Skimming the Surface

Professor J,

 You make all this diversion and disconnection sound sinister. Which it well may be. Is there some coordinated effort to keep us busy and distracted? To keep us from knowing ourselves? To keep us flitting from one scandal and news event to the next? Have we sold our birthright of informed thoughtfulness for clever Facebook statuses and the latest trend? Perhaps, but if so we are complicit in our own demise. And what is the payoff for us, since we rarely do anything without a reward like a rat pressing a lever for food? Is it that we never have to be alone with ourselves or think deeply about much of anything? Is it that it allows us to skim along on the surface of life like silly waterbugs while below us lie unknown depths of murky and serious thought we think best left unmuddled? What intimacy of relationships and profoundness of thought might be lurking there? Our culture is frightened of such things.

So while I agree that all of the things you've mentioned keep us from focusing our attention on the real issues, it also keeps us from taking the time and solitude (not the same thing as isolation and/or loneliness), as well as hard work necessary to get to know ourselves. For all our big talk in this country about the myriad of things we fear, I dare say that this getting honest with ourselves is the thing we fear most.

Turn the TV up and check what's trending on Yahoo, please.

You've asked what relevance the latest round of news stories has for our everyday lives:

"When was the last time we as a nation—as Congress, as President, as a people—addressed matters of real and deep relevance to our everyday lives?  The things that trouble us deep down, both as individuals and society?  Or are we so disconnected, disunited, and unfocused ourselves we can’t even discern relevance anymore and are unwitting pawns to those with better strategies?"

 I'd like to see the politician who would like to step forth and hammer that into his platform! But as I think you are alluding to, we so desperately need that very thing.

We dislike pain and are afraid of the truth. We have lulled ourselves (or been lulled) into imagining that life is possible without being hurt, losing something, or ever doing the hard thing. You often wonder what our descendents will think of us. I imagine our ancestors would be appalled as well. Is American Idle sincerely the best use we can make of our leisure time, unimaginable for them? And what of our inability to stand, what would surely have seemed to them, expected loss and hurt. I imagine they would be hard pressed to understand our culture's need for medication and escapism to deal with fairly common events for them. The frequency not making them less painful, but far less surprising when they occurred. I suspect there was a psychological strength and defense in that.

They expected life to be hard and were thankful if ever it were easy. We expect it to be easy and are dismayed when it is hard.

We don't even know ourselves. We've lost our ability to see things clearly. We are easily diverted and trained early in life to be just that. No matter how fascinating any area of study in our education system, it can instantly be brought to an end with the clanging of a bell. The message of "stop focusing on that, and focus on this now" is built into the core of the system. We learn it early. That interesting question the student had in mind will likely be forgotten by tomorrow when they arrive in class again. Things like TV, work, and technology add to it along the way so that by adulthood it is how the mind works. Is it any wonder it is so easy to keep the curtain unnoticed while levers are pulled behind the scenes.

Oh dear. This turned into a rant and I didn't even get to Monsanto! ;)

And yes Madame does wish to hear the MUCH that you have to say on the particulars of Scandalmania. Proceed, Professor!