Why?

The theme of the February edition of The Monastic Way, Joan Chittister, is “Curiosity”.  The meditation for February, 20, reads, “What we do not ask ‘why’ about, learn more about—the US budget, for instance, the immigration issue, US foreign policy, the state of our prisons, the state of education in the country—anything and everything that affects the culture in which we live—makes us part of the reason that, as a country, we never get beyond the problem.  ‘Millions,’ Bernard Baruch reminds us, ‘saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why.”

This little thought really struck me because it has seemed to me I never got over the “why” stage of childhood.   People generally get upset over things they don’t understand, but they never seem to get to the stage of asking “why” are things this way.  This was brought home to me with a Facebook comment made by one of the ‘friends’ that I have known slightly for years before Facebook.  The lament was that it was pretty difficult to find the truth in today’s news because one station would only present one side of an issue, while the other station presented the other side.  I ground my teeth, again, because although both sides of any issue needs to be understood, not all of both sides can be valid.  So, what is one to do?

One can do what I am doing at this exact moment, i.e., sit at the computer (or in a library) and look up the information oneself!  Of course, just because a piece of information is on the Internet doesn’t make it any more true than if it happens to be on TV news.  One needs to be selective about which sites one goes to, which basically leaves out Wikipedia for complete accuracy.  Generally, one can rely on Huffington Post for headlines to find out if the world has blown up or not.  The articles may or may not be accurate, but for the most part the headlines are informative in and of themselves.  For water news there is a great website, www.Aquafornia.com, that gathers water news from around the country and compiles it in one place.  www.network.org is a great place for what Congress is doing on the social justice front.  It is the website for Network, the organization known for Nuns on the Bus.  These women are tireless advocates for social justice.  

To keep tabs on what the right wing is doing, there is a great website called, what else, Right Wing Watch.  This site posts articles by the right wing people and/or organizations generally written by the people themselves.  Or if by someone else, there are extensive quotes, with citations as to where the quotes come from so one can check on them for accuracy.  This morning I learned that, according to Tom DeLay, God wrote the US Constitution.  Foolish me!  I always thought it was Thomas Jefferson, who did not ascribe to the established Christianity of his day, actually rewriting the New Testament to take out all of what he perceived to be Jesus’ miracles.  For an understanding of what the radical right-wing is thinking about, this is a great site.  Although I will have to admit, a tad mind-boggling.  With just a bit of effort, one can find other sites that are about as accurate as one can get to determine which TV news stations are the most accurate in their coverage. 

Which gets me back to my original point of “why”.  Why are news anchors saying what they are saying?  Is it to impart information or is to plant inaccurate statements for nefarious reasons.  One thing I have noticed is that if multiple news announcers and politicians start using the same words or phrases over and over, the intent is to plant inaccurate statements, generally for political reasons.  Instead of just brushing this off, we should be asking why they are doing this.  What idea is it they are trying to get us to believe? 

Being a sponge and just soaking up what is spoken to us or written for us is not helpful.  We should be a nation of “whyers”.  Sometimes the answers are really great, for the common good and to impart good information.  But with some others, listener or reader, beware!