I decided to take a break from news for just one moon. A friend, speaking about something completely unrelated, mentioned how easily she seems to be "thrown off balance". I took that as an important message. In my own life, I have been feeling a bit out of balance over the past few weeks. I had a general feeling that it was because of adrenaline overdose. The more I thought about it, the more I was able to see how damaging the relationship between watching the "news" and my general physical state has become. Even though I know that the oligarch-owned media will go to the ends of the Earth to find tragedy and mayhem. It still has the ability to get me a good dose of adrenaline. Like many, my visual cortex is directly linked to my adrenal gland. When I see a mountainside burning, a bus crashed into a river, or police arriving in military vehicles taking up defensive positions with weapons drawn, I can't help but have a fight or flight response.
Since there is nowhere to run and the vast distances between the action on the screen and my life makes it impossible for me to "fight", my own equilibrium has been thrown off more than even I can know. Although it is difficult for someone who likes to keep their finger on the pulse of public discourse, and "news" is often a big part of that; since turning off the network news and scrolling past the majority of posts on facebook, I have been surprised at how little I have had to hear about tragedy and mayhem. It is as if the night sky has become clearer, my vision is much more acute and my relationships have been enhanced. Instead of being tempted to respond to messages that in no way have any bearing on me or my loved ones, it has given me extra energy to discuss things that really matter.
This would normally be seen as possibly detrimental to a blogger that prides himself in staying up to date on the issues of the day, unless you were a blogger that would rather talk about solutions, enacting them in daily life, committed to positive actions and armed with fifty-five years of paying attention to way of healing our toxic relationship with one another, the planet and the creatures we share Starship Earth with. If there were a salve that could heal the damage of adrenaline overdose, I would slather myself in it, but to my knowledge, there is none, so I will try to eliminate the source of that toxicity as well. By refusing to be drawn into the web of lies and deceit, fueled by the fear and hate mongers, I am striking out into new territory which lends even more credence to my understanding that the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave is more properly seen as WE THE PEOPLE than a bunch of victims. True, the oligarchs have been winning the class war for fifty years, but there was a time before that when they were brought to heel (as The Hil is fond of saying about young black men.) When we look critically at the tax rates in the U.S. of A. we are not, nor will we ever be the highest taxed people on Earth. We are certainly not at greater risk than past generations and there is no vast conspiracy to turn everyone into amoral drones, willing to carry out any level of assault for our corporate overlords. Facts fly in the face of the "truth" that is being peddled by the uberwealthy snake oil salesmen.
Statistica recently released a chart that details the over 50% drop in reported violent crime over the past twenty-five years; from over 750 reported crimes per 100,000 population back in the early '90s to about 360 per 100,000 today. We are indeed safer today than we were 25 years ago. I agree that we have more threats to our freedoms and have had more freedoms taken away than at any time in our history over that 25 years, but you would think that making more things illegal would have created more violent crime, not less. as people become desperate, ugly things tend to happen, but do not be to quick to decide what is going on. There have been many changes in the world over the most recent generation. Many have decided to get educated outside the schoolrooms of this great nation. virtually everyone is getting to understand the growing deception that has been going on in our newsrooms, on our university campuses, and in board rooms around the globe. Children are being taught moral values by parents who care about the future of our nation and with more wanted children, as well as fewer unplanned or problem pregnancies, we are standing on the threshold of the baby boomers babies coming into their own age. These young adults have seen where their parents have failed. Most of them don't have time for the news either.
Part of what led me to turn off the "news" is a meme that found me on my facebook feed. It said, Remember when our parents used to say, (for me it was a generation removed already, my grandparents used to say to me) "I'll give you something to cry about." What if they really meant that they would poison our rivers and aquifers, destabilize the climate and contaminate both the land and air with chemical and nuclear waste? granted, that is probably not what they meant, but it is what we let them get away with so far. We are at a crossroads, we can let the "news" play us and weave a web of lies for us to grapple with, or we can stop letting them get away with defining our age for us. The wealthy always get to write their own history, but we ultimately will have to write their epitaph if we are to move on. I am making a concerted effort to only take in information from my friends, or on occasion listen to stories they tell about what has been happening to their friends, family and/or loved ones. The world still comes to me, but when I feel the need to fight or flee, at least the battles are in my own backyard, where I can be the most effective anyway.
