023 - Refusing to Amuse Myself to Death
Two months into my "No News Year" and wouldn't you know, it's working!
My elderly roommates who look uncannily like seventy-something versions of me and — odder still — share my surname recently returned home from a winter weather reprieve in Florida. With them came roaring back the klaxon blare of MSNBC punditry from every TV in the house during all hours of the day. Morning Joe, Midday Jansing, Evening Ari, After Dark O’Donnell… I’d be lying if I said they were missed.
In my month of suburban solitude, I experienced nothing short of eternal conscious ecstasy NO CAP. My personal enrichment flourished, thanks to daily walks with Buscemi on my leash and Michael A. Singer in my ears. I caught up with a dozen different friends for a beverage and/or meal. I celebrated an upstate 50th and a surprise Brooklyn 40th. I met a brilliant, gorgeous, spirited woman (and fellow writer!) in the unlikeliest of places (a dating app!!!). Our first date? The surprise 40th, followed by grilled cheese and tomato soup at an abjectly empty diner and a throwback hip-hop dance party at a bowling alley. Shawty got low (but you KNOW I got lower!!!!).
My creative output and overall productivity reached an all-time high, as I published eight essays and two podcast episodes to this here Substack (and recorded three other eps for future publication). I edited and posted nine different videos between my Instagram and TikTok pages. I performed my first ever fully improvised stand-up set. I hosted Topps Rip Night at Bleecker Trading with Fanatics owner Michael Rubin and prepared an incredibly fun live event with a pioneering fintech brand that you’ll be hearing about (and maybe even participating in) very soon. I listed several new pieces to the Quiz Daddys IG and my eBay page and scanned several dozen hand-written letters from former Major League Baseball players that I’ll be publishing on Opening Day and sprinkling into the ‘Stack throughout the season.
Oh, and I co-founded a multinational corporation.1
It just so happens this month of unbridled bliss, enthusiasm, and fecundity coincided with the first month of Trump Part Deux. How was I able to achieve such an elevated state of wholeness and abundance despite what I can safely assume was a daily horrorshow broadcast by the news media as they frothed at the mouth relaying the latest egregious lie, outrageous sound byte, or dangerous policy initiative?
Simple: I wasn’t watching.
For the entirety of my caretaking tenure of Chez Rogowsky, the televisions sat in silence; mute objects of curiosity without any discernible purpose or obvious aesthetic appeal. Did I find myself reflexively reaching for the remote during dinner? I’m only a man! But my willpower won out, and with victory came this startling discovery: food tastes better when I pay attention enough to taste it.
The New York Times was habitually retrieved from the driveway each morning and unbagged over coffee, but I chose to skim over the redundant A section (“Things Were Bad Yesterday, Likely Continuing into Today, Chance of Being Worse Tomorrow”) for brighter pastures in Arts, Sports, Science Tuesdays and Thursday Styles. And once it was announced Pete Alonso was yet a Met for at least another two seasons, I was hit with another shocking epiphany: there was nothing else I absolutely needed to know.
I had written about my Personal Project 2025 the week of Trump’s inauguration in a piece titled “Good News Is No News,” outlining my strategy of self-preservation for the new year and beyond. I wanted to follow up with this piece (the one you’re reading right now!) to further elaborate on my philosophy, which I humbly admit has been significantly influenced by Neil Postman and his landmark work of cultural criticism Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985). I had read the book some years ago but reingested it aurally at the top of this year, along with his 1992 technophobic treatise Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, a cautionary polemic that has proven itself uncomfortably prescient three decades on.
In dissecting the very concept and purpose of “the news” while tracing the technological advancements throughout history that shaped its content with each newly invented form of its consumption (aka, the medium is the message), Postman, aiming his critical laser at the contemporary scourge of cable television, made the compelling argument that the extremely high quantity of information (24/7 international news cycles) paired with its extremely low quality of delivery (a fast-moving, visually-distracting conveyer belt of decontextualized stories given a few seconds of attention at a time) was, in a metaphorical but no less serious sense, killing us — and he made it 40 years ago.
In Amusing’s chilling foreword, Postman compares the dystopian visions put forth by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Brave New World (1932), respectively. Orwell’s frightening picture of the future was painted with the brushstrokes of authoritarian oppression and tyrannical power, “a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” But in Huxley’s prediction, as Postman explains, “people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” He continues (with my own emphasis added):
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Contrasting his experience of living in 1984 and with Orwell’s imagining of 1984 Postman felt Huxley’s vision was more accurate. Contrasting my experience of living in 2024 to Postman’s pre-mobile social media experience of existence,2 I would gild his lily and say that in today’s terminally online society, not only does the truth float lifeless and bloated, lapping facedown against the rocks, having been drowned in a vast social media ocean of irrelevance, but the truth has become one with irrelevance. Truth is itself irrelevant. Those who choose to engage with social media platforms are endlessly bombarded with infinite bits of news, each with its own truth to discern. Those infinite truths are the very droplets of water that form the sea of irrelevance.
