Up: [[Accept Reality]] Created: 2024-12-01 Updated: 2025-02-13 When 9/11 happened, my local radio station created an ominous sounding alarm sequence that played before every update. Perfectly appropriate. Then they started using the same alarm to announce snow days, rainstorms, and road closures. Everyone is vying for our attention. The easiest way to get it is to suggest that danger is ahead. The easiest way to sustain it is with nonstop reports of outrage. This is yet another reason why I want nothing to do with social media or, more and more, mainstream news. While they may be sharing unvarnished reality, I am experiencing it as a constant assault. Nothing good can come of this. > [!Orbit] Thomas Merton > To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times. Merton died in 1968, long before the Internet, social media, and AI. > [!Orbit] Umberto Eco > Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. Then they were quickly silenced, but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. > It’s the invasion of the idiots. Three questions from the late Jim Rohn - Who am I allowing to speak into my life? - What effect is that having on me? - Is that okay? > [!Orbit] Robert Wilensky > We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire words of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true. This is where I choose to live. Poem - [Even in a Time of Intolerance](https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2025/02/13/even-in-a-time-of-intolerance/) - [[Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer]]