News Only Provides Part Of The Story
Ms. James: In one of your columns you actually seem to be trying to make a virtue of ignorance and apathy. You contend that people who follow the news closely tend to be cynical and pessimistic, and you advise them “to try tuning it out for a week” to relieve their anxiety. You seem to be saying that ignorance really is bliss.
I am one of those “news junkies” you put down and I have always considered this one of my definite strong points. - Gene
Dear Gene: I, too, am a “news junkie.” I read four or five newspapers a day, news magazines and watch CNN and PBS. But I do not believe this keeps me informed about the world or its history. “News,” even in its best forms, is selected, exaggerated and repeated until anxiety replaces reason. “News” rarely provides a historical or cultural framework for events so they seem isolated and chaotic. “News” conveys a “the world is falling apart” quality and many people begin to feel it is.
Turn off the set once in a while, put down the papers and read history or a novel. Search out essays or commentary that provide understanding for an event, that put it in context, and you learn more and feel better. Don’t confuse “news” with information or understanding.
Anthropologists are taught to look at events within a wide and complex cultural frame. The tragedy in Oklahoma City can be seen not as an indication of increasing violence or social breakdown but as a symbolic breaking of an old order. If the authorities are right, suspect Timothy McVeigh is a racist farmer who used farm subsidy money or robberies to create a fertilizer bomb to blow up the government he feels is taking him into a future he does not want.
Sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote about “anomie” or alienation in the late 1800s when farmers in Britain were moving into industrial towns to work in textile mills. “Anomie” results when the sense of reality you hold in your head, the way you deeply believe things have been and ought to be, is not the reality you see around you. You literally become crazy because you cannot resolve the extremes.
This pattern of alienation is common in times of rapid change. The more absurd the rhetoric and acts, the closer the change is to completion. The “news” rarely offers us the context within which to build an understanding of the events of our time. Turning off the “news” once in a while and turning to other sources sometimes does.
- Jennifer
Dear Jennifer: In one of your books you wrote about martyrs who give a lot to someone and really use guilt on the other person. I think I may have fallen into this even though it was not my intention.
I’ve had a close friendship for a few years. I was always helping them in many ways. They began demanding more and more and then called me a doormat. Finally they stopped calling and I’m the one who misses the contact.
- Bob
Dear Bob: Guilt is insidious because it reveals an imbalance in a relationship that is volatile. The recipients of your generosity at first see it as thoughtful and wonderful but then they realize that they cannot give back enough to keep up with you (you have more time or interest than they do). Intuition tells them that sooner or later you will either be angry at them or guilt will wear out the friendship.
People are afraid of “martyrs” because over the years they will deliver more pain per relationship than all the other “difficult” people put together. Maybe your friends, by calling you a “doormat,” tried to push you into a showdown that would break the pattern; maybe they weren’t worth your interest. But there is a problem, and it has a lot to do with your sense of your own worth.
We will send out our “martyr” information and you can see what you think about doing some homework.
- Jennifer
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jennifer James The Spokesman-Review