Since there is nowhere to run and the vast distances between the action on the screen and my life makes it impossible for me to "fight", my own equilibrium has been thrown off more than even I can know. Although it is difficult for someone who likes to keep their finger on the pulse of public discourse, and "news" is often a big part of that; since turning off the network news and scrolling past the majority of posts on facebook, I have been surprised at how little I have had to hear about tragedy and mayhem. It is as if the night sky has become clearer, my vision is much more acute and my relationships have been enhanced. Instead of being tempted to respond to messages that in no way have any bearing on me or my loved ones, it has given me extra energy to discuss things that really matter.
This would normally be seen as possibly detrimental to a blogger that prides himself in staying up to date on the issues of the day, unless you were a blogger that would rather talk about solutions, enacting them in daily life, committed to positive actions and armed with fifty-five years of paying attention to way of healing our toxic relationship with one another, the planet and the creatures we share Starship Earth with. If there were a salve that could heal the damage of adrenaline overdose, I would slather myself in it, but to my knowledge, there is none, so I will try to eliminate the source of that toxicity as well. By refusing to be drawn into the web of lies and deceit, fueled by the fear and hate mongers, I am striking out into new territory which lends even more credence to my understanding that the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave is more properly seen as WE THE PEOPLE than a bunch of victims. True, the oligarchs have been winning the class war for fifty years, but there was a time before that when they were brought to heel (as The Hil is fond of saying about young black men.) When we look critically at the tax rates in the U.S. of A. we are not, nor will we ever be the highest taxed people on Earth. We are certainly not at greater risk than past generations and there is no vast conspiracy to turn everyone into amoral drones, willing to carry out any level of assault for our corporate overlords. Facts fly in the face of the "truth" that is being peddled by the uberwealthy snake oil salesmen.
Statistica recently released a chart that details the over 50% drop in reported violent crime over the past twenty-five years; from over 750 reported crimes per 100,000 population back in the early '90s to about 360 per 100,000 today. We are indeed safer today than we were 25 years ago. I agree that we have more threats to our freedoms and have had more freedoms taken away than at any time in our history over that 25 years, but you would think that making more things illegal would have created more violent crime, not less. as people become desperate, ugly things tend to happen, but do not be to quick to decide what is going on. There have been many changes in the world over the most recent generation. Many have decided to get educated outside the schoolrooms of this great nation. virtually everyone is getting to understand the growing deception that has been going on in our newsrooms, on our university campuses, and in board rooms around the globe. Children are being taught moral values by parents who care about the future of our nation and with more wanted children, as well as fewer unplanned or problem pregnancies, we are standing on the threshold of the baby boomers babies coming into their own age. These young adults have seen where their parents have failed. Most of them don't have time for the news either.
Part of what led me to turn off the "news" is a meme that found me on my facebook feed. It said, Remember when our parents used to say, (for me it was a generation removed already, my grandparents used to say to me) "I'll give you something to cry about." What if they really meant that they would poison our rivers and aquifers, destabilize the climate and contaminate both the land and air with chemical and nuclear waste? granted, that is probably not what they meant, but it is what we let them get away with so far. We are at a crossroads, we can let the "news" play us and weave a web of lies for us to grapple with, or we can stop letting them get away with defining our age for us. The wealthy always get to write their own history, but we ultimately will have to write their epitaph if we are to move on. I am making a concerted effort to only take in information from my friends, or on occasion listen to stories they tell about what has been happening to their friends, family and/or loved ones. The world still comes to me, but when I feel the need to fight or flee, at least the battles are in my own backyard, where I can be the most effective anyway.
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| This is a screen shot of the graph and because I am using it for educational purposes, I feel that just telling folks that it is from statistica is enough attribution. Anyone who tells you that we are less secure than we were two decades ago is lying. |
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