Juvenescence for the Brain

While waiting on a smog check for my Volkswagen today, I read an extremely well-written article in Newsweek entitled “The Death of Theocracy: Tehran’s Thugs Cannot Last”. I paused to take special note, as I’d been seriously underwhelmed by the other pieces in this most recent issue. I’ve always enjoyed Christopher Hitchens’ writing, with this example being no exception!

He defines theocracy as “a system where mortals claim the right to dominate other mortals in the name of God”. This is a definition with which I heartily agree, and also one in perfect alignment with his book. Iran, of course, is a theocracy – one whose problems are currently boiling to the top of international media. Its fundamental issue is a lack of human accountability (and competence), as its leaders claim to be merely enacting Allah’s will. In the West, the average citizen views Iran with suspicion and fear, in no small part due to its position amongst the so-called “Axis of Evil” (thanks, Bush!). In reality, the truth is far more complicated.

Allow me to generalize. Here, I use “we” in reference to the typical American – an individual who composes his/her worldview primarily from stories reported by large media outlets, and perceives the general distribution (types of stories, nature of the “big issues”) of those stories to somehow accurately reflect the state of things as they really are. For example, “we” believe terrorism to be a huge, pressing threat toward our daily lives, when in fact we’d be better off paying more attention on the road – since we’re hundreds of times more likely to perish there than at the hands of an extremist. “We” view Iran as a nation full of pin-headed, reactionary fundamentalists, when in fact the vast majority of Iranians are more liberal and easy-going than that, and would likely be content with a chilled-out leader and a functioning electoral process.

Yes, I understand the economics behind reporting big stories. People are more interested in reading about bomb threats than things like their own city’s impoverished areas, and henceforth those are the things that we read about. Unfortunately, rather than pushing the real, rational perspective of things toward us (as responsible media should), the misguided masses are pulling all kinds of crap toward themselves. Used to being entertained, we are demanding entertainment from the media. And that’s what they’re giving us in order to keep the lights on.

I see myself beginning to ramble (again). I suppose what I originally set out to tackle was our misunderstanding of terrorism, and of the Middle East in general.

If I leave you with any main points, they are these:

• Media outlets mean well, but they are businesses. If they’re feeding us bullshit, it’s because we (the customers) asked for it.
• Muslims don’t want to blow us up (at least not very many of them) because they’re mean people, they want to blow us up because their governments are making their own lives suck, and they have no viable outlet for that anger (such as free speech).
• Make an outline before you begin writing, or – like me – you’ll have a brain fart and forget what you were even getting at.
• That is all.