Received a recent Mother Jones story link in an email from a dear friend the other day.  The story examined a perceived rise in misogyny.  The lead, of course, featured Rush Limbaugh’s recent attack on Sandra Fluke, but later in the story the author speculated that the perceived rise of misogyny might be owed to the suddenly public nature of everything and everyone, thanks to the Internet.

With the possible exception of my pre-teen daughter, all the women I know are more than capable of defending themselves, so I won’t even comment on any perceived rise in misogyny – or on any of the talking-head buffoons on either side of the political spectrum – except to say that nothing is profane when everything is profane.  But here’s what I replied to my friend…

“Don’t know if misogyny is on the rise.  Then again, why not? Seems like everything else is (except peace of mind).  Seems to me that we tend to find whatever it is we’re looking for nowadays, at least online.  But isn’t the whole point of search engines to justify the query, however spectacular, base or banal?  Google pornography and you’ll find a universe of nothing but pornography.  Google misogyny and all you’ll find are articles and videos about misogyny.  Either way, we sleep with dogs and wake up with fleas.

“Fast information, like fast food, always comes at a price: the ancient Vedic Seers observed several thousand years ago that we have a tendency to become our attention.  Dreams — they knew for certain — are powerful.  Perhaps the pursuit of everything at once all the time simply leaves no room at the end of the day for civility.  Perhaps freedom of speech will die as it becomes too expensive to sustain.”

Real freedom of speech is far too politically incorrect and chaotic to sustain for the biggest TV and online networks, and political correctness is a poor surrogate for civility, a ham-handed attempt to enforce values in a culture that traded them years ago in a massive drug deal for 24/7 access to reality TV and all its online derivatives.  That’s why we find whatever freedom of speech still remains on TV so far up the dial these days, and buried so far off the beaten path online.  Generally speaking, the farther up the dial we go, the less political correctness and the more freedom we encounter.

Civility, of course, ended more than a generation ago with the arrival of MTV.  But that’s what happens when we hand the keys to the kingdom over to a generation too young to remember Barney Fife.  Then again, why bother to remember anything when we can Google everything then proclaim ourselves as instantly knowledgeable and wise?  As the Egyptian King Thamus told the god Theuth, the proud inventor of writing (and lisps):

“Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their own internal resources.  What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory.  And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instructions, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.  And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society.”

Civility, like freedom, is a casualty of our addictions to all things media, an unfortunate concession to the digitally scaled conceit of wisdom.

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Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?  Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.  We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

- – Nelson Mandela

The search for meaning, commiseration, and escape clearly finds motivation in fear and uncertainty, and it’s not for nothing that deep recessions typically witness sharp increases in church attendance, bar traffic, and box office sales.  These are deeply evocative days.  Why then are we marketers and advertisers of the digital era so fearful of our own power to evoke?  Why do we shrink from substance and seek refuge in trivia?

Offered in the honor of Easter is a passage in the Gospel of Mark where Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome go to Christ’s tomb to anoint him, a simple act of respect imbued nonetheless with considerable risk under Roman rule.  They find the large rock that had sealed the tomb the previous day mysteriously rolled aside, and inside sits a young man clothed in a white robe, but no Jesus.  The young man tells them that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth has risen, then instructs them to tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus had gone ahead to Galilee, where they will meet again, as promised.

The three women had confronted their fears that morning when they went to the tomb of Jesus, expecting to pay their homage, complete their task, and move on with their lives, the terrifying scourge and crucifixion of Jesus now behind them.  Apparently, however, no good deed goes unpunished, and they are instructed instead to confront their fears once again, this time as disciples in Galilee.  What they thought was the end turned out in fact to be just the beginning.  The antidote to their fear proved to be their faith – over and over and over again.

What they and other heroes learned over the eons is that courage is found precisely in the confluence of fear and faith.  The best among us search out those fearsome intersections and confront them with deliberate faith.  The best among us will gladly trade true uncertainty for false security any day.

Jeff Einstein

P.S. Check out my latest pdf download,  An Uncommon-Sense Guide to Addiction Recovery, a 21st-century approach to addiction recovery, and the perfect supplement to any addiction program for any addiction problem.

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Jeff Einstein

While you’re here, please sign up to join our mailing list and receive your free Media Log pdf download. Thanks for visiting, come back soon and tell your friends!

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Jeff Einstein

While you’re here, please sign up to join our mailing list and receive your free Media Log pdf download. Thanks for visiting, come back soon and tell your friends!

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Jeff Einstein

P.S. Check out my latest pdf download,  An Uncommon-Sense Guide to Addiction Recovery, a 21st-century approach to addiction recovery, and the perfect supplement to any addiction program for any addiction problem.

