"Twisted mind,
Withered brain
You know I'm going insane
I just tell them to get back
When they tell me how to act
I've got the world up my ass"
Withered brain
You know I'm going insane
I just tell them to get back
When they tell me how to act
I've got the world up my ass"
["I've got the World up my Ass", Puscifer (cover of Circle Jerks)]
I find myself dwelling mentally in odd spaces of late, outside my typical comfort zones. It's not that I fear confrontation, coping with bad news, or hearing about the deplorable state of the world. My typical mental "comfort zone" has room for those things. I digest. I cope. I have my mechanisms. And truly, if you sift through the constant barrage of media, the world is actually getting better, it's just not reflected that way. But that media reflection, that's part of the problem, and it doesn't stop there.
In recent months, partly because of things like watching Bill C-16 work its way through the Senate, largely because of things like Trump and Syria, I feel like I'm dealing with "death by a thousand cuts". Facebook feeds. Group feeds. News websites. Comments sections on wherever - which yes, I know I should never read. Bit by bit, it grinds me down. Bit by disheartening bit, it depresses. I've found myself blocking more and more people on social media, but it's still never enough. Part of me wants to just unplug from it. I am tempted. But I know I'd be giving up the good with the bad.
I'm a problem-solver. It's deeply ingrained in me. Every situation I see or hear I want to respond to. I always have an opinion. I always have an idea. (I clearly should have become a cab driver or hairdresser.) I've a distinct lack of "yeah, whatever". I hear strangers arguing and realize they simply misunderstand each other and want to interrupt. I hear someone at the front of a line I'm in trying to argue with a clerk and want to go stand beside them and present a clearer argument and see justice done. When it comes to social media, it's often hard for me to avoid arguing with idiots on the internet, which is a rabbit hole that should be avoided at all costs. (They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.) I understand that I don't have the solution to all the world's ills - the "piss-n-vinegar" years are well behind me - but I still feel a compulsion. Every time, a desire to fix things rises in me.
And so I find myself trapped in the middle these days: I feel too exhausted to fight every battle, constantly eroded by the daily toll of shared news articles, yet feeling as though I've somehow disappointed or failed those I profess to represent when I'm not there for them every step of the way, writing the letters or sharing the posts or whatever. I console myself with a Taoist parable about how 'the wind can't blow all the time, and if the heavens must sometimes rest, so too must we', but it's not enough. I remain burdened with guilt. I feel like I should be screaming from the rooftop at Canadian senators, but all I really feel like doing is calling up a certain U of T professor to tell him he's an ego-maniacal cunt and I hope someone he loves comes out to him soon so he's forced to face the depths of his ignorance in the most emotionally-invested way possible. Emotional investment seems to be the only path left that spurs some of us to learn now that we're drinking our information from the poisonous fire hose.
I believe in stepping up, I do. But the problem with the modern day social-media frenzy is that in 'the global village' you know all about all the problems, and there are far too many problems to jump in and help fix. Even when you pick and choose your causes, the fact remains that "the little guy" will be out-gunned, out-spent, and out-lasted by governments and monolithic corporate entities. Open Media vs the Big Three. Standing Rock. Muskrat Falls. Suddenly I have an over-played Billy Joel song stuck in my head.
Ultimately, the problem for me (read: us) is this: within the span of our generation, we've gone from being largely ignorant of most of the goings-on in the world except what's happening locally, to having more information at our fingertips than we can possibly digest. Unable to fully digest all we're seeing has led to "news" often being little more than 140 character tweets, and considering ourselves "informed" when all we've done is skim a misleading, sensationalist headline. That won't keep us from having an opinion, mind you, or from further propagating what we thought the story was.
The pendulum has swung heavily from one side to the other, and we need to find ourselves a reasonable medium. There has to be a way we can filter the daily torrent of shit in which we find ourselves awash. But the problem is that I can only conceive of two solutions, and neither of them is particularly appealing, and may not even be possible:
First, we have selective, willful ignorance. As individuals, we choose what to consume or not consume, and therefore what to give a shit about or not give a shit about. I don't have to stress over the things to which I'm blissfully ignorant. I don't have to feel compelled to do something about them; I don't have to feel guilty if I choose not to. But this is something that's currently culturally unacceptable. It's barely acceptable when someone is unwittingly ignorant ("What do you mean you've never heard of Allepo?"), so imagine the reaction when someone professes they don't want you to enlighten them. ("Nope, and I don't want to.") Such a position leads us to assume they are an individual lacking in compassion, as opposed to someone whose compassion reserves are simply run dry. Even people I know who regularly suffer from anxiety and depression are still tuned-in to the daily barrage of everything-wrong-in-the-world through Facebook, Instagram, etc., we don't hesitate to regurgitate these details to them, and we still expect them to be informed, like the rest of us. How merciless are we?
