WHY THE SOCRATIC SCRIBBLER MISSES THE DAILY NEWSPAPER — THE ONE MADE OUT OF PAPER —

Have you been finding your life a bit chaotic, adrift, almost random…bouncing from one thing to another? This seems to be more and more true of everyone I know, but especially young people who seem to be triggered primarily by the last tweet.

At first, I attributed this to the pandemic. Wearing masks and not being next to people you care about can surely make all of us a little crazy and some of us a big crazy. That said, I suspect there is more to it than a mere plague.

I’m an old man. I grew up with the daily newspaper stretched in front of my face, not a mask.. Indeed, as a kid it was my job to go out on the porch and find it buried somewhere in the bushes where the paperboy had tossed it at 4 AM. And, fetching that paper was no pleasure on cold, wet days in Chicago. Worse, I later ended up being that 4 AM guy pitching the papers.

So, you might think I welcome the digitalization of that cold soggy rag. Not so.

Let’s take the old Sunday newspaper for example. For us, it was the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times. They were big thick things, full of sections: Global and national news, followed by local or metro news, then followed by just about every category of life: Home, Real Estate, Business, Travel, Auto, Classified Sales, Sports, Comics, Health, Education, Books, Movies, Theatre, Entertainment, Gossip, Restaurants, Home Decoration, Food and Cooking, Holiday Planning, Gifts and Gadgets, Household Tips, Romance Advice. Political Opinions, Local Loud Mouth Columnist (Mike Royko, Jimmy Bresslin) Religion… in effect those categories of our lives and our world that are always changing. And throughout were sprinkled wonderful display and classified ads, letting us know how to increase and decrease our store of goods and fashion. The newspaper would tell us what is New, that is… different…than yesterday, including the obituaries, reminding us there would be a last call for us all. And every personal ad could be decoded into a mystery thriller.

The newspaper also taught us how to put ideas and images together. I have yet to see a meme as good as the old front page political cartoons. The business section and the sports page taught us how to read tables and graphs. Just by being there, headlines taught us how to find the actual news in the story. Why we could even learn how to play chess or improve our vocabulary with crosswords.

You may reply: Yes, but all these things still exist in their own way online..these and more. Yes, but they are all scattered, bits of body with no souls… incoherent, random, scattered atoms in ether, like a Lucretian death.

When you picked up the newspaper and literally thumbed through the sections and finger licked through the pages, your brain was tangibly reminded that the world consists of all these things and events. It also implied that you need to think about all these things in relation to yourself and your world. Some things you could ignore; others would become passions; some more relevant when you were young, others when you became a parent. But you were invited to think about them. Indeed, the people who actually read the newspaper every day seemed, well, a little smarter and more informed than the rest of us. We would know to go to them for advice.

Is it me or have digital social media absorbed all other news into one giant Gossip Column? So and so says. Isn’t that terrible? Did you hear what so and so did? What else would you expect?

Newspapers don’t work well online. You start to read a headline story that sparks your interest , and then you are shuffled to other links based on some clandestine math formula…until you are through a rabbit hole of propoganda and micro-targeted ads just for you. Your so called “browser” is anything but…you are being tracked and steered and taken for a ride and a pick-pocketing.

Do you ever sit down with your shrink or go on a retreat for a few days…pause… and rethink your life? Do you try to decide what you should change and what you should continue? Do you forget what you should be thinking about? Do you forget to plan? Do you wait until your boss fires you or your wife divorces you before you think back or think ahead? Do you let life happen or do you actively engage? Do you need to become more entrepreneurial to make a living, do you want to travel, what books should you read, how do you find a mate? To think about this stuff means we have to thumb through the sections in our mind and think about how we are doing and where we want to go with it. I fear, unless this list is etched in our minds, we will just wander in the gossip column and nobody will ever plan anything, cooperate and play well with others, and get anything done.

When you sit down to plan your life, you have to run through the same checklists that organized that daily and weekly newspaper. You have to think about Romance, Family, Health, Wealth, Home, Car…..keep on thumbing. The problem is that we now have a whole generation that does not know the checklist. We are forgetting the questions we ought to be asking ourselves. Does anybody even use their thumbs anymore…except to text while driving? How do you think anything trough plan anything out of the gossip news online and on cable…except perhaps something wicked? People without a plan rarely win the game or even play good improvisational jazz. Everyday followers of St. Ignatius ask themselves a few questions before they go to bed, including “Where did I see God today?” Followers of late night social media are lucky to remember to ask themselves if they brushed their teeth.