While reading an article this morning, I had a profound thought.

If we would, as a people, stop and think before implementing rampant change (or legislating un-change), we would be in a much better world.

I think we all know the story of the Henny Penny, right? We’ve had it turned into Chicken Little, but the main concept is the same. The main character sees something, takes it out context and draws conclusions that are obviously not based on actual facts or events – only a superficial knowledge is there. Like reading a headline and assuming that you know what the story is about. Or, reading a blog title and assuming that you know what the post is about.

The danger, of course, is having your head snapped off by a fox.

Ok, actually it’s taking courses of action based on incomplete information, which could be entirely and tragically the incorrect way to go. You see it all the time in religious and political circles – people who can quote scripture but have never read the bible, people who listen to a radio station announcer yelling about something but never bother to check the facts.

I remember reading in the forward of a book once, the author made a comment to the effect that one source of information was worse than none. Without counterpoint, contrast, discussion…well, you just don’t learn enough about it to have an informed opinion. But that doesn’t stop us, does it?

And that, I’m pretty sure, is how stupid laws are passed, ridiculous protests are staged, and it is what will surely be the downfall of human civilization. It’s probably what really killed the dinosaurs.

I thought we all knew the song,

Dear God, don’t know if you noticed, but… your name is on
A lot of quotes in this book, and us crazy humans wrote it, you
Should take a look, and all the people that you made in your
Image still believing that junk is true. Well I know it ain’t, and
So do you, dear God.

And the part that goes, “did you make mankind after we made you?”, right? Well, apparently there are some researchers who had not heard that song.

In this article on the New Scientist website, Dear God, please confirm what I already believe, they discuss just that.

“Intuiting God’s beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify one’s own beliefs”

And the world goes, “duh”.

It’s frustrating me more and more, every time I see an article like this. I can’t even find a job to live on, and here are groups of people getting paid more than I ever have, to make great announcements about things most of us already knew.

I should write them. Tell them that from now on, they should just ask me first. I wouldn’t charge as much, and chances are, I’d be able to point them in the right direction – the direction of, “Duh.”

Under the heading of, “How many people live in poverty while we spent money to study this?”…

A new article today says that…hold on to your seats…teenagers are egocentric!  I KNOW!  OMG!  Who’da thunk it.  Why Teenagers Can’t See Your Point of View

Once again, I can’t believe that this wasn’t already pretty common knowledge.  First by real-life experience with (and as) teenagers; second by just knowing that as a rule, a person develops empathy over the course of his/her life.  Duh.

I think  we all can look back on our teenage years and see that we were pretty much concerned with ourselves, not so much with what others thought.  It took us years to realize that other people may actually have thought differently about a particular subject.  It’s why I use the standby, “because I’m the mom and I said so” when my kid asks me why she has to do something a particular way.  Because I’m the mom, and I can see things from a wider perspective than my teenaged kid, who mostly still thinks of her own.  It’s annoying that she does, but to be honest, I’ve just chalked it up to her being a teenager.  I can see the same thing in her friends, and I can remember (albeit vaguely) being that way myself.

So, in order to use our grown-up empathy and realize that the researchers will feel bad if we don’t seem amazed, I guess we can all fake it, right?  Pretend we had no idea that kids are in it for themselves.   Now we can wait for the next round of testing, where they will repeat the testing on males, and come up with the astounding information that men are behind in this particular category when compared to the previously female-only research subjects.

[for previous research-related articles, see here and here.]