Odds and ends, part two

As I get older, I am more willing to accept that I won't get the answers I seek, particularly where faith is concerned. Faith is a mystery that I will never truly decipher. My faith in God has wavered from time to time up through the years. Ditto for my desire to attend Sunday mass. But I've realized that I won't get firm proof that God exists; he/she is not going to suddenly appear before me (like in the story of doubting Thomas) and convince me that way. So I accept God's existence on faith. Attending mass is similar; I go, no matter how I feel. Ten to fifteen years ago, I often wondered why I should go to mass when so many things seemed to be topsy-turvy in my life and definitely in the world. Not anymore. It's become something I do without thinking about it too much. That works for me. I like being there, being part of something larger than me. Being together with (presumably) like-minded people, in the sense that they are also believers. Even if they aren't, it wouldn't change my wanting to be there. I've realized that I can just offer up who I am on any given day--happy, sad, moody, bored, angry, irritable--and hope that I am acceptable. Being human means being imperfect. That is my reality, even though I try hard each day to be the best version of myself (as Matthew Kelly says). 

I watched the film Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret from 2023 last night. It's a touching, funny and sweet story about a twelve-year old girl on the cusp of adolescence, and how she deals with life at home and in school. The film is based on the book of the same name by Judy Blume; I never read it when it was published back in 1970. Margaret is the daughter of an interfaith marriage--Jewish father and Catholic mother, but neither of her parents are religious and they have chosen to raise Margaret without any religious affiliation. She does however hope to eventually find some sort of religion to belong to. She is assigned a school project that allows her to explore different religious beliefs, which she hopes will give her some idea of what religion to eventually embrace. She does talk to God however, telling him about all the things that are happening in her life and sharing her joys as well as disappointments. Abby Ryder Fortson did a wonderful job as Margaret, as did Rachel McAdams as her mother and Kathy Bates as her grandmother.

I also watched the film Dog from 2022 with Channing Tatum the other night--also very good. He played a former Army Ranger suffering from PTSD who wants to return to military duty but whose superiors deny him that chance due to his condition. However, he agrees to bring his former partner's dog Lulu to his funeral (he has committed suicide) as part of a deal for him to return to active duty. Lulu is anxiety-ridden and aggressive (suffering from a kind of PTSD too) and destined for eventual euthanization, and the trip from Oregon to Arizona is fraught with different problems and troubles along the way. It's a beautiful story about the bond that forms between man and dog, and how they both save each other. 

I've spent the past four days without tv news of any kind to invade my life. Bliss. I don't want to know what's going on in the world because I know it's the same old, same old--wars, aggression, conflicts, shootings, murders, political divisiveness--the list is long. And the news media love reporting it all; sometimes I get the feeling that 'the worse, the better'. I know that's cynical, but hey, the news media are cynical institutions. You get back what you give. 

I haven't been on social media much either. Also bliss. I don't really miss it. As I've written about before, I'd remove myself from most of it if it wasn't for the fact that friends in the US still use it. It's a way of staying in touch with them, although these days we mostly chat via Messenger and WhatsApp. 

Restoring equilibrium and peace by not watching the news

It is easier than you think to kill the joy and spirit in others and in the society around us. For starters, just count up the number of feel-good articles that make it onto the news versus the number of articles detailing wars, rapes, murders, mass shootings, aggressive behaviors of all kinds (especially in politics), all sorts of upcoming diseases and epidemics, and all of the other assorted miseries that define our 'civilized' society. If you spent most of your free time reading or watching the news, you'd slowly go crazy. You'd at least sink into depression. And yet that's what many people do--allow the drivel that passes for news--to invade and permeate their daily lives. There is no peace to be found in living that way. A continuous presentation of bad behavior will alter your world view for sure. If it doesn't make you cynical, it will make you fearful. There are a lot of people who live in fear.  

I'm not saying we should shut out news shows completely, we cannot, but I am in favor of shutting out a large portion of them in order to be able to live peacefully and peaceably with others. Society is done no favors if its members are continually distrustful, fearful, and ultimately cynical about said society's capability to take care of them should real trouble arise. I think we have reached that tipping point. I don't see how falling into an abyss of despair and nihilism helps anyone. Yet that's what we're being tipped into en masse. 

