The Galli Report: 11.13.20

Stop reading the news, the angry fatherless, wisdom from Antartica, and the world's most dangerous places.

Stop Reading News (but not Newsletters!)
Well, at least this newsletter, especially given a turn I’ve been mulling over for some weeks.

One guiding principle of The Galli Report has been my policy to rarely recommend articles over 3,000 words.  I recognize that all of us feel squeezed by the clock—not just the hour hand, but the minute hand, maybe even the second hand--so I’ve reasoned that it’s not likely that readers will finish a longer piece.  Discouraged by the length, they may even decline to start it. So I’ve tried to stick to what’s short and wise.

But the longer I’ve been publishing GR, the more difficult it has become to find the short and wise.  Short, yes, but not wise.  Wise, yes, but not short.

Here’s another thing I’ve discovered.  Even when I don’t finish a long (and wise!) article, or only skim it, I am intellectually and spiritually rewarded more than when I read a shorter piece word for word.  All sorts of qualifications come to mind, of course.  Despite my constant complaint about Twitter, for example, it’s good to remember the Book of Proverbs can be seen as a series of tweets. So yes, short can be wise once in a while. Still, I think my observation holds true as a generalization. Which is why careful readers of GR will have noticed more longer articles in the last few weeks.

Which brings me to our first link, “Go Deep, Not Broad.”  It’s a review of Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life.   The review is full of critiques of the news media—as a former member of the media, I affirm most of the critiques—e.g.  

“Sturgeon’s Law” is named after sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon who, when needled by a patronizing critic complaining that 90 per cent of science fiction was rubbish, replied that 90 per cent of everything published was rubbish. This principle applies to the news. Nonsense is prevalent. The major fraud of the news media is that anything recent is relevant.

But the thrust of the review and the book is this positive insight:

Throughout the book there is the reminder that living well by making sound decisions is our primary responsibility, and the news is extraneous to this life project. We need this reminder. And we are assured: if we avoid the news and instead read books and longer journal articles (both in print and online) then we may not know everything current but we will have a deeper knowledge and richer perspective to bring to any discussion of current affairs.

In sum, the manifesto of this newsletter is now “Go Deep, Not Broad”—and occasionally “Go shallow and have fun!”

The Angry, the Fatherless
In keeping with my interest in meta-analysis of our current cultural crisis, I offer Mary Eberstadt’s “The Fury of the Fatherless.”

… Here’s a new theory: The explosive events of 2020 are but the latest eruption along a fault line running through our already unstable lives. That eruption exposes the threefold crisis of filial attachment that has beset the Western world for more than half a century. Deprived of father, Father, and patrium, a critical mass of humanity has become socially dysfunctional on a scale not seen before.

This is especially true of the young. The frantic flight to collective political identities has primordial, not transient, origins. The riots are, at least in part, a visible consequence of the largely invisible crisis of Western paternity. We know this to be true, in more ways than one.

A theory is fun to quibble with, but it seems to me there is something to this particular theory.

Wisdom from the Bottom of the Globe
Since a new COVID lockdown is threatened as winter overshadows the land, time to remind ourselves how to manage it.  We learned a lot during the first lockdown.  And a lot of what we earned is reinforced by an offbeat piece (at least for me) in Nautilis: “What You Can Learn from Living in Antarctica: Wisdom from the end of the Earth.”  From the editorial introduction:

For the past 30 years, [Joe] Pettit has worked as an engineer and project manager. He first worked the busy summer season at McMurdo Station, the largest research base in Antarctica. Soon he began to work through the winter: eight months of nearly perpetual darkness, brutal cold, and fierce storms. He lived for months without sun, and fell in love with the polar night. He became McMurdo’s resident aurora chaser, reading up on the Southern Lights and alerting his colleagues when they could expect the most dazzling displays. He found different jobs to make sure he had work each winter: engineer, research associate, head of glacier search and rescue.

What does it take to survive—and love—a place like Antarctica? As many of us around the world prepare for our own long, socially distanced winters, Pettit has some wisdom to share. He offers it below in his own words.

Speaking of Dangerous Places…
It seems appropriate to segue to the end with a short video (shallow but fun!) about “The Fifteen Most Dangerous Places on Earth.”

Grace and peace,

Mark Galli
mark.galli.com