Sunday, June 13, 2010

Le poisson nage

With everything going on in the world today, whether it be Israel's blockade of Gaza; Iran and the ever increasing sanction; North Korea's sinking (allegedly, of course) of a South Korean warship in "disputed" waters; the wonderful (not) political nonsense that is the midterm elections; to the oil spew in the Gulf of Mexico, is it any wonder why we are so messed up as a species? I mean let's think about it for a brief minute. We have so much going on today that the news cannot possibly (or won't) fully cover it all to a degree that is more than superficial nonsense and a quick 2-minute summary of opinions that have not changed and continue to spout the same biased information. So we are left with generalized statements and 5 second sound bites (since this is all that we have time for nowadays) about some very complex and vitally important information and events.

Can you honestly say that after watching 2-hours of your favorite news channel (take your pick, they are all really the same) you really understand the issues going on today? I mean really understand the issue beyond the dummyfied (new word) synopsis of "BP still cannot stop the flow, fish and birds are dying" that now replacing true intellectual conversations and debate. One side will take anything and make it about being unpatriotic or hating God while the other will spin it to oppressing a group of individuals or the damn caribou. If we continue down this path of quick, superficial discussions as the only real conversations, we will be doomed as a people. There would not be any "if" but rather the definite "when" that we will be left with.

The news channel that is devoted to "high" level financial debate and coverage recently had a "film" about the largest corporation collapse in the history of mankind (Lehman Brothers). The concepts behind the collapse and the attempts made by the Federal Reserve to intervene (through a private sector bailout) are indeed very complex and I do not fully understand them but can you tell me how this story could be told in 40 minutes? 40-minutes would not even cover the CDO and credit default swaps that helped led to near complete collapse of the entire western financial system and yet this is what we get. So much potential that got wasted in the new "dummyfication" of the world.

Even the once renowned foreign press has given in to the modern age of nothingness journalism and, to be frank, it scares me. After this, where do we go from here? How much more can we shrink our understandings and intelligence? The Oil will still be spilling into the gulf, we will still be addicted to this deadly and very limited substance, war will still be around the corner, we will still be arrogant, and the left will still be the left (I had to get a quick superficial political jab in to this blog since everyone else is doing it). Judgment for human stupidity, intelligence loses.

PS, the title of this blog is French as I am in the process of learning a new language… can you guess what language?