Eight Track or Cassette

Is it just recent times or have humans always devoted themselves to dichotomies? Raising 2 opposing camps and then choosing sides- VHS or Beta, Conservative or Liberal, Sea Shepherd or Greenpeace.
My favorite example of this is in the movie Life of Brian. Lecturing to a large group, the speaker says "YOU'RE ALL INDIVIDUALS!" and a lone voice pipes up, "I'M NOT"

The most recent schism I have come across is in the arena of Looming Changes Economic Forecasting. I have started to notice various print and broadcast interviews wherein the person lays claim to his or her consistent accuracy of prediction- their 'record', so to speak. And the debate between the deflationist camp and the inflationist camp starts to sound a bit catty at times. This is not new, academic mudslinging is a proud old tradition. A person's ego becomes invested in the correctness of their angle of prediction and then spends energy defending that perspective.

I feel caught in the middle. Someone spoke up during a discussion at the end of viewing the 3rd Crash Course video to say that it was possible to experience inflation and deflation at the same time, which threw a whole other wrench into my understanding of economics. My grasp on the Economy is a tenuous one at best. Each article I read contains references to one or more principles which I don't fully grasp. What I would like to ask the dueling camps is, "What difference does it make to the average person which scenario plays out? Seeing that there is a possibility that either could trump at the end of the day, how would one prepare for both of them rather than one or the other?"

I think this is yet another sideshow distracting from the work of preparing communities to face whatever reality awaits. I don't know much, but it seems to me that nailing down the exact cause and effect will be academic. 5 minutes into the ordeal, what will be the most important thing? Surely not 'Why it happened' or 'See, I was right, we ARE in a deflationary spiral!'

So the question on my mind these days is how to keep informed about events unfolding and to focus on utilizing that information creatively to inform solutions. It is a simple and difficult task, which few pundits address themselves to, leaving us pedestrians with the hard job of making sense of  conflicting predictions, which is not such a great help after all.

I think that in the end, the most important thing is keeping a focus on accurately observing what is going on around us, that fundamental practice of permaculture;  making immediate, small steps in the first direction that suggests itself from our individual landscape.