Skip to main content

Dumb State

While I don't have social media and don't have to deal with doom-scrolling, reading the news of my phone is almost as bad. Depending on the source, the opinions are skewed left or right in ways that turn news into content that triggers feelings of angst, hopelessness and pessimism about the world and our future. Not sure if that is any different than doom-scrolling. I was telling a friend recently about how my parents when I was a kid, insisted that I read the newspaper and particularly the editorial page. The weekend supplements were mostly considered good, useful reading and highly encouraged.

We got a couple of newspapers and some bi-weekly magazines at our home. The neighbor had a different set of items she subscribed to, so we traded across the fence often - magazines more so than newspapers though there were times when newspapers were traded too. Getting me to read this content everyday was their way of bringing awareness of the world to my life even though I lived in a sleep town where nothing ever happened. 

They also believed that reading the op-ed pieces would help my language and writing abilities because there was a certain quality bar writing had to meet to make it to the editorial pages. I cannot imagine any of that working today - most newspapers such as they do exist, are a far cry from what I grew up on. I don't think any young person would benefit from them in ways that I did back in the day. I am not sure what is available today to replace good journalism for kids who are growing up in a world where doom-scrolling, influencer posts, social-sharing and news reporting have fused into one thing. Maybe they need to be on dumber devices. It would not make such a dent in the level of the kid's awareness of what is going in the world being that the time names are resorting to AI to write for them. 


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
5 comments
Read more

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more