THE NEWS - Is it bad for you? In todays Western world, people are addicted to the news. You. Even you are addicted. Oh yes, I know all about you. Your ideal morning is sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, immersed in the morning paper, discovering the latest murders, catastrophes and wars that were going on as you slept in peaceful slumber that night. While driving to work, you turn on the radio to catch up on the newest snippets of global information. The radio may be on all through your work day: news - hour by hour, minute by minute. While on your way home from work, your eyes are instinctively drawn to the headlines scattered across the newsstands. Once you get home, you slump into your sofa and turn on the TV - to watch what you may have missed in between, or just to recycle things you had already heard 12 times that day. You can't get enough can you? After your brain has been pumped full of a days worth of death, destruction, suffering, and desperation, you are left feeling hollow. Numb. And why wouldn't you be? I mean heck, those horrible stories don't differ from any of the ones you had heard the day before, or on any of the hundreds of thousands days before that. So, to protect your mental health, your brain numbs itself to avoid massive depression. In fact, you can get away with watching things that would normally break the human psyche because the information is bounced off the protective shield that your brain has built up. Handy! Murders, rape and suffering fail to awaken your sympathy, fail to shock. Don't you find that strange? Ok so I am exaggerating a bit... since you will react emotionally sometimes - but it's gotta be a really juicy story containing such horror as never before seen to make you feel. It has to out-do all the previous stories you had heard before that. Take for instance the World Trade Center tragedy. When it happened, the world was mortified and in total shock. But would our reaction be just as strong if something similar was repeated today? Despite the equal amount of destruction and suffering, no, we would not react very strongly anymore. What is happening to us? Where will this lead if news must be more and more hard core to stir any emotions. Are we capable of feeling anymore? I was in my early 20's when I realized I wasn't feeling anymore. I was numb. Not to mention depressed to be reminded daily, of human cruelty, of how planet earth is rotting, of AIDS, Ebola, pollution, chemical warfare, natural catastrophes due to the greenhouse effect. Human kind was slowly sinking into a putrid slimy hole to it's irreversible death and dragging the world and it's creatures down with it. If the end was coming, what was the use of even trying to live. Now I don't mean suicide. I mean that it felt kind of silly to work hard towards goals, have children, build a career and so forth. Why even bother? Oh how I longed to have lived the simple life, a few hundred years earlier - like in Little House on the Prairie or Blue Lagoon. But this was the 1990's and there was no escape. I had to do something before I'd end up with a heart of stone. So I started analyzing the things that were affecting this reaction within me. After much thought I came to the conclusion that "the news" was to blame. 99% of it contains purely negative data. How healthy can it be to intake such information, many times a day, each day of your life? How about output? The data comes in, but how does it go out? What are the results of exposure to intense negativity all the time? Depression? Aggression? Stress? Desperation? When you really stop to think about it, people in this day and age are mentally very unhealthy in the western world. I firmly believe that the news is one factor that contributes to that. So if people are mentally sicker than before and if we were to presume for a moment that news is one reason, it is interesting to then ponder how natural it can be for the human psyche. Let's take a trip back to what life was like hundreds of years ago. Before newspapers, before books, before TV and radio. At a time when people peacefully lived in small villages scattered amongst the lands isolated from each other. Most likely, the news they heard concerned events taking place in their own village or ones nearby. For one thing, the balance between positive and negative news must have been much more even. But even when there was some bad news [when the people got negative input] they actually were able to output it. Let me explain what I mean: Ok let's imagine a situation where you are working in the forest chopping wood. The neighbor comes running to you shouting that the Smith family's house is on fire. Your immediate reaction is shock, then worry, then empathy. How can you output this? Easily: by dropping your axe, running to the site of the fire and helping to put it out and save the people inside. When we hear that something bad has happened to someone, our natural reaction should be empathy, and if it gets a chance to be used, it will continue to live within our personas. But if the empathetic reaction cannot be somehow unravelled, it is suffocated and eventually dies from constant suppression. The news we hear is not about people we know personally, it is not usually even about people in our immediate area. "An earthquake killed thousands in Turkey!" "Hundreds dead in a bomb attack in Israel!" "Floods in France - many homes lost!" We mainly hear about people on the other side of the world - going through catastrophes that are very foreign to us. And when that empathetic reaction surfaces? Can we somehow help these people to output our emotions? No, we are not given that choice. And when you really think about it, it's not natural for us to be hearing this kind of news, because these man made machines that supply this media is not natural or part of mother natures plan either. We're not meant to be hearing this stuff. Our psychology was not designed for such input. Anyhow, as I was saying earlier, I started to worry about my loss of empathy and feelings and after I had analyzed all of the above, I made a decision to all together quit following the news. No newspapers, avoid the news on TV, not listen to the radio. It's now been over 10 years since that decision and for me, it was the best choice I ever made. Hasn't been hard either, since I was never into radio due to my picky taste in music (not to mention that the advertising sucks), and I'd much rather sit at my computer than watch TV, and newspapers bore the hell out of me. Since my choice, a huge chunk of stress and desperation has been lifted off my chest and am able to live a more positive life. I'm much happier, more balanced and stable. My empathy has been preserved. When I look around at people, I can see a big difference in how dead their emotions, morals and empathetic capactities are compared to mine. Interesting to see the affect my choice has made. Go ahead, call me uncivilized and uneducated. But I will challenge you with that accusation and ask how civilized your choice is. Do you follow news just because everyone else does? I just betcha keeping up to par on the worldy events makes you feel really smart eh? It's nice to feel smart, to feel like you know more than other people do. *rolls eyes* I wouldn't be surprised if it was, because I know so many people who are sucked into that illusion. Which makes you wonder why people need to prove their abundance in knowledge so much. Poor self esteem? I mean who gives a fuck if you remember how many were killed in which war in the year XXXX? What purpose does this information truly serve? How useful is it to be a walking library of dates and names? Personally, I'd much rather funnel my mental energies and resources into things that concern me, my loved ones and things I can affect. Like right now I'm doing the "output" thing by writing this in hopes that it may help many others out there who have become numbed and depressed by media. To show that you have an alternative option. Besides, that news you hear, watch and read - are you sure it's even the truth? Imagine how horrible it would be to wake up to the fact that the news as we know it, is filtered into editable pieces that "they" decide to feed us. Imagine realizing that all those hours you could have been using to spend with your family or be creative was actually wasted sucking in stories that "they" were telling you, that only contained part of the truth? So before you put any more energy into your addiction, you may want to investigate the ingredients first. So am I saying we should all just throw our hands up, and decide to blind ourselves to what is happening in the world and move into our own little padded bottles? No, all the power and respect to those out there that keep themselves informed and take action to make the world a better place. These people have the means to "output". Who I am writing this to, are the everyday John Does and Jane Smiths out there who don't have the resources (or even interest), to help out those hurricane victims on the other side of the world, or get into pollution research to save our environment. Nor are they the ones that join Greenpeace and save whales. I'm talking about people much like me, who have only enough mental resources to get by in everyday life and end up frustrated because they can't do more. Because they feel powerless to stop the greenhouse effect. Because they feel helpless when watching people starve on TV. The whole point of this article: If there is no way to truly "output" yourself, you may want to consider eliminating the "input". - Andrea, June 14 2003
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