"People have the illusion that all over the world, all the time, all kinds of fantastic things are happening. When in fact, over most of the world, most of the time, nothing is happening"
About this Quote
Brinkley punctures the modern appetite for constant astonishment with a line that reads like a deadpan correction to the entire news economy. Its sting comes from the contrast between “all over the world, all the time” and the blunt anticlimax of “nothing is happening.” He’s not claiming the world is harmless or dull; he’s saying our default setting is statistical boredom, and that boredom is precisely what makes “fantastic things” feel plausible when they’re packaged for us.
The intent is partly journalistic hygiene. A veteran of broadcast news, Brinkley knew how quickly a medium built for daily drama starts manufacturing urgency: the tyranny of the segment, the seductive montage, the “breaking” banner as a business model. His subtext is that the public’s “illusion” isn’t naïveté so much as training. When attention is the commodity, rarity gets oversold as normality, and the exception starts masquerading as the rule.
The line also carries a quieter democratic warning. If citizens believe history is always erupting somewhere, they become jittery, impatient with incremental change, and vulnerable to demagogues who promise to match the pace of their adrenaline. Brinkley’s cynicism is practical: reality is mostly maintenance, repetition, slow trends, and people living untelevised lives. Recognizing that isn’t complacency; it’s calibration. It’s a demand that we stop confusing motion with meaning and treat “nothing happening” not as failure, but as the baseline against which real events should be measured.
The intent is partly journalistic hygiene. A veteran of broadcast news, Brinkley knew how quickly a medium built for daily drama starts manufacturing urgency: the tyranny of the segment, the seductive montage, the “breaking” banner as a business model. His subtext is that the public’s “illusion” isn’t naïveté so much as training. When attention is the commodity, rarity gets oversold as normality, and the exception starts masquerading as the rule.
The line also carries a quieter democratic warning. If citizens believe history is always erupting somewhere, they become jittery, impatient with incremental change, and vulnerable to demagogues who promise to match the pace of their adrenaline. Brinkley’s cynicism is practical: reality is mostly maintenance, repetition, slow trends, and people living untelevised lives. Recognizing that isn’t complacency; it’s calibration. It’s a demand that we stop confusing motion with meaning and treat “nothing happening” not as failure, but as the baseline against which real events should be measured.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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