Musings

[tinyjo]

I read the news section of the Guardian on Monday for the first time in, oh gosh, ages. It was quite interesting in the end. I see that teenagers these days are more unhappy and mentally unstable and wondered whether it was linked to a finding I read recently in Scientific American about how increase of choice can lead to increase in unhappiness. These days there are so many choices to make even at that age and so many ways to fail - it seems like there's more pressure these days. There were some interesting articles about the positions of Blair and Bush and their implications for the institution of democracy.

The reason for this was that I was travelling back from Wakefield on the train, which gives you plenty of time to browse. I tried to tune into Radio 4 but couldn't get any signal. In fact there were no signals at all except for the silence at 93.15, which I can always get anywhere in the country. What is that about? About half an hour before I got home I remembered you could listen to the radio by plugging into the socket between the seats, which is fine except that it cuts out for station announcements and stuff about the buffet car, which is extremely annoying. Also, why is it that every ticket collector has a different type of ticket stamp or puncher? What's the system?

Comments

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

"...wondered whether it was linked to a finding I read recently in Scientific American about how increase of choice can lead to increase in unhappiness"

and there was me thinking, "crap diets, no sleep, student loans" !

The obvious thing to do is to obtain matched hordes of teenagers and experiment on them (ignoring their cries of, "Get away from me, you horrible old woman!").

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

student loans

It was done on 15 year olds so less likely to be that one by then. Still, the other two would definitely apply.

Or....

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

perhapsthe lesson is "don't read the news in the Guardian...?"

Sorry, that's facetious; and there may be quite a lot in the choice/unhappiness/teenagers linkage; but the Grauniad has an unerring way of pointing at The Ills of the Modern World which to my mind makes it in fact a little bit reactionary. Taking an historical perspective - and not denying how terrifying the 20th century was, and the how scary the present is - there is much to be thankful for which most of the print media take for granted, whether to slag it off or praise it.

For actual news, in print, I now rely on The Week, which does a good job of sampling from All Points of View. This supplements R4 and the World Service. Are you a WS listener?

And don't forget, for all that Bush and Blair are blue meanines, in their ways, they AREN'T Pol Pot or Stalin (to name a few). The UK and the US have elections. All the deaths in Iraq, and all the uncertainty the US/UK policies have reintroduced to the forefront of world politics, have to be stacked up against the millions of deaths and vast, vast uncertainties imposed on the world by other dictators whose people had no chance whatsoever of changing their leadership.

Re-read The Gulag Archipelago or The Killing Fields.

Re teenagers: grownups have to exert choices for their children. There have always been crappy, no-hope, stark choices for 14 year olds to make, and our society as a whole (IMHO) needs to make it clear that choosing GCSEs and romantic partners is a doddle compared to choosing between working 14-hour days in a factory, finishing shirts at home for a penny a dozen, or prostituting oneself for shillings and gin, as many young girls in 1900 did (see Clementina Black's Married Women's Work, originally ?1919, republished by Virago).

erm, I'll get my coat....