Why I Avoid The News

WHY I AVOID THE NEWS This week I’d like to step out of the world of writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror and handle the truth that I presently live in the COVID-19 “hot zone” of Seattle; mailed in my mail in ballot a week before the particular person I voted for (Elizabeth Warren) dropped out of the race, leaving that vote meaningless; and have brushed up towards other information tales including folks seeing their life’s work trashed by internet mobs in a descent past due course of and right into a straight and uninterrupted path from allegation to conviction. It’s definitely feeling, right here within the second week of March 2020, like things are teetering on the brink of complete collapse into barbarism. But let’s break that down, beginning with the feeling these and other present events are engendering in me. Aldous Huxley wrote, in The Perennial Philosophy: Agitation over happenings which we're powerless to change, either as a result of they have not but occurred, or else are oc curring at an inaccessible distance from us, achieves nothing beyond the inoculation of here and now with the distant or anticipated evil that's the object of our distress. Listening four or five instances a day to newscasters and commentators, studying the morning papers and all of the weeklies and monthliesâ€"these days, that is described as ‘taking an clever curiosity in politics’; St John of the Cross would have referred to as it indulgence in idle curiosity and the cultivation of disquietude for disquietude’s sake. That’s not a book I would in any other case tend to search out solace in, being in general an apology for religions I’m not a party to, but if he can be in general agreement with Bertrand Russell, someone I do tend to be more philosophically aligned with, who said in his 1951 speech “To Face Danger Without Hysteria”: Mass hysteria is a phenomenon not confined to human beings; it could be seen in any gregarious species. I as soon as noticed a photograph of a big herd of wild elephants in Central Africa seeing an aeroplane for the primary time, and all in a state of untamed collective terror. The elephant, at most times, is a relaxed and sagacious beast, but this unprecedented phenomenon of a loud, unknown animal in the sky had thrown the entire herd utterly off its balance. Each separate animal was terrified, and its terror communicated itself to the others, causing an enormous multiplication of panic. As, nonetheless, there have been no journalists among them, the terror died down when the aeroplane was out of sight. …I assume we may be onto one thing here. COVID-19 is actual, and real folks have really died. A small fraction of the population is in actual hazard, and I’m happy to take part in reasonable measures to assist them keep away from contact with this virus. That’s actually fairly easy for me, personally, since I do business from home and my automotive is damaged so I’m successfully self-quarantined. Still, this i sn't the Black Death, and this isn't the fourteenth century. I do really feel that Elizabeth Warren would make a reliable, empathic, reasonable, and progressive president, so I voted for her within the primary. The incontrovertible fact that she’s dropped out has not, nonetheless, sent this nation right into a demise spiral. I’ll hope Bernie Sanders can pull it out so I gained’t have to be compelled to vote for Joe Biden, but if I am, like I was forced to vote for Hilary Clinton and John Kerry before him, I’ll dutifully solid my “not-the-other-man” vote and we’ll stagger on as a nation. The other factor? Let’s face it, banned books always promote better than books everybody thinks are swell. All that business will both just blow away or eventually descend into lawsuits and felony trials and in any case a younger era will finally mature enough to be as embarrassed by their youthful indulgences as I can typically be about mine. Because punk rock will live eternally, de mise to yuppies. What sends me right into a hyperbolic psychological demise spiral is publicity not to the corona virus, the presidential campaigns, or cancel culture but the wildly uncontrolled non-cease mainstream media and social media hand wringing, doomsaying, and the willful, aggressive ignorance wound up in it. I write and edit (primarily) fiction, so can fortunately ply my commerce eternally with no minute by minute transcript of the day’s events, filtered through a myriad of competing agendas. I can, have, and will proceed to stay away from the “information,” full cease. If, in the final couple weeks I’ve strayed from that True Path, it’s only proved to me how good I was to turn my back on it after I did, years in the past. Maybe all this chatter and yelling and screaming and dressing down and hypothesis does one thing for you. I hope not, however you do you. Just depart me out of it. â€"Philip Athans About Philip Athans The media has an economic incentive to get you to learn their articles or watch their video. How do you get people to concentrate? Drama. The extra dramatic the information, the more doubtless persons are to observe. They love the two-individual political races. Even when one person is a shoe-in to win, they'll make it sound like a nose-to-nostril horse race. wow â€" a voice of calm in a time unreason â€" thank you I stopped watching the information a very long time in the past. It’s simply too darn depressing to keep tabs on things I even have no control over. And it doesn’t help that the media is biased and likes to oversensationalize. My mother and father are avid news watchers and it explains why they're such pessimists. They informed me as soon as that Obama ruined this nation. What? How? I can see how a few of his decisions may have caused hardships for a small portion of the population, however come on. Ruin the whole country? He certainly didn’t ruin their life. They st ay in a pleasant home, they manage to pay for to pay her payments and put meals in your desk, they've 4 “mostly” properly-rounded kids, they've seven healthy grandchildren, and though their well being is not optimum it’s not dangerous considering their age and unhealthy way of life. I’m not a fan of Trump either, however I would never be so overdramatic as to say he ruined the country. If I had been a pessimist, I’d say this nation was messed up lengthy earlier than Obama or Trump. But I’m not. I’m an optimist and I stay this manner by not letting myself get carried away by the media.