Since I was a kid, I have read the newspapers. Especially the Sunday News--often from other states (as well as the state I was living in.)--not just the comics, either. The front page gave me a quick "take" on the items that everyone else deemed most important. The arts section and the book review section gave me takes on what I found important.
At the dawn of computers, however,the constant deluge of "info-mation" got to me. I began to drown. I was exhausted as I tried to wade through the currents of information breaking all over my mind. I nearly gave up when I found myself having to double-check every story for its validity and accuracy--using a multitude of websites to cross-reference even the most mundane facts. To what end? Did it really make me more well informed--or did it simply sap my life? Was I entering the ideas of others around the world or was I assimilating only the ideas of other "Leaders"? Who owned the information? Who let it loose on the world? Who decided what was truly "important"?
Hope for better humans seemed to diminish as I learned more about the human race. No amount of "feel good" interest fluff counter-acted the depression of what was happening in every country to almost everyone I knew...this planet is a place of vast physical beauty and vast suffering. Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, Lao Tzu--they all knew it. They all told us; attempted to rake through the muck and prepare us; float us to safety in another place. (I remain grateful for the saints and sages and the God who walked with us for a while. Truly.) However, our suffering hasn't abated. Just now, we can get a closer view with a wider array of statistics. How this serves us, I am not convinced. (Surely not enlightened.) Suffering for the sake of suffering has never been a scenario I bought...there has to be a reason. (Why can't we know, for sure, huh? Enough with the theories: I want the truth...) No newspaper, no t.v. broadcast, no internet website has provided any answers--only illustrated the worst possible details of that suffering. Sunday news from the pulpit doesn't add much clarity, either.
We are in this, together, to find ourselves. (A bit of a conundrum. Nevertheless, true.) By finding ourselves, deeply, honestly, completely, we find the Almighty. By finding the Almighty, we get free of the suffering. We get free of the small "self" and merge with the "SELF"--with the others who are part of the "SELF". (Why not just stay merged with the Almighty to begin with? Why the separation from the start?) This is where it gets sticky. This is where I begin to feel like a Spiritual Slacker...Nobody has given me a clue to why this whole "play" has to be played out--news of any kind adds to the miasma.
In the meantime, all the smoke and mirrors, all the bells and whistles and syncopated news of the horrors surrounding this life seek to engulf us; seek to separate us; seek to sink us with despair. The Sunday News, as the rest of "the news", no longer informs me. No longer gives me a slice of the planet--nor even a new recipe I might add to the plethora of recipes I've been collecting my whole life. The Sunday News has become like every other outlet of information: political in a game which the common person can never really play; "human" in a way that merely points out how others are holding it together and succeeding while we secretly fail; entertaining in a way that is stale; boring; dated and trite. (Reviews on Sunday have been previously posted all week long--some before the film or play or performance has even been released to the public!) The people being interviewed and fed to me as "stars" don't shine--are almost interchangeable--and if one scratches the surface, one finds that they had "connections" from the beginning, to get them in those positions of adulation and success... how many resurrections of Charlie Sheen or Rhianna or The Real Housewives do I have to see before even "resurrection" becomes a used-up verb?
My bitterness comes from spending an hour reading the Sunday Times today. It wasn't romantic. It wasn't relaxing. It wasn't enlightening or energizing or even slightly entertaining. It felt like work--piss poor work going nowhere. If one article can be published heralding a rise in reading scores in Massachusetts while another, one page over, points fingers at the educational system in Massachusetts because of poor reading scores in different sections of the state--and no one on the op-ed pages sees this...no one comments critically...or one story in the "Living" section touts the latest findings about cholesterol and Baby Boomers while another contradicts the exact stats--and both are only talking marginal numbers and finite findings but no one is commenting on the fact of how these articles and "suggestions" from the "experts" are confusing us--or that the price of avocados and fresh veggies rivals the price of meat these days and McDonalds doesn't really offer a helluva lot of vegetarian courses anyway--and kids don't eat at home, so who cares?
We wonder why our kids don't read: books, newspapers. (Or go to Church anymore...)We wonder why people rely on twenty-minute ticker-tape renditions of the news flashed on big screens at the supermarket or the restaurant or the bar or the subway station. Or their phones. We wonder but it is right in front of us. We don't want to read through what is printed because we know it will confuse, enrage and not engage us deeply.
Our phones and our screens keep us from pointing out this fact and sharing it with our children. The flashing info-bits are pretty colors and noise--the stuff of sleep-walkers and infants; the stuff of dreams. If we were awake and able to rummage through the dross we might find the truth.Through our neighbors we might find ourselves. (Through ourselves we might find God. Through God we might get through the pain and bitterness and lack of hope; we might go beyond the self-condemnation; the loathing; the anger; the hate.) We might see what beauty if truly there.
