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Where is the news leading us?

Norman Cousins (1915-1990)

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Background knowledgeThe author’s political view “Norman Cousins (1915 –1990) was an Americ

an political journalist, author, professor, and world peace advocate.” ----Wiki

“Cousins’ longstanding leadership as a global peacemaker is explored as well as envisioning a world within which peace and mutual respect could exist amongst all people & nations.”

“the legendary editor & author to explore the power of belief.”

----http://www.potentialsmedia.com/NormanCousins.html

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In a 1984 forum at the University of California, Berkeley entitled “Quest for Peace,” Cousins recalled the long editorial he wrote on August 6, 1945, the day the United States dropped the bomb in Hiroshima. Titled “The Modern Man is Obsolete,” Cousins, who stated that he felt “the deepest guilt” over the bomb’s use on human beings, discussed in the editorial the social and political implications of the atomic bomb and atomic energy. He rushed to get it published the next day in the Review, and the response was considerable, as it was reprinted in newspapers around the country, and enlarged into a book that was reprinted in different languages.

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Background knowledgeHis honor Cousins received the Albert Schweitzer Prize in

1990.

(It is a prize given to people who made exemplary contributions to humanity and the environment. The prize was established in 1986 by an international grain German merchant, Albert Toepfer. It is named after noted humanitarian and physician Albert Schweitzer)

Other prizes named after a person (known in the world)

尤金 · 史密斯人道主义摄影奖 (Known in China 鲁迅文学奖、茅盾文学奖 )

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His combat with his disease:

Told that he had little chance of surviving, Cousins developed a recovery program incorporating megadoses ( 大剂量 )of Vitamin C, along with a positive attitude, love, faith, hope, and laughter induced by Marx Brothers films.

"I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep," he reported. "When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval.“

his dignity as a tough fighter against his disease

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His notable quotes: "Death is not the greatest loss in life. The

greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."

"History is a vast early warning system.”

Question for discussion: how does such background relate to the the

me in the text?

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Structure of the text

The text can be divided into two major parts, with the author’s argument in the middle:

Part 1 from Para 1 to Para 8

Para 9 contains the author’s position

Part 2 from Para 10 to Para 13

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Part 1. 1. What is Cousins’s purpose in the first 8 para

graphs? 2. Has he successfully led his readers to his co

nclusive argument? How does he do that?3. His argument was presented in Para.9. Can

you identify it?The responsibility of the news media is to sear

ch out and report on important event---whether or not they come under the heading of conflict, confrontation, or catastrophe.

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How does he bring out his view point successfully?

He begins with a question to two journalists: why are the news papers and the television news programs so disaster-prone? (para.3)

He then judges their answers to be missing the point: he believes that it is not the responsibility of the journalists for the existence of negative news but ...

He thinks the reason lies with the definition of the term “news” (para.4-6)

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The concept of news Eruptive vs. non-eruptive Disasters vs. human progress which

happens only in bits and pieces. To the author: human progress contains

events worthy of coverage. (para.7-8)

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The last 4 paragraphs: Cousins strengthens his viewpoint by citin

g examples of what he considers positive developments of the world (para.10),

and calling attention to the responsibility journalists have for affecting the way people think and the role the media play in shaping the mind of the people. (para. 11-13)

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Detailed analysis

Line 5: The purpose of the symposium, as I understood it, was to scrutinize the obligations of the media and to suggest the best ways to meet those obligations.

[We need further information on this.]

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Professional Ethic Codes of the journalist

Public Trust ： their first obligation is to the public

- Understand that any commitment other than service to the public undermines trust and credibility.

- Recognize an obligation to reflect the diversity of the community and guard against the over simplification of the issues and events. On the contrary, they should provide a full range of information to enable the public to make enlightened decisions.

- Not libel others. 不损坏他人名誉 …… (to be continued in the discussion of Text II)

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Line 15-16 He was just wondering why distortions are

most reported. The news media seem to operate on the philosophy that all news is bad news.

Line 21 News is supposed to deal with happenings of

the past 12 hours-24 hours at most. Line 28 The most important ingredient in any

civilization is progress, which is not eruptive and comes in bits and pieces.

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Line 35-37 (Para.8)

“An unrelieved diet of eruptive news depletes (exhausts) the essential human energies a free society needs.”

Paraphrase: A continuous amount of negative news reduces the human potential that a free society is in need of.

Question: Why?

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Where is the negative news leading us?

