Misery Loves Misery

Following current events is an essential component of being informed, but it frequently comes at the expense of morale. Each days leaves me more knowledgeable about the sorry state of affairs. There are consistently new depths plumbed in exploration of the human condition, and all too seldom are there any new heights to balance them out. Something that's been interesting to learn is how little people desire to be secure against emotional and mental offense; indeed, they seem to seek out and embrace such outrages.

Far be it for me to suggest that there's nothing to be offended by: if you're not mad, you're not paying attention. Even so, one can see people performing magic tricks of outrage daily. The meaning of the word 'scandal' seems to have been entirely debased or lost altogether. They once applied to shocking outrages of earth-shaking significance. The Pentagon Papers and Watergate were the real deal. The "unsafe at any speed" Corvair and the poisoned Tylenol meant something. Society got a taste for it, I guess- started to pine for it every day- now we desperately scrape for something to make due with.

Often it seems to take the form of a rather unpleasant cycle of celebrity. We value something about someone so much that we elevate them to the rarified air of global fame. We grant them such rewards that we actually begin to resent them. At the least provocation- say, if an album fails to move us or if they can't deliver a sports championship- or even no provocation, we turn on them, relishing the act of knocking them down from the very pedestal we made for them. Our time on this earth is so short, and the way one sees most people spending it is soaking up every detail of what is unquestionably someone else's concern.

I regret that I myself am susceptible to being drawn in by these stories. It's out of curiosity, I suppose. If anything separates me from others, it's that I feel such regret and turn away when I realize what I'm doing. I don't ever feel the vitriol and fury that others seem to when the latest tempest in a teapot comes on schedule like a commuter train. The very expected nature of it makes it easy, and I like to think I can put things in perspective. It just feels that when one of these scandals comes along, it only really happens because people are looking to be outraged.