Andy Murray's Nice
Discover more from The David Charles Newsletter
Andy Murray's Nice
It takes effort to look deep into the worst of us and to share the ways that humans, out of the darkness, respond with energetic hope and creativity
Happy Friday!
And a warm welcome from my sofa in the sky.
Thank you so much to everyone who has donated to the Thighs of Steel refugee solidarity fundraiser — your contributions made my birthday feel all the more fuzzy.
Collectively, we raised £5,377 during Refugee Week, more than we’ve ever recorded in a single week. Thank you. Keep ‘em coming!
I don’t know if you heard yesterday’s Court of Appeal judgement that Rwanda is not a sufficiently safe country to which the UK government could outsource compassion towards people on the move from persecution.
The judgement is a temporary respite for humans like us who just want to get on with their lives.
The cure is not Rwanda, that’s clear; the cure is much more radical than that.
Free movement — for humans.
We already have more or less free movement for the capital, goods and services of transnational corporations, so why not for the people who make it all happen?
The whole asylum and border system is fundamentally rotten. But we must always remember that the criminalisation of movement is not the natural state of affairs.
As President Kennedy said:
Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man.
Dismantle concepts of here and there, them and us, worthy and unworthy, in and out.
That dismantling can start now, from within. I’m grateful that I’m not alone.
For those of you new around these parts, welcome 👋 My name is David and I’m a writer, outdoor instructor and cyclist-at-large with Thighs of Steel. I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Sometimes I don’t understand what power does to us; most of the time I love that we do so much to help one another.
Welcome to edition 367.
Andy Murray’s Nice
As a writer, I am — naturally enough — very deliberate about what I put out into the world for other humans to think about.
I’d be INSANE if I wasn’t equally deliberate about I take in from the rest of the world.
Insane.
But somehow, a writer’s natural deliberation isn’t always mirrored by the reader.
Readers — audiences of all kinds, myself included — often accept what we’re told without critique.
Particularly when it comes to content that is presented as impartial fact.
I’m talking about The News.
You Can Take Dessert Or You Can Pass
In these pages, I’m the writer. Every idea I write about, you can be sure I’ve thought very carefully about.
I don’t expect every idea to land with everyone, every week. That’s fine. As long as you get something out of most of my stories, then you’ll probably stick around.
If none of the stories ever help you make the world a better place, then I expect you to take the sensible decision to unsubscribe and stop reading.
That’s normal. I write stories that help you (and me) understand the world a little better, not stories that you can’t live without.
You can take dessert or you can pass.
With its apparently impartial presentation of fact, The News somehow, perniciously, sidesteps this judgemental faculty of ours.
We swallow The News as a vitamin.
It might not taste good, but, like vitamins, we believe that The News really does ‘contribute to the normal function of a healthy immune system’.
Unfortunately, it really doesn’t. And, secretly, we all know this.
If I told you that I got my news from The Daily Mail, Fox News and Russia Today, you’d probably draw the conclusion that I was a shitbag.
If, on the other hand, I got my news from the same place you get your news, however — why, what a discerningly well-informed world citizen I am!
We always believe that everyone else’s news sources are trash, but never ours.
The News is not a vitamin; it’s dessert and you can choose to pass.
No News Is Good News
Taking care over The News that I read, watch or hear is something that I’ve written about on these pages before:
Since 2017 — for more than five years now — I’ve not regularly read, listened to, or watched any newspaper, website or broadcast.
For much of this time, I have allowed only one feed into my life, the constructive journalism of the fortnightly Future Crunch email newsletter.
Sometimes, as during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, I’ve gone directly to more-or-less non-news analysts, such as research scientists and civil servants, or to crowdsourced aggregators like Wikipedia.
Everything else newsworthy comes to me through the filters of friends and the people around me — as likely to be the birth of their new niece as the sinking of a submersible off the coast of the Americas.
It’s not a perfect system, of course. I’m sure I do miss out on the odd thing that might change the way I think or act.
But it is one hell of a lot better than the old system I had, which was to try to stay on top of E V E R Y T H I N G.
Opening The Fire Hose Of Shit
From around 1995 until 2017, I used to listen to the radio news every day and (once I had an internet connection) trawl the pages of the BBC News website, scrapping for more information on whatever stories were top of the media agenda that week.
I felt like it was, in a vague, non-specific way, an important duty as a citizen to stay informed. And one stayed informed with a daily news report.
Unfortunately, this is how most of The News is reported:
Crap thing happening
Life getting worse
No end and no solution in sight
If you don’t believe me, let’s do an experiment. I’m going to go over to the BBC News website right now and see what kind of story they’ve chosen to tell about the world today.
(Feel free to skip this bit — it won’t make your life a better place.)
Murder arrests after man fatally stabbed
Sexual violence helpline pauses over lack of funds
Former PC faces trial over misconduct charges
Julian Sands’ brother on ‘overwhelming’ tributes
National police training in wake of mass shooting
Glastonbury Festival crew member dies in tent
Drink-driving arrest after car crashes into house
Andy Murray surprises girl who uses tennis prosthetic
Let’s be honest, opening the BBC News page — with its carefully cultivated projection of impartiality and fact — is like opening a fire hose of shit.
But here’s the kicker: just like me, the writers behind The News put a hell of a lot of thought and effort into the stories they’re telling.
The fire hose of shit is a choice; it is only one story, one vision of the world.
We don’t have to buy what they’re selling.
Let’s All Be Andy Murray
This shitty story nightly repeats, like the tolling of a death knell, the message that humans, collectively and globally, are failing.
(Except for Andy Murray: he’s nice.)
We’re failing ourselves, we’re failing each other and we’re failing the planet.
Andy Murray aside, there is no energy, no hope and no creativity.
Thanks to some quirk of human psychology, this apocalyptic vision is an extremely compelling story. So we share the worst of us.
It actually takes a great effort to share the best of us.
It takes even more of an effort to look deep into the worst of us and, resisting the temptation of negativity, to share the ways that humans, out of the darkness, respond with energetic hope and creativity.
That’s why it was wonderful to hear that Angus Hervey, one of the people behind Future Crunch, was recently invited to open the TED conference with his version of The News.
Hope Is A Doing Word
When we only tell the stories of doom, we fail to see the stories of possibility.
The hundreds of examples of progress in human rights, rising living standards, public health victories, clean energy breakthroughs, technological magic, ecological restoration and the countless extraordinary acts of kindness that take place on this planet every day.
I believe that if we want to change the story of the human race in the 21st century, we have to start changing the stories that we tell ourselves.
And we have to remember that hope isn’t a noun. It’s a verb. It’s not something that we have or something that we’re given. It’s something that we do.
Millions of people around the world chose to hope in the last 12 months and then rolled up their sleeves to get it done. Perhaps it’s time for the rest of us to do the same.
And Now The Weather
It’d be totally remiss of me not to include a proper theme tune for today’s news broadcast and, who else, but Bill Bailey.
Days Of Adventure 2023: 35
🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢 🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢 What is this?
More wrist rest this week and I’m pleased to say that I’m now very almost better.
Thank you for reading and I hope you found something to take away with you.
This newsletter (and the writer behind it 👋) is 100 percent community supported. I don’t take a wage for my writing, only what appreciative readers choose to give me.
Even better —
⚠️ Make your contribution direct to this year’s Thighs of Steel fundraiser ⚠️
If you’d rather I got paid, then it’s easy for you to give what you feel is right:
There’s also a tier where you can pay £50 or more.
Whatever you choose, thank you.
Big love,
dc: