Just Beyond the Light: Making Peace with the Wars Inside Our Head

by D. Randall Blythe

Regrettably, people are very attracted to new, even if it’s bad new. The feeling of excitement imparted by watching the latest bright, shiny thing unveiled—even if it’s a bright, shiny disaster—is irresistible. And although history shows us again and again that politicians lie, people go broke, strange diseases from foreign lands wipe out large numbers of people, and the earth acts in unpredictable ways, the giant media conglomerations know that people would eventually unglue their weary selves from their screens if the corporate mouthpieces were to get honest and say, “Okay, admittedly, some of us ain’t gonna make it, but this is the same old crap we’ve survived repeatedly in the past—it’s just wrapped in plastic now instead of papyrus. Hang in there, y’all—we’ve seen all this before.” So newscasters keep cashing paychecks and toeing the company line, acting as if this is an utterly new terrifying reality instead of an entirely predictable continuation of historical patterns. Regrettably, it seems most folks can’t be bothered to further strain their LCD-battered eyes, rendered feeble and myopic by the luxury that is modern life, to peer into the brutal truth of the past.