I sometimes think back to when I was five or six years old. My whole world was just a few blocks wide—home, the corner store, and maybe a park if someone had the time to take me. But even in that tiny universe, something vast was shaping me: information.
Not the kind of information we associate with news or the internet today, but the steady stream of spoken words, gestures, habits, fears, and hopes that flowed from those around me—parents, neighbors, strangers in line at the market. I watched how people reacted to each other. I absorbed their stories and copied their moods. That’s how children grow—by absorbing. And they don’t absorb selectively. They take in everything.
The environment we grow up in writes the first lines of our internal script. If we hear kindness and honesty, we learn to speak that language. If we hear bitterness and fear, those echo inside us too. I didn’t realize it then, but what I was receiving wasn’t just information—it was formation.
As I got older, the world widened, and so did the flow of information. But something strange happened. I began to notice that many people—myself included—started filtering out anything that didn’t directly serve our immediate tasks. School became job training. Reading became rare. Curiosity dulled under the weight of long hours and short weekends.
By adulthood, many of us are too tired to ask big questions. We stop wondering how things could be different, and we start doing just enough to keep the wheels turning. Somewhere along the line, growth becomes optional. Responsibility starts to feel like a burden, not a privilege. And personal development—mental, emotional, moral—quietly exits the stage.
Years pass like this. The world moves faster, but we slow down inside. If we don’t actively nourish our minds, our sense of responsibility withers. It’s not a dramatic collapse, more like a slow leak. We stop questioning what we consume, believe what’s easy, repeat what’s popular. Weaknesses—like envy, prejudice, pride—find their way in and sit comfortably where discipline and clarity once lived.
The risks of this slow decline are no longer just personal—they’ve become global. When people stop reflecting, they start reacting. When we stop understanding ourselves, we stop understanding each other. The result? Loneliness disguised as independence. Greed masked as ambition. War waged in the name of identity, belief, or power. Disconnection posing as freedom.
Look around. Aren’t we seeing this now? People lost in screens and slogans. Nations drifting apart. Violence framed as virtue. And under it all, a quiet, invisible failure to evolve—not technologically, but morally.
So I ask you—no, I ask myself, and invite you to do the same:
- What kind of information do I allow to shape me today?
- Do I critically examine what I believe, or do I just inherit it?
- Am I making excuses for my inaction, blaming fatigue, circumstance, or the state of the world?
- Do I dare face uncomfortable truths about my culture, my comforts, my inherited biases?
- Can I still grow—not in knowledge alone, but in wisdom and courage?
The easy path is to keep consuming without thinking. The harder path is to wake up.
But maybe it’s time.
Author: Michael Kaplan
To encourage people to think, understand, and find solutions in the fight against ignorance, while promoting knowledge and inspiring personal and collective responsibility for a more enlightened and just society.
This article is a real source of inspiration to shape up the reader’s inner self. I like the way how creatively you presented the words – formation and information. Last but not the least, we need to revise and erase any kind of malice from our “internal script”. Very well done to yet another wise work of wisdom, Michael.