Another earlier memory I have, this one of young adulthood, is of reading a certain novel (I wish I could remember its name) during my senior year of high school. Whatever that novel was, I loved it. I can't even remember the plot, but it was generally about life in small-town America on the eve of one of the World Wars. The plot wasn't the point. It painted such a vivid picture of a close-knit community and a simple life, and that picture is still with me years later.
In my more stressed moments, I daydream about moving to a small town, where I can walk to work and I know everyone and they know me. In some ways, it's not much different from when I was in school, in the midst of a place with a great sense of community.
I don't want to say that news singlehandedly destroyed community, but I think it represents something larger which has taken its toll. When we put energy into the news, that's energy that does not go somewhere else, somewhere more immediate.
Which leads me to think about the idea of simulation. I haven't read Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation (it's on my list to get to soon), but one of the things it discusses is the progression of real things to things that represent reality to things that are disconnected from reality. We are at the point where reality has been replaced completely by representations.
I think news has helped with that progression. News does represent reality, but it represents a twisted version of reality. The same way a photograph can be altered so that it is both real and unreal at the same time, news sources filter the entirety of world events so that they represent a distorted reality.
Maybe in some way, getting rid of the news is bringing me one step closer to that daydream.
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