Once in a Lifetime

I don't know about you, but I've had it up to here with once-in-a-lifetime events.

Katrina was once in a lifetime. The 2004 tsunami was once in a lifetime. This past year's wildfires were the worst blazes in living memory. Every other month seems to bring an epic rain or snow that is said to be the storm of the century. And don't get me started on the polar ice cap.

George W. Bush, the worst president in American history, will turn out to be, God willing, once in a lifetime, as will the officially sanctioned use of torture by American interrogators, the subjugation of the Justice Department by a bunch of right-wing twenty-something hacks, and the grotesque intervention of Congress into the Terry Schaivo case. If Dick Cheney isn't once in a lifetime, there is reason to doubt the existence of divine mercy.

The depth of the unfolding recession, for those who did not experience the Great Depression, is now forecast to be once in a lifetime. Bernie Madoff's breathtaking Ponzi scheme is - one can only hope - once in a lifetime. The demise of Lehman Brothers, founded in 1850, is once in a lifetime, as will be the extinction of Levitz, the 97-year-old furniture chain, and (as is plausible) of Dodge (b. 1914) and Kmart (b. 1962).

Until this recession, India and China were poised to overtake the U.S. economy, which would surely constitute a once-in-a-lifetime development, like the fall of communism, tobacco, butter, girdles and Esperanto.

The impending deaths of the print newspaper, the network evening news and the television networks themselves - like the prior deaths of the buggy, vaudeville and silent movies - are bound to be experienced as once in a lifetime. The demises of slide rules, typewriters, Polaroid instant cameras and VHS tapes each marked the end of an era. TV Guide is going the route of Colliers, The Saturday Evening Post, Look and Life; when either Time or Newsweek folds, its surviving competitor will doubtless send it off with a once-in-a-lifetime obit.

September 11th was once in a lifetime, unless you lived through Pearl Harbor. It is wishful thinking to imagine that the malicious explosion of a nuclear device is not in the world's foreseeable future, and if, kinahora, that happens, it will surely be labeled - optimistically - once in a lifetime.

On the upside, the election of a black American president is totally without precedent, and it is not inconceivable that a woman will eventually follow him to the White House, though if it's Sarah Palin, she stands a decent chance of wresting worst-ever laurels from Bush.

My discomfort at being crowded by this surfeit of once-in-a-lifetime happenings is partly about hype, and mostly about mental hygiene.

The mainstream news media have no vested interest in proportionality. With so many things competing for our attention, the only way for media-owning corporations to capture our eyeballs is to inflate everything to Armageddon dimensions. Every lurid local crime becomes a national melodrama; every flare-up on the planet is depicted as a precursor to World War III; every scandal is Watergate, or something else-gate. We are inundated with the Ten Worst This, and Ten Best That, while long-simmering atrocities truly deserving of notice, like Darfur or the tuberculosis pandemic, barely make it onto the radar screen.

No wonder the world has the jitters. We are daily assaulted by so much hyperbole that it is nearly impossible to know what is important any more. It is undeniable that we live in a time of big change, but if we did not also live in a time of big media, I am not convinced that we would experience our lives as a relentless onslaught of cliffhangers, crises and catastrophes.

To every thing, Ecclesiastes tells us, there is a season, but you wouldn't know it from the media, which know only one season, which is BREAKING NEWS. Real life has natural rhythms; it plays out on many stages, from the personal and private to the public and historical. But the culture of THIS JUST IN homogenizes those differences. Its imperative is to monetize our attention, and the easiest way to do that is to see as much as possible through once-in-a-lifetime lenses.

I don't mean to diminish the pain of the economic meltdown, or the significance of climate change, or the symbolic breakthrough of the Obama inauguration, or the dizzying transformations being wrought by technology. But it does no good for us as citizens if everything is as screamingly urgent as everything else, and it does no good for us as people if our nervous systems are constantly being bombarded by superlatives. How can our leaders set priorities, how will we ever agree on trade-offs, if public discourse only consists of capital letters? How can we linger in the intimacies and mysteries of existence, how will we truly know what's worth caring about, if shock and rupture is the only language our culture knows how to speak?

This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.

Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan

Comments

[daddysboy]

Very well said. Thank you.

[the-lexicon]

My favorite corollary to this is the now-obligatory line included in almost every report...

"...and this is the FIRST time the DJIA has hit these levels since two weeks ago..."

...as if to PROVIDE some kind of proportionality to the reportage. In actual fact, it NEGATES the proportionality of the story!

lexicon

[subdued]

Mr. Lexicon - Why the need to sign off on your comments when your name is already indicated at the top of your post?

Does this practice provide your comments with some sort of extra meaning?

