August 18, 2021 by Brian Weiner No CommentsChanging The World One Thought At A Time., Lessons From The Mountain

Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking.

The world seems to get more and more polarized by having all of these new layers of communication set on top of humanity.

There was a time where something happening on one side of the planet was not even known on the other side of the planet. Eventually as ships circumnavigated the earth, communication started to spread information about cultures and their collective differences.

Human beings being the greed-driven species that we are, started to covet the gold and natural resources available in the newfound territories and dispatched armadas to secure it for the crown.

Now I can put an image on Instagram or similar and get a like within 2 seconds from someone on the other side of the Earth. That degree of interconnectivity is still so relatively new (in relation to the age of our specie) that we are only beginning to come to terms with the perpetual evolution that this degree of communication is manifesting before our very eyes.

Take the disinformation that has become a strong hold in American culture. We used to trust the news because there had not been a self-serving loathsome character who would bend the news to their own benefit. This experience was dubbed Yellow Journalism. Yellow journalism and yellow press are American terms for journalism and associated newspapers that present little or no legitimate, well-researched news while instead using eye-catching headlines for increased sales. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism. By extension, the term yellow journalism is used today as a pejorative to decry any journalism that treats news in an unprofessional or unethical fashion.

Joseph Pulitzer had purchased the New York World in 1883 and, using colorful, sensational reporting and crusades against political corruption and social injustice, had won the largest newspaper circulation in the country. His supremacy was challenged in 1895 when William Randolph Hearst, the son of a California mining tycoon, moved into New York City and bought the rival Journal. Hearst, who had already built the San Francisco Examiner into a hugely successful mass-circulation paper, soon made it plain that he intended to do the same in New York City by outdoing his competitors in sensationalism, crusades, and Sunday features. He brought in some of his staff from San Francisco and hired some away from Pulitzer’s paper, including Richard F. Outcault, a cartoonist who had drawn an immensely popular comic picture series, The Yellow Kid, for the Sunday World. After Outcault’s defection, the comic was drawn for the World by George B. Luks, and the two rival picture series excited so much attention that the competition between the two newspapers came to be described as “yellow journalism.” This all-out rivalry and its accompanying promotion developed large circulations for both papers and affected American journalism in many cities.

Pulitzer and Hearst are often adduced as a primary cause of the United States’ entry into the Spanish-American War due to sensationalist stories or exaggerations of the terrible conditions in Cuba.

Given the origins of wide spread misinformation in mainstream media, you can easily see that the out of control growth of media has made the influence of unsavory characters like Tucker, Sean, Laura and other totally loathsome scum more powerful than ever before, sending many unsuspecting victims to an untimely death by believing what they are hearing.

To Hawking’s point…. The more societies communicate and collaborate, the more we get results like the International Space Station. The more that they cut off communication, the more we get stalemates in our American government and in international diplomacy issues.

I believe the solution is clear communication. For a failure to communicate always ends badly for someone. Let’s hope it is not us!

Happy Wednesday!

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Written by Brian Weiner

When I was 5 years old, I discovered that the lemon tree in the backyard + dixie cups + water and sugar and I was in business. I have been hooked on that ever since. In 1979, I borrowed $14,000 to create a brand new product... photographic greeting cards with no text on the inside, called Paradise Photography. That was the start of The Illusion Factory. Since then, The Illusion Factory has been entrusted by all of the major studios and broadcasters with the advertising and marketing of over $7 billion in filmed, live, broadcast, gaming, AR, VR and regulated gaming forms of entertainment, generating more than $100 Billion in revenue and 265 awards for creativity and technology for our clients. When I took a break from film school at UCLA to move to Hawaii, my mother did not lecture me. Instead, she took 150 of her favorite aphorisms and in her beautiful calligraphy, wrote them artistically throughout a blank journal. That is the origin of the Lessons from the Mountain series. Since then, on my journeys to the top of a mountain to watch the sunrise, I have spent countless hours contemplating words of wisdom from the sages of all races, genders and political persuasions, constantly accumulating the thoughts to guide me on my life path. I hope you enjoy my books. Please let me know your thoughts, as I highly value your feedback!