It is more than ever essential for a human being to know.
Imagine for a minute you can read people's thoughts, their first impression of you, their inner most sadness and worries, their moments of weakness and the greed.. I doubt if you will want this ability long, I would either isolate myself in the confines of a windowless room or take my own life.
Knowing everything is a burden that can only be handled by God.
Now imagine you live totally unaware of the events that directly impact your everyday life, changes in the laws of your country, new prices for the things you use everyday, new medical discoveries for your illness, new diseases on the loose in your town.. These are MUST know things, and your very survival can depend on knowing them.
Knowing the essential bits can seriously impact your life.
So now you are probably thinking to yourself: So what, I need to know some essentials and do not need to know everything, what's the big deal?
Not so fast! Think again, first of all you have no choice whatsoever regarding the volume of news and information dumped onto your head everyday, if you seek moderate (relevant to your life) bits of news, you will still get a news dump. There is no QUANTITY control.
Second, you guessed it right, QUALITY & reliability of news and information.
I switch between the BBC, Aljazeera, CNN and AlArabeya when there is a political event I need to follow.
Only with the 4 of them can I come up with a conclusive personal point of view untainted by external factors, but to get there I have quadrupled the QUANTITY factor, more irrelevant side bits and peaces of news get dumped onto my poor brain!
Forget the TV & Radio, let's get the exact bits of info from the Internet, the cutting edge, the information age, the new millennium .. (ok maybe not this one)
The internet's potential to assimilate and deliver exactly what you are seeking is a challenge taken on by the likes of Google, and their technology is still with flaws, vulnerable to human greed and is still in its infancy, but where I am heading is somewhere else..
How many times did you open a web browser page, found exactly what you are looking for, then turned off your computer?
Me too, ZERO times, there is always that witty side comment, that well placed related link, that flashing in my face ad that I can't resist exploring, that's what makes the Internet a successful medium, and that's exactly what I don't need: Yet another lateral information dump on my head.
The images of blood and devastation is not for everyone, the number of humans dying from diseases, wars or utter stupidity used to be a privilege only for God, now anyone with a radio knows too much.
The amount of injustice in this world is staggering, the tyranny is no longer hidden, the suffering is amplified, our skin is getting thicker towards other people's suffering, otherwise we won't survive the information storm age, we have to be less sympathetic, forget faster and move on with our life, we have to become less human to remain alive.
While writing this I was watching a report on AlArabeya showing beautiful little girls and their mother in Palestine whose house is about to be torn down for the Israeli Wall, her husband died recently out of sorrow and she has no where else to go after they take her home, my heart sank, my anger rose, and my helplessness turned to self contempt, actually forget all the above, I'd rather know and pay the price, it is nothing compare to the real victims in the news, and yes, I will remain a human, a very pissed human!
1PA
1 comment:
I like your thought process, it's very logical. I think if we could process everything, and make responsible decisions for every aspect in our lives without making mistakes, we'd be targeted by the lesser people afraid of our understanding. Damn'ed if you do... sometimes life gets too much for me to want to know more details, but I just have to! So I unwind by sitting in my
massage chair and use journal writing as an outlet.
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