The second possibility that comes to mind for me is based on an interesting contention made in a YouTube video I found Dan watching the other day (sorry, don't have the link). The argument was that when we moved from a subscription model for news to an advertising-based one, it caused the decline in quality and the move to infotainment, which spiraled into the disgusting mess we somehow still call "journalism" today. The current design is meant to be pure click-bait, with little regard for the quality of the content itself, and little regard for the idea of repeat-viewing by a loyal customer base. And that means it's all exaggerated and usually fear-mongering, and even more dire and emotionally-draining that it really needs to be. Is it possible to reverse this trend? Is it possible for us to return to the idea of fact-checked, impartially-delivered, spell-checked, well-researched and well-written articles for which we would actually pay out of pocket for such quality? Are we willing to buy back our sanity a piece at a time, demanding a pressure gauge and filter for the firehose from which we daily drink?
I'm sincerely hoping someone has a third option I haven't thought of.
I'm a problem-solver. It's deeply ingrained in me. Every situation I see or hear I want to respond to. I always have an opinion. I always have an idea. (I clearly should have become a cab driver or hairdresser.) I've a distinct lack of "yeah, whatever". I hear strangers arguing and realize they simply misunderstand each other and want to interrupt. I hear someone at the front of a line I'm in trying to argue with a clerk and want to go stand beside them and present a clearer argument and see justice done. When it comes to social media, it's often hard for me to avoid arguing with idiots on the internet, which is a rabbit hole that should be avoided at all costs. (They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.) I understand that I don't have the solution to all the world's ills - the "piss-n-vinegar" years are well behind me - but I still feel a compulsion. Every time, a desire to fix things rises in me.
And so I find myself trapped in the middle these days: I feel too exhausted to fight every battle, constantly eroded by the daily toll of shared news articles, yet feeling as though I've somehow disappointed or failed those I profess to represent when I'm not there for them every step of the way, writing the letters or sharing the posts or whatever. I console myself with a Taoist parable about how 'the wind can't blow all the time, and if the heavens must sometimes rest, so too must we', but it's not enough. I remain burdened with guilt. I feel like I should be screaming from the rooftop at Canadian senators, but all I really feel like doing is calling up a certain U of T professor to tell him he's an ego-maniacal cunt and I hope someone he loves comes out to him soon so he's forced to face the depths of his ignorance in the most emotionally-invested way possible. Emotional investment seems to be the only path left that spurs some of us to learn now that we're drinking our information from the poisonous fire hose.
I believe in stepping up, I do. But the problem with the modern day social-media frenzy is that in 'the global village' you know all about all the problems, and there are far too many problems to jump in and help fix. Even when you pick and choose your causes, the fact remains that "the little guy" will be out-gunned, out-spent, and out-lasted by governments and monolithic corporate entities. Open Media vs the Big Three. Standing Rock. Muskrat Falls. Suddenly I have an over-played Billy Joel song stuck in my head.
Ultimately, the problem for me (read: us) is this: within the span of our generation, we've gone from being largely ignorant of most of the goings-on in the world except what's happening locally, to having more information at our fingertips than we can possibly digest. Unable to fully digest all we're seeing has led to "news" often being little more than 140 character tweets, and considering ourselves "informed" when all we've done is skim a misleading, sensationalist headline. That won't keep us from having an opinion, mind you, or from further propagating what we thought the story was.
The pendulum has swung heavily from one side to the other, and we need to find ourselves a reasonable medium. There has to be a way we can filter the daily torrent of shit in which we find ourselves awash. But the problem is that I can only conceive of two solutions, and neither of them is particularly appealing, and may not even be possible:
First, we have selective, willful ignorance. As individuals, we choose what to consume or not consume, and therefore what to give a shit about or not give a shit about. I don't have to stress over the things to which I'm blissfully ignorant. I don't have to feel compelled to do something about them; I don't have to feel guilty if I choose not to. But this is something that's currently culturally unacceptable. It's barely acceptable when someone is unwittingly ignorant ("What do you mean you've never heard of Allepo?"), so imagine the reaction when someone professes they don't want you to enlighten them. ("Nope, and I don't want to.") Such a position leads us to assume they are an individual lacking in compassion, as opposed to someone whose compassion reserves are simply run dry. Even people I know who regularly suffer from anxiety and depression are still tuned-in to the daily barrage of everything-wrong-in-the-world through Facebook, Instagram, etc., we don't hesitate to regurgitate these details to them, and we still expect them to be informed, like the rest of us. How merciless are we?
The second possibility that comes to mind for me is based on an interesting contention made in a YouTube video I found Dan watching the other day (sorry, don't have the link). The argument was that when we moved from a subscription model for news to an advertising-based one, it caused the decline in quality and the move to infotainment, which spiraled into the disgusting mess we somehow still call "journalism" today. The current design is meant to be pure click-bait, with little regard for the quality of the content itself, and little regard for the idea of repeat-viewing by a loyal customer base. And that means it's all exaggerated and usually fear-mongering, and even more dire and emotionally-draining that it really needs to be. Is it possible to reverse this trend? Is it possible for us to return to the idea of fact-checked, impartially-delivered, spell-checked, well-researched and well-written articles for which we would actually pay out of pocket for such quality? Are we willing to buy back our sanity a piece at a time, demanding a pressure gauge and filter for the firehose from which we daily drink?
I'm sincerely hoping someone has a third option I haven't thought of.
