SoCS – WHO do YOU trust?

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “start with who/whom” Begin your post with either “who” or “whom” and go from there. Have fun!

Who do you trust?
That’s a great question!
Let’s face it, we’re all human. And if your answer was “I trust myself most”.
I think many of us probably feel the same way.
None of us blindly trusts anyone else if we’re thinking clearly. We are well aware of human frailties and know that even the most well-meaning people can be fooled… even ourselves.
So, what are we to do?
Asking questions constantly seems a great start.
And?
The person or persons we ought to question, first and foremost, is our self.
Writers, in particular, are prone to internal conversations and inquiries. We’re working things out when we aren’t making things up. Asking ourselves questions happens all the time. The most important person we should never lie to is numero uno. Yes, we all do that sometimes too.
A long time maxim has held that we must see things with our own eyes to believe them. I’ve always felt that was the best method but there’s one big problem. Our eyes lie to us all of the time and in this tech age there are forces working extremely hard to perfect the art of fooling our eyes. Have you heard about ‘deep fakes’?
Deepfakes
Altering videos can be as minimal as removing a few frames to as extensive as dramatically altering whole videos using Hollywood-style special effects. The latter has been enabled by advances in artificial intelligence and “deep learning” technology. Deep learning makes it possible to create hyper-realistic though entirely fictional videos called “deepfakes.”

So “seeing is believing” is becoming an obsolete phrase in a hurry!
The removal (censorship) of information isn’t going to be the worst of what’s coming to manipulate us.
Media wants to control us and that’s the biggest threat to our country since the Cold War.
Yes, dividing us using identity politics is the current tool but there are others in the wings.
Asking questions and civilly engaging each other has never been more important!
I’ll finish by coming back to our most trusted friend, ourselves. Please watch the short video below.

Now, you may be more aware of the human tendency to focus on one thing at a time.
I consider how the media influences our focus, and outrage, and what they may not want us to see.
Keeping my information sources plentiful, and diverse, might be the most important thing that I do to find answers.
If you enjoyed that video look up the series Brain Games for yourselves. It’s fascinating and reveals our own cognitive strengths and weaknesses.
Who can you totally trust?
I guess an on-going scientific method of honestly questioning and comparing information, is my suggestion.

God bless.

The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS April 3, 2021 | (lindaghill.com)