Get Your Freak On

Your happy and clear-headed joyful freak, that is. Here's an excerpt from Rob Brezsny's mind-blowing "Pronoia:How the World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings", which was published in The Sun magazine a few years ago. If you haven't seen The Sun, do yourself a favor and check it out; you'll find current commentary written from a stance of progressive wisdom - poetry which is actually good - and much more.
In 2001 Brezsny founded the Beauty and Truth Laboratory, which he describes as “a think tank of sorts,” to balance what he sees as the unrelenting negativity in the news and entertainment media. The Beauty and Truth Laboratory, which
may or may not have offices in Brezsny’s garage, is dedicated to exploring the possibilities of pronoia. Coined by Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow, pronoia is the opposite of paranoia. A “pronoiac” is someone who believes that the world is conspiring to shower him or her with blessings.

QUOTE At the Beauty and Truth Laboratory, we believe that stories
about the rot are not inherently more captivating than stories
about the splendor. On the contrary, given how predictable
and omnipresent the former have become, they are actually
quite dull. Obsessing on evil is boring. Rousing fear is a hackneyed
shtick. Wallowing in despair is a bad habit. Indulging
in cynicism is akin to committing a copycat crime.
How did it come to be that the news is reported solely by
journalists? There are so many other kinds of events besides
the narrow band favored by that highly specialized brand of
storytellers. Indeed, there are many phenomena that literally
cannot be perceived by journalists. Their training, their
temperament, and their ambitions make vast areas of human
experience invisible to them.
“Ninety-six percent of the cosmos puzzles astronomers,”
read a headline on CNN’s website: proof that at least some of
our culture’s equivalent of high priests — the scientists — are
humble enough to acknowledge that the universe is made up
mostly of stuff they can’t even detect, let alone study.
If only the journalists were equally modest. Since they’re
not, we’ll say it: The majority of everything that happens on
this planet escapes their notice. UNQUOTE