It is sometimes amazing, how much we need to know to be able to navigate through our daily trudge through life. I was looking at some ‘current events’ news articles on a variety of newspapers (online), and it occurred to me that just to have some reasonable understanding of the current news of the financial meltdown in Greece warrants the need to know about more than just the fundamentals of economics, or even some knowledge of the history of economic thought. You would also need to have been concurrently reading up on the latest events in the EU, what drove these governments to create this organization, some understanding of how the union movement wields its power in Europe, and some broad understanding of some of the almost ancient unreconciled grudges and animosities which create the rest of the back story to this problem in Europe.
I often worry about the chicken-egg sort of problem regarding how Americans deal with international news. As I mentioned, just to have enough perspective to understand (or even care) many things which take place outside of our shores requires more than is what is considered to be enough for a high school curriculum. Actually, unless you are involved in a program which would require a conscientious study of international news and current events, I wonder how many Americans really look at these topics.
Where do most people develop a reasonable background with which they would be able to get a handle on these complex events? I guess most people rely upon professionals (e.g. reporters, international studies experts on Sunday pundit shows) to show them the way. To be honest about it, this is how I got started…that is, watching (at first in an amazingly uncritical manner, too!) and reading all kinds of things from almost any perspective, about almost anything I could get my hands on.
Over time (more than a couple years…), I started to be able to see patterns in how various news organizations, governments, pundits, and public figures all presented their views. In essence, I was forced to understand foreign news through the process of trying to understand and evaluate a wide variety of different points of view. As a result I grew to understand international politics (i.e. ‘international relations’) and how they are presented as two layers of political biases.
I am left wondering if there is a more efficient, less arbitrarily complex way to understand these issues. I am also left wondering if there are better ways to get to the pith of what is called domestic news… Is there a similar problem limiting most people’s ability to see what is going on?
I can see that in many ways we haven’t been well served by the media (Newspapers, TV, Radio, Internet, etc.). Since we are supposed to be involved citizens of the USA, why is it that there are so few means to see into current events other than from extreme partisan points of view (from both sides, all over the radio, TV, newspapers, and the internet)? In any of these media forums ,all I see are ‘red meat’ thrown to the adherents of various rigid points of view, ‘head counting’ or ‘horse racing’ perspectives on what the outcomes might be in…for instance, the health care imbroglio. You would think that we regularly spend more time looking at the ‘Vegas line’ than on what these things really mean to us…
There are some contrary arguments, I must admit to. Instead of our being presented with political news, international news, or even local news as potboilers which demand your visceral emotional response, a more reasoned account of the news is…well, it’s just boring. Only wonks want that sort of thinking, or would want to deal with information in that cold and dry a manner.
At this point in my discussion of current events, I am started to see how this may relate to some f0o the things I have seen regarding how we, as moderns, respond to the beginnings of boredom. This may be one of the biggest boogie men we have (and don’t like to talk about). It is certainly a better thing for us to be entertained instead of using our brains in a continuous, disciplined manner which often results in no emotional catharsis. I think that this may be one of the driving forces in our culture…now…
