Mass Media

I am feeling how violent media–and the vastness and ubiquity of media generally–works to make us less emotionally intelligent.  We know, or think we know, that violent movies, TV shows, and video games reward the limbic system, most likely at the expense of the frontal cortex, where nuance, social connection, and functional empathy live.  You become emotionally stupider and coarser the more time you spend with such media. 

And constant distraction, itself, morphologically as seen from a temporal perspective, works to mitigate deep reflection and deep thought.  It distances us from our own inner knowing, our own inner perceptions.  You need something periodically like a complete media break, a week without TV, iPhones, internet of any sort, or even a CD player.

The horror with which so many would view that tells us something about the state of our addiction.  What is wrong with silence?  What is wrong with doing nothing?

The constant tap tap tap, drip drip drip of news–any of it, from any perspective, saying anything at all–demotes our inner silence and rewards, so I feel, the same limbic system. We get addicted to stress and outrage.  This is perhaps the true addiction.

I am trying to build silence in my life.  It is hard, because it is also a solitude for someone who has been somewhat socially disconnected all his life, because of a lack of ability to activate my frontal cortex, due to hard core and awful trauma.  That is slowly changing.

And my hope, and occasional brief glimpse, is that the world may soon seem less hostile.  It is easier to be alone and undistracted when a pervasive sense of attack is not pressing in continually, until you relent and distract yourself by buying something, playing a video game, getting drunk and/or high, or watching TV.  Or watching porn.  That’s never been my particular thing although I do watch it sometimes.

We may survive this time.  That is my hope.  We may build mile high skyscrapers with elevators that can connect to space ship loading docks.  We may build bases on the Moon and Mars in our lifetime.

And, vastly more importantly, we may introduce into mainstream science the notions that we survive death, that God–or something we may as well call God, even if it is nothing like the Christian God–exists, and that we are all interconnected energetically in interesting and fun ways.

There is so much wrong now.  Things seem to be trending, culturally, in such bad directions.  All anyone can do is stay awake and aware, not panic, and keep exploring and trying. If I get stopped mid-sentence or mid-journey one day, so be it.  I WILL be in movement, internal or external.  I will be looking.  I will be seeking.  And I don’t think it is overstating the case to say I have done some finding, too.