If daily news headlines don’t make you feel anxious, you probably aren’t paying attention.
That was my response to my son when he, like 42 percent of Americans, told me he purposely avoids the news because it makes him feel too anxious after a long work day.
What’s a conscientious citizen to do? To reduce my own news-induced anxiety, to impose structure and perspective as I prepared to teach world and American history, in 2018, I started a daily blog focusing on 4500 years of global history in 10-, 50-, and 100-year timelines.
The last time I studied some of this history, I was a distracted, recalcitrant teenager. So rediscovering it not only provided perspective and parallels, it helped to process and make more meaningful the global and national travel I had done to 42 countries and 42 states. I’ve connected with hundreds of lifelong learners eager to deepen their knowledge of history, culture, and literature. Many of us have a habit of congregating on Substacks and around YouTube video playlists.
Daily news headlines seem designed to evoke negative reactions and words of outrage, an epithet, a shake of the fist, feelings that things have never been worse in the entire history of humanity.
I thought back to what previous generations endured. Some nearly starved to death, were oppressed or treated as outlaws in the countries they were born into, “were tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Some were enslaved or discriminated against for generations, and still yearn for equality.
My great-grandparents lived through a civil war. My grandfather, born in 1864, lived through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, WWI, a global pandemic, the Great Depression, and WWII.
My parents lived through the Great Depression, WWII, the Civil Rights Movement, the shadow of nuclear annihilation, and quagmires in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
They all were exposed to awesome new inventions and experienced vast technological advances.
Methodical study of history helps me focus on the long view. It helps give meaning to life.
Yet I do agree that too much focus on the past can distract from what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the fierce urgency of now” and why we need to stay engaged with the news of the world, our nation, and our communities. But how to do that and maintain perspective?
Are you a YouTube user? What do you think of it as now, the dominant network for news and entertainment?
Post your observations in the comments and help us build community.
Here’s my YouTube video playlists.
YouTube Eclipses Other Streaming Services, Luring Cord-Cutters
The story of YouTube.com is remarkable. Created initially as a video-matching or dating service that failed, in 2006, it opened to anyone to post videos about anything. The most popular videos initially were playful but inane cat videos. It has evolved into a powerful economic engine for a “creator economy” and lifelong learners, with far more viewers and revenue than Netflix or other streaming services. It has also captured cord-cutters, those who used to pay $50 to $100 or more for 500 channels on cable television but now pay less than $20 a month for YouTube.com’s no ads service.
The Streaming Wars Are Over. YouTube Won
Drill Deeper:
Why More and More People Are Tuning Out the News Because It Creates Anxiety (UK Guardian)
America In Therapy: Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl said a man can endure almost anything, except the lack of meaning. “Finding purpose, our “why,” is a psychological necessity for surviving profound hardship. Without a “why,” one is tempted to give up, the ultimate loss of agency. We can make no sense from madness, violence, and mass unconsciousness, for they contain no meaning. In times of great meaninglessness, we must be the meaning makers.”
BC: 20 articles on encountering history Before the Common Era.
There is so much vying for our attention, it is very hard to be consistent readers or viewers of anything. ADD is pervasive. If we dont have it, we aren't paying attention, lol.
Great posting. Our histories are similar: my great grandparents lived through the Civil War, one losing two sons in the Battle at Shiloh in 1862, fighting for the Confederacy, their bodies being buried in unmarked graves there, presumably. The great grandfather who lost two sons also fought in the Texas War of Independence in 1836. My other great grandfather lost his older brother (18 years old at the time) in the battle at the Alamo on March 6, 1836. That great grandfather also fathered a daughter with a slave in 1850. Through DNA, her descendants got in touch with us. One is Reggie Van Lee. You can google him. He resembles my dad, which leads me to have a clue of what my great grandfather may have looked like.
The study of history? Absolutely essential, along with critical thinking skills. We here in the U.S. are now suffering the failure of our system to teach these subjects adequately.