“You CAN have it all, just not all at once!”
[… and then you do Weight Watchers … ]
Oprah Winfrey
A participant in a “Lifelong Philosophy” colloquium asked the question:
“Where do you get your news?”
He had been intrigued to find that Gen X-Y-Z individuals get most or all of their news from Twitter.
In so doing, he pointed out, they were the VERY FIRST to know about the Arab Spring uprisings … about the Paris and Brussels bombings … about San Bernadino … and about everything else happening in the world – NOW!
Better yet, it’s unbiased … direct from the front lines … not “filtered” or “colored” by journalists or TV anchors and commentators. Raw, unvarnished NEWS.
And it’s available 24 hours a day …
In contrast, I couldn’t help think of our retired neighbors and most of the residents of the local senior residence facility who watch CNN or other newscasts [perhaps in between soap operas, game shows and naps] 6-8-10 hours a day. “Filtered” and “colored”, indeed, but sometimes with helpful perspective added.
And then I couldn’t help thinking about my own relative absence of indulgence in news-mining/news mongering derived from my cave-dweller’s approach to graduate school, asserting that any news of immediate importance to me would – in due course – be brought to my attention by neighbors or colleagues. Otherwise, it was my sole job, occupation and focus to figure out the mechanism of adrenocorticotropic hormone action in the adrenal cortex and get my Ph.D. (As it turned out, my neighbors and colleagues were very accommodating!)
A similar perspective excluded most other television programming (except for occasional sports) as well as other forms of entertainment. My roommate in college introduced me to the Beatles and my barbershop quartet has introduced me to all sorts of music legends whose rearranged songs we sing. As for other cultural connections, I didn’t know who Peter Falk was until I saw his death reported in TIME magazine. If asked to join a foursome for Bridge or Black Jack, I’d be totally lost!
In fact, the cave-dweller’s mentality served me very well! I got my Ph.D., and, over a 40+ year career, contributed to enhanced understandings of the fundamental biochemistry of hormone action, human development, aging and cancer.
I’ve mellowed a bit with retirement and generally watch the news during lunch or dinner. I also get a lot of my “digested/filtered” news as a long-term subscriber to NPR, TIME and the local news paper. Thus, I know who Vanna White is and have learned about video games like “Mad Birds” and “Candy Crunch” – although these, nonetheless, do not have any real bearing on my overall quality of life. I’m also at a loss to discuss more esoteric cultural benchmarks of the mid-late-20th Century, although a diverse collection of associates regularly bring such to my attention … like the Beatles’ Song “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”, for example. The 5th graders where I volunteer on Tuesdays have informed me that there are three different versions of “Call of Duty”.
After some degree of reflection about what I might be missing, I sampled enough of the offerings on television to become completely bummed out and at least personally exonerated. The vast wasteland of cultural fluff masquerading as “entertainment” with megabillions of dollars worth of associated advertising is mind-numbing – to a point that I once conjectured:
“Television, videos and movies are for invalids
who are constrained from actually living life
and who must experience it vicariously through virtual association.”
This, of course, was partly a rationalization that gave me license to continue to ignore and abhor such potentially habit-forming intrusions into my gray matter through the Paleolithic “Pleasure Center’s” back door.
But, getting back to the 24-7 engagement of Gen X-Y-Zers in social media …
I think an associated reality is that we don’t want to MISS anything. Five minutes without access to a Smart Phone, TV or computer can give one debilitating withdrawal angst!
Another associated reality is that we don’t honestly know what to do with ourselves if we’re not permanently, intently, intimately “glued” to some device connecting us to the rest of the world. So we stay “dialed in” … perhaps to keep from feeling “dialed out” or from having to do something either useful or thoughtful. Whatever is “happening NOW” is the next thing on our list, and we can’t abide not BEING there.
Could it also be that remaining in constant contact with the world is a way of measuring or showing how “important” we are?
So I’ve come to believe that there IS such a thing as TOO MUCH engagement. How many times do you have to hear news repeated before you can move on? And how important – really – is it that YOU be the VERY FIRST to know about something … much less what someone else – THIS VERY MOMENT – is having for dinner at the local food stop?
“Some, some, some, some,
Some folks do,
Some folks do.
Some, some, some, some,
But that’s not me or you!”
“Some Folks Do”
Stephen Foster
I’ve found it’s much more effective to let the news find ME at the speed of ME rather than scrambling my Destiny chasing the news at the speed of light. If something is important enough to have staying power until tomorrow or next week or until it’s picked up by NPR or TIME magazine, then it probably deserves a much larger fraction of my attention THEN.
And so it is with most of the rest of life. If we let external forces constantly command our attention, time and energy, we’re allowing ourselves to get lost in the shuffle.
Prockmorton’s Point to Ponder
“If you’re not being paid for newsgathering and dissemination,
and if you’re not diligently working on your PhD equivalent in life and career management,
you may be wasting a lot of valuable potential.”
Learn to let go! Anything not adding significant value to your life is probably taking away value, tying up critical synapses, and draining your overall finite resources. In workshops on TIME, we talk about Sacred Cows and Strategic Sacrifices when things get tough. The fewer Sacred Cows we have and the more Strategic Sacrifices we can make, the better armed we will be to do what more rightfully needs to be done WHEN it needs to be done. Let the rest go! Quartermaster
