Influence on Society
I believe the most influential force in today’s society is the media and the way it attempts to convince people that it is the standard-bearer of the truth. What I mean is that media outlets have successfully brainwashed much of society into believing that whatever they say is fact and should be accepted without challenge. The media has been so successful at this game they now market openly biased networks that cater to like-minded individuals. This has created a society of people who seek out information that confirms their own opinions and do not critically think about things themselves. This form of thinking, which is called confirmation bias, is described by Science Daily as “A phenomenon wherein decision makers have been shown to actively seek out and assign more weight to evidence that confirms their hypothesis, and ignore or underweight evidence that could disconfirm their hypothesis” (Science Daily, n.d.). In other words, people seek out confirmation of beliefs they already hold and push away evidence that may prove contradictory. To prove the existence of confirmation bias, one does not have to look farther then his or her Facebook wall or news feed, find someone who has been taking about the election, and just read that person’s posts.
What scares me a little about this control the media has is that if people in society are continually told what to believe and will not challenge their own ideas or accept challenges from others, it will be difficult for people to grow in their personal values. I believe most of us grow by listening to others viewpoints, challenging them, and defending our own views. When we engage in this challenge and defense, we tend to eventually accept pieces of the opposition’s position, making it part of our own and growing in the process.
As far as how this force affects Christians, I think it is fairly obvious if we simply look back to the incidents that unfolded with Chick-fil-A. The story began