Musing

today’s Musing written and published from south Calgary, near Fish Creek Park

walk report: 7C/44F, overcast, Chinook arch, steady light breeze; bare lawns expand reach, snow banks on north sides of houses hold their ground, Gusta not caring about the weather change or which way the wind is blowing, keen to romp (as I write this she is doing sprints in the back yard oblivious to me watching); is it Chinook time or spring time?

too many questions, too many polls, too many messages, not enough understanding, too little feedback from too narrow a point of view; opinion pollsters gauging winds of change seem less intent on knowing views, more focused on testing theories by way of how they craft questions, skewing answers to support some trend imagined; I read (or listen to) the daily collage barrage volume of ‘message’ trends (John Naisbitt would cringe); is the budget right, is a campaign promise affordable, is some notion better than another?

when answers don’t support their view, they consider the research incomplete and go on to ask more questions while media adversaries tend to skew things the opposite way - in theory - to ensure contrary views are heard, unpopular trends are exposed and charlatans pilloried, too often they become makers of news rather than reporters of it

budgets, campaigns, issues – dominate my news horizon; it occurs to me that leaders, wannabe leader and pretenders to the throne are just like us as children; they, at their core, exhibit traits no different than our childish ways of avoiding consequences of acts, avoiding exposure of what we failed to do, of what we failed to do well, of what we forgot to do, of what we are bound to be in trouble for if found out – media presume we crave to know about every microscopic piece of dust, analysis far from objective or insightful such that advertising hype for a new movie seems more credible to me

politicians, economists and stock pickers alike - less concerned knowing which way the wind is blowing or how hard, they know which answers serve their purpose – then organize their data, theories and questions to generate the answers they want to hear

evaluating effectiveness is not about truth objectively viewed any more than saying ‘it is windy today’ tells me El Niño or La Niña are at work or taking a holiday; if questions are created for the sole purpose of generating a particular type of answer, it become hard to know if the wind is blowing at all or which way

Mark Kolke
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... with your voice, teach in order to learn


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