As we watch war and famine on TV, our connection with other humans is slipping away.
What a strange period of human existence we find ourselves in. We have access to information from all over the planet via technology, and yet it has not brought us closer together — or closer to empathy. Instead, we are bombarded with news and images of people starving, being tortured, and dying, and we are numb. It has become a societal habit to casually spectate at horrors.
Many of us begin by feeling bad about it, and helpless to change it. Over time, this transforms into a state of apathy as we consume news and images that relentlessly play on our lower emotions of fear and sadness, and we burn out on this cycle. We shut down and end up feeling nothing.
It’s bad enough that people are suffering. Human life has always been this way, but now we just know about it more — all day, every day, if we pay attention to the news media. On top of that, it’s despicable that with all of our technology, we haven’t eliminated manmade suffering. Instead, we amplify it by using technology to watch it while doing almost nothing for the victims of horrors.
We’ve devolved as a species. There is a lack of connection amongst fellow humans. We are so used to the awareness of the calamities and suffering of strangers that we are able to take in the information in a second and then turn it off as we go on with our daily lives. How is this not the most barbaric moment in our collective evolution? This is a new version of the Dark Ages.
This is an absurd situation, and yet here we are. No one seems worried about it. None of us really wants it, yet all of us participate in it.
People would rather lose their humanity than try to redirect their usage of technology toward something productive. They would rather derive triggering emotional responses like fear and anger from the news media that they consume on their screens than to take simple actions toward world peace.
This is a pandemic of apathy.
We literally witness genocide happening on our TVs and then turn it off to go have brunch with our friends. It’s playing in the airports on televisions as people sip their lattes and wait for their boarding call. It’s front page on newspapers sitting on your front doorstep, thrown into the trash hours later as if it is merely a trend. It’s in your social media feed, making you slightly uncomfortable — but nowhere near enough to do something about it. It’s a mere annoyance; a point of anxiety to talk to your therapist about. This is gross.
People are dying, as they always have been. It’s brutal, and it always has been. But this time, it’s different. One hundred years ago, humanity didn’t have this problem of constant awareness. Now, it’s in your living room. This is a new problem that we’ve never faced before.
Will humans reach a breaking point and start to feel again? Will we decide to start using our resources and technological advancements to save other people from suffering? Or will we continue to use them for our consumerism and selfish ends?
You have the ability to decide because you are a real person in the collective. What you think and do counts. Let’s call out the absurdity of our lives. Let’s redirect attention to reality and truth.
