Why do you read, listen, and see news reports? What dictates the reports you choose?
As an American (i.e., citizen of USA as identified differently from other Americans, i.e., South Americans, who are also “Americans” and Central Americans, who can also use the term), I have tunnel vision with respect to events. If something happens in “America” (the one to which I belong) or affects Americans, I hear about it, provided the various news agencies choose to report the event or some viral video catches my attention. It’s like some Disney or Universal ride that keeps the rider in the dark except for any highly coherently themed images the park’s developers want to show. In other words, my knowledge of world events is limited because I can’t be everywhere, and I rely on others to shape my focus. Apparently, I live in a park.
It has to be a park. For you, also. Like the surprises provided in Disney and Universal rides, news stories emerge from the darkness or from around the corner to catch the eye. Of course, you can exit the park to return to hotel or home, where outside information ostensibly flows freely, though chaotically. If you wish, you can peruse the daily news across the planet, but you will, like some stretched elastic, return to things local, things you find immediately germane to your life, and things that seem to be coherently linked. Even outside the park, riding the Web is very much like those park rides.
“I was unaware,” I say to myself when I stumble across news from another country via the Web. I was unaware of the significance of takfiris until I read a report in the Egyptian Daily News that recounted that country’s attack on their outposts in the North Sinai. Takfiri militants are opposed to anyone that doesn’t profess their brand of Islam, not only labeling them infidels , but also attacking them. Takfiris make IEDs for terror attacks, produce hashish and marijuana, and smuggle people and narcotics into Egypt. The Egyptian army sees them as a threat to the nation and conducts raids, such as the counter-terrorism raids reported by the news service in February, 2018.*
During the raids, the army killed six takfiris while losing two of their own. Eight deaths. And I was unaware at the time because no one in the tunnel deigned to let me know. My stumbling across the information occurred in a Web-ride I had not previously experienced, one called the Egypt Daily News online. But, at this very moment, I’m guessing similar incidents are occurring in the Park Planet. Even if I were to devote my entire existence to uncovering worldwide events, I would lack the omnipresence necessary for omniscience, just as it is difficult if not impossible to experience all the offerings in a giant park like Disney World during one’s usually relatively brief stay—as we are all only in Park Planet for a finite time
Before the rise of the modern world and its ever-entwining connections, my isolated park ride would have been sufficient for my survival. But those connections make knowledge from outside the park potentially useful, potentially personal. Does this mean that I now have to concern myself with Takfiri attacks in America? Probably not, but not necessarily not. That I have read the Egyptian Daily News once or twice doesn’t make me any less finite and local in my concerns. Just as in the expression “all politics are local,” so also is the idea that all interests are essentially local. That locality is elastic, stretching at times to faraway places, but it usually snaps back and resumes its original shape dictated by the park designers in the parks we frequent.
As the physicists are wont to say, the world is local; nonlocality violates Einstein’s relativity. My being limited to a single park is the way of the world. Information has to travel, or I have to travel to it. I am bound by two kinds of places, the physical one that forms the boundaries of the park I wander into and the mental one that forms the boundaries of my interests and abilities. I’m definitely bound physically. I’m also bound mentally. Someone might say, “Oh! You should go to such-n-such park. It’s great. The rides there are so different.” But even if I go, I find I can’t stay. If I do, it becomes my new locality. My old “locality” usually draws me back after a brief excursion.
So, I’ve been to the Egyptian park, not to see the pyramids or the Sphinx, but to see what is happening currently there and that is of interest there. I’m back now, back in my own park, the familiar one, riding the rides I know and expecting to be surprised in a way I’m used to being surprised. The whole experience points to how limited I am by place, particularly by place of mind.
*http://egyptdailynews.com/detail/six-takfiris-killed-in-past-week-of-operation-sinai--egypt-armed-forces
As an American (i.e., citizen of USA as identified differently from other Americans, i.e., South Americans, who are also “Americans” and Central Americans, who can also use the term), I have tunnel vision with respect to events. If something happens in “America” (the one to which I belong) or affects Americans, I hear about it, provided the various news agencies choose to report the event or some viral video catches my attention. It’s like some Disney or Universal ride that keeps the rider in the dark except for any highly coherently themed images the park’s developers want to show. In other words, my knowledge of world events is limited because I can’t be everywhere, and I rely on others to shape my focus. Apparently, I live in a park.
It has to be a park. For you, also. Like the surprises provided in Disney and Universal rides, news stories emerge from the darkness or from around the corner to catch the eye. Of course, you can exit the park to return to hotel or home, where outside information ostensibly flows freely, though chaotically. If you wish, you can peruse the daily news across the planet, but you will, like some stretched elastic, return to things local, things you find immediately germane to your life, and things that seem to be coherently linked. Even outside the park, riding the Web is very much like those park rides.
“I was unaware,” I say to myself when I stumble across news from another country via the Web. I was unaware of the significance of takfiris until I read a report in the Egyptian Daily News that recounted that country’s attack on their outposts in the North Sinai. Takfiri militants are opposed to anyone that doesn’t profess their brand of Islam, not only labeling them infidels , but also attacking them. Takfiris make IEDs for terror attacks, produce hashish and marijuana, and smuggle people and narcotics into Egypt. The Egyptian army sees them as a threat to the nation and conducts raids, such as the counter-terrorism raids reported by the news service in February, 2018.*
During the raids, the army killed six takfiris while losing two of their own. Eight deaths. And I was unaware at the time because no one in the tunnel deigned to let me know. My stumbling across the information occurred in a Web-ride I had not previously experienced, one called the Egypt Daily News online. But, at this very moment, I’m guessing similar incidents are occurring in the Park Planet. Even if I were to devote my entire existence to uncovering worldwide events, I would lack the omnipresence necessary for omniscience, just as it is difficult if not impossible to experience all the offerings in a giant park like Disney World during one’s usually relatively brief stay—as we are all only in Park Planet for a finite time
Before the rise of the modern world and its ever-entwining connections, my isolated park ride would have been sufficient for my survival. But those connections make knowledge from outside the park potentially useful, potentially personal. Does this mean that I now have to concern myself with Takfiri attacks in America? Probably not, but not necessarily not. That I have read the Egyptian Daily News once or twice doesn’t make me any less finite and local in my concerns. Just as in the expression “all politics are local,” so also is the idea that all interests are essentially local. That locality is elastic, stretching at times to faraway places, but it usually snaps back and resumes its original shape dictated by the park designers in the parks we frequent.
As the physicists are wont to say, the world is local; nonlocality violates Einstein’s relativity. My being limited to a single park is the way of the world. Information has to travel, or I have to travel to it. I am bound by two kinds of places, the physical one that forms the boundaries of the park I wander into and the mental one that forms the boundaries of my interests and abilities. I’m definitely bound physically. I’m also bound mentally. Someone might say, “Oh! You should go to such-n-such park. It’s great. The rides there are so different.” But even if I go, I find I can’t stay. If I do, it becomes my new locality. My old “locality” usually draws me back after a brief excursion.
So, I’ve been to the Egyptian park, not to see the pyramids or the Sphinx, but to see what is happening currently there and that is of interest there. I’m back now, back in my own park, the familiar one, riding the rides I know and expecting to be surprised in a way I’m used to being surprised. The whole experience points to how limited I am by place, particularly by place of mind.
*http://egyptdailynews.com/detail/six-takfiris-killed-in-past-week-of-operation-sinai--egypt-armed-forces
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