Recapturing Our Reality

Conspiracy theories blaming "plants" in town hall meetings. Parents protesting their kids seeing a speech from the President. Police officers opting for pay raises over layoffs of their fellow officers. Michael Jackson's death gets higher billing in the media over health care reform.

Are these real issues to some people? Absolutely. And that's the bigger problem.

The focus of our society seems to have degenerated into a mass of insignificant squabbling between parties and individuals that have lost their perspective on the bigger picture. Did I really need to know the intimate details of Madoff's embezzlement? Sure, it was good to know, but after seeing the story for the 51st time on primetime news, it gets a little old. Yes, I agree it was a travesty for the people that trusted their money with him, but did it really deserve front-page treatment for as long as it did? If I was one of his victims, I certainly wouldn't want to be reminded that I now need to work until I'm 100 every time I turned on the news.

The media is partially to blame, but let's be real here: they feed the public what they want to see so who's really at fault? Ratings drive content, so what are we really saying about ourselves when the top story over health care reform is the latest Jon and Kate divorce news? Even the so-called "legitimate news" shows now seem to bending to the public's will and pushing the fantastic before the fact. It would be easy to blame TV, newspapers, magazines and the internet for this, but let's think about this logically. When was the last time ANY media source posted or broadcast news that people DIDN'T want to see? As individuals, some of us may turn our noses up at the idea that Michael Jackson's autopsy results was "real news", but someone out there saw the ratings spike when they aired the story which means a LOT of people were actually watching.

The point? Our perception of what is important has been worn down to a puddle of misdirected enthusiasm and diluted priorities. Does it really matter that a child does or doesn't watch a speech made by our President when the state of our education system is below the global standard of excellence? Can we really give attention to a story about police officers voting for raises instead of preserving jobs when a single mother can't find a job to support her family? Should we truly care about health care reform that screams socialist tendencies when a city is laying off firefighters to pay for a skate park? We have become accustomed to paying more attention to what is easy than what is important. We have traded our focus on what needs to be fixed for a crusade against what is more sensational to solve. We care only about the big picture when the little problems are too tedious and vice versa. Put simply, our priorities are totally screwed up.

Is there a solution? To be honest, I'm not sure. It's easy to say that we need to focus on the important perspectives first, but who determines what's important these days? It's part of the reason we're in this boat in the first place. Maybe we need to take a lesson from those laid off firefighters and approach the root of the problem. When you attempt to snuff out a fire, you don't aim the water at the flames themselves. It looks impressive, since the flames rise and fall as we spray, but the fire never really goes out completely. Instead, you attack the base of the fire and extinguish the source. This is essentially the lesson we are missing in society today. Stop attacking the flashy issues and focus on the problem at the root of those issues.

If there's a shootout in a school, we're quick to blame the school system and the police for letting it happen because of the news coverage it garners. We should be asking the parents why they didn't know their kids had guns in their own house, or why they didn't know their kid was depressed, bullied, or angry. If our economy takes a dive, we blame immigrant workers, the government, and the market-makers for our downfall. We should be asking why our society accepts paying 21% on a credit balance with 2 cars in the garage and a mortgage we can't really afford. We publicly protest political reform, social injustice, and environmental preservation, yet divorce rates and domestic violence cases have not shown any significant decrease in years, maybe decades.

Simply put, we have become a society that blames the outside world when we should be looking within ourselves, and barring the door when we should be getting out to make a difference. We have taught ourselves to take the path of least resistance and quickest gratification without considering if it was the RIGHT path. It all comes down to the root of our problems, and in many cases the root is the simplest of solutions. Maybe we need to take a few steps backwards before trying to move forward. At the very least, even if we still head down the same path, we'll do so after seeing things from a different perspective.