Evidentia

In the early 1990s, when I was an editorial-writer, I had an argument with my editor. I told him our newspaper should open up a solutions page one day a week, so that our readers – very well-educated people – could propose concrete solutions to problems, whether at the community, municipal, provincial, national or international level. I said that all it would take was one page of the newspaper per week: I even proposed editing the page myself. The editor replied this was a terrible idea, since a “solutions page” would never sell newspapers. He said that readers wanted to hear about problems, not solutions.

I have often wondered since then whether people really want to hear about problems rather than solutions. Do they feel strangely reassured to hear of other people’s problems, as if they were saying to themselves “there but for the grace of God go I?” Do people get a vicarious thrill – a sort of Schadenfreude – in hearing about other people’s problems? Or do they take other people’s problems as proof they are right to fell deep-seated anxiety about their own lives? As if everything they had worked for in their life was about to be annihilated at any moment.

Or do people want to hear concretely how they can improve their own lives and make the world a better place?

Lightning strike (Photo by Fir0002/Flagstaffotos; http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:GNU_Free_Documentation_License,_version_1.2)

The more bad news I hear – whether of conquest, war, famine or death, the more I have the impression the media have become truly apocalyptic. The media regularly forecast the end of the world, irreversible destruction of the atmosphere, oceans, lands, lakes and rivers, the collapse of society, the collapse of morality, and epidemics that are on the point of striking, with the potential to wipe out tens of millions of lives. It seems we are going to hell in a hand-basket. The process, according to the media, is inevitable, and we should be grateful to them, since they are the first ones telling us the latest horrible news.

The other day, a science journalist on the Radio-Canada website asked whether current dire predictions of climate change by the year 2100 could fall short of reality. What if the situation proves to be far worse by then, he asked.

In fact, anyone making a prediction has to make it as dire as possible, in order to get media attention. Scientists are actually the worst offenders in this respect.

Four centuries ago, the whole point of the scientific revolution was to ground scientific narratives in observation, experiment and above all verifiable evidence, in order to get as far away from the purely speculative modes of thinking about the universe that were prevalent during the Middle Ages.

However, science is now increasingly taking on a predictive function – which means it is returning to the realm of speculation. Of course, today’s scientific prophets will object that they are merely extrapolating from current trends, when they tell us the future of the climate is at stake. Besides, their predictive models are unbelievably sophisticated.

But these models could still be wrong.

Actually, there is no way to verify whether scientific prophecies will prove accurate, unless we happen to be around in the year 2100, which very few of us will be. The same goes for other prophets – experts warning us about the dire future of healthcare, the dire future of the educational system, the dire future of relationships, of the family, of love between men and women, and of parents for their children.

All I can say is, the trend of dire predictions seems to be worsening, and if the current trend continues, things will definitely get worse, since everybody will believe the end is near, and you know as well as I do that prophecies have a way of fulfilling themselves.

There is something profoundly existential in contemporary anxiety (This is a NASA photo, taken by Andrew Fruchter of the Eskimo nebula)

How did this all come about? In 1964, Marshall McLuhan wrote that “Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phases of the extensions of man – the technological simulation of consciousness.”

What may not have been apparent in 1964 is that the globalization of our central nervous system is bombarding us with a stifling volume of completely irrelevant news, specially selected by the media for its shock value, not to mention its disturbing, mind-numbing, horror-inducing, offensive, traumatic, unspeakably painful, compelling, and even downright disgusting nature. And this in turn is contributing significantly to anxiety, since the media are maintaining us in a passive state, where many of us feel defeated, neutralized, incapable of addressing problems let alone solving them. Our anxiety is anything but accidental.

First of all – what is anxiety? It is an unremitting, all-pervading, spine-tingling form of dread about what is yet to happen. It can paralyse, debilitate and depress us; it can turn us into non-stop talkers and meddlers; it can defeat our best instincts and turn us into emotional wrecks, subject to moments of wrenching panic, phobias and agonizing pain. Some people’s anxiety leads them to depression, even suicide.

Click here for an antidote to anxiety:

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The glorious song of the American Robin

Since anxiety is so obviously bad for our health, I used to think it was better to retreat into the forest, in order to avoid becoming anxious. I pictured anxiety as the opposite of peace of mind, so I found ways to forestall it, such as getting fresh air and exercise, or meditating, or playing music. Listening to the gloriously cheerful song of the American Robin, for example, how could I possibly feel anxious about anything?

But our emotional state is not always or ever purely voluntary. I now see anxiety as something unavoidable, simply because it has become one of the world’s greatest profit centres and sources of power. Many institutions, from the media to governments, and pharmaceutical companies to New Age cults, thrive on our anxiety. By managing our expectations and instilling fear about what is yet to happen, these institutions have a stake in keeping us anxious.

How prevalent is anxiety in society? According to the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States, “an estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year… Approximately 40 million American adults ages 18 and older, or about 18.1 percent of people in this age group in a given year, have an anxiety disorder.” Percentages in Canada are quite similar. (See for example, the website of the Anxiety Disorders Association of Canada: www.anxietycanada.ca)

But these statistics refer only to mental and anxiety disorders. They do not take into account the fact that most people feel anxiety sometimes, and this is partly because the media are feeding us a non-stop diet of impending disaster, as a way of keeping their market share and keeping us riveted to our television sets, newspapers or computers.

Anxiety has become so existential that I even believe it has taken on some religious features. In the Rebel, Albert Camus wrote that “The future is the only transcendental value for men without God.”

This must be why the media are conditioning us to be anxious about the future at all times.

I still withdraw into the forest, to listen to the robin’s glorious song. But instead of seeking the remedy for anxiety in peace of mind, I now see anxiety as the opposite of hope – hope in the future. In “hope” there is a potential motivation to actually make things work better.

An American Robin, singing (Photo by Tom Grey) - I still love retreating to the forest as a remedy to anxiety, but action – not retreat – makes the world a better place, and it is important to have hope