“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
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