Drinking Poison in the Jungle

 It’s a fine line between salvation and drinking poison in the jungle. Gym Jones.

I often wonder when it started: the “othering” of the other side. The Covid saga bears a lot of responsibility, I think, because it is never a good idea to treat your fellow humans as vectors of disease. Some people are truly evil, but few indeed, and most folk want only a few things from life: a home, friends, family, a decent standard of living, the ability to pass through both life and death with dignity, the option to choose religion or atheism, food and water. Humans don’t particularly need safety, in fact, there’s evidence we thrive under difficulty; we certainly do not need fake protections from other people’s beliefs and the humble and hubris free among us understand that we can never truly know the circumstances of other people’s lives.

Everyone thinks that media, particularly legacy media (in Australia that means Fairfax, the ABC, the Murdoch dynasty) exist to share the news, but in reality, today’s media is driven pretty much entirely by clicks, and clicks are driven by division and outrage, which is why virtually every news story you see (even on the oft-assumed to be non-partisan ABC) features headlines which are both absurd and outrageous. Middle of the road and balanced centrist views do not deliver engagement.

The best book I’ve read about this is written by comic artist Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) and has the uninspiring title: Loser Think: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America. I walked past this book at my local library a dozen times before I borrowed it, read it, absorbed it and changed my relationship with media overnight.

It is discouraging to see the educated elite of our country perpetuating division and hate under the guise of empathy, and I simply do not understand how these folks can feel comfortable in their own skins with public comments such as this (not one of the worst):

“Trump and all his supporters are truly horrific – the most deplorable group of people on earth.”

It’s a bold statement, a hateful statement, and, at the end of the day, the kind of statement – and attitude – that will deliver the election to Trump because there is not a human on earth who responds positively to being denigrated and abused.