Attention Span

Despite all the achievements and glory during the Olympics it's probably going to be remembered as the fake robbery story Olympics.  Maybe not but everything else seemed to follow script mostly so I'm not sure where there is a story that will be remembered more.

We live in an age of self indulgence.  We only care about the things that are immediate to our experience and everything else competes for attention.  What was once famously described as fifteen minutes of fame is now probably down to a minute.

We certainly have the ability to focus on things, just look at the Pokemon GO people, but we selectively focus and things that aren't part of that focus circle need to compete for our attention.

Once again this isn't new, and it is probably related to the amount of free time we have divided by the number of things competing for that time.  The limitation there is of course the amount of time we have available.

We also suffer from a situation where our news has become in many cases biased.  Sometimes the bias is actually the attempt to not seem biased, other times its more blatant. Famously, many Americans used to let the evening news or the evening newspaper provide them with facts and opinions.  Now we have a million sources, many of which are simply irresponsible, that compete for that role.

The easiest target is normally the Government and so it is attacked the most.  Now I keep seeing polls that show the American people don't trust the Government.  This seems to be true at all levels of Government.  Of course despite that mistrust we still use the services to pay our taxes, get social security benefits, get passports, collect economic data, etc. etc

The Government that isn't trusted is the Government portrayed in our information sources.  There is clearly issues with Government, there are issues with everything really, but the general belief that the Government is either corrupt, evil or influenced by specific groups is not really supported by the day to day operations.  It may be true to a larger extent of our elected officials, but of course we have no one to blame but ourselves for that.

Despite recent claims that the system is rigged, it isn't.  If you know the rules and help set them you can do better than someone who doesn't.  So like everything else, put in the time and effort if you want to succeed.  If you expect to get the reward without the work you probably will be disappointed.