Think back with me, children, to a time when something happened and we didn’t learn about it until minutes or even hours later—if ever. Every syllable spoken by boys in balloons and senators from Vermont wasn’t flashed across our screens instantaneously, and explaining a complex subject like health care or the designated hitter rule took thousands of words instead of 140 characters. And, if you can imagine it, some things even happened without anyone, anywhere, caring to comment.
Is it any wonder we’re all stressed out by the never-ending parade of things to worry about? Just on Monday, I worried about the vote in Afghanistan, the sincerity of George Clooney’s new girlfriend, whether there will be any swine flu vaccine left for me, the Dow’s rise, North Korea’s nukes, Ruth Reichl’s job prospects, college students’ mental health, and on and on.
But if I try and make it stop by staying away from screens for a day, I know I’ll be at a dinner party staring at the centerpiece while people all around me enjoy lively discussions on the news of the day, the hour, the minute.
So which is better? Information overload? Or willful ignorance? And is there some happy medium?
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I remember several years back, when on a cross country move I spent the better part of two months traveling through CA and the Pacific Northwest. I was basically living out of my truck, moving from campground to campground - Yosemite, the coast of Oregon, Olympic National Park. It was an amazing experience, of course, but one of the things I was most surprised by was how much I liked being out of the loop. Other than browsing national/world news once or twice a week via USA Today, and catching up on phone calls with family and friends, I knew nothing. And I didn’t care to know more.
But dropping back into society made it impossible to maintain that informational minimalism. Do I have to pop open MSNBC evey morning to scan the headlines and delve into stories? Of course not. Does doing so make me think of lots of things I don’t need to be thinking about? Absolutely. It sounds like a bit of a cop out to say it’s just the world we live in, but it is.
Rather than trying to avoid coverage on a daily basis, I advocate periodic blackouts. Maybe those are forced on you by a vacation, maybe they are choices you make for a weekend. But going through a news fast now and again allows you to find your own stories, and that’s healthy.
As for the dinner conversations, look at it this way - you get to be the interested party, asking questions and allowing your friends to be the storyteller of the moment. Who doesn’t like that?
Very well said. I have thought those thoughts so often. Information overlaoad is certainly a problem that previous generations did not have to deal with. Thanks for letting me know that I’m not the only one who often feels overwhelmed with information…some useful and some not.
personally I think it’s a sign of the end times and for once am glad I don’t have children so they won’t have to witness the blazing inferno! To me Twitter and texting is like hell on earth and a sign that Idiocracy has truly come to America…I can’t even imagine any activities that more un-conscious and a good predictor of whether someone will ever be able to break free from the egoic mind. If you spend any time doing these things I beg you to stop now, before it’s too late! (And if I see one more unconscious a-hole texting while driving’ next to me in traffic I’m gonna run ‘em off the road!)
This is a topic I’ve been mulling over for a while. How much detail do we really need on subjects that don’t impact our future and that of our country? The “news” we see on some topics becomes a rehash of the same points over and over with a lot of opinions thrown in. And what are the networks calling “news”? I don’t care about what charges are filed against the “Balloon Boy” family - but they should be charged with forever saddling their little boy with that moniker. I don’t care about the Gosselins’ marital problems and I don’t care if Rosie is breaking up with her wife/partner. All this is heavily covered on national news programs! I do care about the health care reform issue, taxes, our national leadership and signs our economy is improving. I care about my kids being able to find jobs and build careers - I don’t care about an actor’s career and how it could be damaged by their DUI arrest or drug addiction. Wouldn’t it be crazy if there was a “Good News” segment in the programming each day? Think how much fun it would be to talk about that at a dinner party…one might not even end up staring at the centerpiece.