And while you’re here, please sign up to join our mailing list and receive your free Media Log pdf download. Thanks for visiting, come back soon and tell your friends!

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The fact that the Obama campaign alone will raise a billion dollars – most of which will line the already deep pockets of big-media interests – tells us just about everything we need to know about the state of American politics and the true function of big media in American democracy.

I’m not a party man so I don’t buy into either side of the political duopoly that the media have carved neatly into polarized red and blue states to facilitate the sale of political advertising (much of which is paid for by public campaign dollars).  As far as I’m concerned, the only real difference between the red states and the blues states is that the red states are full of media addicts who do nothing but consume twelve hours of media each and every day while the blues states are full of media addicts who not only consume twelve hours of media each and every day but also produce, sell and distribute almost all of the media that everyone consumes for twelve hours each and every day.

We hear much nowadays about the corrupt influence of institutional money in politics.  True, money buys influence, but big media (and campaign finance reform) always focus on the wrong end of the campaign finance continuum — on where the money comes from — when the real focus belongs on the other end: on where the money winds up.  Because it doesn’t stop with the politicians.  It ends up in the aforementioned deep pockets of big media.  Hence the rise of perpetual political campaigns as described last week in Fear and Envy on the Campaign Trail — Part 1.

Big media minions may talk ceaselessly about the corrosive influence of institutional money in politics, but they never examine the corrosive influence of big media – except as opportunities  to excoriate each other through character assassination.  They never talk about where the institutional campaign money actually winds up because any focus on where the money winds up instantly extends any discussion of collusion and conspiracy beyond the powerbrokers of Wall Street and the Beltway (the obvious villains) to the real benefactors of political graft: big media — the self-described purveyors of truth and democracy.

Big media’s self-serving focus on where the money comes from  (instead of where the money goes) is designed to polarize the dialogue and inflate the demand for more media.  Likewise, fair-and-balanced, media-bias, red-state-versus-blue-state and all related arguments are nothing more than media inventions, artifacts designed to inflame political passions and sell more media.  Big money in politics is all about big media, and big media is how politicians buy votes these days.

That said, all of the above describes a far more sinister and insidious mechanism at work: our addiction and fealty to all things media  — the single biggest  threat to our democracy and the quality of our lives in the 21st century.  The demise of American politics and the corruption of democracy are predictable byproducts of our descent into the grips of a media-driven mega-addiction.  Left unchecked, our addictions — regardless of the narcotic — eventually take over as moderators over all our internal debates.  Eventually, they dictate our behaviors and determine how and where and with whom we spend our time and money.  Those things that protect and elevate the self-serving interests of the addiction float to the top as priorities, while those things that challenge its hegemony are buried and neglected.

Big media’s focus on where the campaign money comes from protects and promotes the interests of our addiction to media, and therefore floats to the top.  Conversely, any focus on where the campaign money winds up challenges the interests of the addiction and gets buried in the back of the book — if it appears at all.  My advice is to follow the money, and know that where it comes from is never as important as where it winds up.

P.S. Check out my latest pdf download,  An Uncommon-Sense Guide to Addiction Recovery, a 21st-century approach to addiction recovery, and the perfect supplement to any addiction program for any addiction problem.

Jeff Einstein

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What five things have I learned about being a good partner in an intimate relationship?

1. I’ve learned that trust precedes and sustains intimacy.
2. I’ve learned that intimacy must always develop and speak its own language.
3. I’ve learned that intimacy is especially tolerant and respectful of silence.
4. I’ve learned that even the smallest intimate moments sometime steal my breath.
5. I’ve learned the difference between intimacy and familiarity.  One requires constant vigilance, the other requires only time.

Jeff Einstein

P.S. Check out my latest pdf download,  An Uncommon-Sense Guide to Addiction Recovery, a 21st-century approach to addiction recovery, and the perfect supplement to any addiction program for any addiction problem.

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Jeff Einstein

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What five things have I learned about having a successful business?

1. I’ve learned to slow down often enough to appreciate the people around me.
2. I’ve learned to let go of failure, that what worked yesterday may not work today.
3. I’ve learned that deliberate simplicity is better than unmanageable complexity.
4. I’ve learned that the right answers are less important than the right questions.
5. I’ve learned to knock on doors and mind my cash flow.

Jeff Einstein

P.S. Check out my latest pdf download,  An Uncommon-Sense Guide to Addiction Recovery, a 21st-century approach to addiction recovery, and the perfect supplement to any addiction program for any addiction problem.

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Jeff Einstein

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