Wonder Lost

by Brant Watson

Quote

All things are poison, and nothing is without poison, the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison.

— Paracelsus

Wake up, check your phone. Go to work. Read the news in the bathroom. Read it walking down the hall. Post about the latest outrage. Argue with people about a topic on social media. Go home. Read more news. Watch personalities analyze the news. Live it. Breath it. Let it consume you. Jump into the pool of news and media and let it consume your thoughts. Yes, consume it. You’re a consumer. Do your job. Call it being informed. Call it caring about the issues. Call it being engaged. Proclaim that it’s meaningful and important. Tell yourself you can stand apart from it; objective. Tell yourself it doesn’t affect you. Validate your actions.

Problem

We are overdosing on media and it’s poisoning us.

An important human trait is ability to see and identify trends that are relevant. Relevance is based on those things which we encounter more frequently. As recently as a few hundred years the rate of information propagation was slow enough that the daily life of people on one side of the world had little to no effect on the lives of people on the other side of the world. Since that information would never be encountered by either party neither could have perceived it as relevant. In a modern world this is no longer true. We choose which information to consume. The glut of available data is now an ideologically driven concept.

A few weeks back I was walking through a small wooded area looking for morel mushrooms. Having hunted for them every year since I was a child I knew what to look for. I foraged, experiencing the joy of discovering something edible in the wild. As I lay down to sleep the evening after a hunt I noticed something. Swirling murkily in my minds eye was the vague after-image of a morel mushroom. My ability to recognize this pattern was active. Similarly, the more you encounter something the better you become at finding it. Over time you become attuned to the pattern and easily spot it even when a novice cannot. Become overly attuned and you begin to see it even when it’s not there. An animal in the clouds. An image in smoke. Two headlights and a grill conjure a face. Abstract information is the canvas on which our minds paint.

It’s this adaptation that requires us to be cautious with the information we consume. Our daily ritual of enjoying the clash of egos, attacks on ideas, and vilifications of groups leaves us nothing but a hollow shell vicariously living through media personalities and reveling conflict like a kid at the movies.

What value do these inputs really hold for us? Do they help us get more out of the time we’re given? Given that we now choose the information we can consume, what thought do we put into the information we feed our minds? Is a dose this high worth momentary catharsis as we laugh at someone else’s misfortune? At what point does this dose become poison?

Solutions

In all the raging turmoil of life, culture, social media, the 24 hour news cycle, left vs right, nationalism vs globalism, etc… it’s easy to feel adrift or inconsequential. On a grand enough scale anything finite is a mere mote set against an all encompassing darkness that renders it devoid of meaning and purpose. But instead of looking outward one can look inward. Not inward in the narcissistic ego driven naval gazing way that most people think of but instead deeper and more spiritual. What is it that we are? If we wish to find peace then we should figure out what it is that desires peace.

Pursue these questions with curiosity and courage. Pointing out issues is easier by far than finding solutions. These begin with the self and not others but admitting this can be a shot to the ego. “The problem isn’t ME it’s all these jerks and idiots.” No, the problem is within you. It’s the rot and darkness and fears that we project or ignore or defy. There is no peace to be found in the 24 hour news cycle. It’s designed to appeal to our sense of spectacle and capitulates to the worst parts of ourselves. The distraction is cunningly designed, allowing us to participate passively in whatever war reinforces our existing views. But the media is not the real problem.

If you were stripped free of the baggage of your life, clean down to the deepest parts of your soul so that you were once again as naive as a child, you would find missing or hidden pieces of yourself. We bury or kill aspects of ourselves because we’re small and scared and sensitive. We surround ourself with our own constructions designed to protect this piece of ourselves. Forts go up. Walls. Abstractions. Intellectualizations. Rationalizations. They attempt to protect the soft parts of our flank. Each unkindness the world brought us is baked into a new brick for our fortifications. Sometimes we are hurt so deeply that we are unable to remove the blade, leaving a vulnerability which no fortification can protect.

When we stare out from our own fortifications we don’t see the pure version of anyone. We see their facades and forts and the blades they couldn’t remove protruding from them. Their form is different but they were built for the same fundamental reasons that ours were.

Some people look for places where others are still open and vulnerable or where a blade still protrudes and attack that spot and enjoying the pain they cause. To them the problem isn’t their attacks—it’s that these people didn’t have good enough fortifications.

One of the most challenging things we can do as humans is to look beyond the fortification and facades of a person, into the ineffable condition we all share and to love them unconditionally even as they seek to harm us or others we love. It’s tempting to give into fear and pain and say we shouldn’t have compassion for some people. This is a lie we tell ourselves. It can be done but it’s something we must do willingly and with an open heart. The militant fighter murdering women and children, the drug dealer, the abuser, the murderer, the suicide bomber, and the troll were all once babies who wanted nothing but warmth and safety and love and care and something terrible happened along the way. They’re wounded and carried along by the inertia of their own lives and forts and baggage and pain. It’s possible to carry understanding without condoning or excusing actions. Compassion is a volitional act not a judgment and it’s the first step in healing your own persistent wounds. Not everyone is ready or willing to heal.

Shut off your constant news feed. Purge your daily intake of hatred and cathartic trolling and entertainment news and talking heads and sound-bites and pandering and bitching about the state of things and just stop. Stop everything. Find stillness and quiet. Peace. Look inward towards the piece of you that you’re defending with your fortifications and remember a deeply human child-like naivety that is capable of unrestricted joy and trust and love and wonder and awe and allow this piece of you to emerge and let it’s emotions flow through you and cry—weep with joy or sadness for love lost or those we love, for potential squandered, for questions unanswered, for those taken too soon, for those whose wounds we cannot heal or for your own wounds and be a pure being without a fort and stand before the universe with humility, raw and bare and vulnerable and afraid and feel… just feel. It’s not the world that is keeping that part of you locked away. It’s you.