[vegas9999]

Speaking of once in a lifetime. A man who is in charge or one of the people in charge of scrutinizing Fannie and Freddie is sleeping with a man who works for one of the two and donates money to his campaign receives less print then the amount of money spent on a vp candidates clothing bill. Think that will ever happen again?

[fedupwiththis]

Perspective and proportionality can be two of the blessings of advancing age. It is unfortunate that they elude so many of our fellow sojourners.

[tcagle]

Same as it ever was.

[GorBud]

If truth be told I am sick to death (ha Ha) of the extreme language used in everyday conversation especially when it comes to political conversations and writings. Everything is described in such extreme language that it leaves no room for description when something really extreme happens. All the outrage, disgust and moral depravity are used up. I for one have ceased to listen to or take seriously people who MUST venture to the outer reaches of language to describe political doings that are part of the give and take of the process. Newspaper people of limited talent, that includes most columnists, are forever trying to "chicken little" the hell out of some political story or personality. The next day they are on to something else as if yesterdays story of some outrage or another did not exist.

[USAFree1]

IT HAS GOTTEN SO BAD THAT I'VE ALMOST STOPPED WATCHING THE NEWS. However, I still go to too many news websites. That said, it's easier to read about the news THAN HAVE ALL THOSE TV DOLL BABIES SHOUTING IN MY EYES AND EARS. I was about to have a nervous breakdown over everything that goes on and on and on. I'm listening to music more, reading more books (2 non-fiction and 1 fiction), talking to real people, and laughing more (my husband and I watched Snow Dogs last night and laughed ourselves silly).

[GrainOSand]

A true once-in-a-lifetime event is one that could never happen again in a lifetime. You are right to point out all the many events once thought to be once-in-a-lifetime -- that have since been repeated in scale, influence, and profound meaning. There is a connection to events. Humans operate on one clock but the grand movements of what is (God, nature, the cosmos, happenstance) has no appointments or schedules to keep. When conditions are right for change, change will occur, either in the positive or the negative. Prognostication seems a futile endeavor for it is going to be what it is going to be no matter the fears and hopes expressed in soothsaying. We reflect as humans on our time and we look around us and within us to take an assessment of life. The culmination of many, once-in-a-lifetime events, may well lead to an event like none we have ever seen, all based on the synthesis of events making for the right conditions for change. There are known ingredients of disaster. There are proven steps for success. When you witness a dash of despair, a pinch of fear, a smidgen of hypocrisy, and a load of crap constantly being added to the pot, it is difficult resisting prognosticating disaster stew.

There is water in the glass, measurements of fullness mean nothing to parched lips. Therefore drink what is and except that there is only what is, not that postulated.

[citizensrus]

I'm addicted to superlatives, have been my entire life. I hate brussels sprouts, I love chocolate cake. Okay..this is hard, Marty. Ahem, "Good article. Nice." Ouch. It goes agains the grain not to say..GREAT­, FANTASTIC! Here's a quote from Willa Cather:
"It was a painful period in which I overcame my florid, exaggerated, foamy-at-the-mouth, adjective-spree period. I knew even then it was a crime to write like I did, but I had to get the adjectives and the youthful fervor worked off."

[Overd0g]

So what you're saying is that most urgent thing we can do is to stop being urgent.

[citizensrus]

"If Dick Cheney isn't once in a lifetime, there is reason to doubt the existence of divine mercy."
Classic.

[gojo]

The media seems to think that they must sensationalize every story in order to compete with the oversensat­ionalizing of the other stations in order to get us to watch. This is now the in mainstream and it's making people crazy with anxiety and stressing them out. We are ready to rip into anyone who does not agree with our opinion. My question to all is, how do we stop this mass hysteria train from exploding into violence? Maybe it has to in order for us to finally calm down, look around and realize that it's all going to be ok?

[Bongborg]

You are right, everyone is pretty stressed out. My recommendation is, everyone on the planet who is not at the moment engaged in delicate procedures should take a break at 4:20 PM tomorrow, and catch a really good buzz. I just did, and someone disagreeing with my opinion right now would mean exactly diddly squat to me, just like their own opinion would.

[grimus]

u have a new fan! Grimus

[libbygirl]

This is an absolutely superlatively written article. There can be no better! I'm thinking Pulitzer.

[filabac]

Good post and I agree, but that being said ..........­..........­..Oh Wait, There's BREAKING NEWS on CNN, I'll be right back

[RI]

Great post. The main stream media manipulators have learned that the ancient wiring of our nervous systems are most sensitive to any possible threats, so they pound away at us with stimulation of all types of "breaking" and "important" news and horrible crimes, etc. to be sure and get our attention. That way, the advertisers can do their own job

Even Huff Post does it with sensational headlines, but it is a lot better than the MSM at least.