Thought 126: You are the target of the media blitz

Information is constantly beamed at you - by the media and also by the internet, if you are a regular surfer. The media is constantly communicating with you all the time, perhaps subliminally too. Some of the information beamed at you is designed to mislead you into decisions and actions, which may be inimical to your own interests.

Therefore, the information churned out by the media is frequently not processed properly for your use. The raw data has to be evaluated and filtered and processed for accuracy of facts, as well as, for relevance to your needs. Filtered and processed information is value-added information and therefore, can be quite costly.

It is not enough if you acquire the proper information once. It has to be updated constantly. We know now that the information gets obsolete very rapidly. This puts pressure on you. You are never sure that you are not operating on obsolete information.

If you do not have proper information with you, you will be at the mercy of those high pressure sales people, who are eager to sell you something and take away your money. There is a mad rush to get at your purse strings and separate you from your money, somehow, any old how.

The business community looks after its own interests much better than ordinary consumers. The ordinary consumers too should do the same. Self help is the best help. You become aggressive and design your own counter measures.

Consumer societies are one answer to this. We can also choose the sources of
information - the news paper, the magazine, the TV station, friends, neighbors, the school, the job, etc, from where we get information. Not easy, but we have to think on these lines.

We have to know our needs precisely and decide which sources of the information are likely to satisfy our needs properly. Our objective is to prepare ourselves for taking good decisions, because, "Your decision is only as good as the information that you have".

The next thought is about “There is an immense mass of information being thrown at you now”