I spend a lot of time reading the news. A lot. More than has ever proven useful. Working from home, it's easy to get endlessly distracted, and pointlessly so, since none of my work is ever news-related. I think I share the same kind of fascination with the news that so many have with the stars, pre-telescope. I imagine them all, Aztec and Mayans and Egyptians and Celts and Anasazi, studying the stars for generations and generations, trying to plot the patterns, master the mysteries. I imagine the sharp-sighted wizards and priests and witches and shamans accumulating lore and generating theories about the movements of the universe, building mythologies and temples.
I think that same impulse drives my fascination with the news, all those wasted hours and days trying to make sense of it all, trying to track down the truth, the core motivations, the impeti, trying to predict what comes next, following the history, the origins, the grudges and atrocities and manipulations and conspiracies. And sometimes, after a few hours of cycling through the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, and various and sundry others (including DK), I ask myself, "What am I looking for? What am I hoping to find?".
To be honest, I'm still hoping to one day turn on my computer and read the headline "Everything is Fixed!". Not gonna happen. But that's my hope. Even though I know, on some level, that Utopia is Now-Here.
It's here because that's where I am - there's no better possible world than the Here and Now. Because that's the only moment we own - everything else is a distraction. People have been reading the news for centuries and getting bummed out about it, and before that, there were rumors and prophecies and storytellers and priests who could tell you What's Wrong With Everything and How it Should be Made Right.
The truth is, as humans we're hardwired for Stories About Problems. There's almost nothing but, save for the stories of Magical Abundance, like the land where bbq'd pigs with a fork & knife stuck in their butts running around squealing "Who'll eat me?". I remember gazing at Dairy Queen posters with canyons of chocolate, and banana splits floating down them like boats, and creating elaborate plans for what I would do, were I to be magically transported to that (as I know now) deadly waterless landscape. There, I just hacked a Magical Abundance narrative.
Humans are fascinated by Stories About Problems. Evil/misguided kings, mean stepmothers, tricksters, malicious politicians, back-stabbing reality show characters, war, apocalypse, famine, disease, sin, atrocity, failure, and so on. And so that's what's in the news. Nobody reports on how a person or a town had a peaceful and prosperous and enjoyable day because no-one wants to hear it.
The world of dew
is a world of dew.
And yet, and yet...
I've actually been to Utopia, or one of them, Roosevelt Island, just east of Manhattan. It was a former asylum/hospital that in the 50s/60s was rebuilt as a modern Utopia - schools and parks and public housing and public transport. I believe that even in NYC's dark years of crime, Roosevelt Island flourished as a place of safety and peace. Mostly because it was hard to get there, and once you did, there wasn't much there. The concrete aesthetic looks a bit faded now, and the maintenance hasn't been kept up, but based on the pampered kids and dogs running around, the general cleanliness and lack of crime, they're doing just fine. Walk ten minutes and you're in Queens, which has its own charm, but is a lot harder to consider Utopic.
Point being, even in this place of safety and comfort, which should be exalted as at least a Relative Utopia, every issue of the local paper I read had multiple screeds and jeremiads about the bus schedule and how it had to be improved. Should it be every 15 minutes during rush hours? Or wait needs-based at specific stops? Or be better synched with the subway? Or be cheaper? Or more civil? Or tweeted?
That was when I realized that Utopia was Now-Where. Not there, not then. Our Now is as enjoyable as we are capable of enjoyment. There is virtue and pleasure in working for the future, but that pleasure should be savored Now. We are the change that we have been waiting for, and Now and Here is when it begins.
It's easy to criticize the world we find ourselves in, through no or little choice of our own. And it's useful, to an extent. The poor will always be with us, but it's the poor in spirit who are the problem, to the extent that there are problems. There will always be suffering, whether it's famine or bus schedules. And Utopia is nowhere because it's Now-Here, at this present moment, when we are most capable, most aware, and most Present.