I read an article last night about the future of schooling in the UK in regards the consequences of Covid-19. It was after I had written yesterdays piece on returning to schools and the possibility of fines for those who don’t, otherwise it would have been included in the article. I thought of writing about it today though but I won’t. I won’t for two reasons, a quite important one being that while my gut feeling from what I read was that they were teaching this generation a certain necessity to be controlled and it scared me, I can’t find the article or remember exactly what it was that made me feel so worried. The other is that today I feel a bit tired of writing these pieces damning some politician, political party or whatever example of systemic corruption that takes my fancy. I will again for sure but today my mind is in a different place.
Why then do we keep coming back to these articles which do nothing but confirm our understanding that the world is a corrupt and bullshit place. The obvious would be that we’re searching for some kind of confirmation or negative bias. We hear of research that social media companies use suggesting we’re drawn to and spend more time responding and reacting to bad news over good. There’s also the instinctive scared animal within us which is constantly on the look out for danger in our quest for survival. My direct experience of the world is not that it’s a dangerous place, quite the opposite, of course that is just my experience not one representative of anyone else or any collective group.
My view of the world through my news, political and social internet search history is an alarmingly different one to what I have seen through my eyes. Don’t get me wrong I have seen some shocking things in my life but proportionally these are but a fraction of the overall experience. What keeps drawing us back then to following a different vision of the world. Perhaps we know that there is more out there than our small bubble, maybe we just want to. There is a chance we just want some more excitement in our lives. Could these bad world experiences draw us in because we’re actually collectively deep down unhappy and they appeal to that. Certainly I’m online less and care less about world events – football aside – when I’m having fun, travelling and living more in the moment. There just seems to be something unhealthy about it all. The news has not all of a sudden become a negative thing but we now have a constant live stream of it and with their need to keep our focus, there surely can be little beneficial about it. With that in mind I’ve just had an idea. I will avoid the news and therefore my Facebook feed too for the next ten days and see not only how I feel but what it forces me to come up with on here. Oh god, I’m getting the shakes already. What have I done?!
Observations and Misunderstandings 