A world you were conversant with.

Subject: A world you were conversant with.

"Ignorance is bliss" so the old adage goes. Do we in this digital age, know too much.
Does this extra knowledge further our desires to have what others have or lead us to become dissatisfied when we learn of our position in the league table of goods and assets.
Information is handed out by bureaucrats and politicians on a need to know basis. Listening to a sitting in the Scottish Parliament this morning, two eminent professors from two Scottish universities were being questioned about the effect of Brexit on Scotland.  It was interesting but then suddenly the session was brought to a close with the statement "that the open session was coming to a close and a closed session was about to begin". I wondered, since this was not a meeting where "state security" was being debated, why would they invoked a reason for secrecy, why were the general public excluded. Was it just an ego trip by people who clearly think themselves important and more important than the people who voted for them, gave them their jobs and in fact pay them out of general taxation.
Anyway back to the thesis that we have too much knowledge.
Our worlds are bordered by relatively insignificant things, of which, the cost of a loaf of bread is one of them but which little else rarely matters. Most world affairs are outside our pay grade as they say, even the crimes against humanity are pursued by people who have no influence over. The tragedies which have happened or are happening, there is little we can do but feel sorry for those effected.
The problem is that feeling sorry has a cumulative effect on our psych. We begin to feel uneasy at our own luck to be unaffected and wonder will it happen to us in the future if and when we are effected. For instance the list of diseases seems to grow each year and their causes with them. Our diet and lack of exercise is deemed a killer more dangerous than an attack by ISIS (no doubt is). The fall in our ability to have the money to spend on things we didn't know we needed, until some marketing executive got to work on our addled brains and convinced us of its necessity.

I come from a time when we were inclined to think for ourselves and form our own judgement. Before television streamed its views into our home, before people began to walk around with a smart phone to tell them where to turn.

In this pre television world your needs were governed by your own independent consideration, the ability to consider what actually matters to you, was gathered from a small personal compass, from the actual world around you, the one you knew and you were conversant with.