Looking around, you might conclude that you live in an Age of Exacerbation. Certainly, you can see evidence in social and main-stream media that numerous people add fuel and air when social fires start to smolder. Over the TV and radio airwaves we also hear sounds that stir fury.
Your peace is under constant attack even when you ignore the media’s soundbites. Unless you live in a vacuum, you encounter tension that others impose upon their surroundings because, unlike you, they succumb to the media-driven exacerbation. Lots, as we might say, of negative energy in the air and on the airwaves: Fires of distress and fury are fanned over airwaves.
Even those who would ride a “peace train” can exacerbate. Take Yusuf Islam, aka Steven Demetre Georgioiu aka Cat Stevens, the British singer-songwriter of 1960s and 1970s fame, a man who voiced some antiwar feelings in one very popular song. Recipient of peace awards and singer of the popular “Peace Train,” Yusuf apparently then supported the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini against author Salman Rushdie. At Kingston University, the singer said “He must be killed” though he later said his statement was based on a dictum of his religion and was not a personal call for Rushdie’s murder. The problem is, as you know, once “it’s out there,” it’s out there wafting about until it blows into the “wrong ear.” World peace, the universal goal of the stereotypical beauty queen contestant, just ain’t gonna happen if the one who sang “Peace Train” at a Nobel Peace Prize ceremony supports a killing.
Protecting yourself from exacerbation is, sorry to say, a full-time job nowadays. You need to work at finding peace. You need to ask yourself what you really deem to be bothersome and what you really deem to be someone else’s concerns. There’s some justification for individual isolationism with regard to hysteria, mob action, and controversies that don’t directly affect you.
Unfortunately, all of us get drawn in at times. There’s a powerful gravity in making everything grave. And widespread media, echoing and amplifying, can exacerbate the slightest offense, making it a noisy earworm that disturbs peace.
Repeatedly, the wise have told us that at times we need to step away from the fray, to withdraw for a bit. And the reason for isolating ourselves every so often? To paraphrase Macbeth: Many in the media tell a tale of sound and fury that upon deep reflection really doesn’t signify anything. Windstorms over airwaves come and go just as tornadoes do their brief destruction in the affront of a front, sounding as they approach like a train.
But not all exacerbations are quiet breezes. Some are insidious, daily enveloping us in restlessness and anxiety. As past exacerbations crept toward meaninglessness, so today’s exacerbations “creep in their petty pace from day to day,” again to quote Macbeth. “To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow,” to borrow from Shakespeare, will see continued exacerbation. That’s a given. Maybe Cat—sorry, Yusuf—should reword his famous song’s title as “Exacerbation Train.” It seems to be the one that many people currently ride.
Your peace is under constant attack even when you ignore the media’s soundbites. Unless you live in a vacuum, you encounter tension that others impose upon their surroundings because, unlike you, they succumb to the media-driven exacerbation. Lots, as we might say, of negative energy in the air and on the airwaves: Fires of distress and fury are fanned over airwaves.
Even those who would ride a “peace train” can exacerbate. Take Yusuf Islam, aka Steven Demetre Georgioiu aka Cat Stevens, the British singer-songwriter of 1960s and 1970s fame, a man who voiced some antiwar feelings in one very popular song. Recipient of peace awards and singer of the popular “Peace Train,” Yusuf apparently then supported the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini against author Salman Rushdie. At Kingston University, the singer said “He must be killed” though he later said his statement was based on a dictum of his religion and was not a personal call for Rushdie’s murder. The problem is, as you know, once “it’s out there,” it’s out there wafting about until it blows into the “wrong ear.” World peace, the universal goal of the stereotypical beauty queen contestant, just ain’t gonna happen if the one who sang “Peace Train” at a Nobel Peace Prize ceremony supports a killing.
Protecting yourself from exacerbation is, sorry to say, a full-time job nowadays. You need to work at finding peace. You need to ask yourself what you really deem to be bothersome and what you really deem to be someone else’s concerns. There’s some justification for individual isolationism with regard to hysteria, mob action, and controversies that don’t directly affect you.
Unfortunately, all of us get drawn in at times. There’s a powerful gravity in making everything grave. And widespread media, echoing and amplifying, can exacerbate the slightest offense, making it a noisy earworm that disturbs peace.
Repeatedly, the wise have told us that at times we need to step away from the fray, to withdraw for a bit. And the reason for isolating ourselves every so often? To paraphrase Macbeth: Many in the media tell a tale of sound and fury that upon deep reflection really doesn’t signify anything. Windstorms over airwaves come and go just as tornadoes do their brief destruction in the affront of a front, sounding as they approach like a train.
But not all exacerbations are quiet breezes. Some are insidious, daily enveloping us in restlessness and anxiety. As past exacerbations crept toward meaninglessness, so today’s exacerbations “creep in their petty pace from day to day,” again to quote Macbeth. “To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow,” to borrow from Shakespeare, will see continued exacerbation. That’s a given. Maybe Cat—sorry, Yusuf—should reword his famous song’s title as “Exacerbation Train.” It seems to be the one that many people currently ride.
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