The losses of joy and the spark that keeps us alive and moving forward are not trivial or banal things. What is the motive of the companies who present (their version of) the news? Do they want to inform or do they want to destroy the basic goodness in people? I have to ask that question. I'm not likely to get an answer, but I am aware that I am being played. And it's not a good feeling. I spent one happy day yesterday 'offline', as in, I didn't go near my computer nor did I watch any news programs. Doing that for one day restored my equilibrium. I'm going to do it more often. 

The bad news that envelopes us

Just a sample of the bad news that is available to us 24/7. This is just today's list of the negativity that defines the world at present. Everything is 'catastrophic, problematic, alarming, deeply troubling, staggering, on the verge of collapse, deadly, etc'. 

Atlantic Ocean is headed for a tipping point − once melting glaciers shut down the Gulf Stream, we would see extreme climate change within decades, study shows (msn.com)

Atlantic Ocean Currents Could Collapse and Shut Down, New Study (businessinsider.com)

What Does the 1.5 C Marker of Global Warming Mean? - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Mary Sanchez: America must choose – Aging man with bad recall or the one with evil intentions (msn.com)

How Old Is Too Old to Be President? Biden Report Raises Uncomfortable Question Again. - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Why Does Everyone Seem To Have The Flu Right Now? (msn.com)

The deadly fungal disease C. auris spreading across the US explained - symptoms, treatment and outbreaks (msn.com)

'No common symptoms' for deadly fungal disease sweeping US, public health agency warns (msn.com)

Measles Now Spreading in 9 States Amid 'Staggering' Outbreak, CDC Warns (msn.com)

Costco, Trader Joe's, Walmart products recalled amid listeria outbreak (msn.com)

California knows the way to end homelessness. It's time to find the will. (msn.com)

New problem found on Boeing 737 Max planes | CNN Business

How production pressures plunged Boeing into yet another crisis | Reuters

California earthquake: Millions in Los Angeles and Malibu feel quake after Hawaii tremors (msn.com)

Vladimir Putin wants 'massacre across Europe' after 'deranged' Tucker Carlson interview (msn.com)

The pressure to have an opinion about everything

We are giving up our subscription to the daily newspaper, the paper version that gets delivered to our door each day, as of the start of the new year. I have mixed feelings about doing so; on the one hand, I want to support newspapers and a free press, on the other hand, I have grown weary of modern journalism and its insistence on having to dissect everything ad nauseam in order to 'present the facts', and on its insistence that everyone has to have an opinion about every issue reported on. Their contribution to the polarization (especially political) we see in society at present is considerable. They are no longer neutral purveyors of the news. The fact of the matter is that many newspapers and TV stations are partisan, supporting either liberal or conservative sides, and no matter how they try to disguise that they are not able to do so. Their partisan stance always shines through whatever is reported. And that is the major reason why I won't miss the daily newspaper, and why I have reduced the time I spend watching TV news. I find both very stressful; they 'invade' the peace of daily life that is so hard to come by, and they force readers and viewers to take sides, to have an opinion about everything (regardless of whether readers and viewers are well-informed about specific issues or not). The most stressful thing I know is people who spout their (often-uninformed) opinions about everything under the sun, but if you ask them how they know what they say is true, their answer is that they read it in one or another newspaper, or worse, on social media. Surprisingly, intelligent people fall into this trap as well; 'I read it/heard it in the news' (therefore it must be true) is a standard comment in so many conversations and discussions. What surprises me is that this comment often ends an interesting discussion, because the person who utters it expresses little to no interest in exploring a specific issue further, in other words, no interest in going deeper, under the surface, to learn about whether what they profess to be true or false, is really so. 

