Why bad news pleases
Very intertesting points about good news / bad news. I would like to give the question another spin though, especially as my next post to this blog is going to be my last. (As you probably know, all the Freethinking blogs are going to be put to sleep shortly after the Freethinking Festival in Liverpool this weekend.)
The basic problem is this: most of us accept that on the whole the world is a better place now than it was a few decades ago or a few centuries ago, and yet when we consider day to day events, we are always inclined to think that more bad things are happening than good. So a form of prejudice seems to be at work here – another enemy of genuine freethinking: a prejudice in favour of bad news. How can we account for this prejudice?
I see what William Cope means when he says that people in power are always giving us false good news, and I understand the implication that we should welcome bad news because it restores the balance. But I do not quite agree: it seems to me that there are several forces at work – vested interests if you like – that tend to generate a prejudice in favour of bad news. Three in fact.
In the first place, powerful people have a lot to gain from accentuating the negative: dwelling, for example, on the downsides of single parenting, or driving too fast, or mass higher education. If you were competing for office in an organisation of some kind, you would be ill advised to campaign on the slogan ‘things are going from good to better’. It might be true, but it’s not what your constituency would want you to say. The operating conditions for British industry are not bad at the moment, but would the industrialists want the Director General of CBI to go round saying so? Trade Union members have experienced a steady improvement in wages and conditions, but are they going to vote for officers who turn this fact into a campaign theme? Most users of the National Health Service are more than pleased with their treatment, but no one would become a leader of the nurses, doctors or dentists if they promised to harp on about patient satisfaction. And as for teachers ... Conclusion: discontentment, not satisfaction, is the key to public influence, so people interested in positions of power have a vested interest in bad news.
But it is not just those holding or seeking power who like bad news; so too do people in the news business. Trouble and strife (as has been said in several earlier posts and comments on this blog) are more saleable than peace and progress, and nothing will sell like stories that embarrass the rich and powerful. Second conclusion: the media that bring us the news have a bias towards bad news too.
And what about us, as consumers of news? Do we want to hear how well things are going? William Cope is disgruntled with Gordon Brown for talking up the British economy, but what exactly is the problem? Of course there is an element of prejudice here: a Finance minister would be falling down on his job if he said the economy was in poor shape, rather like an Archbishop speaking disobligingly about God. But that's not the whole story. Politics is (as I pointed out in my last post) an art of comparison, and the fact is that Brown does his boostering not only by telling us good news, but also by reminding us of bad news (about rising oil prices for example, or the cost of switching to renewables, or about the predicament of other economies, or of Britain in earlier decades).
Which brings me back to what I have been saying about moral exhibitionism, or ‘prejudices of self-display’. The great Danish theologian S?ren Kierkegaard had it about right when he said that the reason why journalists are so good at selling us their gloomy ‘opinions’ is that in our heart of hearts we want the news to be bad. They know, as Kierkegaard put it, that there is nothing we like better than the opportunity
to swoon before what is vile – and then to imagine that we are superior
So there’s a third conclusion: our moral vanity gives us a vested interest in disasters: perhaps that’s the most fundamental reason why bad news pleases.
Mere speculation with no hard evidence to back it at all!
I see we're going out on a fizzle - just as I suspected - those damned philosphers have hijacked Guy Fawkes yet again!
As an explanation to what you have described as an endulgence in bad news, I would suggest that what we are experiencing now, though not a recent phenomenom by any means, but perhaps more peculiar now than ever before, is what is often descibed as a feeling of 'crushed hopes'. By this I mean that in the area which I think is most important for human contentment and stability I think that relative to the developemtns in modern society we have failed to attain what we all deep down hoped for.
Though are lives are undoubtedly better than they were many years ago, especially in terms of science and technology, life expectancy, and most qualities that are measurable, the developements of modernisation have not enriched our (and I use this term loosely) spiritual lives as much as it has other aspects (one may argue that it has actually suffocated this).
This can be viewed from many perspectives. Some argue that a corruption of culture has drained our lives. Another perspective may be a lack of developement in terms of human relations; which from a psycho analytical perspective could be understood as a result of an over complication of the relationship with the other (through the complication of intermediary devices) , which in turn has lead to an ever more insecure identity. Furthermore, though there is, socially, more intergration than there ever was, one cannot help but feel that we have in fact made little progress towards true justice, equality, tolerance and understanding. Values which I think are trurely universal.
One proponent of life on earth has suggested that there are really only three 'types' of people or personalities throughout the globe.
the light entities, the grey entities and the dark entities!
The lights are those with positivity, always look on the bright side - ignore the bad news as being irrelevant - bring a cheer to others.
The grey entities are the willy wobblely ones - oh I'm not sure what I am today - I was light yesterday but may be dark today or tommorrow. the fence sitters - I'll go with what I think is best for me today.
