You already knew that, right? If you have been paying attention, you did. The various news media these days have more competition for your attention, and they have long known that to get your attention, they have to produce an emotion in you. They get more attention by producing a negative emotion. So the news is no longer JUST THE NEWS. It is a concoction of events developed into a story in language carefully crafted to get your attention. Even the weather is no longer just "here's what to expect." Today's weather reporters are also competing for your attention. So rather than, "We are expecting 5" of snow before 6PM ," now it is, "This is shaping up to the the worst snow in 52.5 years, so be very scared."
We know that most of what has changed is competition for your attention. But something more subtle has changed along with that. The news is no longer "just the facts, m'am." Today's reporters want to grab you with negative emotions: fear, anger, outrage. But we tend to assume that the news and weather types are still reporting facts, so we respond as they have guided us. This affects our lives in very real ways.
What is the difference between "Today the temperature will be -13" and "today there is a wind-chill advisory in effect and you are advised to dress warmly"? One aspect is the assumption that we are all too stupid to wear warm clothes; that we do not know what -13 means, that we need it to be painted in scarier terms so we pay attention. I don't know about you, but I am insulted by weather reporters on a daily basis. Yep, -13 is cold. Yep, I need a coat. Yep, I will cover my face and hands. This barrage of insults is bad enough for me to have stopped paying attention to them altogether. I want the facts, and I will decide how to behave, thanks.
But the more sinister aspect is that when people are continually subjected to such emergency tactics, they tend to feel fear. It comes on gradually as we are inundated daily with this and that emergency. From weather to climate to politics to foreign affairs, there is a reported emergency around every corner. Thus, my attempt to avoid all forms of media reporting.
As a society, however, trends become obvious. First is that more people demand to be kept totally safe from reality. We become more fearful of things that once were considered normal. This week, it is tornadoes. I have actually looked at the historical data on tornadoes. Every year, the midwest suffers A LOT of them. There is no evidence that they are worse than ever. In fact, my memory contains some crazy fragments of walking (admittedly, a little fear on the part of the school officials who sent us out the door would have been wise) home from school because of a tornado warning, watching a tornado out the window, another of walking to school the day after a tornado, surrounded by uprooted trees, broken back porches, and the school bleachers in the middle of the street! School closures? Nope, never. Well, once, in '67, after a blizzard totally shut down Chicago. We might have sometimes been stupid, but we did not live in fear of basic facts of reality. There is weather every day. Sometimes it is inclement. It is wise to plan accordingly rather than demanding better weather or blaming something for bad weather or refusing to plan for bad weather and getting into trouble.
The question is, are we better off now that we, as a society, are so much more cautious? Admittedly, there are times when this caution is well-placed. No, I ought not to have walked three miles to a movie in a short skirt in -15 weather when I was 13! But I did learn a lot about cold and frostbite and never did anything like that again. Are your kids better off if they do not have an after-school job, so they can focus more time on studying? If they get 12 vaccinations rather than the 3 we used to get or the 4 my kids got? If their playgrounds have short slides and soft landings? If they stay home from school when it snows more than an inch?
Alternatively, were we better off when we played outside all day and came home with bumps, bruises, and probably a cold? When we walked to school in every sort of weather? When a job was required if we wanted spending money? When we left the occasional kid in the car while we ran into the store? When, if our home lacked air conditioning, we found a way to stay cool that did not involve a public "cooling center" (yes, it did used to get over 100 degrees regularly in Chicago when I was growing up)?
Trust me, there has always been weather. There will always be germs. Bad people exist, and do harm, though not in the numbers the media would have you believe. Kids fall and need stitches. Life is not always safe.
So what am I getting at with all of this? Missing in many people today is resilience. Resilience is when a bad thing happens and you dust yourself off and try again. If we protect our kids from all forms of adversity, if we avoid adversity at all cost, if we deny adversity ought to exist, we do not develop the ability to deal with it. Adversities will occur. Often. There is more power in having the skill to deal with whatever happens than in demanding that it not happen or that it ought next time to be prevented by someone somehow.
Resilience is what kids demonstrate when they fall off the monkey bars, scrape a knee, and get right back on. Resilience is also what a kid demonstrates when he can fail a test or lose a ball game, feel sorry, recover, and work harder next time and do better. Resilience is what we show when we hear that it is going to rain all week where we are planning to go camping and either we still go and make the best of it or revamp our plans and have a great time even though we did not get to do exactly what we wanted.
Resilience does not develop when we protect kids from adversity. I see this time and again: A kid who is shocked when he is hospitalized and cannot cope with being away from home, and what's worse, feels betrayed by reality that he was injured at all, can indeed feel traumatized by normal life events! Another who receives a bad grade, goes home and complains, and a parent calls the school to complain (and I am a person who does not believe in traditional schooling nor traditional systems of grading--see other blog entries, but if you are part of that system, then you play by those rules). What did the child learn from that interaction? That he does not have to do the work to get the grade if he can get a parent to make enough noise. Is that going to work when he has a boss?
Lack of resilience has many consequences. Why do we see more anxiety and depression than we used to? Why are more kids struggling to adjust to college? Why are so many young people either on prescription medication or self-medicating with psychoactive (I am including nicotine, alcohol, cannabis, and all illegal drugs here) substances?
The answer to these societal ills is not more drugs. It is not getting society to change and remove all adversity from our lives. It is also not going back several decades to when life was more full of obstacles. It is good that humans can make life safer and easier. What is not good is when people then learn to demand even more degrees of safety and ease and lose the ability to cope with reality.
The answer here is learning when not to listen to scare stories from the media. It is learning that adversity is what helps us gain resilience. It is accepting that often life will be difficult, and we can learn to cope with these difficulties. It is also making sure the next generation, while gaining many advantages through technology that we do not yet have, and thus having an easier life, does not thus lose the ability to tolerate things that do not go as expected.
Challenges, or stressors, are what motivate us to act, to change, to improve. Without them, we become lifelong dependents upon others to save us from every twist of fate and every shift in our reality. This is not life; it is slavery.
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