When I am asked my opinion about a specific issue these days, I often answer 'I don't know' or 'I don't have an opinion'. This is the truth. Often I don't have an opinion about a specific issue because I am not informed about it, and I don't want to be pressured into uttering an opinion I neither stand for nor have reflected upon. The latter is very important to me these days; I want the time to reflect on the issues that come my way. I also appreciate the freedom to reject issues that do not interest me. In other words, I am not interested in having an opinion about absolutely everything. Firstly, it is impossible to have an opinion about absolutely everything, and secondly, having an opinion about absolutely everything is characteristic of superficiality. If you ask me about a scientific issue, I can most likely answer your question or have an opinion about it, e.g. vaccination or cancer treatment, because I have studied and worked in science for many years and consider myself reasonably informed. If you ask me about a political issue, I can tell you what I may prefer in politics, but I cannot say that my answer is an informed opinion, because I know very little about politics, and it would be stupid of me to argue stubbornly for my way of thinking. I would have to concede to politicians or those who are well-informed about politics in a political discussion. The problem nowadays is that few people are willing to say 'I don't know'. Few people are willing to listen to the experts tell them about a specific issue. Few people are willing to really learn about an issue. Many people will argue and stubbornly continue to argue for their point of view in the face of truth and facts that prove their opinions to be false. If you want to be informed, there are many ways to get informed, but you have to be willing to invest the time needed to read and to reflect upon what you read. You have to be willing to talk to the experts and read what they have written. And if you want to remain neutral in a partisan world, you need to be informed about what both sides stand for. Actually, many issues have multiple sides, not just two sides. It is entirely possible to remain neutral, to want a non-partisan world without it necessarily being an overly politically-correct world. Neutrality and political correctness are not the same thing. Neutrality (at least for me) implies the desire to acknowledge that there are multiple sides to an issue and to reflect upon the associated pros and cons. One will always have opinions about some issues important to oneself; one cannot have opinions about absolutely every societal issue. 

'Don't know what you've got till it's gone'

I have been a regular subscriber to the weekly news magazine, Time, for at least thirty years, before I moved to Norway and since I moved here. I’ve looked forward each week to Time's news summaries and articles, film, book, music and theater reviews, and interesting tidbits that they toss in from time to time. You might think that it would be a problem to experience regular weekly delivery of Time; I can tell you that it’s been a pleasure to be a subscriber. Not once, I repeat, not once, have I ever had a problem with a missed issue or late delivery. I haven’t had to contact customer service for any problem whatsoever, except to renew my subscription, and that is also a problem-free experience, unlike other magazine and newspaper subscriptions that I have had since I moved to Oslo. That by itself is a miracle in this day and age—a magazine that manages to be timely, punctual, and service-minded.

What bothers me lately is that I’ve noticed that with each issue I receive in the mail, especially during the past half year, the magazine is shrinking. Each issue is thinner than the previous week’s issue. Given the fact that its competitor, Newsweek, stopped publishing the paper edition of its magazine at the end of last year (I refer you to Wikipedia for a more-detailed update: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek), I have begun to wonder if Time is moving in the same direction. I hope this is not the case, but I have a gut feeling that it is. The end of the paper editions of these magazines doesn’t mean their total demise; in the case of Newsweek, they decided to focus their energies on an all-digital format, meaning that the internet has claimed yet another victim, in one sense. I don’t have a problem with internet; if used well and if you can filter through the morass of information that is available at every turn, you can in fact obtain a lot of useful information in the blink of an eye. I need only think of Wikipedia as I write this—useful, informative, updated, with mostly correct information (and they are honest about the ‘holes’ in their summaries, about what is lacking, and that’s a good thing). But there is something about opening the print issue of a magazine like Time when I get it, sitting down on the couch with a cup of coffee and reading it from cover to cover. I enjoy that very much; it’s not the same sitting down with my Kindle for iPad and reading the issue that way, even though I read books that I’ve downloaded on my Kindle for iPad from time to time. It’s just that I don’t want to see the end of all print publications, be they books or magazines.

