As I scroll through my newsfeed, I can be bombarded with information regarding a tornado that swept through Central Illinois, a typhoon that hit the Philippines, someone who locked their child up in a cage, multiple people’s battles with cancer and disease, childlessness, joblessness, break-ups, and the list goes on. On the internet I can get updates on national disasters and local injustices, all within a click of the button. I am more aware of the pain and tragedy in the world than I was even 10 years ago. The question I have to ask myself is, “am I the better for it?”
I think about how things were in my grandparents’ time. They grew up in the Great Depression; they were no strangers to injustice, pain, starvation, and suffering. They lived through World War II and heard first hand the destruction that humanity was capable of. They were familiar with the roads that evil, disease, and unemployment can take a society down. And all of this occurred while technology was advancing. They had newspapers and telephones to pass information on the world’s occurrences. Information was received much more rapidly than even their parents had experienced. Yet, things were relayed so much differently during their time. News travelled fast in the small town where my grandparents lived because everyone knew each other’s business (good or bad). Word spread from person to person. You got a phone call from your neighbor down the street and you heard the intonation in the person’s voice as they shared the tough news. Or you read it on the headlines of today’s newspaper. You saw the images printed in black in white, perhaps after several days had already passed and it would’ve e been considered “old news.”
We have a much different experience today. Instead, we are bombarded with hundreds of pieces of information each minute. Many of them are negative. And as much as I am all about raising awareness to the issues going on in the world, I start to wonder if we were made to handle all of this. We reach a certain point where we become anesthetized to the suffering around us. The headlines on the evening news are tragic, yet we only give them a cursory glance while chatting with our children over the dinner table. We could justify this response by saying that those people are “half a world way,” yet even when tragedy strikes next door, we are hardly impacted. Children are being shot in gang wars in the streets just 30 miles away and we are unaffected. And what about those headlines that are even closer? What about our “friends” on our news feeds? We encounter tons of information from our “friends” daily on social media sites such as Facebook, yet how often are we actually affected by someone else’s suffering when they post about it online? We may take a second to pause and pray or let the news sink in, yet it doesn't seem to carry the same effect as it did years ago. Perhaps we have gotten so over-informed that we truly aren't informed at all. Is there such a plethora of information that we have to sort through on a day to day basis, that we have begun to ignore the most important pieces around us--the lives of others that are impacted right in front of our eyes (literally)? Could it be that the human mind (and heart) is meant to only process so much? Are we handicapping ourselves by taking in too much information?
I can't begin to know the answers to these questions. Yet at the same time, I can't help but notice the effects of information overload in my own life and ponder its aftermath. At what point will we say, "something has to change?" Until then, we can each be intentional about noticing the truly noteworthy news in our world, and pausing to feel the pain, suffering, and burdens of others who have been affected by tragedy around us.
