byChris White – 2017

You see, as I ambled along life’s winding road, I stumbled upon the peculiar pitfalls of this so-called American abundance. It’s something that sneaks up on you, a sensation only half-recognized until it knocks you flat with the sheer excess of it all. We’re like a feller who’s wandered into an all-you-can-eat buffet and hasn’t quite learned that “all you can eat” ain’t the same as “all you should eat.” And in that very comparison lies the core of our conundrum.

If one is honest about it, we Americans are a prosperous lot. But our trouble is that we measure our prosperity by counting the calories, the gadgets, and the hours glued to a screen. I’ve traveled far and wide, and when you do that, it’s hard not to notice the gaping distance between the haves and the have-nots elsewhere. And by golly, I tell you, even our so-called poor are sitting on velvet cushions compared to many parts of the world.

Of course, it’s not that we don’t have our share of woes. We lament the shrinking middle class and the merciless climb of inflation, and rightfully so. But just between us, our middle class, by global standards, lives like royalty. We eat better, we live better, and we have a type of liberty in excess, a glut of choice and freedom, that others wouldn’t dare dream of. We feed the world, they say, with our corn, our wheat, our soybeans. And somewhere in the mix of it, we also managed to feed ourselves into the wrong kind of world record, leading the globe in obesity. A dubious distinction, but at least we’re number one.

And it ain’t just our waistlines that we fatten; it’s our minds, too. We gorge on information until we’re positively bloated. With this newfangled contraption called the Internet, information comes to us like a deluge, and we stand beneath it, mouth agape, swallowing as much as we can. It’s a cruel twist of fate, a buffet of news, entertainment, and “facts,” that promises nourishment but serves us empty calories. It’s as if we’re trying to nourish our souls with spoonful’s of sugar.

I reckon I’ve done my share of chewing on the cud of information, it’s hard not to. But the news, I say, has become as habit-forming as chewing tobacco, and just about as good for you. It’s easy, slick, and available any time, like a tin of sweets, and just as prone to rot your insides if you overindulge. The media sells it like carnival barkers, a thousand different shows under one big tent. Except in this circus, every clown has an agenda, and the high wire act is more about balancing ratings than facts.

Denzel Washington, a feller who’s got some good sense about him, once pointed out that if you don’t read the news, you’re uninformed. But if you do read it, you’re misinformed. That about sums it up, doesn’t it? Our modern press is a bit like a loudmouth gossip, more interested in being heard first than being right. They jump into the fray without care for whose reputation they shred, as long as it sells. The tragedy of it all is that our minds aren’t suited for this relentless onslaught. We’re still wired for Walter Cronkite’s evening reports, not this 24-hour circus where headlines are fed to us in bits and pieces, as bright and sugary as hard candy, and just as unsatisfying.

Modern news aims to scare us, to rile us up, to keep us glued to our screens. Let’s face it, it’s a game of ratings, not information. I’ve found that watching a plane crash on the news, watching it over and over, doesn’t make me wiser about air travel. No, sir, it only makes me more jittery when I’m fastening my seatbelt. And if a rational mind like mine (and I say this humbly) isn’t immune to it, then where do the rest of us stand? The solution, you ask? Well, maybe it’s as simple as turning it off.

The irony of modern news is that it’s almost entirely irrelevant. Of the tens of thousands of snippets and stories you’ve swallowed in the last year, how many have actually enriched your life? Have any of them made you a better decision-maker, a wiser parent, a more diligent worker? I’d wager not many. What’s important often goes unsaid, while the trivial, the salacious, the scandalous, gets top billing. You want to hear about the car that crashed through the fence, not the fence itself, even though it’s the fence that might tell you something important about safety.

What’s worse is that this overconsumption of information is making us dumber, not wiser. We don’t think any more; we just react. The human mind needs quiet and focus to truly think, but the news is designed to deny us both. It’s a constant distraction, a series of flashing lights that snatch at your attention until you can’t concentrate on anything worthwhile. And what’s the result? A nation of folks who can no longer read a book without feeling fidgety, as if a story, thoughtfully told, were somehow an intrusion on our time.

I used to think that maybe my musings here weren’t all that engaging, that maybe I was too verbose or my thoughts too obscure for most folks. But now I see it’s not me at all. It’s them. The news has reshaped our minds. Folks don’t have the patience for long thoughts anymore, which, I suppose, gives me the liberty to say whatever I please at this point in my rambling. But that’s neither here nor there.

The truth is, we need a different kind of journalism, the kind that digs deep and uncovers the truths hidden beneath the surface. Investigative reporting, in-depth articles, and books that demand our attention are what’s needed now more than ever. We don’t need more headlines, more quick hits that dazzle and disappear. The real stories are like the bedrock beneath a river, slow to move, perhaps, but shaping the world all the same.

The tragedy is that we’ve grown so accustomed to the bright, sugary allure of news that we’ve forgotten what it means to think deeply. Our brains are trained now for speed, not for understanding. And as a result, we’ve lost something precious, that quiet space in which creativity is born. For isn’t that what creativity is, a deep and quiet contemplation, a willingness to let the mind wander beyond the headlines and the noise?

I don’t know a single artist, a real creator, who lives in the news cycle. Not a one. My sister, who is as creative a soul as you’ll ever meet, doesn’t give a hoot about what’s in the headlines. She’s got better things to do, like filling her mind with the kind of quiet that allows art to bloom. The truth is, news is the death of creativity. It stifles the imagination, distracts from the important, and fills our heads with clutter. If you want to create, you’ve got to shut it all out, the noise, the headlines, the constant ding of a phone demanding your attention.

In the end, all this rambling is just my way of saying that we need to be careful about what we feed our minds. Information isn’t wisdom. Wisdom comes from reflection, from taking the time to understand the world deeply. And for that, you’ve got to turn off the noise, sit with your thoughts, and maybe, just maybe, give that fortune cookie a little less credit. Because in the end, the best advice doesn’t come from a slip of paper in a cookie or a talking head on the evening news. It comes from that quiet place within, where real understanding is born.