And that brings me to my final point; with fewer books and magazines printed, there will be more bookstores that will go belly-up. One of the major American book retailers, Barnes and Noble, is struggling and on the verge of collapse, according to a recent article from Slate (http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/02/14/barnes_noble_collapsing.html), and that makes me sad to read. Very sad. I have fond memories of the many hours spent in their bookstores; starting when I worked part-time as a stocker for a company on West 13^th Street in lower Manhattan during my graduate school days, and would spend my lunch hours perusing the bookshelves of the Barnes and Noble bookstore at 122 Fifth Avenue between 17th and 18th streets. I bought many a Christmas present there as I remember. And then later on, during the mid-1980s, when I would drive up from the Bronx where I lived at that time, to their bookstore on Central Avenue in Yonkers and wander around there for a few hours on a summer evening, looking at photo books of Princess Diana (who was all the rage then), or skimming books on why women are afraid of success in the business world, how to make your relationship better, or the meaning of dreams, in the self-help section. Those were weekly trips that I looked forward to, and I always left the store with one or two new books that I couldn’t wait to dive into. In later years, when I have visited my sister in upstate New York during the summer, we have had some fun driving to the Barnes and Noble bookstore in Poughkeepsie, where we would start off our visit with cappuccinos in the little café at the back of the bookstore. We would sit and chat for a while, and then wander the aisles in search of a book that would catch our eye. It was always fun to compare our current literary interests, talk about the books we had read or were reading, check out the different games and puzzles for sale, and so on. Sometimes my husband would call me from Norway while we were wandering around the store; we would be laughing at some silly thing, and he would get a chance to join in on the fun. Simple stuff, but simple stuff is the stuff of memories. Bookstores generally, and Barnes and Noble specifically, have been and are a large part of my life. I cannot imagine life without them. As Joni Mitchell sings ‘Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’. But sometimes even when you do know, things disappear anyway, replaced by newer things, but in some cases, more sterile things. I will never be attached to a computer the way I have been attached to my books. And that’s not likely to change in my lifetime. 

A useful website--Views and News from Norway

http://www.newsinenglish.no/

A very interesting little website--Norwegian news stories translated to English, for those of you who might want to read what is going on in this country.

Just give me the facts, ma'am

As many of you know from this blog, I have managed to reduce my TV watching time quite substantially over the past two years. I still do watch a good movie on the cable channels from time to time, but my interest in following particular TV shows, series, or the news has diminished. I would like to blame this mostly on reality TV, and yes, this type of programming has definitely pushed me away from TV. It has infested nearly every major TV channel, both here and in the USA. But my current stance also has to do with the level of credibility concerning news reporting in the media generally, because I have also lost a good deal of interest in newspapers as well. I just don’t believe most of what is presented to me as news/facts anymore. I get irritated by so many things—but primarily by the loss of objectivity in news presentation. I am reminded of what Fox Mulder used to say on the X-files—‘Trust no one”. It’s how I feel about most of the news media these days. They have an ‘agenda’ that they want to push. European and Norwegian news agencies have their agendas, as do American agencies. We could discuss for hours, maybe even days, what those individual agendas are. Suffice it to say that sometimes they’re pushed right up into your face in this country as well as on CNN, so that you cannot ignore them no matter how hard you try. And you can’t stick your head in the sand like an ostrich because the minute you stick your head back up again you’re bombarded with ‘truths’, superficial reporting, politically-correct commentators and people telling you how to think and feel. If you want to make these things part of a debate program, that’s fine with me, because that’s where they belong. But don’t sell this approach to me as objective news reporting, because it’s not. And don’t get me started about the tabloid-like headlines that are supposed to hook me into reading newspaper articles. Even one of the best newspapers in Norway, Aftenposten, has resorted to using such headlines to reel in readers (and advertisers), e.g. in the vein of ‘We love to buy (something or other)’—a folksy approach that just doesn’t work for me on its front page. Furthermore, I am tired of reading and hearing journalists’ opinions about major news stories—just give me the facts please and not opinions. If I want their opinions, I’ll ask for them or even Google them if I need to. But no, it seems as though I cannot find respite anywhere.

I grew up reading The New York Times newspaper, because that’s what my parents read, in addition to the local Tarrytown newspaper that updated us on all the local happenings. But The New York Times was special. It was a real newspaper, with solid, in-depth reporting. The front page was the ‘hard news’ page and you either liked that or you didn’t. But you knew it was there and you knew that the facts were being reported on the front page. I guess that might have been boring to some people. So I decided to check out the front page of The New York Times recently, to see if it was still the ‘real news’ newspaper I remember from my youth. And as far as I can determine, it is, at least from the ‘front page’. That was heartening. But still, I have become so skeptical that credibility and truth are going to disappear at a moment’s notice that my motto remains—‘trust no one’, at least in the context of the news media. I check out many different sources now, newspapers, TV, radio, blogs, and online sites in order to get the ‘complete’ story. So in one sense, the superficial reporting of news has had a positive effect—I now am willing to use whatever time is needed to find truth and credibility, especially if one or two news stories particularly interest me.