Garbage In, Garbage Out

“My experience is what I agree to attend to.” - William James

If I had a nickel for every time I heard my Mother say the phrase “garbage in, garbage out” when I was growing up, I’d probably be retired by now. Usually this phrase was reserved as a retort for when my brother and I used profanity or when we wanted to watch a movie or TV program that Mom didn’t approve of.

I remember once when I was huddled around the living room TV with my friends watching a movie. If memory serves me correctly, it was the 80’s cult-classic Sixteen Candles. Maybe it was Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Either way, at a certain risqué scene, Mom went over to the VCR, hit the stop button and with a stern look said, “Not in my house - Garbage in, garbage out!” My friends didn’t bat an eye; we simply headed outside to play basketball.

In my house, neatness was expected. Just like we knew enough not to mess with my Dad when it came to literal garbage in terms of picking up after ourselves, we also knew never to mess with my Mom when it came to ‘garbage’ in terms of morality. (Garbage did not pertain to junk food and sweets, although sugar cereal was outlawed and alcohol was definitely verboten in our home).

For some garbage back then was rap music or movies and video games that glorified sex and violence. Tipper Gore even led a movement condemning explicit music. Whether or not such content was or is actually harmful is up for debate, but it’s easy to see why rap and violent video games may have seemed threatening to suburban Moms. Importantly awareness was brought to the issue for people to make up their own minds about taking out what they deemed as ‘trash.’

Still, the 80’s was a different and more simplistic time. Back then people watched TV, listened to cassette tapes and radio, and they may have had a VCR, but that was about it. With the prevalence of the Internet, the average American now consumes an estimated 11 hours of media every day! With this environment of constant connectivity, today’s garbage is harder to quantify and more subtle. But the influences of fear, addiction, hatred, and toxicity are everywhere if we look closely.

The world has been transfixed about the growing concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic and rightfully so, at least to a degree. Knowledge is power and staying informed and taking precautions is prudent, thoughtful and saves lives. But misinformation, hysteria, gossip, and profiting on the fears of others is repulsive and repugnant.

Many feel helpless as to what they can do to control their lives in a time of social distancing and self-quarantine. We can start by taking out the garbage. That is, controlling what content we take in, substances we consume, and even what thoughts we think. As a recent article that I read stated, “To Control Your Life, Control What You Pay Attention To.”

This is a tipping point in our society and one of the lessons learned from this pandemic is to be on guard with our thinking. We need to pay much greater attention where it comes to the environment, our collective health, and the well-being of others around us. We need to pay more attention to the food we eat, the media we consume, and the relationships we keep. We need to pay much less attention to fear, overconsumption, and judgment towards others. We also need to pay less attention to those looking to control our thoughts and influence our behavior.

For instance, how alert are you to the marketing messages you are ingesting? Digital marketing experts estimate that most Americans are exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 ads each day. Some of these ads are informative, some are entertaining, but some are merely promoting fear, consumption, and even addiction for the sake of profit. The same goes for other content whether it’s news or merely entertainment.

Instead of taking in garbage we must stand firm for truth and justice and know that harmony and positivity can also bring abundance. Especially now, we must scrutinize what others are saying whether it’s a person, group, or a corporation. If every thought and action is based in either fear or love, we must spend our time now more than ever separating the trash from the recycling, the good from the bad, and the fear from the love.

Whatever your religious, moral, or political beliefs are we can probably all agree that we need to be taking out the trash with more regularity. Taking out the trash starts with clarity of thought and clarity of thought starts with stillness and solitude. Maybe it’s time to cut down to just 10 hours of media a day and use that other hour to pray, meditate, or just take a quiet walk. As Anne Lamott says, “almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”

Before this crisis occurred, we had glaring systemic and societal issues to address – a declining life expectancy, opioid and substance addiction, suicide, and obesity. We have a homelessness epidemic and a significant portion of our populace that is one bad break from being on the street. We have a stagnant and gridlocked (if not broken) political system. Far too many are self-obsessed, narcissistic, and even hateful where it comes to those that think differently. Far too many are feeling left behind, left out, and forgotten. Even the planet is neglected. 

None of this is a coincidence. As Mom used to say, if our thinking is full of garbage, so will the byproducts of our thoughts. My sincere hope is that this pandemic represents a moment that will allow for empathy and love to conquer our collective thinking. Maybe this is the moment where we see that the person you despise or the individual who opposes your viewpoint is just like you are – someone with a capacity to both hurt and heal.

We must cast out fear, compulsivity, and hatred by recognizing these malicious suggestions whether they come from our own thinking or the suggestions of others. As the saying goes, “Ships don’t sink because of the water around them. They sink because of the water that gets in them.” If there was ever a time to take out the garbage and put our thoughts on lockdown, that time is now.

The Fear of Living

According to the Chapman University Survey on American Fears, a corrupt government is now the number one fear for people in our country. Other top worrisome concerns for Americans include pollution, those close to them dying/getting sick and not having enough money.

