The Noise Is the News Now
Fewer signals, deeper meaning
Intelligence is drowning – in too much information. I open my inbox warily, as one might a crammed closet, not to be crushed. Here the few old-fashioned publications I follow, which used to be called newspapers, magazines, journals; individual voices who’ve detached themselves from publications to assemble their own audiences; folks I find myself following on Facebook, both intimate and remote; the heroes who read me, who merit reciprocal regard; politicians; group emails I’ve been copied on; effusive automated thank-you’s; questionnaires. One transmission out of twenty, if that, is meant for me personally, mostly from readers, which I rejoice in. Each sender seeks “only a moment” until few remain.
This is new in my lifetime. My parents “took” three newspapers and maybe half a dozen magazines, which arrived in a stack with the morning mail. Most of it was read, if only cursorily. One “got through” the mail and on with one’s day. Kids were rationed to an hour or two of television a week; electronic communications, in my parents’ view, were for crises only.
One could “keep up,” be “on top of” things. Fewer topics received more attention. Those in one’s set would have read the same material, so discussions delved deeper quicker. The more one knows “what’s going on”, the calmer one feels. To know is to tame.
These days we’re dowsed by shouting, as if from a jimmied hydrant. Though more widely and rapidly informed, we feel bewildered, jittery, threatened. Newsmakers vie to whirl us into news cycles; the viler the leader, the more avid for our attention. That so many disparate voices can reach me – and mine reach you – is, in some ways, glorious, an egalitarian miracle. It’s harder for those in power to dupe us about the truth, however wormy their lies. But there is a cost – in calm, consideration, confidence, community – which, while hard to tally, is surely immense. TMI is a groaning disease, not just a grinning acronym.
How to cope? More than one of my readers has barred their inboxes to all intruders in an hour of anguish, stranding me outside. “But we were enjoying our conversation,” I’d whimper. Yes, they’d concede, but it was all too much, sorry, they couldn’t take it anymore. Open the sluicegate even for a trickle and they feared they’d drown.
The ostrich option, however tempting, is not sustainable, especially in this hour of existential peril. Bury my head in the sand and I’m likely to get it axed.
My survival tactic is to trust. Whom can I depend on to array and report what I most need to know? Who will reduce the welter of woes and worries into the most pressing? Who will do this most concisely, with a glint in their prose? For these precious providers the rest must stand aside. Countless publications, politicians and pundits share my concern about civilization’s direction. God bless them, but sorry, no can do. To retain my sanity, I must heed my sages. Their clarity will be mine. Less information will leave more time for thought.
I write to earn your trust. I’d much rather a thousand regular readers than a million now and then. Celebrity is the opposite of intimacy. Though it hurts, I want to be unsubscribed if I don’t fit. The competition for communion prods me to write my best. Let ours be a moment of quiet in the roar, akin to a moment of prayer. Let’s cling to each other to feel less crazed, less alone.
Communities need not be exclusionary but they are by their nature exclusive, even if those included choose so.
Thank you for your words, Carll. And, keep on writing. I have hesitated to write lately to avoid adding to the noise until I could absorb more and communicate with clarity and, as you mentioned, trust.
I comment a lot attempting to get a toe hold scaling other people's ascents, but everything seems so ephemeral and in constant flux. I remember the solid journalism of our youth and the stately pace of information flow and its integrity. There were editors and legal departments then and the internet has eliminated that and pegged the accelerator. It seems trust has become road kill and "alternative facts" are proliferating without any guardrails.
Humans learned to communicate to help manage our subconscious sense of fear and terror. The pen was supposed to be "mightier than the sword." Sadly it is no match for the meat grinder we have created for ourselves. Rather than calm our fears we now amplify them and engage in what someone called "angertainment".
I suppose I am looking inward hoping to discover a mythos, a story to tell to focus our collective minds on something other than polarization and eventual annihilation. To watch the liberal world order being replaced by savage nationalistic realism is a grim horror story. Sadly, anything else I imagine seems inadequate for the task. If you have any hints, send them my way.
Meanwhile, I seem tasked to be a witness to our diseased and wasting ideologies poisoned by the malignancy of our cancerous technologies. It is a nasty corner we've painted ourselves into and I fear there is no easy way out.