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Carrion Luggage
Carrion Luggage
 
Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem.
This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it.
It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans.
It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier."
I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination.
September 10, 2025 at 8:06am September 10, 2025 at 8:06am
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Here's a source I've never linked before: Zocalo Public Square.
I have other addictions, so I'm not trying to shame anyone here, but: how hard is it to just... not? From what I've been seeing in non-scrolling media, it would be easier to quit smokes or smack.
Their attention has been captured, but not by anything in particular, not really, they say. Like a lot of us, my students are chronic doomscrollers.
You know what it reminds me of? Back in the days when it was cable or nothing (and I chose "nothing"), I'd go visit someone or I'd be sharing a hotel room, and the remote comes out, the TV fires up, and then it's click... click... click... click... click... click... just constant shuffling through channels, without resting on any of them long enough to absorb any information, just click... click... click... click... I seriously considered trying to invent and market a device that scrolled through cable TV channels by itself, hovering on each one for some user-defined interval between 15 and 120 seconds, but that would take away the clicker's illusion of control.
And, like a lot of us, they’re miserable as a result.
Are they? Or were they miserable before, and doomscrolling helps? It's important to point causality in the proper direction.
And those misery machines are hard to turn off, by design.
I'm pretty sure that's meant metaphorically, but my phone enraged me a couple of months back. I went to literally turn it off, which is usually a long-press of a side button. You know what those forkwads did? They reprogrammed the long-press to summon the AI "assistant."
Yes, I was able to change it back in Settings. But I shouldn't have to.
Developers engineer our phones and apps to capture and keep our attention, to make us “lose time” by mindlessly moving from app to app. This design attacks us where we’re most vulnerable by taking advantage of our innate need to scan our environment for threats.
Hm. Perhaps it really is today's version of channel-surfing. I have some skepticism about the implied evolutionary psychology interpretation, though.
Spending all of that time on our misery machines “cultivates” our reality, making us think that the world itself is miserable—which is what media scholars like George Gerbner call “Mean World Syndrome.”
Thus leading to a barrage of misinformation like "crime rates are up" when they're actually down, which in turn leads to more misery as the military moves in to control everyone.
But there may be hope. The best way to disrupt the recursive loop of doomscrolling is to be more intentional about our media use.
Or, you know, figure out how to turn the phone off.
Instead of doomscrolling, we should hopescroll—looking for positive news, not threats. I asked my communication and journalism students to try it this year by creating class social media accounts devoted to sharing positive news.
I prefer notscrolling, but if it helps, it helps.
Unfortunately, most positive news these days reads like orphan-crushing machine stories. 
The engagement with our accounts—across all social media platforms—was so pathetic, in fact, that I considered canceling the assignment. Stories of progress and problem-solving don’t get a lot of attention or engagement, alas.
Stevie Wonder could have seen that coming.
But you gotta try, or you're just being cynical like me. Don't be cynical like me. Be cynical like yourself.
Many students reported that they shared what they learned with their roommates, on their family chat groups, and in conversations with random folks throughout their week. They liked having something positive to talk about, and they found that folks wanted to hear about the good news.
So, they wanted to hear the good news in meatspace, but continued to doomscroll in cyberspace? People are weird.
One student reported that shifting their attention away from “institutions that benefit from people’s fear” and toward “those who aim to heal” made them feel more resilient. Several students noted that they saw a shift in their moods that surprised them: “Honestly, I did not expect that much would change, however, after reading about communities working together for a large cause, individuals trying to make a difference in their own way, and new innovations being made in hopes of creating a better future, it readjusted my perspective that not all is bad and/or lost in the world.”
Cynical or not, I can appreciate that.
In keeping with the article's theme, it concludes with a what-you-can-do-about-it section.
Look, I'm not trying to add to the doom. Not today, anyway. Nor am I ragging on the article or its premise. I hope that it helps someone. |
© Copyright 2025 Robert Waltz (UN: cathartes02 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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