Doom and gloom. Is that what people really care about?
You may be wondering what I'm talking about. Well, here it is. I was just perusing the headlines after a long day of working in my new job (which may be one of the greatest jobs in the world, i.e., working with medical professionals to help people learn to cope with cancer) and this was the list of top headlines that came up on Yahoo!
End of Days? Thousands of dead animals? Body found in landfill? Amputations! For the luva my freakin' godiva, did anything good happen in the hours I was away at work today? And to top it all off, Pete Postlethwaite dies? Really, could things get much worse?
I don't even mean to belittle the world of journalism because I have more than an Eiffel Tower's worth of respect for people who can a) dedicate their lives to finding the truth, and b) write it in a comprehensible way that enables those without the means to investigate it on their own to still know what the world holds in store. What I have a problem with is this kind of doom and gloom sensationalism that puts everyone in a place of wondering, like me, what good happened in the world today. Yeah, I know, I'm just being thin-skinned and failing to see the overall importance of "news." But really, is knowing a celebrity may lose a leg going to do more for my personal contentment and peace of mind than knowing that say, a non-profit organization has successfully immunized thousands of people against preventable diseases? Which matters more to you?
The whole issue really just speaks to the fact that, though homogenization of information has its positives, it is much too vulnerable to the whims of sensationalism and capitalistic necessities. As a human being with a need to be nurtured as much mentally as physically, I think it's imperative that we seek out the good as much as we do the bad. Our equilibrium and efficacy as a species, and as caretakers of a planet containing billions of other species, depends on it. I challenge myself, and anyone else who wants to, to find one good thing happening in the world for every bad thing we read in the headlines for an entire week. If we don't want to make our future a self-fulfilling prophecy, it's up to us to overcome our own hardwired tendencies to believe that pursuing what is difficult, i.e., justice and peace, is futile.
Ahem. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Has anyone watched Season 2 of Lost? Things are getting pretty juicy on the island of no return!<div
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