The light has sunk into the earth:
The image of DARKENING OF THE LIGHT.
Thus does the superior person live with the great mass:
She veils her light, yet still shines.
—I-Ching, hexagram 36, Wilhelm/Baynes
Working in a cafe, I become aware of two men sitting at a nearby table. One is older than I, in his 70s and vital with a full head of gray hair. He is speaking loudly to the other, who is ancient, sitting in a wheelchair, missing one leg from the knee down, and apparently partially deaf. The younger man is skimming a newspaper.
"Do you read the New York Times?"
"Eh?"
The younger man repeats his question again, only louder.
"Nah."
"Well, it's all bad news in the world."
"All the bad news that's fit to print!" the elder replies, with a mostly toothless grin.
That was a few days ago and the conversation keeps returning to my thoughts like a comet periodically returning to visibility on its irregular cycle. Something about the exchange seems meaningful. I think it has to do with the power of narrative to impose a layer of meaning on the perception of life and experience.
Bad news is not the only news, but it is the time-honored practice of news organs to focus on provocative topics that will capture readers' attention and keep audiences engaged. There is good commercial rationale for disseminating bad news.
There's another data point that is perhaps more telling. Namely, two investment groups, Blackrock and Vanguard, that own a large interest in the New York Times also own most of its competitors including Fox (News Corp), CNN (Time Warner), Disney, CBS News, MSNBC and many other major media brands. These two companies arguably control almost the entire media landscape, including organs that might ordinarily be seen as promoting opposing points of view.
The two investment groups, which are effectively one because Vanguard owns a controlling interest in Blackrock, also own virtually all the companies on the S&P 500, including every major company working in the pharmaceutical (notably a majority interest in Pfizer), defense, energy, banking, and technology sectors.
With this global monopoly of everything in view, it is not a stretch to infer that the major media companies serve as the marketing and propaganda arms for a worldwide business enterprise. And all these businesses benefit from unbridled consumption, destruction of the natural world, dismantling of the local economy and independent business, war, pandemics, and social strife. For these companies, bad news is good news.
My point is not to decry the injustice of a small group of corporations with more money than God controlling the economic, social, and political life of most of the planet for their own benefit. Rather it is to suggest that not only the news but also the narratives within which the news is framed should be viewed skeptically, and with a persistent inquiry—who actually benefits from the story? The great leap of inquiry is to look beyond the official narratives to what is real.
We are the recipients of innumerable narratives about what is happening in "the world" as though it is some known and consistent quantity. But what is the world, really?
The world is not distant events about which I can know nothing directly; it is not public figures who may as well be fictional characters in a Russian novel; it is not a stock market industrial average or parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere.
The real world begins with my direct experience and includes people with whom I enjoy personal encounters. The world is what I contact with my senses, what I touch, taste, smell, hear, and see. The world is what I perceive, and what touches my inner life. The world is what I can verify and come to understand in experience.
If my aim is to be kind to everyone, the objects of kindness and respect are those people that I meet. If my aim is to care for Great Nature (of whose body I am a part) then I can strive to consume only what is necessary, to preserve the objects in my care, and to relate to the sacred within all life.
The first thing I find in making contact with the real world is that it is good. The sense of ownership and separation quickly drops away as I become grateful for the abundance flowing everywhere. Though there may be problems and difficulties, the basis of the real world is the inexhaustible creative force of life. I see that this life that briefly flows through my body flows through all beings, all plants, all animals, all people and that in this we are one life.
A sensitive contact with the world reveals its reality and the unreality of the dominant narratives. In this contact I am allowed to be content and unafraid even as many around me are suffering and fearful. With freedom from fantastical and illusory media-driven narratives I may even be able to serve in a manner that is relevant and sincere.
