When relevance becomes irrelevant (Gita Daily)

Based on Bhagavad Gita Chapter 18, Text 73

Our age bombards us with irrelevant information. The attack on an embassy in Africa, a tennis tournament in America, an election in Europe — does such informationchange what we need to do today? Or even the day after?Not very frequently.

Never before in human history have people been fed so much information about which they can do nothing. Never before has the culture subjected people to life with an action-information ratio so low. Our society judges information not by its functional utility, but by its entertainment capacity. We have made relevance irrelevant.
Does this analysis suggest that we stay totally uninformed about worldly events? Not necessarily, though we could substantially decrease the time we give it without losing anything except perhaps the capacity to appear “informed” in pointless chit-chatting about irrelevant subjects.

The main purpose of this analysis is to help us realize that our culture has profoundly changed the way we look at information, a change that significantly alters our approach to scriptural information in two major ways:

1. Superficiality in study: Because we are so habituated, even addicted, to be entertained by new information, we look for similar new entertaining stuff while studying the Bhagavad-gita. On not being titillated, we dub the Gita”boring.”

Read More – http://www.gitadaily.com/2012/09/14/when-relevance-becomes-irrelevant/