Raising the Bar

Over the years it seems to be getting harder and harder to scare people, harder to shock them. This is evident in so many ways to those who have enough perspective to stay calm during the constant onslaught of challenges from all sides. It shows up in movies and television, in literature, in daily life and in national and local news.

Violence on television and in the movies is getting more graphic. In the Psycho shower scene (1960), we hear scary music and see a butcher knife slashing the shower curtain as blood washes down the drain. It’s enough to hint at something very gruesome. Today with improvements in special effects the blood often comes spurting directly out of people before washing down the drain leaving body parts behind. They must use more graphic portrayals to hold our attention.

Many years ago George Carlin had a routine he sometimes called the “heavy seven,” the seven words you can’t say on television. In July of 1972 when he performed the routine in Milwaukee, he was arrested and charged with violating obscenity laws. About 10 years later I attended his show at a local club – by then it was a classic, and the audience called out for it. Today those words still don’t appear on network television, except as initialized abbreviations, but are common in movies, on cable, on the stage and all over social media. People are getting more desensitized about the language they hear.

This phenomenon of desensitization spills over into the daily news as well.

A staple of the national news is telling everyone what to be afraid of. The networks apparently think these scare tactics will guarantee higher ratings. People will tune in out of curiosity or perhaps wondering what should be added to the list.

It has finally gotten to the point where attempts to scare us have reached ridiculous levels. Diseases that affect a miniscule number of people are labeled as epidemic and something to guard against. In 2014 as Ebola ravaged western Africa, the news was so intense that some people cancelled planned trips to safaris in countries in eastern Africa, half a continent away. After the final count was in, media reported that only two people had contracted Ebola in the US.  Both were nurses who had treated an Ebola patient and both recovered, but panicked voices had warned us for months of an imminent danger.

Three weeks ago they gave us news of beaches in Florida being closed because two people suffered non-fatal shark bites. But two weeks later the danger was not from sharks but from beach umbrellas.

USA Today ran a story about the problem of flying beach umbrellas turned loose by high winds. They reported that “at least two people have been impaled by the colorful sun shades in recent weeks” one in the ankle and one in the chest. Both were recovering. “According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, about 3,000 people each year are rushed to emergency rooms for injuries involving umbrellas.” (Notice that they weren’t driven to emergency rooms or taken to emergency rooms – no, they were rushed, after being impaled!) They warn us to take precautions against this unexpected danger.

When we hear news like this we must remember a few things. Among them is that the news media are trying to upset us. That is what keeps us coming back – like to a soap opera – to find out what happens next or where this all leads! Another is that with over 300 million people in America, the incredible speed of communications and cameras everywhere, there will always be a crisis or a disaster within easy reach. They can’t tell it straight; they must build it into a shocking drama. (As politicians and social media jump on board to reinforce dire predictions, it's no wonder so many more people seem overly anxious today about every episode in Washington!) 

As all the entertainment and news media continue to raise the bar on shocking stories and images, take a deep breath and don’t be manipulated. Perspective.

Unpredictable Consequences

The premise that behavior has consequences and that the nature of those consequences usually follows from the wisdom of the behavior is accepted by almost everyone (and is common to most religions).  Most consequences are predictable in this way, but some people need to learn the lesson the hard way and many do.

A recent example was the man who had to be rescued two days in a row from Wildcat Creek in Indiana.  On a Thursday he and three others were rescued when their boat capsized on the flooded creek.  The next night he returned to the same spot to try to retrieve belongings that had been left behind, and he drowned.  The consequences of his Thursday misjudgment were not enough to deter him from repeating the risky behavior.  Consequences can be cruel.

More troublesome are those consequences that are harder to predict because the decisions are based on faulty information or grounded in fear.

I read a book a few weeks ago by Gene Stone called The Trump Survival Guide.  In it he criticized the idea of private Social Security saying the stock market might yield a higher return (most of the time) but the Trust Fund was invested in government-backed securities, so although the return was lower, the investment was safer.  Fine, but individual Social Security returns are not based on the investment vehicle of the Trust Fund.  They are based on a set formula that rewards at a higher rate those who contributed less. (See the graph here.)  This assumption also perpetuates the myth that the money you paid as F.I.C.A. taxes are invested in a “lock box” or trust fund and are waiting for you to collect them.  This is absolutely incorrect.

One week earlier I read a book by David M. Smick called The Great Equalizer.  At one point he tells of the difficulty of raising the Social Security cap to get the rich to pay more, thus extending the time before the Trust Fund is depleted (an estimated 15 years from now).  He gives the example of a husband and wife who together earn more than the current cap of about $120,000.  (I couldn't believe an author with his credentials could be so mistaken.)  The Social Security cap applies to individuals.  You can’t file jointly to try to reach the cap sooner.  That’s not how it works.  That couple would not have been affected by such a change unless they were each expecting a huge raise!  Yet such misinformation could easily get them writing anxious letters to Congress.

