-marketing letter (but of course, he doesn’t read them) said that it’s harmless not to touch, open, and read something you don’t like. Good point. To senders of spam, die now from irritation. At least, one person doesn’t read you.
We are slowly degenerating from pollution as much as we are violently drowning from information overload.
Here in our country, we have only, what, 30-plus newspaper dailies in Manila alone, five or six television stations, over 50 radio stations, a couple of weekly and monthly magazines, and look where we are now. We are overly opinionated but at the same time pathetically ignorant. We get our news and information from text messages and from Boy Abunda, Joey de Leon, and the politicians, not necessarily in that order.
Daily, we are bombarded by opinions from opinionated people whose opinions are opined by more opinionated people whose opinions . . . ad nauseam. Walang binatbat ang mga Amerikano sa atin. They have 50,000 books, we have Lolit Solis. Really, there seems to have no end in sight to this kind of drowning. Can we shut up, please?
Truly, we are suffering from information-fatigue. In the Senate, for example, one can ask who among the senators read the three-inch thick Senate Journal from cover to cover everyday and chances are you will get a raised eyebrow. What’s that?
“In one day, we are bombarded with more information than a typical person in the sixteenth century might have encountered in a lifetime! What's more, it's getting worse! The amount of information available to you now doubles every five years; that means five years from today, there will be twice as much known in your field as there is today,” Warren writes.
He said that Solomon, whom the Bible called the wisest man ever, understood this problem, so he gave us the above quote.
The good thing about Warren is that he does not only give you a little problem, but the big solution as well. Here are the three skills he said that we need for surviving information overload:
“You need to know what's worth knowing and what isn't. Selection is the first key to survival.” Switch off the TV, please. I am reading Gunter Grass.
“You need to understand the meaning of what you know. This comes from seeing the big picture. Perspective enables you to see how things relate.” Well, Gunter Grass says life is an onion. “The onion has many skins . . . Peeled, it renews itself; chopped, it brings tears. Only during peeling does it speaks the truth.”
“You need to know what to do with what you know.” I write about them.
“When you possess these three skills it is called having wisdom! Wisdom is even more critical to your success than knowledge. Wisdom turns information into power.”
And how do we get more wisdom?
“First, ask God for wisdom. He wants to help you: "If any of you lack wisdom, you should pray to God, who will give it to you; because God gives generously and graciously to all” (James 1:5 TEV).
“Second, read the Bible and follow God's instructions: "But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does" (James 1:25 NIV).”
Thanks, Maria, for Pastor Warren’s advice. Now, I will go get that wisdom. And tell the politicians, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment