Dear diary,
I imagine bumping into someone on the street, and the stranger asks me: “What’s your info diet?” And I say, “Info diet?” And the stranger says, “I mean: What type of info do you prefer to take in?” And I say, “Well I mostly hate ‘info’; I’m more hungry for wisdom; so I read books, and I prefer poetry, essays, and novels; but if I do ‘take in’ any ‘info’ — I assume you mean on audiovisual media — if it’s not great movies or awesome music, I stick to the doom-and-gloom stuff: all the news about the upcoming global catastrophes: climate chaos, the chance of nuclear disaster, and the economic meltdown that we’re enduring and that is only getting worse.” And the stranger says, “Do you really enjoy the doom-and-gloom news?” And I say, “No, actually I wish that I could tear myself away from that type of topic; but I keep paying attention to it, thinking that it’s important to know about it; as if I might be better prepared to weather these potential or looming threats if I am fully cognizant of them.”
I don’t wanna keep talking to this stranger. Let me take my leave and change the subject...
Is peril imminent? Well, like I said, it’s surely a potential. But is it truly looming; is it just around the corner? Who could answer that? Since I attend to the doom-and-gloom news, disaster feels like it’s ready to strike any moment. But then I walk outside my house and strike up a conversation with my neighbor who’s working in his garden, he doesn’t even mention the certainty of worldwide ruination; his only concern is that his grandson gets a good score on his math test tomorrow. His grandson is in middle-school, I am told — he just turned eleven years old; the kid’ll probably be a banker someday, or work in the financial industry.
And other people are shopping at clothing stores, purchasing the type of coats that are currently fashionable. If nuclear war breaks out, or if the planet asphyxiates, or if the economy implodes, these people will be immune: their lives will continue as usual, while my own life sizzles like a pat of butter in a pan on an open flame.
Nuclear weapons: do I myself have total control over them? No. But could I join an assembly of concerned citizens occupying a public place; and might our act of peaceful protest have an impact that leads to all countries abolishing nuclear weapons forever? Yes; that’s likely to happen, if about twenty of us anti-war activists make signs with catchy slogans on them and stand on the roadside and wave these signs at all the vehicles that pass, when it’s cold outside. Preferably it’ll be raining.
Climate chaos... I don’t like to call it global warming because I’m from Minnesota, where it’s cold outside and preferably raining, and never not snowing; and I’ve learned from the folks who live here that global warming would be a welcome attraction, for then we’d no longer need to shovel snow from our driveways and walkpaths. We the People of Minnesota would gladly let the whole rest of the planet expire in agony, if it means, for us, the end of shoveling snow. We also dislike raking leaves.
But climate chaos: is this something that I myself can stop, all alone? Sure, I can stop climate chaos easily, by selling my gas-powered vehicle at the local used-car lot and buying an electric lawnmower to drive around. Also stop eating sweetmeats. Plus, if I can wean myself off of bottled water, I can save all the dolphins. Ninety percent of sea life went extinct this week, due to the amount of plastic that’s clogging the ocean. And, in the time it took me to write that last sentence, the percentage increased from ninety to ninety-nine. Now only a single dolphin gets to enjoy breeding itself back to superabundance. So it’s good that God made heaven.
And the economic meltdown was embarrassing for all of us saviors who are so commonplace that you can’t remember how to disbelieve in us. Nobody likes to beg his inferiors for money, least of all a thief who happens to be down on his luck. But compassion was safely caged and then let out of its cage for a moment and then caged again; thus anyone who’s struggling deserves to continue to struggle: non-fraudsters basically love struggling; otherwise they’d become an impervious entity.
Yes, a spider who lives behind the workbench in your garage may spend what remains of his life thinking that decent rock-&-roll music will never be heard again. For the boombox that the previous homeowner left atop the workbench got removed by you, the home’s current owner: you brought it indoors, but then discovered that its cassette player doesn’t work — only its radio works — so you tossed it into the basement, where it now sits collecting dust. Little does the above-mentioned spider suspect that, if he only knew how to open the door to the stairwell, which connects the garage to the basement, he himself, a lowly spider, might descend those steps and retrieve the discarded boombox by tying some twine around its handle (I recommend using the spool that we bought last month from the hardware shop — don’t use the gossamer web that comes from your own person: that would be a waste of creative energy) to drag the boombox up the stairwell, hoist it back onto the workbench in the garage, somehow plug it in, press its power button, and adjust its tuning knob to the rock-&-roll station. THEN he would learn that rock-&-roll is NOT dead. (This of course presupposes that there’s still a radio station in existence which broadcasts decent rock-&-roll.)
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