Warning: a steady diet of pap is bad for you

Write enough columns and you’ll trip over a simple fact: provided you write clearly (if you understand spelling and punctuation, and write sentences short enough to not be overly convoluted), at least some small segment of the population will like your work.

Another segment, somewhat larger, won’t like it.

But what’s interesting is that the quality of what you write often isn’t the defining issue in whether you’re congratulated or condemned.

Often, the people who say you are a good writer are those who agree with your position on an issue. Those who say your writing stinks are actually usually taking issue with the position you put forward, not the quality of your sentence construction.

We like to be surrounded by people we agree with. Likewise, we approve when our positions are spelled out and amplified. Maybe it makes us feel smarter; maybe it makes us feel better understood.

For me, it means taking compliments and complaints alike with a grain of salt. Obviously, I prefer compliments, but the truth is they often come from the same place — whether you agree with me or not.

And that takes me to the curious world we now live in, one that, despite the huge reach of the internet, not only offers endless reach for gathering, reading and digesting information, but also allows us to wall ourselves off.

On social media, when someone constantly gets your goat, you block or mute them, so eventually (sorry to say this) you can end up with a circle of opinion bobbleheads: one person says something, and everyone else nods in unison. It’s the echochamber of the like-minded.

But it’s not just social media. One of the handicaps of the 10,000-channel internet world is that it’s happening in the media,

You find the news outlet most like you, permanently attach yourself to its feeding tube, and dine on self-confirmation daily.

too. You find the news outlet most like you, permanently attach yourself to its feeding tube, and dine on self-confirmation daily. The world is always just like you knew it was, whatever you happen to have thought that it was.

In the United States especially, separate, isolated streams of media — pro-trump, anti-trump, conservative, really conservative, left, conspiracy centric — can be winnowed down to a single type of source, a diet of one ideological tone of media alone.

There have always been different media channels: Toronto Sun readers and Globe and Mail readers are clearly different demographics. In a job long ago, I had to read and clip stories from the Toronto Star, Sun, and Globe and Mail for a clippings library, and I was endlessly fascinated how editorial writers and columnists could come to vastly different conclusions from the same exact set of facts. (At that point, at least, different media outlets didn’t spend time and newsprint space allowing politicians to trash competing media.)

But thought and food are not different.

It doesn’t matter which one you pick: no diet of one thing and one thing alone is particularly healthy.

I know how much people like having their own beliefs reinforced and supported by having them repeated in the media, and I can understand the attraction; why listen to someone who might be suggesting that you’re wrong about something or someone, when you can have a full day’s chorus singing the tune you already knew was the right one anyway?

It’s simpler, takes less thought, and is far more self-affirming.

Now, I don’t mean you have to keep the lines of communication constantly open with someone who calls you vile names every day. There’s no rule that says you have to suffer trolls gladly — and frankly, after a day or so, you’ve heard enough of what they say to be able to predict their responses anyway. At that point, from a blood pressure point of view, it’s better to move on.

But you should regularly read argument outside your comfort zone.

I can read Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail or Barbara Kay in the National Post, for example (to name just two), and they can drive me right up the wall; I disagree so much I wpractically foam at the mouth. But once I’ve read them, some small part of me works over their ideas and arguments to winnow out any scrap that might be useful in modifying my view of the world.

Consider this: if you honestly believe there’s only one truth and that it’s your truth, why would you bother even thinking anymore?