Boomer Musings: But We Don't Think About That, Do We?

Words to live by...

"How beautiful it is to do nothing, and to rest afterward."

[Spanish Proverb]

Ius luxuriae publice datum est

(The right to looseness has been officially given)

"Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders," wrote Ludwig von Mises, "no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interest, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle."

Apparently, the crossword puzzle that disappeared from the blog, came back.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

But We Don't Think About That, Do We?

As I perused my email this morning, I came across a piece by John Stossel regarding the news and why/how it is reported. News is negative, is it not? I mean Dan Rather (for example) never opened a news show with "It was a wonderful day today, nobody died in some horrible and unnecessary way, all the planes that took off landed safely, no earthquakes, no tsunamis, nothing horrendous happened... perhaps tomorrow. Until then, I'll be bored silly."

Stossel's point was, I think, that we seek out bad news and we do not seek out good news. Oh, we do seek out good news involving those we care about but not in the world around us. The Germans have a word for it, schadenfreude, which I think is not defined accurately. Its meaning is:

satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune.

I don't think we derive pleasure from others' misfortunes so much as we tend to be happy it's someone else's woe and not our own or those we personally care about.