Today was a pretty rough day. There was a huge mass shooting in Orlando two nights ago - the worst in U.S. history, they say - and, of course, the news is masturbating to it and everybody’s pissed at Isis or at people who love guns/hate guns etc. Or, if they're not pissed, they're afraid of more attacks. Or they just have a general sense of hopelessness and despair. You could feel all this negative energy in the air today. People were driving like bigger A-holes than usual, almost like the end of the world was imminent and they just didn't give a f*** anymore.
People were also just plain acting rude in general. This was most apparent to me when I went out of my way to hold a door open for a lady at the library and when I say "out of my way" I mean that she was still more than ten feet away so I was going beyond the gentleman's call of duty if you know what I mean. But the lady just grabbed the door and didn't say 'thank you'. Then I held another door open for her inside the vestibule, expecting she was saving her 'thank you' for door-number-two. Nope. Still no thank you. I took a quick glance at her and she was like a zombie who hardly even seemed to acknowledge my existence. I got so pissed, the rage just surged into me. I walked off in a huff and then I realized, shit, this negative energy is contagious, man! I honestly just wanted to get away from it all, fly off to Mars or at least to some faraway island.
People were also just plain acting rude in general. This was most apparent to me when I went out of my way to hold a door open for a lady at the library and when I say "out of my way" I mean that she was still more than ten feet away so I was going beyond the gentleman's call of duty if you know what I mean. But the lady just grabbed the door and didn't say 'thank you'. Then I held another door open for her inside the vestibule, expecting she was saving her 'thank you' for door-number-two. Nope. Still no thank you. I took a quick glance at her and she was like a zombie who hardly even seemed to acknowledge my existence. I got so pissed, the rage just surged into me. I walked off in a huff and then I realized, shit, this negative energy is contagious, man! I honestly just wanted to get away from it all, fly off to Mars or at least to some faraway island.
Don't get me wrong here: of course a mass shooting where 50 people die is a horrible, heartbreaking event, but usually what’s worse about these big negative news events is that they breed a disproportionate amount of negative energy in the world, meaning that the world's collective negative reaction in response to the event far outweighs the negative event itself. It’s just one, big negative cycle of, well, negativity. Negative event happens. News covers it to death. Fear, loathing, despair, hopelessness spreads to millions and millions of people. The world’s collective energetic frequency lowers itself and just gets further and further away from anything resembling “God” or "Allah" or, if you don’t believe in God, let's say positive energy or, shit, let's call it the L-word: LOVE!
But the news outlets (and the corporations that own the news) make a lot of money off these events so - deep down - they want more of them. Inevitably another negative event occurs. They cover it to death. More fear. More loathing etc. And, over time, the negativity is growing and swelling. Negative energy breeds more negative energy on an exponential level. So there’s a snowballing effect. “The devil” - whether you want to see ‘him’ as a literal entity or a figurative name for negative energy - feeds off this energy and, the larger the snowball of negative energy grows, the more power ‘he’ accrues and the greater hold he gains over the entire human race.
I usually try to detach myself and transcend all the negativity but it was pretty difficult yesterday and today because it was so fregging intense. I know I have no choice but to ride it out and wait for this energy to subside. But, of course, the problem is that, once it does subside, the news quickly latches on to another negative news story, whether it’s Zika virus or an unjust rape verdict (i.e. the Brock Turner rape case) or something offensive Donald Trump just said or some other story that triggers either fear or loathing or both. Negative stories press our most primal buttons, get us all riled up and therefore get more views and clicks and make more ad revenue. So even if the story isn’t that big of a deal or not that huge of an immediate threat (like maybe with Zika, at least here in the U.S.?) they will still make it a big deal to make their money.
The media is what will destroy us more than anything else. Not a crazed lone gunman. A gunman will destroy a finite amount of people - in the Orlando case, it was 50 people, an insane amount of people but finite nevertheless. The media, however - with its incessant coverage and dwelling on negative events - will drown each and every one of us in negativity and destroy the energy and soul of an entire human race.
The true beast here is the media.
Matt Burns
Boston, MA.
June 13, 2016
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