We reap what we sow... even when quoting

We need to ensure that we fact-check regularly. Once our media services employed researchers and journalists whose job it was to fact-check all things we put out. When we fact-check, we "compar[e] news content to well-established facts to ascertain if the news content under test is true or not" (Jabiyev et al., 2021, p. 3). How wonderful that was when what was published or broadcast was largely likely to be pretty accurate!

But no longer. We have little fat in our media organisations: many journalists are gig workers who would not make minimum wage unless they worked for many masters, so fact-checking may be sketchily done... if done at all. As a result, we get what we pay for. Further, the sheer AMOUNT of content requiring fact-checking is so vast, that keeping up with it is really a Herculean task. "Manual fact-checking, although often accurate, does not scale well, given the sheer volume of content that online communities produce daily" (Jabiyev et al., 2021, p. 3). 

So when I encountered the following quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, and felt it was sniffy, I decided to try to find the source, on my 'own dime' as it were. The quote was:

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”

This has attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, to Margaret Thatcher, to Lao Tse, and to numerous others. While I was SURE it was older than the 1980s (so cannot have originated with PM Thatcher), I felt it reminded me of something biblical, but could not put my finger on what. 

So I trotted over to Garson O'Toole's Quote Investigator site (2013), and Garson had done the heavy lifting for me! This quote appears to have been formalised from the speech of a Mr Wiseman, speaking to students at Kelvedon school between Chelmsford and Colchester in Essex, UK (1856, as cited by O'Toole, 2013):

"Mr. Wiseman then cautioned his young friends as to the habits they contracted in early life:—”Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” You sow an act, you reap a habit (acts repeated constitute habits); you sow a habit, you reap a character; you sow a character, you reap a destiny. Let them, he said, cultivate habits of industry, application, and order, and [...] they would succeed in life" (1856, as cited by O'Toole, 2013).

So yep, the base of the quote is biblical: "Do not be deceived; God is not mocked: for whatever a man sows, he will also reap" (Revised Standard Bible, 1952, Gal. 6:7). Additionally all the work on evolving the original Wiseman quote has been tracked and cited on the Quote Investigator's site: and the development of this piece I found fascinating (O'Toole, 2013). It is well worth a read. 

But this is a good reminder that we need to fact check our own stuff, as well as we are able. Let's try not contribute to the vast pile of "my auntie said" misinformation out there.

Sam

References:

Jabiyev, B., Onaolapo, J., Stringhini, G., & Kirda, E. (2021). Game of FAME: Automatic Detection of FAke MEmes. In the Proceedings of the 2021 Truth and Trust Online Conference (TTO 2021) (pp. 1-11). https://truthandtrustonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/TTO_2021_proceedings.pdf#page=13

Revised Standard Bible. (1952). Collins Clear-Type Press.

O'Toole, G. (2013, January 10). Watch Your Thoughts, They Become Words; Watch Your Words, They Become Actions. Quote Investigator. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/10/watch-your-thoughts/