Do you seek, and are guided by, the truth? Or do you go running to your tribe for the necessary guidance?
Please don’t pretend you have no tribe. We are social beings which means that tribes are ubiquitous. Your family is a tribe. Your tennis club is a tribe. The football team for which you barrack is a tribe. Your workplace or professional affiliation is a tribe. Criminal gangs are tribes. Your neighborhood is a tribe. Social media via the internet are tribes. Your church is a tribe. Your political affiliation is a tribe.
All tribes dispense information. Sometimes this is misinformation or even disinformation. In these latter cases, perhaps you should (at least temporarily) disaffiliate yourself from your tribe and go it alone lest you fall into a rabbit hole as many do. Reliable information, aka the truth, is so important if your life is to be guided by reality. It is pure gold.
How do you tease out reliable information? How do you know it when you come across it? It’s not easy. Getting dubious information from your treasured tribe is much easier.
To get to the truth, you must consult a variety of sources, keeping an ear to the ground re the relative reliability of each of these sources. This is part of the process of discernment, a handy skill to acquire. Education, foil to tribalism, is key to its acquisition.
Read books and other printed information by all means, steering clear of the ‘best sellers’ recommended by tribes with their own agendas. Read social media postings for entertainment only and, for the most part, at your own peril. My posts are OK – but I would say that wouldn’t I? – so you must find this out for yourself. This is where discernment comes into play, and a healthy dose of skepticism at all times.
Travel extensively to avoid parochialism. So that your own local community does not become your overarching tribe.
I met recently a person (call him Jim) who had hardly ever moved away from his local district, even as far as the CBD of his own capital city. In conversation with Jim, I remarked on the recent comment of a prominent meteorologist, who pointed out that, though 2024 has been the hottest year on record for the entire globe, it would likely be the coolest year for those experiencing subsequent years. Jim was dubious. He felt the meteorologist could be wrong.
Of course he could be wrong. But it would be unwise to bank on it, as I feel Jim was doing.
Be advised. Information acquired through educated discernment is more likely to approach the truth than information peddled by your tribe of preference.