Bombarded by the media and weary of technology

It’s one of those days where it feels like the world is closing in, and when I say “the world” I’m talking about accounts of the world as reported to us by “the media” in its myriad forms.

Of course, it’s worse in an election year, when you got all this “he said she said” going on. While that kind of stuff has always gone on and is still going on, it got mitigated somewhat this year by the number of debates, which is more than in any campaign ever before. I see some people on TV, mostly party insiders and political consultants, and also journalists and commentators, saying - enough already. From the campaign side, they know they have only so much time and so much money with which to operate, and only so many hiccups and stumbles they can overcome or withstand; from the news commentator / campaign moderator side, they complain that there are only so many questions they can ask (or apparently even think of to ask) that someone else hasn’t already asked. Read More

But were it not for this many debates then the campaign and PR teams would have even greater latitude and impact than they already do. They could (and do) say whatever they want about their candidates, and the opponents, but in the case of someone like Rick Perry – he is best revealed in his own words and by his own reactions.

The public is served by seeing it for themselves; and those that didn’t see it only need to tune into the news and they’ll see it about 200 times before the day is through.

Advertisers used to say you need to see something seven or eight or nine times for it to click in your brain; now it’s something like a hundred times, because there’s so much coming at us all the time.

It’s like this great big battle for our attention – all these messages all the time being flung so forcefully and in the most sensational of terms.

I’m up to here with it (hand on forehead, which in my case goes up halfway around my skull.)

You can turn on your TV or your computer, or flip through the glossy magazines, and hear about how everything is changing faster than you can think, or blink, but as I gaze out my window, and see the trees and the mountains, and the clouds and the colors, and as I sense the stillness and the motion – in the branches, and hear the birds, and observe the angle of the light, it occurs to me that not everything is affected by this non-stop barrage of media messages telling us what’s what and what will be, and how things are, and who’s hot  and who’s not, and what is worth wanting.

My soul is crying out for my mind and body to spend a little less time in the ever-changing world of technology, the world of phones and TVs and computers and cars, and more time sensing the wind and the stars and the earth and the ocean, which means more time in the world that’s been here all along, or at least as long as anyone can remember.

I don’t want to have to rely on the internet to be connected, or on some electronic device to be in synch, and I don’t care to pretend that most of what gets passes of as news these days can be classified as anything other than promotional propaganda.