On Soul-Hygiene and Media Consumption
Finding hope despite the horror
It’s impossible to avoid the news of death and destruction lately. When the Hamas attack happened, within minutes, everyone had a hot take on the carnage in the Middle East, even as we face unprecedented levels of fake news and propaganda about it. If I learned anything from having lived through the period of the US invasion of Iraq and 9/11 and Afghanistan events, it’s that nothing is as it seems or is presented to us via the media at the time. It would be naive to think it’s any different now. Yet, how do we know which news items are exaggerated, propaganda, or outright fake? We can’t and don’t. It’s crazy-making—if you weren’t already questioning your sanity. Speaking of which…
For over a year, I followed the work of Caitlin Johnstone, an independent Australian journalist. She sees through the matrix and reports on the lies that form the basis for our modern society. With blog posts titled, “We are ruled by Sociopaths and Morons” “Queen Warmonger Hillary Clinton Complains About ‘Men Starting Wars’,” and “They Dupe People Into Debating War With Russia Vs War With China, Instead Of War Itself,” she’s prolific, prophetic and opinionated. But it all became too much. I had to unsubscribe. Even Johnstone says now that after a month of intensely covering the Israel/Gaza war, she sees dead Palestinian children when she closes her eyes to go to sleep. What to do with all that information—besides getting secondary trauma? She even had a post about how we shouldn’t look away, and though I agree with much of what she says: war is bad, capitalism is bad, the powers that be are going to ruin the world… what can I do once I’ve confirmed that it is indeed, all bad?
To quote Casey Johnston, an excellent writer, and fellow gym-goer I admire, “This is not anyone’s individual fault; the internet lets us see farther and wider than our human brains can process.”
And, this ain’t my first Reddit rodeo or the first time I’ve had this realization; after spending many hours scrolling through Subreddits and Facebook groups on Berlin life, after the umpteenth anecdote about people getting scammed trying to find housing, or complaining about the Foreigners Office ruining our well-laid plans to emigrate, what good does yet another one do me? This question already goes even for more mundane things, so now, with the vastness of the world’s horrors, how much is too much? When I start questioning my sanity, that is when.
“They want you in the dark,” says Johnstone, but what happens when we are exposed to so much light of truth that we feel more like deer in headlights? I experienced an intense desire to go offline completely, yet it remains coupled with a part of me that still has the desire to keep reading and then throw myself from a bridge after yet another terrifying newsletter from Ms. Johnstone about the end of the universe and civilization as we know it. This is a phenomenon I’ve been thinking about even more now with the newest war on our screens. Is there such a thing as a happy medium between offline and dead-baby nightmares? I have had at least three real nightmares myself since the Hamas attack, replicating the images I saw online but involving my loved ones and myself.
I was reading, and continue to read, Chris Hedges’s Substack newsletter. Hedges’ work has influenced me greatly, but it is mega-depressing. Scathing take-downs of the failure of the left, fiery condemnations of America’s complicity in evil of all sorts, and on it goes. It’s a bitter pill or, rather, nuclear medicine. If the cancer doesn’t kill you, the poisonous truth that Hedges offers might. More recently, after reading Hedges and Johnstone for years, a sort of cognitive dissonance arose in my mind. How can I continue to live, to exist as a thinking, feeling individual in this corrupt and evil society? What’s the point of going to work every day, how to make even the most minor decisions about what to purchase, what to eat, where to meet friends when you know that in parts of the world, and bleeding as it were, into mine, my fellow humans are torturing and murdering each other? Systematically oppressing, exploiting, lying, and all the other facets of darkness that Hedges and Johnstone so vividly explain and decry?
Somewhere in my readings, I came across the line, “Truth cannot be told, it must be lived,” which seems to be an alteration of the quote from Ralph Smart, “The truth cannot be told, it has to be realized.” Alternative new facts are not the topic here, but more philosophical truths, which are certainly connected. I can’t only read about these truths or this “calling out of lies”; I must continue to live my life despite the lies and horrible truths.
This is not the first time I’ve read about the narrative matrix and had a crisis of conscience. Almost two decades ago, when I was a lowly Specialist in the US Army, I read an essay by Curtis White about resisting the culture of total work and capitalism, and it plunged me into an existential crisis (to be fair, another one). One that manifested in whether to shop at Walmart or Whole Foods, my options at the time, living on a junior-enlisted salary in central Texas. (Hedges also writes about the evils of the soul-less mega-store running mom-and-pop locales and thus the local economy out of business in his book, America: The Farewell Tour). Meanwhile, Whole Foods was acquired by Amazon; how ironic, the existential crisis of choice was eclipsed.
Curtis White describes the phenomenon in his book “The Spirit of Disobedience: Resisting the Charms of Fake Politics, Mindless Consumption, and the Culture of Total Work” that I only read recently (20 years later) is that of the Holy Whore—of Babylon, from the Book of Revelations and in this case, is used by White as a rich metaphor. He laments that we are all part of Her—even us artists and writers—as we must sell out to put food on the table in this culture of capitalism, and this is what occurred to my previously favorite organic store, Whole Foods. Already in the early 2000s, White offered a similar takedown of the left’s and progressives’ failures and pointed out the fake choice offered by the duality of the two-party system and Left vs. Right, both of which are beholden to capitalism (the Whore). Somehow, knowing this on an intellectual level helped me feel a bit better about my own selling out.
White precisely describes the conundrum of hypocrisy and lack of virtue that modern existence means, that American patriotism is evil despite all its self-identifying Christianity, and when I read that in his 2005 essay—being on the front lines of American patriotism at the time myself—I couldn’t deal with the truth. My own life was actively participating in that hypocrisy. Now, almost 20 years later, it is even truer. Though I’ve removed myself from the environment of American patriotism and militarism by moving to Germany, the system is not that different, and the Whore runs the show.
During the first week of the Israel-Hamas war, on the video screen that hangs from the ceiling of each Berlin subway car, the news was about the latest antics of movie stars or how a swan triggered a deployment of firemen and emergency workers. How adorable! Tell me more. I will accept anything to distract me from the constant stream of genocidal and obliteration updates. Even at the gym—where I often seek refuge from life’s realities by putting on my playlist of 90s-2000s pop hits and zoning out—from the second-floor gym, I could see the faces of relevant politicians filling an entire window across the courtyard. It was a TV blasting the horrors of the day. The next week, I went back wearing my Vets for Peace t-shirt, as some fellow gym goers, who are from all over the world, know of my past military service. I wanted to send a message: I’m not blind to the truth of that system; I see the matrix, and I choose peace. I can’t do much for that outer peace except cultivate my inner peace.
To quote both Chris Hedges and Curtis White, war is about lies and profit. Both authors say that inner spiritual resistance is the only answer. Despite knowing that we alone can’t fix or change the rotten system, we can adopt a healthy inner attitude, one of creativity, peace, and healing. White says that resisting this culture of total work (capitalism) and practicing spiritual disobedience means, rather than throwing bricks through bank windows, living differently by taking responsibility for the character of the human world. The inner frontline is the only one we can clearly call our area of responsibility. This movement is one that does lead into the future and is an expression of hope.
The author John Trudell, a Navy veteran and Native American activist, said, “When one lives in a society where people can no longer rely on the institutions to tell them the truth, the truth must come from culture and art.” Hope and creativity remain the only answers I’ve yet to find to my initial question of what to do by having the horrors of the world revealed to us via social media.