strangereality149

It isn't often that I emerge from my ivory tower and deign to notice, much less pass comment upon, events in what the reader almost certainly thinks of as the 'real' world. I have spoken before, in my trademark pompous fashion, about the will-'o-the-wisp status of the 'real' world of news events – that world whose cumulative profile is mediated to its avid member-consumers via the sophisticated and formidable apparatus of mass communications/word of mouth/simple societal mutual support and collusion... (This is scruffily expressed, but I decline to spend any more time polishing the language, as I have a yearning to get back to my ivory tower, pronto; suffice to say that I know what I mean, and anybody else who knows what I mean will also know what I mean).

An hour or two ago the Iranian president announced the immediate and unconditional release of 15 captured British sailors. This is the news story that you will not have avoided hearing about over the past two weeks, you avid member-consumer of the 'real' world, you.

In reality nothing has happened.

I do not deny the phenomenal reality of certain events: of people in boats upon the sea, and angry words exchanged, and politicians grandstanding on television screens, and reams of newspaper copy, and so forth. All of these things certainly happened.

But what do they mean – not to the 'ordinary man in the street' (God save us, or rather me, from 'the ordinary man in the street'), but to the conscious individual, or the would-be conscious individual, in this strange reality?

They do not mean anything. In reality nothing has happened, because reality is not the news. Reality is not the news. The news is a collection of 'stories'. Even the producers and consumers of news call its contents 'stories'. On some level perhaps even they know that the news is of no lasting significance or importance. There is only one news 'story' that would be of concern to the individual: the news of the end of the world. Until that 'story' opens, there is no point whatsoever in watching news, reading news, talking about news, or believing in news.

Watercooler moments: an informal term for those random eddies of everyday conversation with friends and/or colleagues. The past few weeks have seen me observe many such moments, where outraged persons of putative 'British' identity express varying degrees of outrage and hostility and bellicose determinations. In other words: people have been spoiling for war. People who, a week before the 'crisis' percolated out of the news vortex, were decrying the war in Iraq, and lambasting Britain's faint echoes of imperialism in the 21^st Century. (I can't believe I'm actually writing about this junk.)

The point I came to make is a relatively simple one, and I've decided I'm just going to toss it out and have done with it. My tower calls.

People are operated by the news. Like puppets. People live and have their entire being through news. Their senses of self are totally invested in the chimeras of national/cultural/racial identity as mediated to them by news. The perceived fall and rise of their national/cultural/racial identity as mediated to them by news is reacted to and may in turn influence the flavours of news that comes to them.

Nothing at all has happened. The sun has risen and set. The trees across the road have started to leaf. The air is lighter and milder – spring is sprung. Watching news, reading news, hearing news, talking about news – this is not reality.

News is a manufactured product – as artificial and studied as a packet of sausages or box of soap powder. It is assembled and disseminated by news professionals. Its vital role in manufacturing the bogus worldview held (and cherished) by billions is, in my unhumble opinion, indisputable. It is indisputably true that the news world is not the real world. The world is not what a majority of people agree to believe that it is. It is what the I, the self, sees for itself without any partiality.

I have had enough of writing about this. I haven't written well about it. I've been all over the place. I haven't taken my usual care. The reason is that I don't care about news. I don't believe in it, and I regard those who do believe in it – who go so far as to have emotions about it – as so many pitiful dreamers, fast asleep and not planning to wake up any time soon.

 Imagine that you woke up one morning and everyone was talking about the world of The Lord Of The Rings as if it was the real world. That's what it's like for me, living in a world where reality is taken to be the reality depicted by news.

As an experiment, the curious reader may attempt to give up news for a week. For one whole week, do not read a newspaper, do not watch a TV news bulletin, do not listen to radio news.

It is not your 'duty' to be aware of news events. It is a major aspect of the news delusion to believe that it is, somehow, your duty as a human being to be aware of every disaster and geo-political quake and tremor that 'occurs'. But it isn't.

Give up news for a week, and see what happens. If you can make it through the first day, there's a chance you might one day be invited for tea at my ivory tower.

Which I must get back to now.