It's a bit insane. I'm ready to admit that right up front. I read the news and I like it.
I know, that is not a socially acceptable response to the current state of affairs. You are supposed to read it, be indignant about the stories found therein, then go about your daily life slightly depressed that you took the time to inform yourself about the most recent chapter in this rambling tragedy called human history.
For me however, just can't help myself, I really like the news these days. Sure, its some really twisted, convoluted madness and contains many horrors and few hopes, but its reality and its picking up steam.
I think its horrible and terrifying for most people because they are blissfully ignorant of history, and thus how truly in line recent events truly are with this 6,000 year old adventure we got going here. The further down the road we go the higher the stakes, and the more interesting the wager.
I'm the first to admit that humanity is strutting itself down a path to almost certain doom in a fashion that is one part supercilious runway model and another part jingoistic goose stepping lunatic. Its a sincerely distressing time and place to take stock of, but I say it must be done. It is just this dire situation that we have gotten ourselves into that makes me think we have some chance to reach escape velocity and launch into a new direction that might not be so savage and hard to accept.
One thing is for sure though, ignoring/hiding/circumventing what sort of world we live in isn't going to help. So here is a daily dose of reality for you:
People are dying by the thousands at the hands of Neo-Caliphate in Syria, Iraq and Nigeria. As is typical, the West responds to this by aerial bombardment, giving people weapons and denouncing violence as wrong when other people do it. All meteorological indicators show that climate change is officially here and is going to really fuck with how all creatures survive through this century. The war in Eastern Ukraine is clearly escalating and Russian forces are for the first time openly operating there. The plunging price of oil has radically changed the geopolitical scene on many fronts, threatening instability for many nations that rely upon it for staying afloat financially. Its not getting discussed much but this is also likely to cause some serious problems for America too, because the fracking oil boom is completely dependent upon oil being about $80 a barrel (it's down to below $50 currently) and the companies engaged in extracting oil in this way are borrowing massively to finance it; in so doing they have created another bubble that is certain to wreck havoc in the financial markets. Add to all this that global wealth is now so concentrated in so few people that around 80 people own more than 3 billion.
This is but a taste of the realness, there are many more courses.
This is but a taste of the realness, there are many more courses.
Truth, and that would be a capital T even if it hadn't started the sentence, is crucial at any phase, and especially so right now. My affinity for the news stems from my love of history. Every day I have the pleasure of sitting down to my computer and checking out whats going on in the world is an honor for me. It is possible that this wild ride we are on will end in complete annihilation, but the view out the window is breathtaking. What else you got going on in your life that could be even half as interesting as this incredible point in time where the fate of our species, and really all species, hangs in the balance?
"Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of our imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This my friends, is the crux of our solitude."
-Galleano
