Posted by Roo on August 22, 2002, at 9:18:30
Interesting Good News?You may have noticed: The media acts as if mayhem and decay and collapse and
crime and death and loss and corruption are the subjects that are most newsworthy.I don't agree with that assumption. I don't believe that Bad Nasty Things compose
98 percent of the human experience. Even factoring in the prevailing misery in Gaza
and Rwanda (for example), I doubt that the Global Bad Nasty Ratio ever exceeds
50 percent. And here in the West, where most of you reading this live, the
proportion is far lower.Still: I'm willing to let the media fill up half their pages and airwaves and bandwidths
with poker-faced accounts of pain and twisted fates. But I also demand EQUAL
TIME for news about redemption and integrity and joy and beauty and pleasure and
renewal and harmony and love. That's all I ask: a mere 50 percent.I vividly recall a shocking experience I had in April of 2000. Opening to the front
page of my local daily newspaper, I found a tiny oasis of fantastic news amidst the
usual accounts of reeling chaos and breakdown. It reported that inner cities all over
America were undergoing a profound renaissance. From Los Angeles to New
Orleans to Boston, the poorest sections of town were becoming markedly safer.
New businesses were opening at a dramatic rate, capital was flowing in,
neighborhood clean-ups were proliferating, drug sales were declining, people were
sitting on their porches again.I was pleased and amazed that such an uplifting story had cracked the media's taboo
against good news. And yet its presence as an exception to the rule proved that the
rule is virtually ironclad.The worst aspect of the unofficial blackout is how numb we've all become to it. Even
those of us whose passion it is to promote the cause of beauty and truth are
hard-pressed to track down enough good news to fill up half the pages and airwaves
and bandwidths. An abundance of good news is definitely out there; it's just that
we've been mass hypnotized to be addicted to cynicism, and as a result ignore and
downplay the beauty that sprouts everywhere.And by the way, I'm not interested in the kind of "good news" stories that announce,
"2,000 planes took off yesterday and all landed safely." That's boring. If the good
news is to compete with the Bad Nasty Stuff, it has to have equal entertainment
value.I invite all of you out there to share with me (and all of us) the interesting,
invigorating, intellectually- and emotionally-stimulating pronoiac news that you
stumble upon in your travels. Send it to freewillastrology@hotmail.com.Please feel free, too, to take up the cause of zoom and boom as you resist the
practitioners of doom and gloom in your own sphere. Let this be our battle cry: WE
DEMAND EQUAL TIME FOR NEWS ABOUT REDEMPTION AND
INTEGRITY AND JOY AND BEAUTY AND PLEASURE AND RENEWAL
AND HARMONY AND LOVE.Now for some interesting good news:
Seething Bilious Hate, Down 3%
What if leaders of the world's major religions got together one and denounced all
religious violence -- and no one cared?
poster:Roo
thread:29035
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020820/msgs/29035.html