Andy is here today.
I’ve been haunted by these lyrics Ann recently posted from Paul Simon’s “American Tune:”
I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered,
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
One reason these lyrics have been on my mind is because Ann has been playing that song nonstop for the last month on our Sonos speaker system. But mainly I’m thinking about them because I can empathize with Paul’s bleak outlook on the world. In fact, I can imagine his being inspired to write those lyrics while sipping his morning coffee and reading the NYTimes (this was 1973, so you have to visualize him reading a hard copy of the paper). Of course I’m speculating about this, but it makes sense based of my own morning routine.
I usually begin each day sitting down to my computer with a cup of hot green tea (not coffee) and perusing the NYTimes headline stories. Keeping abreast of local and world news is a civic duty after all. Sadly though, the news these days tends to fuel my suspicion that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.
Because I’m no Paul Simon, rather than channeling my angst by composing songs, I cope by losing myself in the NYTimes game section. I start with trying to discover the illusive long word in the Spelling Bee and then move on to attempt solving Wordle. And if it’s a particularly grim news day, I may take on the maddeningly-clever Connections. For the time being at least, my news-driven doomsday blahs can be kept at bay.
Don’t get me wrong; there’s plenty of bad stuff out there that we should be fretting about – wars, global warming, pandemics. But surely, there must be some newsworthy stuff in our world that can at least partially reduce post-news funk. Happily, while doing research for an earlier blog piece, I chanced upon a potential candidate for providing funk-reducing news – UC Berkeley’s The Greater Good Science Center and its online Greater Good Magazine.
My first thought was that this must be Berkeley’s version of Harvard’s humor magazine, The Onion. What self-respecting research center would post the following mission statement? ”The Greater Good Science Center studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society.“
But my cynicism turned to admiration when I figured out that the Greater Good Science Center is a serious organization that reports only rigorously-researched findings. The below list of topics from the center’s web site gives some idea of the kinds of research the Center follows (note: click on any of the topics for an overview of research findings about that topic).
Just Some of the Topics Covered by the The Greater Good Science Center.
The December edition of the Greater Good Magazine included what was considered to be 2023’s top ten “insights.” I found one of those insights, “The illusion of moral decline,” to be particularly on target for helping me cope with my world-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket post-news blues. It tells of a recent study published in Nature that debunks the widely held belief that morality is corroding around us.
Analyzing a massive amount of survey data from the U.S. and around the world dating back to the 1940s the study authors found that, no matter the year or place, most people reported that moral goodness was waning. Then, to see if this was an accurate depiction of reality, the researchers looked at what those who were surveyed said about their own moral goodness and the goodness of other’s they knew. They found that those surveyed overwhelmingly reported that they themselves along with their acquaintances were morally sound folks. In other words, the persistent belief that the world is in moral decline doesn’t jive with objective reality. The authors go so far as to say that the prevailing belief that current times are worse than past times is a “myth” that has been with us for years.
Getting back to Paul Simon’s somber lyrics, “I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered, I don’t have a friend who feels at ease,” it’s not surprising that he would be troubled when he wrote those lyrics in 1973 – the time of Watergate and Vietnam. He most likely was convinced that the world was in a moral crisis (I recall feeling that way back then too).
I wonder what his lyrics would have been like if, instead of the NYTimes, he had been reading the Greater Good Magazine (this is all hypothetical of course - the magazine started in 2019). For example, would he have been so untroubled that he would neven have thought about writing something about a bridge over troubled water (which he wrote in 1969)? Or, instead of lamenting about all of his friends who do not feel at ease, would he have lyrically pointed out that their unease was a myth?
When it comes to my own news-driven funk, I’ll have to wait to see if the healing power of the Greater Good Magazine will begin to take effect. Meanwhile, I will continue with my daily dose of the dreary NYTimes news- mainly to justify my over-indulgence in frivolous word games.
