And I recommend to all of my friends that they

Stop watching the news
Because the news contrives to frighten you
To make you feel small and alone
To make you feel that your mind isn’t your own

Spent the Day in Bed Morrissey / Gustavo Manzur

What’s the buzz, tell me what’s happening – did Tim Rice anticipate the notification noise on our 21^st century phones?

I read a news article not long ago about three people dying from eating an arsenic laced Christmas cake in Brazil. It pulled me up short after reading about it. Whilst recognising how tragic it was for all of those involved, I thought ‘why do I need to know this?’ I couldn’t answer my own question.

There is a buzz about what is going on, at times an addictive high that we seek after. The addictive high is often sought as a distraction to interior disquiet or even turmoil that we would rather not face. I felt this buzz acutely whilst attending attending a school concert before Christmas. It caused nostalgia and a desire to return to the ‘buzz’ of the school where I used to work. The thing monastic life does is take away the buzz, which is why it can be hard at times. We want distraction. Distraction gets easier and easier in our artificial world, we can make and be anything we want and technology is there to help us.

So why the need for news as a distraction? I guess it is easier to justify and claim virtuosity as opposed to outright pleasure seeking. For the Christian we can justify it by saying we can pray for those situations we read about. Yet the immediacy and instantaneousness of news increases the volume of our consumption and most of us are not that advanced in prayer…we are not God! Instant news is about having more and more awareness of the things I can do absolutely nothing about and with this awareness comes, in a subtle way, more and more hopelessness.

I was surprised at the pushback from some Christian quarters at a recent interview with US Vice-president Vance, where he elaborated on the Catholic social teaching of subsidiarity. He stated that our first response in Christian love and solidarity is directed towards our families, then to our local communities and then to our nation and then to the wider world. Like a concentric circle moving outwards. Our immediate responsibility and actual sphere of influence is with ourselves and those with whom we live and come into actual (not virtual) contact with.

I have had to struggle with my own news hunger that came from a very early interest in history and politics, and being raised in a politically minded family. It is exacerbated by the growth in information technology to the point whereby news from the other side of the world is instant. This ‘need to know’ comes from a very deep seated need to control, that by knowing something I can somehow have an influence over it. In having so much information we are encouraged to have an opinion about everything…the growth in radio and internet ‘talk shows’ gives us this message that having an opinion about everything is really important, despite the fact that the things being talked about and the opinions being expressed are being manipulated all the time – or influenced by the ‘influencer’. The volume of information allows computer algorithms to tailor what we see and hear to what tends towards our own views, creating the so-called ‘echo chamber’ which filters out the voice with an opposing view. All of this cannot be healthy.

Reviewing current events and engaging in politics is like going to a pantomime. Watching a show and cheering on the good guys and booing at the baddies. The show can easily become the most important thing in life, or even the only thing. All Politics, all people involved in politics left or right, have a need to get attached to the show. They all participate in the process of decoupling spirit from matter, that there are no other processes going on other than the material, the visible. Thus it becomes so much more attractive to watch the news than open say the book of Hosea or Isaiah and meditate on sacred scripture instead. The idea of subsidiarity in many ways can speak to this. Reorientate your focus to what is near not far away. It tells us to come off the internet and check on our immediate neighbour – the person standing next to me – not the person I can see on my device screen who is 3,000 miles away.

Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber summed this whole process up brilliantly in the song ‘What’s the Buzz’ from their 1970 musical ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’…

What’s the buzz, tell me what’s a-happening?

Why should you want to know?
Don’t you mind about the future?
Don’t you try to think ahead?
Save tomorrow for tomorrow
Think about today instead
I could give you facts and figures
Even give you plans and forecasts
Even tell you where I’m going

When do we ride into Jerusalem?

Why should you want to know?
Why are you obsessed with fighting
Times and fates you can’t defy?
If you knew the path we’re riding
You’d understand it less than I

Let me try to cool down your face a bit

Mary that is good
While you prattle through your supper
Where and when and who and how
She alone has tried to give me
What I need right here and now

What’s the Buzz Tim Rice / Andrew Lloyd Webber

What’s After The News?

The parliamentary election was marred by violence
Suspected freud yesterday and one person shot dead
Nine were wounded and voting halted in one town

After a gun battle…
After a gun battle…
After a gun battle…

The poll is seen as a test of this government
It raised fears of slow progress, in the search for peace
Police arrested the leader of a guerrilla group

Police returned the fire killing one gunman
Another shooting outside a school sparked riots
The rebel commander blamed the police for the violence

I’m sitting in the armchair of other peoples’ discontent
They’re spelling out from what they see that I should love this malcontent
I’m sitting by the fire of world events and I’m so sad

Sitting in the fire of what’s happening, right here, right now
I’m sitting in the fire of doubt and I think I’m okay

What’s after the news? The Good News
What’s after the news? The Good News
What’s after the news? The Good News
So what comes after the news?

Benjamin Perkins
2009