Saving Rush

"And what is right speech? Abstaining from lying, from divisive speech, from abusive speech and from idle chatter: This is called right speech."A - Thanissaro Bhikkhu

I'm worried about Rush. Not only does he act like a guy who really needs a hug, but if you've seen him lately, he also looks like a guy who needs a transfusion and a working defibrillator on his desk. It may be that Rush's heart is just two sizes too small or that it's too late to prevent him from rotting on the inside, but it may not be too late for you. Heed me, if you spend time listening to Rush or any of the media talking heads or print journalists spawned from the same Dark Forces, you are circling the health equivalent of a black hole, my friend. Your well-being will be sucked in and obliterated and none of your light will escape.

I've got nothing against Rush Limbaugh, per se. He's just a showman, an entertainer, who is, I think, secretly surprised that anyone buys his shtick. I watched Rush back in the early 90s when he was gaining some buzz and a legion of loyal followers. I tuned in to a few of his broadcasts filmed in front of an audience and remember being fascinated by how he played the crowd of rabid malcontents. Sure, he was offensive, but I could see him digging deep into his bag of tricks to give his fans exactly what they craved. Outrageous slander, cruel and vituperative commentary, acidic cynicism and flagrant anti-intellectualism. Rush spewed and viewers went wild.

In my mind, I could just picture Rush going home at night to water his orchids, walk his King Charles spaniels and put Gilberto Gil on his stereo. Although I don't get a lot of support for my theory, I suspect that underneath that cloak of darkness is a sweet guy who has made poor choices.

He reminds me of the smart husky kid in your high school class who made girls recoil and appeared clammy to the touch. Guys like Rush couldn't get the sort of attention that they craved and compensated by being the blaring mouthpiece of a band of not-overly-bright boy-teens who would guffaw at every sneering joke, and applaud every derisive remark aimed at the special needs students. You suspected that the kid wasn't really mean, but was just lonely and wanted more than anything to slouch in the halls with the alpha boys - young men with narrow hips and varsity jackets who leaned against their lockers with one raised arm, and looked down on girls who acted like standing in the shade of their arm pits was paradise.

No matter. If you don't have any sympathetic feelings for Rush at all and hope he returns back to the hell-pit from which he oozed, you might be gratified to learn that negativity will, likely, kill him.

It's true. Bad thoughts are bad for you.

It seems that some writers, journalists and television news people make an excellent living by just being negative. Surf through the talking-heads or the cable news networks, and you find yourself facing a phalanx of commentators inflated like blowfish with righteous fury. There is much conviction and certainty, evident by the on-camera loud barking and snapping and spraying.

They aren't proposing any solutions, of course. It is not their job or within their talents to devise meaningful strategies. They are not ushering in the Age of Aquarius and a vision of harmony and understanding, or anything. You wonder when viewers will just get bored with them, but the truth is, collectively, we probably won't.

Negativity sells because human beings have what is called a "negativity bias". This bias is measured by neurologists as a surge of electrical activity - kind of a mini thrill. Thought to have an evolutionary survival advantage, we are constantly surveying our environment for negative stimuli. Back in the day, we stayed alert for hungry beasts and evil omens in nature. Pretty, peaceful things were not likely to kill us and didn't need our attention. Nowadays, we tune into the media for a constant intravenous feed of catastrophe and we get more neural satisfaction there than, say, a nice wildlife program about meerkats. Negativity holds our interest.

Unfortunately, since we are all wired for negative stimuli to some degree, Rush and his ilk give us enough neural jolts that it makes it easy to accept and entrain the negative world view of the messenger. We are more easily led to believe that the sky has fallen than that the sky is just where it should be. With our inherent bias for calamity, we start thinking that Rush is right. Before long, Rush starts sounding like an informed political/social analyst, rather than just the very clever media carnie that he is.

