Making your mind up!

It’s Sunday. I usually spend the first few hours on a Sunday morning just ‘pottering’ about, doing generally nothing in particular, but slightly more than the nothing I usually do on a Saturday morning – if that makes sense. I like to have a nice good think to see where my thoughts end up. This morning, my thoughts ended up in the realms of propaganda for some bizarre reason.

I like to think of myself as being open minded, and open to see both (or all) sides of any situation. I don’t think I’m too keen on being told what I must think, yet this morning I have found myself wondering if my reality actually reflects my thinking. I’m aware that if I’m reading an article in a newspaper which has a political angle, the article is written from the viewpoint of the author, so their political views very clearly come across. I can make out that they are trying to influence my way of thinking in a positive or negative way to who it is they are writing about. As I’m aware of this, I can get over their propaganda and make my own mind up about what I am reading.

But what has got me thinking are the articles I read about other aspects of life, scientific discoveries or even book reviews for that matter. I enjoy reading both, but something will always stick in my mind about the subject should it turn up again at a later time. For example, in the case of the scientific discovery, the first article may indicate that a certain degree of failure is expected in whatever field is being described, and scientists think it may take many years for progress to be made. A few weeks later, I may read another article about the same discovery, but my mind has already had the seed planted that it is expected to fail, so I may just skim the article rather than reading it in full. The same is true of book reviews. I may read a review that someone has written about a book by a particular favourite author, but in the review they may say that certain chapters were slow, or more action was needed or something like that. At the time, I’ll read the review, thinking along my open minded viewpoint that I’ll bear in mind what the review has said, but will make up my own mind when I read the book. However, when the time comes to buy the book, something will trigger this thought in my mind, and I’ll probably buy a different book instead.

Maybe my thoughts are more influenced by outside sources than I initially thought, and I’m not as impartial as I say I am after all.

I like my Sunday mornings. One other thing that I have thought about whilst writing this post is that maybe I should do a little bit more than normal, so I don’t have time to think quite as deeply about things as I do.

I mean to say, propaganda. Where did that thought come from?