What defines a “Reliable Source”? Is it a publishing company or corporation, which supports an employee’s judgment of creditable reliability? Is it the consensus of the consumers, a group or a person that consults print and audio/video which decides weather of not what they perceive in the media presented is true of false? I am talking about intellectual skepticism. In today’s fast-paced informational age, we rely on these so-called “Reliable Sources” for literally everything that we do. And I do mean “Literally.” Do reliable sources really exist? I believe that these “Reliable Sources” are becoming harder to confirm.
It was just recently, when my English teacher instructed the class to use “Reliable Sources” for our research term paper that my quest began. This gradually struck a chord in my efforts to locate current information from these “Reliable Sources.” As my careful and calculated search for pertinent information progressed, at the local libraries, I found that half of the data collected was at least 30 years old. The other half, more relative to my controversial subject, seemed much more meager from the same library sources.
For several days after the official announcement of this next assignment and the required parameters, the “Reliable Sources” phrase played through my mind like an old 8-track tape. My brain started smoking, and then, like a motor without oil, it froze. I believed I had stumbled onto a new oxymoron, “Reliable Sources”, like jumbo shrimp, military intelligence, public safety, hot water heater, etc . . . I felt like George Carlin was taking over my mind.
The thinking wheels of my brain began to spin freely. There was no internal friction in my mind, as the pieces of relevant concepts started to fit together. The phrase, “Reliable Sources” started to become transparent, as if I could see through its tough outer shell, and into the innocent, frail truth, like a tree thousands of years old that had been felled, to examine its rings of history. Yeah, history, that was it! That is where I will solve this enigmatic statement about “Reliable Sources,” I will search for clues in antiquity.
Some of our greatest scientific and philosophic thinkers probably started out as “Unreliable Sources.” Imagine that. For example, what if some reporter had heard about Isaac Newton’s research. Let us assume he got an interview with Newton the day after his mind was seeded with the concept (of gravity, though it probably was not defined as such at that time), by the apple that fell on his head. This concept (gravity) was all Newton could talk about the day the reporter came for his interview, and therefore the reporter became convinced that he had an exclusive story. Later the story was printed. I am sure that other “respectable scientists,” among others, doubted the journalist’s source, not to mention his sanity.
Many other earnest men and women have been discredited because of society’s own personal lack of understanding. Columbus believed that the world was round, while at that time in history, the consensus of the population said that the world was flat. Going to the moon in a ship was thought to be insane at the time it was conceived, as was flight in general, but the Wright brothers proved all doubters wrong.
Fiction is really science, and it is just waiting to be proven to the rest of the world. Is the source un-credible in the beginning? I guess not. So during the last 200+ years, man’s creative mind has been on a roll. How many countless numbers of men and women have been imprisoned, excommunicated, tortured, or put to death because they were the “Reliable Sources”? How many of these discredited journalists along with their sources were there in the past?
One of the greatest books that has been cited a “Reliable Sources” is the Bible. Just how old is it? Well, we know that the New Testament is dated back just under 2,000 years. However, did the Apostles write in English? I don’t’ think so! What gets me is the Old Testament. This set of books starts with the reaction of many. Invariably, the question is, did man pop onto the earth knowing how to write? Just how was all that history correctly transferred over 10,000 years (which is a very controversial subject in its self)? As far as I know much of the Old Testament is transcribed from ancient Sumerian Cuneiform, which took years just to learn enough to translate. Much of the Old Testament was finally written down after generations word of mouth transfer.
There is a very good test of this word of mouth communication. A group of people are assembled, one person is whispered a statement clearly. Verbally it is passed person to person with no one person hearing it twice. At the end of the experiment, the last person to hear the statement announces to all what was told to him. In this test and many others like it, the last statement convieyed is not even close to the original statement given.
Presently our government has not been deemed a very “Reliable Source.” There is so much information pertaining to the truth that it is just waiting to be uncovered. At the end of the movie, “Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark”, you see government officials stashing the Ark away in some gigantic dusty warehouse along with countless numbers of other stuff that our government has deemed “Top Secret” and never intended to be made public. All the UFO data collected since the turn of the 19th century is most likely stashed right next to it. Just a year ago Hollywood released a blockbuster film “Men in Black.” Now I know that this film was intended to be a fantasy scenario, but was it really. Could it have been a clever political satire about the truth in which, the government does conspire to look the other way when “inquiring minds want to know”? It might explain a lot!
In the film “Conspiracy Theory,” Mel Gibson portrayed the part of a victim of government experimentation in mind control for the illicit use of political agendas. His mind was in a constant battle over the things that her read in what many call “Unreliable Sources” like, The National Inquirer, The Star and the like. How many of us read the headline of a nationally known newspaper, and automatically assume the bold type and incriminating color picture are closely related with the truth. This danger of such naive acceptance was never more evident than as conveyed in the latest James Bond movie, “Never Say Never.” The theme of this film revolved around a media mogul that was determined to “B.S.” the world into believing that governments were back-stabbing each other over such global issues as nuclear weapons. I know that you may say the movie was fiction. Unfortunately, this sounds like the same thing that newspaper mogul, Randolph Hurst did at the turn of this century.
Just because some guru-politician, scientist, or biologist has stated anything, the “Reliable Source” prints it, and then the world buys it, does not mean the truth came out. The scandals and conspiracies are intended to wrestle with the truth will remain as long as we are shameful about our actions as humans. What ever happened to “What if? Or that “Gut feeling? Next time you accept things seen, heard, or felt, as fact, think twice about which of these senses could be fooling you, and remember about what is the “Reliability of the Source.” The truth in published media is getting harder to prove. Just prove me wrong.
……. News Flash …….
Student mysteriously disappears after uncovering the truth about “Reliable Sources.” Authorities suspect alien abduction . . .
more at 11:00 . . .
