After this evening, I've decided to stop writing for Odyssey. I've enjoyed writing, and I've especially loved having people read my work, but as I've pointed out a few times, the majority of what there is to be read is little more than drivel. Granted, this isn't the news, this is an opinion site, but this site in a way is more appreciable than your average "news" source. Why? There's more here, a broad variety of content, some seen and some unseen.
My work doesn't get read all that much, and I'm OK with that, but I started doing this with the understanding I wouldn't lower myself to writing clickbait trash that gets a large number of views. I'm not insulting anyone who looks at those, I do it myself, but I could never lower myself to writing about it.
Related: Is Tv Destroying Our Creativity and Harming Our Children?
I get it, though. It appeals to a certain group, and you may even learn something about one or two people you know, but for the most part, what are you even reading? What are you filling your time with?
Our culture is so media driven, we swallow up everything. All the mass shootings, the terrorism that shakes the very foundations of society, anything that can drive our hearts to emotion of any sort, whether it be familiarity, or anger, hate, greed, lust, what have you. Our society is "The Mob," a collection of individuals ready to watch the gladiator fights, much like ancient Rome. Sure, we don't actually feed people to the lions, and we don't force slaves to fight, but are we really even all that much better? The only difference is there's no bloodshed; we're just reading and watching mindless things to occupy us from things that matter. Of course, someone is harmed, though. That someone is us.
It's not brain cells we lose (necessarily), it's time. We wonder why we're the generation most plagued by obesity in history? We sit more, myself included in that assertion. We sit, and we watch TV. It's not just killing our time, it's killing (and shaping) our social habits. We want those "televisionesque" relationships and jobs, and we want to be in this wonderful drama, where those one liners always work in conversation and everything's magically better.
Related: Finding Peace In A World Of Hate
What are we even reading on the news? Do we know what's going on in the world, or are we so consumed by reality TV that we can't even realize that the world is going to hell? On that note...
Great Britain didn't even necessarily know what they were voting for with "BREXIT." Google trends indicated that after Brexit happened, then searches asking what that meant started showing up en masse. As far as Americans are concerned, it doesn't matter, and it doesn't affect us because we don't care.
We don't care, and we don't really care about much of anything. What are our values? Our ideals? What makes us, us? I sit here asking these questions, and I can't even find an answer that suits our entire country.
I want to see a society of pioneers. Not like the old Western shows, I mean technological and social pioneers. I'd like to see our culture identities (yes, there is more than one, and that's OK) restored. I want us to stop reading the news so much. I swear, it's bad for yourself. Stop putting things out there as if someone is against someone, don't make it a why this, but not that. Just accept there is injustice and go from there.
I hope we can change some things about our society like what we find interest in, and in the grand scheme of things, it might be better, in the long term, to take more interest in England leaving the EU than what the Kardashians are doing. (An old example, I know, but still a good one.)
