Be Your Own Talking Head

I was watching Fox News with my mom, getting all starry-eyed over the gratuitous and frequent use of the American flag graphic, waving in the background, when I had a sudden feeling of waking up with my house having landed on a witch and America having inched much closer to Fahrenheit 451 while everyone was asleep at the switch. The triggering event for me was when the attractive models-cum-news anchors (a man and a woman) briefly covered a story about a women who was driving a van to evade police, until it stalled out on railroad tracks and she barely escaped the vehicle before a train came and creamed it. Of course, there was a piece of footage from the police car camera so that we could be voyeurs into the thrill of the near-death experience/foible of this otherwise nameless person trying to escape the law. The anchors were actually chuckling as they wrapped up the short-attention-span clip by saying that the woman had several previous convictions and was wanted for something-or-other. The "story" had the same feel as, "Coming up after the commercial, you won't believe (chuckle...) how many soft-serve ice cream cones a miniature schnauzer can juggle, caught on tape by the Hendersons in Cedar Rapids, Iowa."

The whole scene reminded me so much of the people in Ray Bradbury's story who are watching the chase as the Hound goes after the hero and eventually catches the wrong person but that information isn't given to the viewers who are too wrapped up in the infotainment to care. The government news media just wraps up the chase and everything goes back to normal. If you haven't read the book, I haven't given away all of it and it's certainly a great, worthwhile read when you have a chance.

Whenever I'm watching Fox News (which is such a reliable news source that they have taken to reminding viewers between each segment that they are Fair and Balanced), and I'm thinking about all the people who get their disinformation from this big box store of a media outlet, I wonder about what we are filling the airwaves and fiberoptic cables with these days. As we increase the media bandwidth with more channels, websites, internet radio stations, self-publishing sites, etc., what is happening to the quality of the information that comes down the pipe and trickles into our stream of consciousness? What does it mean for us to be living in a world with so many bits and bytes flying around that it's difficult at best to sort out the information? When the figures are lying and the liars are figurin', who do we trust?

I finally stumped myself in my own blog. I don't know who to trust. I like the New York Times, I like indymedia.org, I read Science News (because I'm a dork), and I trust Fox News about as far as I can throw my friend Sam's vintage 1974 TV set. I trusted recycling programs until I found out that my high school dumped most of the bins into the trash because there were staples still in the papers. I trusted my high school health textbook until I met some nice, responsible, well-adjusted pot smokers. (Pay attention, kids - see what happens when you trust people over 30?) I trusted the Sierra Club and NRDC until they started warming up to nuclear power again. I trusted my own eyes and ears until I saw a television ad for coal as "the clean alternative" (I really wish I was joking).

I say trust yourself. Tap just to the left side of your sternum, and if your heart is indeed in the right place, that's all you need. Read everything with a keen and skeptical eye. Take "solutions" with a grain of salt. Take quick-fixes to global catastrophe with a heaping tablespoon of salt. When The Man (that's right, I said The Man) tells you about how hydrogen is going to save our spherical greenhouse by running our cars, ask a few basic questions to yourself about what it takes (more energy! say it with me) to make hydrogen into a useful fuel form. We're a planet full of well-intentioned primates who are rightfully fearful, in a world with more of us and not enough luxury sedans and clean drinking water to go around. But when we're slow and thoughtful in what we do, and remember that quick fixes and innovations (teflon works great, why test it for human health problems?) are a huge part of how we ended up in the hot seat, we do a decent job of taking care of ourselves. Indian cuisine, yoga, tai chi, vision quests, the inclined plane, compasses, The Golden Rule - all these wonderful things were evolved and articulated over long periods of time with the help of countless hands and hearts who were working for the greater common good. I think our generation's work is to evolve a higher consciousness that involves zero fossil fuels, reducing and reusing everything, remembering that climate change is coming for all of us, and working with the humbling reminder from Anne Lamott that if God hates all the same people that we do, it's a sure sign that we've just made God in our own image.

We can help ourselves. It will be a long and difficult journey to get back to a stable ecosystem and a just, humane culture for everyone. It will take all of us being skeptical, scientific, and loving to the very best of our ability. The unpredictable twists and turns will come, as they always have, and it's certain that not all 6.6 billion of us are going to make it. We are going to face some tough times collectively when Nature gets off the bench, spits some tobacco in the dust, gets a clearly-masculine-non-homophobic pat on the ass from the teammates, and bats last (as always). We don't need to worry about whether she's going to crush it out of the park. We only need to take care of ourselves as best we can when she does.

How can I maximize my interest and the interests of the group at the same time? It's no mystery - it's just off the path that we're beating with the suits and the talking heads and the hype and the misdirection. Be well, be kind to each other, be good to yourself. Think about what all these things mean, in the biggest sense possible.

End transmission.