And then the darks - everything is negative - the world is doomed, I hate everyone and today I may kill someone just for fun!
Exagerations maybe but pretty cloose to reality.
maybe we all have a bit of all three in us but then on a day to day basis or even life time basis one of them is the dominant one!
I define myself as an 'infernal optimist' or an 'eternal optimist'
How about you?
And now for the good news - did you know that there is a version of the bible called 'the good news' version?
but seriously folks just in case the bbc doesn't think of asking us what we all thought about this little experiment I for one thoroughly enjoyed it for several reason:
1. it was an innovative thing for the beeb to do
2. it was a brave attempt to get people to think freely even though the beeb felt it still had to maintain some contorl
3. it introduced us to some interesting characters of free thinking in UK - I particularly enjoyed and appreciated the down to earth people like John and Margie - the grass root people with soul.
4. it suggested an option for future communications on the internet - it would be good to continue in some similiar form
5. It also taught the 'gurus' some self restraint - how to listen to the masses without pressing the panic button
well done the beeb!! a brave experiment that should be repeated - and we promise to remain as challenging and controversial as we have been so far!
For radio listeners the festival is not quite over and I especially commend playwright Mark Ravenhill's talk (broadcast just after eight last night for listeners-again).
Bad News pleases because we live in a terrible society.
I agree that there is a pleasure that we derive from bad news, but I'm not so sure that the news of it is all bad. It seems to me that one of the intensest pleasures we experience is that of being required to make a difference, being needed by something outside ourselves: and it's that pleasure that bad news excites and - at least, potentially - activates for good.
It's not true, for instance, that just any kind of bad news will do; for the debilitating effects of bad news about which we feel nothing can be done are familiar to us all. But bad news about which we feel something ought - even must- be done is (whisper it...) invigorating and pleasurable.
So, for instance, we twist and contort the news about global warming into a form which can be received as a stimulus to activity. In this example, the activities it gives rise to may be trivial or misplaced; but in other examples, they may well result in the world becoming, however, tentatively or haltingly, a better place. So it seems ot me that what we need to look at more closely is the kind of bad news we get, and the likely or possible ways in which it might exploit our well-disposed responses.
There is another even simpler explanation and that is bad news makes those that feel comfortable and are not part of the bad news smugly better.
So for example when we see a dreadly calamity - like for example the destruction of Lebanon recently, we can reel with horror at it all, even exclaim protest and send money, but we also feel comfortable that it hasn't happened to us.
So in a deep perhaps freudian way - other peoples bad news makes us feel we are better off
well I think we've put the bad news to bed - thank goodness for that - the pessimists are obviously out numbered by the optomists in this world and so they should be!
You can take your bad news and shove it up the nearest drain!
For what reason do some of you automatically assume that life is better now than it was in the past? That is not something that can be tested as we cannot talk to dead people. We cannot go back in time or they be brought to the future to make a comparison. Your position in society at a specific time also has a great effect. Talk to a Roman slave and then spend a weekend as a Roman in his villa, who do you think is the happiest? We can look back in history and make a judgement but it is all relative and impossible to really answer.
I would think that life in Europe during the early wood era when we still had trees and not many people was not to shabby. To have been an Earl or Duke in the middle ages with a local village to pillage every now and again would also have been fun so it matters as to where one is or was in society, I would say the very wealthy are having a blast right now and except during the French revolution seem to have the best of things past & present. The other classes are working their asses off and facing technological redundancy in the future..not so much fun.
Re those early days of Europe again. It was a time before cities, when there was no class system or slavery, we hunted, traded goods & skills to live, had little use for money and lived in small social groups. Funny they call it the Dark ages I think it would be more apt to call it the Happy ages.
Happy periods also lead into horrible periods and vice versa. The end of happy Europe was when the trees ran out, we moved into cities, the population exploded, got greedy, starved and died of terrible plagues. It took a starving Scots man to find black rocks that would burn for heat to solve that one!
One sobering thought. I am a 47 year old Englishman in America and I have not had to suffer through hardly any bad times....lucky indeed! I believe we have had a record run of relative peace and life improvements. Hold onto your hats as the pendulum will swing back. I hope later than sooner. My fingers are crossed that my children will be so lucky. The accelerating rate of technological innovation coming in next 25 yrs offers some hope and tremendous challenges for them to control. A rate of change 6 to 7 times greater than ever before. That is like going from the middle ages to today in 25 yrs. They better hit the study books hard.
You can have some of the people happy all of the time but you cannot have all of the people happy all of the time. In fact maybe for one group to be happy we need to make another miserable. That is human nature and it evolves slowly.
"Second conclusion: the media that bring us the news have a bias towards bad news too."
Not so fast. Today, the media are largely parts of commercial corporations that sell audiences to other corporations. If anything, they stand to benefit from putting the audience in a state where they are focussed on their own needs and wants and the importance of consumption.