Informed consent is a principle of law which posits that a person cannot make a good decision without reliable and appropriate information. Scant years ago this premise was unassailable. Today informed consent is nearly impossible. Why?
It is because we are immersed in a veritable sea of information—an exponential and unceasing expansion of bits and bytes. Assessing its many sources, veracity and meaning has become practically impossible.
So as the supply of information is inexhaustible we are not. We have less and less time to deal with ever more information. To dignify and excuse our lack of focus and frustration we say we are multitasking. But none of us really multitask. We serially task and most of us do it badly. Multitasking is a myth—a euphemism for distraction—for self imposed attention deficit.
I have no statistics to cite (although I’m sure I could find some online) but my observation from the perspective of 59 years of living suggests that in the United States logic and reasoning are rapidly being abandoned in favor of hunch, cant and dogma.
This is frightening and understandable. The overwhelming task of finding meaningful and irrefutable truths in the mountains of conflicting and contradictory information—the heaps of decontextualized facts and factoids—has predisposed us to those persons, institutions and organizations that offer to do our thinking and fact sorting for us. How easy it is to rely upon guru BABABABA or the alleged inerrant word of some set of holy scriptures. How easy it is to say, “I don’t understand it but those real smart scientists, they got it all figured out.” How easy it is to click on Google, Bing or Yahoo for an instant answer, any answer—preferably the answer that confirms my hunch no matter how goofy or profound it might be.
Our freedom of thought is the freedom least exercised and most often surrendered without a fight—most likely because freethinking can be terrifying and lonely. It often takes the thinker into uncharted territory and raises questions that can’t be answered with a keyword search.
Freedom of association, movement and acquisition can be denied by circumstance or the actions of others. Not so the freedom of thought. It remains a choice.
So it is that informed consent is impossible without freedom of thought which is what makes meaningful focus, discovery and creativity possible.
© Michael M. Smith 2009
This resonates on so many levels.
A now-famous local incident raised the multi-tasking issue recently. At Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee’s town hall meeting to discuss health care, a woman rose to speak about her cancer and its treatment. Jackson-Lee’s cell phone rang , and she turned away from the woman to take the call. Worse, she continued to talk on the phone as the woman stuttered and the audience began cat-calling.
Questioned later, Jackson-Lee said she was “multi-tasking”. She didn’t mention anything about inattention, disrespect or lack of seriousness.
I know this. If multi-tasking means writing or reading while the clothes dryer and dishwasher are running, I can do it. If multi-tasking means talking on the speaker phone in the kitchen while I’m cooking dinner, listening to television and talking to Mom, all at the same time, it’s a losing proposition all the way around.
As for thinking… I hate to admit it, but I don’t think I fully understood the difference between “smart” and “thoughtful” until well past my years of formal schooling. Because I could remember bushels of facts and tested well, I was considered “smart”. But thoughtful? That’s harder – much harder.
One thing blogging’s done for me is force me to do more thinking about my own convictions and about the world. In fact, one of my earliest blogs was entitled, “Reading, Writing and Thinking: A Paradigm for Blogging”. I offered one ironclad rule – more thinking, fewer words – and then added this:
“As I write, I continually edit, and my editing process is concerned with far more than correct spelling and grammar. I edit for clarity of thought, for logical consistency and personal conviction as well. Because I want my words to be a direct expression of who I am – because I want them to be true, in the fullest sense of that word – I’m forced to think to be sure my writing does the job.”
Your other important point concerns context. Decontextualization is a primary reason “talking points” and “sound bites” are so irritating, useless and dangerous.
For years “informed consent” was associated primarily with medical procedures. To continue in that vein, I’d say your diagnosis is spot-on. Now, if only we could determine the correct treatment.