Wednesday, August 08, 2007
PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA
"PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA:
How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings"
is available for sale at http://tinyurl.com/qaj62
To read news and features from the book, go here: http://tinyurl.com/lhwx2
Below is an essay that I didn't include in my book, but it's in close
alignment with the book's spirit.
*
WAR! FAMINE! PESTILENCE! EARTHQUAKES! CRIME! SCANDAL!
The ubiquity of headlines like these suggests that nihilism is the pet
philosophy of the storytellers known as "journalists." But they're not the
only fabulists to thrive on dread and despair. A majority of the prophets
down through the ages have been allergic to the possibility that the
future might hold anything besides endlessly tragedy and disaster.
The sixteenth century's creepy horror-meister Nostradamus wasn't the
first, but he has been one of the most enduring. Ghoulish modern
soothsayers have refined and expanded the scare-the-crap-out-of-'em
tradition. For instance, in the last 40 years, hundreds of self-proclaimed
prophets have foreseen cataclysmic "earth changes" that will flush away
America's West Coast and create beach-front property in Nebraska.
A multitude of their colleagues agree that most of humanity will be wiped
out any minute now, but they see the death blow coming via other
means. Lethal solar flares, nuclear war, and fresh plagues are old
standbys, though newcomers worm their way onto the list periodically,
including my personal favorite: an evil artificial intelligence that achieves
sentience on the Internet.
As entertaining as modern prognosticators' curses can be, however, their
track record is as abysmal as Nostradamus's. The fact that Nebraska is
still without a seacoast should be enough evidence to send many of them
into disgraced hiding.
Amazingly, the ineptitude of the frightful omen-slingers has not
diminished their appeal. Their newsletters and websites proliferate. They
have spawned the runaway popularity of syndicated radio shows rooted in
edge-of-the-seat invocations of imminent global disasters. Tally up the
New Age devotees of spooky woo-woo and the Christian fundamentalist
worshipers of divine uh-oh and you've got a cast of millions.
Cultured, rational folks like you and I chuckle. How can so many people
believe in so much nonsense? And yet as the tears of ridicule splash down
from my cheeks onto today's *New York Times,* a heretical theory
bubbles up into view. Maybe the boogie-man prophets captivate so many
imaginations because there are far more influential minds constantly at
work nurturing the conditions necessary for apocalyptic thinking to
bloom.
In our culture, cynicism has come to be regarded as a sign of intellectual
vigor. It's smart to expect and look for the worst in everything. Optimism
is thought to be the province of sentimental fools with no talent for
critical thinking. Entropy and disintegration are inherently more interesting
subjects to explore than redemption and renewal, availing greater
opportunities to show off one's acumen.
And soothsayers are really just bit players in the spreading of these
memes. The most potent disseminators are the storytellers known as
journalists. They comprise the engine of the myth-making machinery.
"The universe is not made of molecules," said the poet Muriel Rukyser. "It
is made of stories." Subtly and relentlessly, the journalists weave our
universe from narratives of turbulence, loss, decay, and corruption. The
poet John Keats said that if something is not beautiful, it is probably not
true, but our chief storytellers suggest the opposite: If something is not
ugly, it is probably not true.
The Nostradamus wannabes are easy to dismiss. Their spectacularly idiotic fantasies are laughable. But journalists churn out measured, seemingly believable doses of doom and gloom. No single mini- armageddon is too much to swallow, but the sum total of their agitated drone adds up in the long run to a far more powerful prophetic vision than the silly New Age and fundamentalist seers: MEDIAPOCALYPSE.
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