This has much larger implications than just harshing your mellow, however. Rush is not only manipulating your emotions and dragging your positive energy into his lair to be devoured at his leisure; Rush's disgorging is not just feeding your outrage. Rush is, ultimately, corroding your health. Psychosomatic medicine, the study of how mind affects body, indicates that rumination (recurrent negative thoughts) likely affects physical and mental health via the cardiovascular and immune systems, and that this effect becomes more pronounced as people age.

There are several avenues by which to evaluate the effect of exposure to negative speech and thought - there are controlled emotional surveys, depression-dejection and mood scales, quality of sleep indicators, quantitative measurements of leukocytes and lymphocytes and T-cell proliferation. But two particularly interesting studies by the Center for Advanced Wound Care in Redding, Pennsylvania and another by Ohio State University College of Medicine produced rapid feedback.

Wounds recover at a fairly measurable rate in the general population. Should you suffer from that kind of trauma, and presuming you don't have a secondary condition like diabetes or an infection, the rate at which your owie will heal is predictable based on a system of parameters linked to the immune system. Thus, healing wounds are often used as the benchmark to test the effects of a variety of medications, treatments and external factors including studies on the effect of negative thinking on healing.

In the Ohio study, individuals received small puncture wounds. Directly after, they participated in a series of negative conversations. As you might imagine, participants exposed to negative speech healed at a significantly slower rate than the control subjects who were not exposed. Researchers concluded that negative speech and thought, essentially, overwhelms the body's immune system and inhibits healing.

What that means outside the medical research world is that Rush is wrecking his immune system and if you listen to him or any of the other evangelists of doom and discord regularly, you aren't doing yourself any favors, either. That fleeting surge of indignation that you may feel when your negative views are validated may be satisfying in the moment, but they can create lingering harm in your body. If you pile it on every day, you might as well take up smoking again. Your prospects are deteriorating anyway.

I, myself, am making a conscious effort to avoid negativity. And it's not because I need everything to look like rainbows and unicorns, but more because I haven't noticed that dwelling in the negative reaps anything worthwhile. Rush does not look like a happy man. He does not beam health and vitality. He's sad, and my heart goes out to him, but I don't want to catch whatever he's got.

In light of this awareness, I am focusing on what Buddhists would call "right speech", the third element in the Noble Eightfold Path. Essentially, right speech means choosing words that become a gift to the receiver - trustworthy, harmonious and comforting words. Right speech rejects words that misrepresent the truth, words that are intended to divide people from peaceful interaction, words used to hurt people's feelings and talking just to talk. Right speech has the effect of shaping your experience which, in turn, shapes the experience of people around you.

I can't claim to be fabulously skilled in this practice, yet. If people are being transformed by my efforts to just shut up when I don't have anything worthwhile to say, I haven't gotten the memo. But, I can't help notice the relief on someone else's face when they ask, tentatively, "How are you?" and I say, "I'm good. It's a beautiful morning and God gives us coffee so we are awake enough to enjoy it. What more is there?"

When I attend to right speech, I can feel a surge in my immune system as it calibrates to "positive". And, naturally, I can feel their gratitude as they say, "You're right. I think I'll walk with you for a few minutes. I can be a little late."

Rush doesn't appear to be moving along the Eightfold Path very rapidly, at least not where right speech is concerned, but maybe there is still hope. He might be worth saving just as an experiment in guided intention if nothing else.

First, I propose that we cease terrorizing our immune systems by eschewing negative broadcasting. Spin that dial or click that remote to commentators who have something constructive to offer.

Next, I suggest that we commit to a daily practice of visualizing Rush up to his jowls in a warm bath filled with golden bubbles of compassion. After all, we may never know his life's purpose. Perhaps Destiny has something special in mind. Maybe by saving Rush, he'll have a conversion and go on to use his celebrity to establish the Positive Consciousness Movement, or something.

Lastly, we don't get enough time here on the Blue Marble. It's a beautiful day and we have coffee.

Hold that right thought.

< Previous column

Next column >

Ingrid lives on San Juan Island.

While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

editor@sanjuanislander.com

About Us | Advertising Info | Contact Us | Privacy Policy