“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Part of the session grew out of our recent reactions to the televised newscasts, as well as what we’ve been reading lately, concerning the mass suicide in Guyana, the shooting of the mayor of San Francisco, problems with inflation, the Middle East —any of what seemed to be an infinite number of ills the species has created for itself. I must remember that my own caustic reactions pass rather quickly—even if they do return—but that they have a considerable effect on Jane. In some fashion, in order to maintain sanity, I end up laughing at what goes on in the world—probably a last resort. But I’m afraid some of my responses affect Jane more deeply, aside from her problems with her own reactions.

Now: I have spoken about this before. When you watch, say, the news on television, you must keep in mind several important issues. Despite the perhaps deplorable conditions being televised—whether of wars, massacres, graft, or whatever—the great inventiveness of man’s mind is responsible for that technological achievement. And it is an achievement of great import, for the world can no longer hide one portion of itself from another.

The selected newscasts shown in theatres in the Second World War were quite censored, but the aggressive press and its corps do now indeed serve in their own way as an invisible “police force.” No country can really keep them out. There will be a television camera somewhere, and the most secret atrocities will find their way into the public eye. There is no longer any assurance of secrecy in the broadest terms, for nefarious acts of politics or government. Man’s inventiveness, often a partner to his duplicity, has also invented, then, a method to insure that no crimes can be hidden, and has taken steps to shine a spotlight upon those areas of life that blot man’s experience.

Now to some extent, because of beliefs, because of the public’s new knowledge through television of new nefarious acts, some governments do refrain from the more spectacular crimes. Overall, however, the concentration upon any problem, upon its negative aspects, automatically increases the problem.