These may be fine details, but how can voters make intelligent decisions when well-educated people from both sides of the political spectrum (not to mention AARP) don’t seem to understand a system that affects so many?  Faulty information leads to poor decisions, which in turn may lead to poor outcomes we all must live with.

Decisions grounded in fear are also problematic.  I also read in the Trump Survival Guide how the prospect of a Trump presidency was characterized as horrific.  This is simply a kind of fortunetelling, anticipating and worrying about a destructive future that may or may not play out.

As a demonstration of how unpredictable that kind of future can be, consider this scenario.  In 2012 Mitt Romney wins the election.  In 2016 instead of having a 16-way debate among Republican candidates, Romney is running for re-election against Hillary Clinton.  Donald Trump would have no way to throw his hat into the ring.  There is no working class backlash against the establishment and Mrs. Clinton has Romney's 4-year record to run against.  Whatever the result of the election, there is no Trump presidency and no potentially horrific outcomes.

Now if Romney had run on a platform:  If you don’t vote for me, Donald Trump will become President of the United States, people would have called him crazy.  No one would have believed it, no one!  So today we are in a situation no one could have predicted a couple of years ago, yet so many people are stressing about and making decisions often based on wild predictions of future disasters.

Decisions based on inaccurate information or motivated by fear also have consequences.  Inaccurate information may lead you in the wrong direction.  Decisions based on fear of possibilities leads to highly unpredictable consequences and can have a detrimental effect on your health.  Is it really worth panicking about the pessimistic speculation of people with their own agendas who bank on such an emotional reaction from their followers and contributors?  (We know had the election come out the other way,  the same dynamic would be happening on the other side).

For the record:  I supported neither of the major party candidates as was clear from an entry on this page last November.  I still contend that America deserves better.

Peace On Earth?

Only a few months ago everyone, regardless of political views, seemed to be saying, “I can’t wait for this campaign to be over.”  Everyone, except for those few who really relished a good fight, was apparently thinking the same thing, that the presidential campaign was the nastiest, most tiring and most divisive in memory.  The general sentiment was how nice it would be to get back to a calmer time when most of the news was not about accusations tossed back and forth by the candidates, about fist fights breaking out after political rallies, about protests against the appearance of one of the candidates at a sight, or about leaks revealing each of the candidates prior criminal history.

For a long time people were encouraged to go out of their way not to bring up politics at family gatherings or social events for fear of causing major fallout.  Comments and posts on social media were as aggressive and mean as the daily sniping between the parties or the news media’s attempts to dig up the dirt.  Instead of calmly discussing points of disagreement, so-called friends called each other vile names when they found themselves at odds over which candidate was best – or at least, the lesser evil.  All that emotion and anger were exhausting, even to those on the sidelines, not directly participating.  We just hoped Election Day would arrive soon and it would all be over.

Now that the election has come and gone, it’s not over.  The sniping, bashing and name calling continue, not between the candidates anymore, but between their advocates and a still divided population, led by a mainstream media which, despite an attempt to appear non-partisan, can’t seem to hide the fact that they obviously felt the wrong candidate won.  On social media you see that one side has gotten out their crystal balls to determine what a disaster the next four years is going to be.  They are angry and worried sick.  For a while they called for recounts or a rebellion within the Electoral College in a futile attempt to overturn the election results.

The other side, again with crystal balls in hand, predicts that we are better off, and each attempt to smear the President-elect or question the outcome is met with sneers and equally nasty comments.

The truth is that no one has a crystal ball.  No one can predict the future with any accuracy.  If that were the case, we would all be rich and not so worried about it.  We just have to take what comes and hope for the best.  I wrote on the day before the election that most people were voting against rather than for a candidate, and that the poor choices we were left with was our own fault for not demanding better from the parties and from government in general.  Perhaps those who were griping about gridlock for the last four years will be praying for it over the next four.  This is not the answer.  The real solution is to use critical thinking to continuously question politicians, the media and advertisers, not reacting to the hype and forcing them to be honest.

In any case, this is not the season for anger and hate.  It’s the season for peace and joy and goodwill.  Let’s try to leave the politics behind just for a little while.  So over the next couple of days, no matter who you are spending time with and no matter how obnoxious Uncle So-and-so gets, try to ignore the provocation.  Take a deep breath and count to ten.  It doesn’t matter what your religious affiliation is or what this end of the year means to you personally, try to find and share some of that peace, joy and goodwill – even if you have to fake it.