In our modern turbulent world, it’s curious but perhaps not surprising that these new fears have replaced the more ‘traditional’ fears of dying and public speaking. We now fear the environment around us (both literally and figuratively) more than our own internal fears. We fear the economic environment, the ecological environment the political environment. In a telling sign of the times, five of the top ten fears are also now related to ecological issues like pollution and global warming.

For many years, the most common fears were “phobias” such as: social phobias (public speaking or going to parties), arachnophobia (spiders) arcophobia (heights), pteromerhanophobia (flying), claustrophobia (small confined spaces), ophidiophobia (snakes), trypanophobia (needles) and so on. And, of course, the grand daddy of all primal fears (death, or those closest to us dying).

While we still fear dying and losing those nearest to us, what we really seem to fear more than ever is living. It seems almost counter-intuitive, but many now fear living even more than dying. Considering the nature of things these days, this actually makes some sense.

Life in the year 2018 seems vastly uncertain, utterly confusing, and most of all, completely vulnerable. Attack of every sort seems imminent - cyber attack, data breaches, terrorism, civil unrest, environmental collapse, financial meltdown, pollution, identity theft, drought, fires, mass shootings, devastating floods and storms.

One could contend that our modern existence boils down to an obsessive state of worry and constant rumination about these disheartening dilemmas: How will we make a living? How will we pay our medical bills, how will we find clean water, how will our corrupt government protect us? Is it safe to go to church or the mall?

Moreover, the nature of our habitually plugged in lives perpetuates this never-ending cycle of doom and gloom. We seem to be in a hopeless and powerless state marked by environmental collapse, the erosion of jobs to machines, futile political polarization and gridlock, the decline of civil discourse and the epidemic of loneliness – Why should we fear flying and snakes, when life is this scary!?!

It’s enough to drive one to drink or look the other direction at something bright, shiny and pleasant. So, that is exactly what many of us do – we numb. We incessantly surf, scroll, browse, and shop. We text, Snapchat, and Tweet. We dull our pain and anxiety with booze and opiates. We watch TV, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime. We travel or participate in ‘experience driven’ vacations to escape the busyness, boredom and fear of our ordinary lives. We brood over sports, scandal, and celebrity gossip. In short, we do anything to flee from reality because it’s just too damn scary and uncertain.

It’s a daunting task in this day and age to ponder the nature of the immense problems of living (let alone come up with possible solutions). It’s no wonder we’re driven to so much distraction. Regardless of whether our fear is living or dying, many react with the same mantra – “run like hell.”

Sometimes when I stop and think about the really good parts of being alive in this era, I can only come up with one thing - food. The food is really good. Craft food, farm to table restaurants, the organic movement, specialty food stores, authentic food trucks, what’s not to like? I can only imagine future conversations in Heaven or the next dimension with former relatives or those from other times:

Q: “So, what was life like back in the 2000’s?”

A: “Well, it was terrifying, but the food was excellent!”

Yeah, and at least the music was good on the Titanic, right? Indeed, it’s hard not to be a flippant skeptic in this day and age, and yet there is a way out of the despair and subsequent numbing. The recipe for curing hopelessness is love. Specifically, the love of one self.

Gandhi famously said: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” 

In the book of Luke, Christ commanded: “The kingdom of God is within you.”

The Dalai Lama said that peace: “Starts within each one of us.”

The foundational element for a true peace of mind is love. Whether your peace means justice, bringing about the end of conflict, environmental harmony, freedom from worry over financial concerns, or the trials of health and happiness - Solving all these dilemmas starts within the confines of our own self-love. Whatever your belief construct is or whomever you pray to, the path to a fulfillment of peace is clear - The only way to calm the tumultuous waters that we are currently navigating collectively is for us to each seek inner peace and grace individually.

Like many these days, I too am worried about the future as I am worried about the now. But I have begun to see that my biggest personal task and contribution is to seek and forge my own path for peace. We must begin to see that the acute dilemmas of our time are exacerbated by the biggest trial of the day – distraction from our internal conflicts.

The real fear of living isn’t about external phobias, societal collapse or the threat of our own demise. Rather, the root of this fear is about the willingness to confront our own shadows of shame, trauma and guilt. The journey starts with the willingness to embrace both the sharpness of pain and dullness of stillness. As overwhelming as our current obstacles may seem, each one of us has a crystal clear path in solving the crisis of communal fear – facing our own.

The Safety Dance

As a toddler in the 70’s, one thing that was noticeably absent whenever I was riding around in the car with my parents was a car seat. In fact, I didn’t even wear a seatbelt. Instead, I used to sit on the center armrest in the front seat. Apparently, I liked the view up there and the closer proximity to Mom and Dad made for more robust conversation. 

Just imagine the uproar these days of seeing a toddler riding in a car down the street just inches from the windshield without so much as a car seat or even a seat belt providing protection. The ordeal would be national news and the parents would surely be sent to prison! But back in my formative years, no one seemed to give a damn. And it wasn’t just the seat belt either. The 70’s and 80’s were like the Wild West for kids growing up in that era. No seat belts, no scrutiny and no supervision.

Not to throw my parents under the bus, mind you. Loose parenting was without a doubt the norm in my day. Like most kids back then, I learned to ride a bike without a bike helmet. I learned to ski without a helmet as well. Every kid I knew ate peanuts (and gluten, lactose and everything else we could inhale). Most kids were a bit hyper and yet, as far as I knew, none were regularly medicated.

