Fascists and dictators (and now just about everyone) have long understood that deviant behavior is encouraged by the fact that the media give it coverage. For example it used to be, "Don't write about suicide" because the mere mention of suicide might inspire someone to commit suicide in the next few days. Now we are flooded with all kinds of deviant inspiration. We live in a time of internet, Facebook, Twitter and adultery matchup-services. Like the phrase sometimes used in the RS-1 'Freedom Lecture,' "All Is Known," literally! The inundation of 'information' has either swamped us with stress and physical reaction or prompted a new level of defensive withdrawal from engaging. Scriptural wisdom and "Deciding" goes by the board! -----Original Message----- From: steve har via OE Sent: Tuesday, August 25, 2015 6:06 AM To: oe@lists.wedgeblade.net ; Order Ecumenical ICA-USA Subject: [Oe List ...] Breakfast News Conversations... Also called scripture/news conversations You remember them right? random bits of recalled news and then a piece of scriptural wisdom what to do about it? These days news like trying to "drink from a fire hose" My experience now living in the USfA now rather than Costa Rica and listening to USA media is curious. Feels to me like a case of news culture ADHD where nothing is connected to anything except by more and more crisis news events, more passionate & positional thinking more economic political and cultural and more and more "news journalists" driving to their bank on the stream of news. My friend Jack Gilles, if I quote him right, says ORID conversations no longer have a "D" now because it it is all interpretation, everyone has an opinion, everyone is a spectator stuck in the stands watching an unplayable game. Now in conversations is no "D" in ORID, no one knows how to Decide or what Do. "D" stands for Dumpster or "Don't decide" or "Despair" or just "Done". Joe Mathews had a paper, I believe, which he called the liberal heresy - aybe it was the conservative heresy or the reactionary heresy. He used some fancy theological terminology like "the immediacy of the eschaton" which I never did understand,exactly. Anyone remember this paper? Wondering where IS the scripture part, the wisdom part of the breakfast news conversation? The Christian Science Monitor says THEY are doing two things...As days and weeks pass, the media move on to new stories, often neglecting to tell the “what’s possible?” stories about how the people and communities affected by these tragedies are coping and what they’re learning. We hear these types of stories on one-year anniversaries, but they’re not an ongoing part of the media’s coverage the way that the “what happened?” stories are. A growing body of research is confirming what many have long suspected — that a steady diet of trauma and disaster triggers stress, fear and trauma in those consuming the stories. What if the news media covered stories of recovery and resilience as much as they cover stories about devastation and despair? http://ivoh.org/restorativenarrative/ Steve -- Steve _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net