We might.
But we won't find it in The News.
At the dawn of computers, however,the constant deluge of "info-mation" got to me. I began to drown. I was exhausted as I tried to wade through the currents of information breaking all over my mind. I nearly gave up when I found myself having to double-check every story for its validity and accuracy--using a multitude of websites to cross-reference even the most mundane facts. To what end? Did it really make me more well informed--or did it simply sap my life? Was I entering the ideas of others around the world or was I assimilating only the ideas of other "Leaders"? Who owned the information? Who let it loose on the world? Who decided what was truly "important"?
Hope for better humans seemed to diminish as I learned more about the human race. No amount of "feel good" interest fluff counter-acted the depression of what was happening in every country to almost everyone I knew...this planet is a place of vast physical beauty and vast suffering. Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, Lao Tzu--they all knew it. They all told us; attempted to rake through the muck and prepare us; float us to safety in another place. (I remain grateful for the saints and sages and the God who walked with us for a while. Truly.) However, our suffering hasn't abated. Just now, we can get a closer view with a wider array of statistics. How this serves us, I am not convinced. (Surely not enlightened.) Suffering for the sake of suffering has never been a scenario I bought...there has to be a reason. (Why can't we know, for sure, huh? Enough with the theories: I want the truth...) No newspaper, no t.v. broadcast, no internet website has provided any answers--only illustrated the worst possible details of that suffering. Sunday news from the pulpit doesn't add much clarity, either.
We are in this, together, to find ourselves. (A bit of a conundrum. Nevertheless, true.) By finding ourselves, deeply, honestly, completely, we find the Almighty. By finding the Almighty, we get free of the suffering. We get free of the small "self" and merge with the "SELF"--with the others who are part of the "SELF". (Why not just stay merged with the Almighty to begin with? Why the separation from the start?) This is where it gets sticky. This is where I begin to feel like a Spiritual Slacker...Nobody has given me a clue to why this whole "play" has to be played out--news of any kind adds to the miasma.
In the meantime, all the smoke and mirrors, all the bells and whistles and syncopated news of the horrors surrounding this life seek to engulf us; seek to separate us; seek to sink us with despair. The Sunday News, as the rest of "the news", no longer informs me. No longer gives me a slice of the planet--nor even a new recipe I might add to the plethora of recipes I've been collecting my whole life. The Sunday News has become like every other outlet of information: political in a game which the common person can never really play; "human" in a way that merely points out how others are holding it together and succeeding while we secretly fail; entertaining in a way that is stale; boring; dated and trite. (Reviews on Sunday have been previously posted all week long--some before the film or play or performance has even been released to the public!) The people being interviewed and fed to me as "stars" don't shine--are almost interchangeable--and if one scratches the surface, one finds that they had "connections" from the beginning, to get them in those positions of adulation and success... how many resurrections of Charlie Sheen or Rhianna or The Real Housewives do I have to see before even "resurrection" becomes a used-up verb?
My bitterness comes from spending an hour reading the Sunday Times today. It wasn't romantic. It wasn't relaxing. It wasn't enlightening or energizing or even slightly entertaining. It felt like work--piss poor work going nowhere. If one article can be published heralding a rise in reading scores in Massachusetts while another, one page over, points fingers at the educational system in Massachusetts because of poor reading scores in different sections of the state--and no one on the op-ed pages sees this...no one comments critically...or one story in the "Living" section touts the latest findings about cholesterol and Baby Boomers while another contradicts the exact stats--and both are only talking marginal numbers and finite findings but no one is commenting on the fact of how these articles and "suggestions" from the "experts" are confusing us--or that the price of avocados and fresh veggies rivals the price of meat these days and McDonalds doesn't really offer a helluva lot of vegetarian courses anyway--and kids don't eat at home, so who cares?
We wonder why our kids don't read: books, newspapers. (Or go to Church anymore...)We wonder why people rely on twenty-minute ticker-tape renditions of the news flashed on big screens at the supermarket or the restaurant or the bar or the subway station. Or their phones. We wonder but it is right in front of us. We don't want to read through what is printed because we know it will confuse, enrage and not engage us deeply.
Our phones and our screens keep us from pointing out this fact and sharing it with our children. The flashing info-bits are pretty colors and noise--the stuff of sleep-walkers and infants; the stuff of dreams. If we were awake and able to rummage through the dross we might find the truth.Through our neighbors we might find ourselves. (Through ourselves we might find God. Through God we might get through the pain and bitterness and lack of hope; we might go beyond the self-condemnation; the loathing; the anger; the hate.) We might see what beauty if truly there.
We might.
But we won't find it in The News.
No comments:
Post a Comment