When John Lennon sang “I read the news today, oh boy” the dispair contained in his annunciation captured (and presaged) what it means to take in information in the mass-media age.
As pre-1900’s farmers with concerns stretching no further than the horizon, we could be excused for lacking knowledge and empathy about others. If movies and television and phones offer us access to the world and each other, any enlightenment that comes with this is clouded by our behavior as what media want us to be: consumers.
Movies asked us to consume tickets and popcorn and the myth we could be beautiful. Television asked us to consume cars and burgers and the myth we could be free. Our phones ask us to consume our days and our attention and the myth this gives us power.
The “oh boy” feeling that comes with feeling overwhelmed by the headlines is amplified, now, by knowing your would-be allies, to say nothing of your enemies, operate with different facts than you do. We did not have to love the same movie stars or drive the same cars, but because of the internet, you and I do not consume “the news.” Instead, we consume the news each of us wants to consume.
In 1850 you might just be a farmer on the other side of the world. Now you stand in our common pasture telling me corn is wheat and up is down.
Or, rather, you and I are roomates fighting about how to do the dishes.
Clearly, while all of this may be good for the thugs and corporatists of the world, it is not good for us. The “us” of the world needs something better.
Here’s what I am imagining: A worldwide bulletin board with suggestions about how to make the world better by drawing on the place we have power and where our connection ultimately matters: How we consume.
Eat one less avocado this year, please.
Try a veggie burger if you can this month.
Pay attention to the Chinese artist Badiucao.
Don’t buy an Apple product on June 15th unless, by then, they have
discernably made their supply chain more ethical.
In Times Square there use to be a running tabulation of the National Debt. Some similar tickers keep track of gun deaths. O.K. How about at the top of Google’s home page or in every Facebook group a list like the one above? A way to help each of us to listen to the news less through a left/right or blue/red lens and more through one that suggests “this is my world too?”
A way to say to all: There are too many dishes in the sink and here’s one thing you might do about it.
Even if you could confirm, somehow, the things on this “World Wide Bulletin Board” were the right things to have there, there are at least two ginormous problems with this.
The second one is rhetorical. You have to say “eat one less avacodao” not “stop buying avacados” because you don’t want to wipe out all farmers in one go.
And the first is the one you were thinking already: Yeah, right. Why would the vested interests ever put that kind of list out for billions to see it? Neither Tim Cook and Xi Jinping will not be keen.
I know. But if there is an answer it comes in this: Because it can be anonymous.
The answer to a world made stupid and pliable by consuming the facts we want is to give authority to something that cannot be identified.
But more on that tomorrow.
Concrete and useful. Many thanks (she said, savoring what is surely to be one of the last avocados she eats this month).