The only thing that each of us can know to be truly true — regardless of any dictatorial decree or any further tech-enabled erosion of trust in our institutions — is how we feel in a given moment. And all I know is that I feel healthier, happier, kinder, friendlier, more loving and more productive when I’m not hearing about the latest unvaccinated child to die of measles or Trump’s brilliant new plan to repeal climate policy I can’t do anything about the child, I can’t do anything about the policy, and now I’m depressed and anxious and I’m going to zone out and binge Severance and Ben & Jerry’s and jerk off to my Instagram Explore page and HEY THIS SOUNDS FUN!
Therein lies the rub, for it is fun to eat ice cream and masturbate, if perhaps a bit messy (especially when attempted simultaneously), and lord knows I have many fond memories of making really big messes. But if I’m being honest in my recounting of that lifestyle, the moments that came after finishing off the pint (and finishing myself off) were pretty, pretty, pretty… miserable. The memories associated with cleaning up those messes aren’t so fun; shame spirals and pity parties, existential dread and creative lethargy, wasted hours, wasted days, full on benders of self-recrimination, negativity, and doubt.
My truth has me feeling a kindred spirit to Henry David Thoreau who in Walden (1854) observed the following about the paradigm shifting technology of his own time:
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. . . . We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.The telegraph was the first mass medium to provide “context-free information:” news from nowhere for no one in particular. It was promulgated only because it was possible, existing purely for the sake of its own novelty — novelty which quickly became mistaken for relevancy. In the nearly 200 years since Samuel Morse sent the ur-Tweet, and especially in the lightspeed acceleration of the 20 years since Mark Zuckerberg launched TheFacebook, “the news” has only further degraded, becoming at once incoherent, irrelevant, and impotent; a torrent of unsubstantiated ‘facts’ pushing other purported ‘facts,’ as Postman describes, “into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation.”
My truth is, since turning off the news and tuning into myself, I’ve been living my best life. And I simply felt like sharing that with you, dear reader.
One of my dear readers, a newly acquired acquaintance (and fellow Tribesperson which I only mention because… well, you’ll see), didn’t approve of my personal feelings in a personal essay, and sent me this text:
Now this was news to me. I didn’t remember telling anyone to do anything in my “Good News is No News” piece. To be doubly sure, I just reread it, and… yep, I didn’t: I merely shared my personal decision to ignore the news and my belief that no matter how grim things may seem — or how long they may have seemed that way — there has always been and will always be an equal and opposite instance of divine glory or beauty occurring elsewhere in the universe. In short, my piece was an affirmation of my belief in the sacred cosmic balance recognized by ancient schools of thought as yin-yang (and by Upper West Siders as the Black & White Cookie).
Despite her reading miscomprehension, I understand the drive behind her comment and am able to hold compassionate space for her brusque reaction. She and I, as “Semites” with inherited trauma from hundreds of generations of ostracization and attempted eradication, share an instinctive vigilance for perceived persecution and an internal, personal security system that sounds the alarm at the slightest hunch of history repeating itself.3
When news like that of migrants being detained at a notorious offshore torture prison trips her security wires — resonant as they may seem with The Third Reich’s treatment of its Jewish citizenry — she feels it irresponsible, perhaps even immoral, to bury one’s head. I imagine she would contend that if everyone ignored every atrocity, evildoers would run rampant and the world would quickly mutate into a literal living hell. Hitler would have won, along with Mussolini and Tojo and Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot and Fidel and Slobodan and Saddam and Bin Laden and Hamas and…
First, to reassert the spiritual truth of yin-yang and its stubborn insistence in the perfect harmony of all creation, I hold firmly to the belief that evil is cosmically and karmically accounted for. As long as there is a single atrocity at any rate of atrociousness occurring at any point along the space-time continuum, a righteous opposition is inevitably rising to meet it.
If a fifth grader pushes his classmate out of the way to be first in line for kickball, that opposition could appear as the pushed child pushing back, bystanders stepping up in his defense, and/or an authority figure intervening and meting out justice. If an illegal proxy war is waged by an imperial government halfway around the world from its own borders, that opposition could appear as citizens marching in the streets, students occupying campus buildings, soldiers refusing orders, and/or draftees evading service.
But let’s examine why that fifth grader — let’s call him Donald — feels the need to push in the first place. You and I will never know the exact nature of Donald’s motivations, not only because his existence is hypothetical, but because none of us can access the inner life of another. “To thine own self be true,” and only Donald can know his own true self. Regardless of exactly what triggered his hostility, it’s fair to say its triggering was a result of environmental stimuli hitting Donald’s psyche, interacting with the psychological and emotional residue of his past experiences (aka trauma), and causing a disturbance that manifested outwardly in his belligerent behavior. The internal reacted to the external, igniting a spontaneous combustion of aggression.
Donald will grow up, creating new experiences while countering stimuli that agitate old ones. One day he will become a man, perhaps a politician, perhaps a world leader, and perhaps he’ll respond to an alleged immigration crisis with policies grounded in the same harshness and hostility he displayed on the kickball field. Until Donald works through his “stuff,” makes peace with his personal past, and removes the blockages at the root of all his behavioral disturbances, he will remain a miserable putz, taking out his inner anger on the outer world and making life miserable for others.
