Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 16, 1992 TAG: 9202170212
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: E3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARSHALL FISHWICK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
ELECTRONIC DARWINISM ONLY THE STRONG STORIES SURVIVE
ASTRONOMERS say they have discovered a black hole - way, way out - so vast and mysterious that it can swallow up planets, moons and even stars. They disappear forever in the limitless void. How this can be goes far beyond my understanding.But there is another smaller black hole - much closer to home. Where do all the headline stories, momentous events, international crises and global superstars go when they fall into their black hole of oblivion?
They laughed when Andy Warhol said that some day, everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. Has that day come? Do we have not only disposable diapers and shopping bags, but disposable events and people?
Southerners still speak of the War (Between the States) more than 126 years after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. Yet we seem to have forgotten - or at least shrugged off - the Gulf War that happened only a year ago. That struggle created what the media called "the greatest ecological disaster in history" when giant oil spills polluted the Persian Gulf. Have we heard anything about this "greatest disaster" lately?
What about the "titantic struggle" in Afghanistan? How do "liberated" Grenada and Panama fare, after our highly publicized invasions and victories? And what has happened to the liberated Falklands? The Sandinistas? The Kurds?
We know something of great significance happened recently in Bangladesh, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Yugoslavia - was that was before or after the Clarence Thomas hearing? Gorbachev's resignation? Super Bowl and the Star's story about Bill Clinton? Or was it about another candidate - you know, old what's-his-name?
Not only people but toys come and go like a thief in the night. Do you remember the days when our homes and hearts were filled with Cabbage Patch Kids? Then came G.I. Joe, to be pushed aside by Ghostbusters. Nothing could compete with video games - until the Mutant Ninja Turtles popped up from the sewers. Turtle sales surpassed $400 million in 1990 - but fell 40 percent in 1991. One large retailer, whose stores were crammed with unsold Turtles, put it this way: "Kids are finally getting Turtled out." Off Turtles went, not to the sewers but to the black hole.
All this reminds us of that memorable line in the commercial: "Where's the beef?" That feisty old lady, named Clare something-or-other . . . wait, didn't she die? Did the ad die with her?
Out of sight, out of mind - out of print, off the tube. "But where are the snows of yesteryear?" The French poet Francois Villon asked. Yesteryear? How about yesterday?
We seem to have a new undiagnosed malady on our hands: Information Overload. Too much information comes at us too quickly, and we don't know how to use or digest it. Gresham's Law states that bad currency will always drive good currency out of the market. Will bad (or at least trivial) news obscure or eliminate real news? What can we do, as information pours over us, night and day, in an endless stream? HELP!
Life in the '90s has put us on a media roller-coaster: ups and downs to take away our breath, our balance, our judgment. No use blaming the media, Congress, the president, the Japanese. Nor should we expect any quick fix from our pundits, pollsters and politicians - they are the problem, not the solution.
Instead, let us call on one of the intellectual giants of the last century, see how he dealt with overload and overkill, and how it applies to today's dilemma. Charles Darwin, can your views on evolution help us now?
Certain phrases sum up his theory. There was a "struggle for existence" resulting in "the survival of the fittest" through "natural selection of the `most favored races' " - races meaning not human races but the strains within a species. The "fittest" were those having the most useful characteristics and the "favored races" were the strains within a species having good survival powers.
Why not put our trust in Electronic Darwinism? Rather than curtail or restrict information, let it all flow - and then trust our great parents, Mother Nature and Father Time - to sort it all out. The silly and stupid will be discarded, the significant will be retained. In a democracy, we must trust the people to judge, as eventually they will.
The fact that so many stories, stars and "movements" disappear quickly may be a good thing: It leaves room for better and more enduring ones. Of course the process is confusing, and media magicians can fool some of the people all the time. But Lincoln was right: You can't fool all the people all the time. That is the safety valve built into Electronic Darwinism.
Speaking of Lincoln, he wrote his Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope. But the people knew it was worth preserving. They carved it on stone and enshrined it in their hearts. Thousands of other speeches, written on fancy paper and parchment, have disappeared.
So will most of the hype and rhetoric of the 1992 political campaigns. Already the Democratic "Six Pack" of presidential candidates has been reduced to five. (Wilder dropped out, Darwin's first victim.) Only one will emerge on the November ballot; and if he lacks the right stuff, he will join former candidates like McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis in the black hole.
But surely in other elections and in the fullness of time, a real leader - a Lincoln, Roosevelt or Kennedy - will emerge. Instead of raw information, we will be confronted with knowledge, and from that knowledge wisdom will emerge. It always has.
"If any of you lack wisdom," we read in the New Testament's Epistle of James, "let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not." Translated into secular language, that seems to be an endorsement of Electronic Darwinism.
Open all the doors, all the channels. Let those who will shout and rave. Time not only heals all wounds - it wounds all heels. We can count on it.