It can be challenging to maintain a truly negative point of view in light of the intrusion of sunny days, welcoming friends, buses that occasionally run on time, and savory bagels. The task may prove to be more than you can manage.
What if you had help? What if you could recruit a staff of thousands to scour the globe searching for every negative, misery-inducing thing that happens? They could record these events, photograph them, and then replay them before your eyes.
Well, you’re in luck. You do have such a staff. The news media will work tirelessly on your behalf to find and report on every disaster, every capsized refugee boat, every failed bridge, every detonated bomb. Television news will then play these accounts for you over and over again, often while you are attempting to eat dinner. You can see bodies, mangled cars, environmental devastation, victims of war, and the squirm-inducing spectacle of reporters rushing the bereaved to ask them how it feels to have terrible things happen to their loved ones.
This downward avenue has been paved and widened in recent decades with the establishment of twenty-four-hour news channels and Internet feeds. In the 1960s (an era of assassinations, the Vietnam war, the tensions between East and West, and massive cultural change) the viewing public had to make do with an hour of televised news once a day. Today we can view tragedy continuously and enjoy the excitement of watching catastrophe unfold in real time.
For this strategy to work, you must avoid certain thoughts (listed below). Fortunately, the media themselves will assist you in your efforts to suppress them.
First, you must not ask yourself why it is so important to learn about tragedies (coups, distant earthquakes, celebrity firings, election results) the moment they occur. The fact that such reports provide you no useful information will only undermine your commitment to viewing. Instead, retain a firm belief in the importance and relevance of “breaking news” and being up to the minute.
Second, you must not ask about the actual information content of the stories presented. They must be seen as worthy in their own right, not because they actually tell you anything. Repetition should be tolerated without complaint, and the lack of detail or balanced analysis must be ignored. You should know about the latest bombing in the Middle East, you should see the bloodied clothing of the victims, and you should attend the funerals by video proxy. Avoid questioning whether this helps any of the people affected.
Third, you should disregard the fact that the content is heavily filtered, seeing it instead as a dispassionate account of the present state of the world. Pay attention only to the coverage of the Pakistani bus that crashed into a gorge, killing twenty-two. Ignore the absence of any mention of the fifty thousand buses that reached their destinations without incident. Regard the scandal of a cabinet minister’s expenditures on overpriced orange juice (a recent Canadian news sensation—a tempest in a tumbler) as a complete and sufficient commentary on the judgment and worth of the individual, thus justifying your outrage. Do not withhold your verdict pending additional insight into the person’s record or actions.
Finally, the similarities between modern television news and reality television programming should not occur to you, nor should the possibility that much of the news is simply tragedy as entertainment. Perhaps you do not gain anything from the forty-third viewing of the latest shooting, but maybe others will. Yes, it can be disconcerting that coverage of this afternoon’s fatal tornado instantly has its own graphics and theme music, but please avoid referring to it as “The Twister Show.”
Instead, focus on the value and importance of being well informed. In order to cast a well-considered ballot, in order to decide whether to take the interstate to work, in order to remember to restock the earthquake supplies, in order to decide where to donate money or invest, you need to know these things. The fact that you can learn about all of them more effectively by other means (a quick check of the highway updates, a weekly news magazine that provides more detail with less sensation) must be suppressed.
Cultivate your sympathy for the poor news anchors. For all the tragedy on the planet, they are often left grasping for new information, playing the same footage over and over, interviewing people who were barely affected by events, and scrambling desperately to fill the hours of empty airtime until the next exciting catastrophe.
So monitor your news consumption for a week. Make a note of all your regularly used sources: newsprint, Internet news, radio, late-night news summaries. Televised news at the gym, bank, elevator, subway, or at home. Total it all up. Then strive to increase your exposure next week.
If your attention threatens to wane, play a game. Take two stopwatches and record the number of minutes devoted to events that actually have happened versus the consideration of unpleasant events that might (or might not) happen at some point in the future. In the absence of real information, the media spend ever-greater proportions of on-air time speculating about potential future events:
Remind yourself that you too will exist in the future, and so it is vital that you have the news even before it has happened—including the news that will never happen at all.