Increase the Light

If you read frum English publications, and there are many these days and that's wonderful, you will notice that they publish the "psychological/emotional/mental issue of the week." I am inclined to think that it is psychologically detrimental, as well as damaging to our spiritual health, to be exposed, on a regular basis, to abnormal situations.

I think that children as well as adults, need to be fortified with that which is healthy and true and good, and be as underexposed as possible to that which is unhealthy, false and bad.

I think that educators must be very wary about teaching the dangers of abnormal eating practices to young girls, for example, for their good intentions might backfire! For children who weren't aware that food could be regarded in such a sick way, it gives them ideas they never entertained on their own!

When 11 year olds tease each other using the words bulimic and anorexic, I think this should be setting off warning bells in the minds of well-intentioned teachers and parents, who think exposing children to the abnormal behavior of very few individuals is beneficial.

I am concerned not only about publicizing eating disorders, but about numerous issues that have been exposed to the frum public, seemingly with positive intentions. I wonder whether the approach backfires, and the more talk there is about children at risk, the more children at risk there are; the more talk there is about eating disorders, the more people are discovered to have them; the more talk there is about spousal and child abuse, the more abuse there is; the more learning disabilities are discussed, the more children are diagnosed with them; the more mental illness is described at length in popular magazines, the more people discover they have these illnesses.

Is it that pre-existing problems are being exposed and dealt with, OR that talking about it, dwelling on it, and teaching about it, INCREASES THE NUMBERS? Maybe it's both.

The media knows that when they report some awful teen incident of suicide or violence, there is the "copycat" effect. An article in Scientific American, Feb. 2001 said:

“Less obvious, however, are the circumstances under which social validation can backfire … An example is the understandable but potentially misguided tendency of health educators to call attention to a problem by depicting it as regrettably frequent. Information campaigns stress that alcohol and drug use is intolerably high, that adolescent suicide rates are alarming and that polluters are spoiling the environment.

"Although the claims are both true and well-intentioned, the creators of these programs have missed something basic about the compliance process. Within the statement, “Look at all the people who are doing this undesirable thing, lurks the powerful and undercutting message, “Look at all the people who are doing this undesirable thing.”

"Research shows that, as a consequence, many such programs boomerang, generating even more of the undesirable behavior."

I maintain that by spending our time and energy reading and talking about how to positively change ourselves, about good marriages, about healthy eating, about teenagers accomplishing wonderful things, etc. - in other words, “light” - we will accomplish a whole lot more than focusing on the “darkness”. This is not to say there is no darkness. It's not about denial. It's about zeroing in and highlighting the good, in order to increase it, which simultaneously diminishes the darkness. 

The secular media inundates us with negative news.  If you listen to the news on the radio in the morning you can start your day with a fire, rape, robbery and some international problem.  No wonder then that we feel the need to read articles about combatting depression!  Let there be an effort to keep it 80%-20% in favor of the positive in our frum publications so we can face the world fortified with simcha and bitachon!