As I hope you realize by now, Donald is a stand-in for… every single human being on this planet. Until we all find inner peace, there will never be world peace.
BUT ENOUGH OF THAT HIPPIE SHIT…
Working through one’s “stuff” is by no means limited to the former schoolyard bullies who grew up to become the reactionary apparatchiks at the forefront of our present politics. Wouldn’t you know, the hippies have work to do, too.
As transcribed in Philip Kapleau’s seminal collection of Buddhist philosophy The Three Pillars of Zen (1965), Zen master Yasutani-Roshi, in responding to his student’s concern that her zazen practice had made her insensitive to the suffering of others, allowed the following frank appraisal of the do-gooder:
People who think of themselves as kind-hearted and sympathetic are truly neither. There are many people who spend all their time giving aid to the needy and joining movements for the betterment of society. To be sure this ought not be discounted, but their root anxiety, growing out of their false view of themselves and the universe goes unrelieved, gnawing at their hearts and robbing them of a rich, joyous life.
Those who sponsor and engage in such social betterment activities look upon themselves – consciously or unconsciously – as morally superior, and so never bother to purge their minds of greed, anger, and delusive thinking.
But the time comes, when having grown exhausted from all their restless activity, they can no longer conceal from themselves their basic anxieties about life and death. Then they seriously begin to question why life hasn’t more meaning and zest. Now for the first time, they wonder whether, instead of trying to save others, they ought not to save themselves first.Part of the homework I was required to complete before embarking on my personal transformation retreat last summer was an investigation of my negative patterns of behavior that I either learned from or adopted in reaction to my parents’ actions and attitudes. Lo and behold, moral superiority was a biggie! Growing up the son of a JFK acolyte and proud proponent of American liberalism who served 13 years in county government as the only honest politician this side of Jed Bartlett, I was raised with a rigorous sense of righteousness and respect for the law.
My self-imposed Scared Straight program kept me from drinking, drugging, or engaging in any troublesome activity that might get the Rogowsky name in the local paper for the wrong reasons — and if it wasn’t an article on the fight to lower Port Chester’s sewer taxes or opposition to the county airport’s expansion, it was the wrong reason.
My parents also influenced my political activism, each having regaled me with tales of their own youthful expressions of resistance: Dad joining a busload of fellow students headed to an anti-war demonstration in Washington; Mom boycotting grapes in solidarity with Cesar Chavez and stumping for George McGovern. My activism took me to New Hampshire, volunteering for Gen. Wesley Clark’s 2004 presidential primary run. It took me into the streets of New York City for the People’s Climate March and Black Lives Matter protests. It inspired me to boycott Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman when considering my holiday shopping.
But the retreat and the daily inner work I’ve done in the nine months since has helped me identify my patterns and see them for what they are — bullshit. I’m no better than anyone else. I don’t have all the answers. I have no right to tell others they are wrong. There is no “right way” to live as my parents well-meaningly tried to impress upon me; rather, we each find our own way, whatever way works us.
Just because one decides to tune out the news doesn’t mean one is turning a blind eye to suffering or injustice. Just because I am unaware of a particular government policy doesn’t mean I am not driving my friend to the airport, as I did on Friday, or raising money for the Los Angeles Food Bank, as I’m doing with proceeds from my vintage clothing business, or picking up trash from my neighbors’ lawns as I walk my dog each morning. Just because I’ve identified having a savior complex as an emotionally unhealthy, negative pattern doesn’t mean I don’t have empathy.
I am secure in myself as a generous, caring, and kind human being, and because I’m choosing to feed my head with Michael A. Singer and give my attention to my own spiritual growth instead of ingesting a ceaseless flow of toxic junk news about things I have absolutely no control over, I have more mental energy to think about the things I can control, like how I can show up in my community and positively impact those around me. They say all politics is local; so is compassion.
Yasutani-Roshi continues:
It is not selfishness to forget about saving others and to concentrate only on developing your own spiritual strength, though it may seem to be. The solemn truth is that you can’t begin to save anybody until you yourself have become whole through the experience of self-realization.I do not watch the news. I do not doomscroll. I do not identify with a self-concept of needing to be the defender of every victim and the savior of all 8.3 billion people in the world. This is not the “right way” to live; it’s purely my way, and it’s working for me. I think deeply, I care strongly, I create abundantly, and I exist happily.
No one needs to tell you that you are free to do the same.
UPDATE: The immigrant detention plan that raised the hackles of my distressed Semitic friend in January seems to already be falling apart in March under the weight of its own impracticability. I am as unsurprised by this information as I would be to learn that she has forgotten all about it, having since cycled through a hundred other outrages… God Bless!
Lots more on this to come, but for now… staying stealth for our health (and future wealth!?)
Postman died in 2003 — before the founding of Facebook, the introduction of the iPhone, and the latest (and most destructive?) wholesale upending of the cultural/media paradigm — but if he were alive today, he’d probably kill himself.
More to come on the subject of my self-realized relationship with Judaism in future a post!