I tend to think of myself of a fairly well informed and kind of intelligent person.  I know a lot about the past.  Well, I know a lot compared to the average American, which really is not saying that much.  I have a B.A. and M.A. in history.  Yet, despite what some people believe, just because I studied history it does not mean that I know everything that has happened in the past.  Metaphorically, if my knowledge of the past could be represented by the books in the Library of Congress, my knowledge might encompass one or two shelves of books and the rest of the books in the library would be everything that I do not know.  Perhaps, I know a bit more than a couple of book shelves. But, I was also blessed with a learning disability called disnomia, which essentially means that my brain has a faulty filing system. Again a metaphor is appropriate.  My brain is like a file cabinet with a lot of manila folders in it, but the manila folders have no labels and are not filed with rhyme nor reason, they are just placed in the cabinet.  Therefore finding the information can often be very difficult.  Very often when I see someone that I know and they say hello to me, I do not address them by there name.  I often think that I am being rude, but the reality is that I just can not recall their name. This is despite that fact that I have know them for years.  It is not later that their name will pop into my head.  When I thought I used to tell my students at the beginning of the year that If I was trying to remember George Washington name, I would be able to remember such things as the fable about him chopping down the cherry tree, that he fought in the French and Indian War, and that he was the first elected president of the United States, but I will not be able to remember his name.

But I digress.  Why is ignorance bliss?

I like to stay informed about what is going on in the world and the United States.  I am not a cable news junkie.  I think cable news is crap.  All noise and very little  substance.  The real news (the part that is not loaded with a plethora of talking heads)  that these channels present is filled with short and sweet snippets that has no analysis.  Also, their choice of what is newsworthy often dumbfounds me.  Recently, the Coke brothers, those oil industry moguls who back conservative candidates and conservative issues, funded a review of the global warming issue, which many conservatives which they support and have been claiming is nothing more than nonsense and  an attempt by the liberals at a hot-button issue  and their scientific (and evil because many challenge christian beliefs) cohorts. The study concluded that global warming is real.  Well, the day that this report was released also happened to be the day that McDonald's released its McRib.  Now, this is really important news.  It is a annual favorite, made of a pork-like substance, which millions of overweight Americans scoff down by the millions. Us Americans are in awe of the McRib--how do the wizards at McDonalds create a piece of meat that appears to still have the deceased pig's ribs in it, but when you bite in it is rib bone free amazes us every year.  Why shouldn't  the reintroduction of the McRib be much more news worthy than the Coke Report.  Every cable news channel should cover this event in great detail--maybe have a reporter outside holding and eating a McRib and interviewing costumers on their McRib experience.  The Coke report will just have to fend for itself.  I am digressing again.

I tend to get my news from several places. I love the Daily Show and more recently I have been watching the Colbert Report.  These shows are just funny, and they most importantly cut through the bulls%$t presented by cable news.  They are very found of Fox News, but do not hesitate to go after any station that acts like an idiot. This is where I learned about the McRib story.  I also listen to the BBC, and a lot of Public Radio shows.   I often listen to them in podcast form lately, because I just don't have the time to listen when they air.   And, I also read, read, read--books (mostly non-fiction) and magazines such as Atlantic Monthly, Wilson Quarterly, National Geographic, and Harper's.

The problem with reading a lot and listening  to the radio so much is that I get a large dose of reality--finally I am to the real point of this post.

The economy sucks.  And, it is not just in the United States.  It sucks around most of the world.  I live this reality every day.  I am severely underemployed.  There are not too many grocery clerks out there with eight years of college. So, I do not want to hear about how the economy is going to get worse, better, or stay the same in the coming months.

When the economic meltdown happened in 2008 I was all for keeping myself informed.  Yet, the longer the recession lasted the less I wanted to listen.  One reason is that I think that most of the people that are predicting what the economy is going to do in the short term or long term have their head up their ass.  None of them saw the crash coming, or they were making so much money that they did not care if the rest of us got screwed.  To be fair there were a few that tried to warn Washington that a crash was eminent, but the idiots (and by idiots I mean Congress) choose not to listen.  Brooksley Born, who was featured in a Frontline episode tried to warn Congress and others, but no one listened.  So, my point is why should I listen to people that claim that they can predict the future.  One of the podcasts that I do listen to, Freakanomics, did an entire show on these soothsayers, and came to the conclusion that these over educated visionaries are terrible at predicting the future.

The other reason that I choose not to listen,  despite an understanding that no one can predict the future, is that listening to or reading a story about how the economy is going to suck for a long time just depresses me, and hearing the bad news over and over again becomes very tiring.

So, I choose to just remain ignorant.  I do not listen nor do I read articles about the bad economy.  Although I think that" ignorant" is not really the right word, since as I noted most stories are attempting to predict what the economy will do, and no one can predict the future.  So, I cannot be ignorant of something that has not happened.  I will listen to stories that try to explain what happened to the economy--I need to know who I should direct my anger toward.

Instead, I try to focus on the positive.  I have a job--which to me is barely a positive.  I hate my job, and the one thing that I really like about it (working with nice people) is quickly fading away.  So, instead I focus on the fact that my minimum wage job supplements my wife's income.  It allows us to go on vacations.  It helps that we are very content on doing our vacations on the cheap--usually camping.  We would like to go on a grand vacation such as Europe or Alaska, but we are content with a week in the woods.  We are also able to get through life with the necessities, and little extra every once in awhile.  If I focus on this and not on all of the peripheral stuff, I tend to remain pretty content.  Every once in awhile the outside forces itself into my life and I become discontent. These episodes are becoming rare, and I am working hard to keep it that way.

Enjoy life,

Peter