What I don't know

October 22, 2013

One thing I notice when we leave home for a trip is how much is going on in the world that I am generally clueless about.

While traveling I scan newspaper headlines in the gas stations, the TV might be on at places we visit, and I meet different people who are "in the know" media wise.

I catch a lot more than what I can learn about the world living in the woods.

With the internet I've been able to selectively screen my media. For better or for worse.

I've never been a big media consumer, but recently my mass media consumption seems to be dipping to dangerously low levels. (Dangerously low because, what if I lose touch with the world completely?)

I haven't watched TV, as a regular past time, for many years. I sometimes watch TV when staying with other people but I find it mostly boring and I am so annoyed by the advertising that I just give up.

And now that Damien has hooked us up with a VPN I can stream the TV shows I might want to watch (all 2 of them) through our US Netflix account, Canadian Netflix is pathetic.

My mom and I enjoyed watching Call the Midwives together last week. But watching TV shows on Netflix is more of a vacation activity than an everyday occurrence.

I used to regularly listen to the radio. NPR was a nearly constant companion in my kitchen work.

And then we moved. First, we lived with my parents and our media consumption that summer changed to television with some CBC radio. I was re-introduced to The Vinyl Cafe, but overall my radio listening went down.

And then we moved to Quebec.

At this point my mass media consumption plummeted from low to nearly non-existent.

I think this happened mostly because there was a lot of change going on in our lives and one way to deal with this was to tune out extra noise. But the other reason for tuning out the media in my life was because of living in a different culture. All the "everyday media" - the billboards, road signs, newspaper, magazines at the checkout stand, flyers in the mail - all in French.

And I couldn't read any of it, not easily at least, so I tuned it out.

I stopped listening to the radio too. I'm honestly not sure why. Perhaps I didn't realize that I could get English radio here in Quebec. I can.

However, when I started listening to CBC radio again this past year I was shocked to realize (I must have forgotten what news stories were like) that I couldn't listen to the news with the kids. Way too much rape and murder, discussed in graphic detail completely inappropriate for children.

I don't want to hear that either, I have a visceral response to certain horrors.

So when we're in the mood we listen to the human interest stories, the science programming, some arts and culture stuff and turn off the news.

As a household we're not entirely clueless about happenings in the wide world because Damien follows a couple online news feeds. If world disaster or economic collapse is imminent I won't be totally surprised. But even if I was, why would it matter if disaster is imminent?

The only media I have consistently consumed for the past few years is my RSS feed. But after months of mounting blog-reading frustration I quit RSS a couple weeks ago.

I can no longer identify with a lot of the blogs I used to follow and I haven't yet found new blogs I can identify with. So I've just stopped and occasionally I visit my absolute favorite blogs, which are but a handful.

I'm not a Facebook junkie either. Some people get their news from Facebook. If I happen to be there and I notice a news story in friend's feed I might click through to read, but what I notice most on Facebook is news gossip. Gossip mostly about famous people who I am simply clueless about and choose to remain clueless about.

I don't want to know which scantily clad young singer is raising a ruckus. Why would I care about this? And no, I don't need to know "how to talk to my teenage daughter about so and so..." because that's not her world either.

It's not that we're hermit cave dwelling folks. It's just that we can pick and choose what we want, and because of this I find myself relating less and less to mainstream media.

I'm not entirely sure this is a good thing because sometimes not knowing feels isolating. But at present I don't have a lot of motivation to change this reality because of what I've observed in the past couple years of "not knowing".

Here's a few things I've observed as I've stepped back from mass media consumption:

The world goes on without my knowing about all its comings and goings.

I've largely tuned out to the big-picture political and economic news stream and guess what? It's still there. It hasn't missed my absence.

When I do tune in, say at an airport, where the corner TVs are blasting messages of doom and gloom and high alerts, while other news stories scroll in red across the bottom of the screen, I see the same stories I watched on my last trip through an airport - economic crisis, wars, bloody massacres, suffering.

And when I observe, as a sensitized outsider (you become de-sensitized to those messages if you watch them day-in, day-out) I pick up on the main message immediately.

The message is fear. Everywhere. Terrorists, neighbors, Muslims, Christians, the drinking water, the air we breathe - all of it. Be afraid.

I'm not a media wizard but I imagine there must be some way to communicate bad news without all the fear.

There is bad news in the world. So, so much of it. My heart aches, when I let down my barriers, with the weight of all the suffering. The world has always been this way. The more I read of history the more I see, unfortunately, how very little we've "advanced".

These stories must be told - somewhere and somehow. But the way they are told currently seems like fear mongering more than solution finding. The majority of the energy seems to be spent in raising alarms instead of raising awareness and then action around issues.

Next to fear, and maybe because of fear, the next message is want and lust. And not just sexual, but lust of things and security and power.

I am not free from want in my life. But without a stream of slick magazines in the door, slick blogs in my reader, slick ads on the TV, slick stories on Facebook, and slick boards at Pinterest my wants are less dictated by media. (I read a most fascinating story in a newspaper last week about bridezillas who are demanding payment from wedding guests to fund their Pinterest "inspired"over-the-top nuptials.)

I am blessed with an abundant life of food in the fridge, a roof over our heads, and regular travel and adventure. There's not much more "stuff" I want.

This is what I wish: I wish there was a way to be informed about the world (so I can be a "good citizen") without everything else that comes with it. I am wired with a desire to make things right and a propensity to anxiety.

I have to be careful about what I watch and listen to because fear and overwhelm can induce paralysis instead of the action required to solve a problem. I imagine I'm not the only person like this.

It's not that I want to stick my head in the sand either, oblivious to child labor while wearing cheap clothes made in Bangladesh. Or remain unaware of climate change while consuming more and more fossil fuels.

I really enjoyed Erin McKittrick's most recent book Small Feet Big Land: Adventure, Home, and Family on the Edge of Alaska for this reason. She always raises my environmental awareness in an engaging story, non-mass media way.

As for awareness of human rights issues (stories about child soldiers, slaves and other abuses to women and children) I can't read most of those stories because of how distressing they are to me.

And it's not that I'm opposed to advertising either. I like learning about new things that might be useful or helpful to me but we live in a society of too much. And how do you sell in society of too much, a society where people don't really need a new dishwasher, stove, car, couch, or TV? You create fear and want. Fear and want. Fear and want.

As a blogger, I am a part of the media stream and I ask myself, how am I contributing to this cycle?

I have no answers to these wonderings of mine. Just observations and questions.

Questions mostly about how to be a good global citizen without taking on the weight of the world (which is not mine to bear). Questions about how to be a good local citizen when I can't easily read the news, even if I want (this is teaching me some great lessons about the importance of literacy). Questions about how much or how little is reasonable to let into my life and into the safe world I have tried to create for raising our children. Questions about my role as a writer and consumer.

I know this though, I feel increasingly critical in my evaluation of what the media is communicating - how and why they communicate the stories they do (and those they don't). I feel increasingly critical of what I'm communicating.

Like I said, no answers, just thoughts and questions.