When I was still in my vibrant forties I remember a friend worrying about his mother who lived alone in Detroit. He had years before made his way to Houston and amazing work at NASA. He found love, married and settled down to work and have a family. He was an only child who visited his mother often. As she grew older and less and less able to care for herself he noticed how the once indomitable woman had become continually anxious. His conversations with her more often than not revolved around the many fears that consumed her. He learned that most of her information came from watching television news programs almost all day long. He wondered if she would be as convinced that the world was falling apart if she were simply to limit her viewing time or even give it up entirely. He believed that much of her angst had been created by the continual drone of reporters hawking their sensational stories.
I often think about those conversations with my friend as I too enter the later years of my life and hear a constant drone of bad news from the media. Unlike my friend’s mother I rarely watch the news programs. Instead I get my information from news websites on my computer each morning and then I spend the rest of my day in activities that keep my mind free from a day long cycle of worry. Still, I have experienced many nights of insomnia in which I have a tendency to blow up the darkness of news reports more than I should. It is then that I wonder if all of us are suffering from a hyperbolic news overload.
I like to be informed, but there is a tendency in the press to grab onto one topic and repeat stories about it so much that it begins to feel more like a commercial than an opinion free recitation of facts…who, what, when, where, how. Political bents seem to slip into even the very best reporting and often those without a discernible motive are unable to command the attention of the public. In a sense we are the customers of the news who are not just allowing, but actually encouraging commentaries rather than reporting. By our preferences we have unwittingly turned the news into entertainment that thrives on keeping us afraid.
It has been duly noted that our young are presently enduring an epidemic of depression. Little wonder they feel that way when they see the adults continually carping with one another unable to solve problems with a willingness to compromise for the sake of everyone concerned. Battles are big news. They sell papers and provide higher ratings on television. They bring attention to individuals whose thoughts my otherwise be ignored. We have become a world of audacious people vying with one another for the stage and a voice.
There was a time when real problem solving took place in society. Bullies and liars were given little or no berth. Honorable men and women tackled real problems rather than engaging in culture wars. They considered differing solutions and worked for a common good, not a particular base of voters. The news desks were manned by people like Walter Cronkite who only occasionally voiced his personal beliefs, once when he cried when announcing that President Kennedy had died and another time when he expressed his frustration with the ongoing war in Vietnam.
Before my mother-in-law died last year she watched the news most of the day. When we visited her she would talk of nothing else but the fears that the reporting had created in her. She kept her home dark and locked up tight as though it was a castle under siege. My father-in-law too seemed unable to trust anyone because of what he saw and read about the state of the world. It reminded me of my friend’s mother who had become a prisoner in her home because of her worries.
There are so many people suffering from the toxic influence of news services pretending to be factual when they are actually pits of propaganda. They drone on incessantly infecting the minds of good folks who believe that we are on a precipice of destruction. They push us into conflicting tribes and encourage us to be wary of one another. The results of such propagandizing are frightening.
We hear stories of a young man who accidentally knocks on the door of the wrong house being shot in the head. We learn that two women using a driveway to turn around are attacked. A child whose ball rolls onto the wrong lawn becomes a target of fear. People are inside their homes loaded with arms, listening to dire stories of marauders and then we are shocked with they take aim at innocents because they fear that they are under attack.
I recently contacted the county health department because the swimming pool next door has become a toxic danger to the neighborhood. I had spoken with the owners multiple times before making that call and they just smiled and said that they would do something to fix the problems. After a time as the pool sat in a deplorable condition they no longer answered the door. When I came by to ask them if there had been any progress in eliminating the brackish water that had become home to bullfrogs and who knows what else I was greeted by silence from inside the home. When nothing was done after five months I call the county health department that assured me that they would take care of the problem.
Recently I received a message from someone at the health department. She had come by to check on the pool but nobody answered the door at the home. She explained that she does not have the authority to even walk to the backyard of the home to take photos, so she wanted to come to my yard and attempt to learn what was happening next door by peering through the cracks of my wooden fence. In essence she admitted that she was afraid of wandering around my neighbors’ property. Since nobody can’t really see anything from my yard without climbing a ladder it seems that the health department will be unable to issue any citations or orders for cleaning the scum and mosquito filled pool. In other words, this is where we are today. Everyone is afraid, even the authorities.
I would hope that like other issues that our world has faced this era of fear mongering will only be a phase. I like to think that we will tire of the constant bickering fear-filled reports. Somehow we will find our way again to a reasonable way of living together with each other. When we do it will represent a good step toward helping our young to believe once again that we are leaving them a compassionate world of opportunities rather than a cesspool of problems. Perhaps the sooner we do this, the better everyone will be.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 