I don't get it

'I don’t get it' is a common response when people are asked to think deeply about a complex topic that doesn’t immediately entertain them.

Will you 'get it' if you read the constitution of your country, or religious text, or scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles, or a book by the most prominent individuals of our times such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, and Albert Einstein?

We are surrounded by entertainment, infotainment, and noise. Entertainment is important. However, information wrapped in entertainment tends to get ignored. We tend to latch on to entertainment rather than information as entertainment is easier to process and brings us instant gratification in the form of a good laugh. Information presented with entertainment is ignored as it is harder to process.

Sadly, what 'gets us' in today’s information age is not what is useful to us, but things that stand out from the noise because of its entertainment and shock value.

When you 'don't get it', could this be due to your lack of ability to understand and comprehend?

This behavior is not hard-wired in us. It is because the global narrative has been hijacked to keep us distracted, mis-informed, dis-informed, not-informed, divided, insular, selfish, and engaged in trivial pursuits which leads us nowhere.

'What is salient is not important, and what is important is not salient. The media turns us away from the issues that will determine the course of our lives, and towards topics of brain-melting irrelevance. Television channel controllers, perhaps the least accountable arbiters in public life, see themselves as edgy and provocative, but they have purged from the schedules almost all challenges to established power. Newspapers style themselves defenders of free speech, but within their own pages most of them stamp out dissenting voices and dissonant topics. If you are scarcely aware of what confronts us, don’t blame yourself': George Monbiot.

There are aspects of our life which everyone should understand. Even if you 'don’t get it', you have to try and understand it, and engage in the conversation. Big ideas that shape our life should get us interested irrespective of its presentation, entertainment values, or the personality of the presenter.

Every reader has a different personality and likes to be presented information differently. The writer cannot accommodate them all. The writer's job is to highlight relevant information and present it. As the reader, focus on the content and the intention, rather than acting like a media personality, copywriter, social media marketer or Social Justice Warrior, and being fixated on the language, grammar, presentation, entertainment value, and Political Correctness.

Try reading the constitution, religious texts, and works by great men of our century, scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles and see if the problem is with you or the article that you didn't 'get'. Does reading the constitution, religious texts, great works by influential men appeal to you and did you 'get it'?

It will also be good practice and help you get comfortable with quality content rather than empty presentation that is easy to read, entertaining, and politically correct, but is not useful and doesn't provoke action.

When you 'don't get it', read again, and contemplate. Repeat if necessary. Don’t look away just because you don’t immediately 'get it'.


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