As grade-schoolers, my friends and I walked to the bus stop unaccompanied by parents. We rode our bikes around the neighborhood and all over town. As pre driving teenagers, we regularly took the bus downtown to hangout. All activities were unsupervised and there were no cell phones or other means of direct communication with actual adults. We were simply told to be home by dinner.

Not that there weren’t legitimate dangers to be concerned with. The violent crime rate in the 1980’s was significantly higher than it is now. I knew two kids that died from ski accidents. A family friend lost their son to drunk driving. One kid in my high school was hit by a train and killed. Several kids from a local school were killed in a tragic mountaineering accident. 

Indeed there were good reasons to be at least somewhat fearful back then and yet we were seemingly oblivious to danger. It’s a wonder I survived! All joking aside, society back in the day needed to get its act together where it came to safety, supervision and street smarts. Fortunately, we did.

In the past 30 years, seat belts have saved countless lives. Helmets have prevented many deaths and serious life altering injuries. Prominent media campaigns like MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) helped bring about positive changes in attitudes and legislation to combat impaired driving. Social attitudes have vastly improved as well. For instance, gay kids and other marginalized groups didn’t enjoy the freedom and respect back then that they do now. Thanks to an evolution in thought and action, life has become safer and in many ways, better. 

However, while the 70’s and 80’s were a bit too reckless and nonchalant, the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. Fear now permeates almost every facet of our culture. Parents don’t let their kids outside unaccompanied because of fearing kidnappers and rapists. We fear immigrants as dangerous criminals and opportunists looking to steal our jobs. We fear terrorism. We fear people using the wrong bathrooms. We even fear peanuts and gluten. Many, if not most of these topical fears have almost no reasonable basis or factual substantiation. We’re obsessed with danger and paralyzed by fear, but the reality is we have never been safer. Consider the following statistics:

• According to the FBI, violent crime rate in the US fell 48% between 1993 and 2016.

• In the year October 2010-September 2011, there were only 105 kidnappings (65 abducted by complete strangers) that year out of a population of 73.9 million children.

• Not including the tragedy of 9/11, there are an average of just two Americans killed by (jihadist) terrorism every year. Consider that 69 people are killed by lawnmowers every year in our country!

• An estimated 1% of Americans (approximately 3 million people) have celiac disease. 3 million people is far from insubstantial, but more than 30 million Americans avoid gluten despite no indication that they are sensitive to gluten or any evidence that it’s healthier for you.

• In the decade from 1996-2006, the CDC documented a total of 13 child deaths from peanut exposure. Certainly, any death of a child is tragic, but because of thirteen deaths in 10 years, we’ve changed our entire nationwide scholastic and cultural approach to nutrition.

We don’t connect the dots of our media-driven, fear-based culture and how it’s making us inept, impotent and frankly, soft. We’re weak where we need to toughen up and we’re distracted or ignorant where it comes to the actual legitimate fears we should be concerned with.

• Despite a tragic and pronounced epidemic of addiction, no one seems to notice the correlation that many kids (and adults) are more heavily medicated than ever. Furthermore, no one seems to mind the constant bombardment of aggressive advertising touting highly addictive substances from processed sugar to alcohol to prescription drugs.

• Despite the alarming trend of growing suicide rates, we pay little attention to the compulsive nature of screen time and social media, which are correlated with depression and anxiety.

• Despite guns killing almost 1300 kids each year and the appalling epidemic of mass shootings and school shootings, we’re too self absorbed and politically polarized to actually get anything done about it.

• Despite a massive looming threat from the critical state of the environment, many are unwilling to adjust their lifestyle and consumption habits. 

The obvious question we should be asking related to issues of safety is the query “Is It working?” Seat belts undoubtedly work. Without question, bike and ski helmets work. But ‘safe’ zones and ‘helicopter' parenting do nothing but perpetuate a culture of fear and ineptitude. Prescription drug ads do nothing but create a frenzy of drug use and abuse.

False ideologies on both sides of the political spectrum are to blame for our coddled and contemptuous society. Many shamefully fear monger by demonizing those that look, pray and love differently. Others left lack courage in standing up to political correctness run amok. We are now a nation of wimps and whiners thanks in large part to the unintended consequences of overparenting and the ridiculous notion of “safetyism.” 

The fact is we are much safer than we think from the issues that garner the most attention like crime and terrorism. Yet paradoxically, we’re also in much more danger than we’re aware from the issues that lurk beneath the surface of popular thought. While we’re busy fretting over immigrants, terrorists and peanuts, threats of our own psyche (addiction, mental health and suicide) are literally killing us. Because of these threats, for the second year in a row, as a nation we are facing a declining life expectancy.

If we are to succeed personally, culturally and environmentally, we need a balanced approach to fear and safety. I’m not advocating for a return to the careless attitudes of my free-swinging childhood. But it’s time to bring that pendulum back to the center if just a bit. It’s time for us to face the music and stand up to fear instead of promoting and succumbing to it.