An example: http://media.www.theeagleonline.com/media/storage/paper666/news/2004/04/22/Opinions/Negative.News.Dominates.The.Media-668163.shtml

In the past two weeks, the world has witnessed the desecration of the bodies of American citizens in Iraq and seen the terrified faces of kidnap victims of Iraqi insurgents. On any given day, one can open the newspaper and see that some guy murdered his wife, a mother is lacking food in an urban ghetto or a study appears saying AIDS infection rates are skyrocketing.

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I am a voracious （贪婪的） news reader, and even I cannot take the saturation of violence and other depressing stories in the news any longer. People that I have contact with have a perception that the world is going down the toilet （彻底没希望了） , but I believe it‘s not as bad as it may seem. This saturation( 浸润，渗透，饱和 ) of the news with violence and depressing stories is a mischaracterization of the world that is poisoning the minds of our children. They need to learn that for every bad and disheartening story, there are truly uplifting ones that go ignored every day. ……

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Line 55 (Para 11)We are only what we think we are; we can

achieve only those goals we dare to envision. News people provide us with the only picture we have of ourselves and of the world.

Different levels of understanding we/I and think

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1st: a religious understanding

Proverbs 23:7 states, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” “Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Or, as the Buddha said in the opening line of the Dhammapada （《句法经》） (1:1): “We are what we think. All that we are is the result of our thoughts.”

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2nd level: a philosophical understanding René Descartes (1596-1650)Descartes' most famous statement is:

Cogito ergo sum

French: Je pense, donc je suis;

English: I think, therefore I am; OR

I am thinking, therefore I exist.He has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philo

sophy," and much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which continue to be studied closely to this day.

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我思故我在意思是：“当我怀疑一切事物的存在时，

我却不用怀疑我本身的思想，因为此时我唯一可以确定的事就是我自己思想的存在”

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3rd interpretation: You are what you think you are:The implied meaning: your attitude

manipulate your way of doing things and your future achievements.

Your attitude influences how you relate yourself to the external world.

E.g.: Cousins’ own example of combating the serious disease: the power of belief

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L 60 (Para 12 ) The acquired culture is not transmitted in

our genes. The acquired culture (i.e., the good life in

a good society) can never be attained and possessed once and for all. It will not automatically be ingrained in our blood/our genetic system.

So, the wisdom of the good life in a good society needs to be transmitted through the media.

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Para 13 Bernard de Chartres (1080?-1167), suggested

that we used history — boosting ourselves up on our experiences : “like dwarfs seated on the shoulders of giants”

Humanist and philosopher, head of the celebrated school of Chartres, in France, whose attempt to reconcile the thought of Plato with that of Aristotle made him the principal representative of 12th-century Platonism in the West.

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Plato was the teacher of Aristotle.Aristotle once said: “Plato is dear to me, but de

arer still is truth” 吾爱吾师，吾更爱真理。Aristotle refutes Plato's Theory of Ideas on thre

e basic grounds: that the existence of Ideas contradicts itself by

denying the possibility of negations; that his illustrations of Ideas are merely empty

metaphors; and that the theory uses impermanent abstracti

ons to create examples of perception.

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Bernard is a Platonist and yet the representative of a " return to Nature " which curiously anticipates the humanism of the early Renaissance. John of Salisbury (Metalogicus, iv . 35) attributes to him two treatises, of which one contrasts the eternity of ideas with the finite nature of things, and the other is an attempt to reconcile Plato and Aristotle.

http://historymedren.about.com/od/bentries/a/11_bernardchart.htm

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Dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants (Latin: nanos gigantum humeris insidentes)

This is a Western metaphor meaning “One who develops future intellectual pursuits by understanding the research and works created by notable thinkers of the past”; a contemporary interpretation. However, the metaphor was first recorded in the twelfth century and attributed to Bernard of Chartres. It was famously used by the seventeenth-century scientist Isaac Newton .

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Central Concerns of Positive Psychology积极心理学关注的主要问题

PositivePsychology

Positive Institutions

Positive Individual Traits

Positive emotions

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Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment 《真正的幸福》

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Negative emotion always has the ability

to trump positive emotion

(Csikszentmihalyi) There seems to be an ideal ratio of positive

to

negative 3:1 for human flourishing

(Barbara Fredrickson)

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The high prevalence worldwide of depression among young people, the small rise in life satisfaction, and the synergy between learning and positive emotion all argue that the skills for happiness should be taught in school. (Seligman,2009)