Pressure

You never know when a realization will strike you. For some reason, yesterday I realized one of the primary reasons for the negativity in America: information overload.

We are all so interconnected by various mass media that we now know what is occuring throughout the entire world. More specifically, every single day and every single hour we have access to the violence, disasters, and economic woes happening everywhere.

Until the internet boom and the advent of 24-hour news outlets, people didn't know everything that happened in the world instantly. It could be days or weeks before news of a war in a foreign country would reach us. It would be even longer before the rumors of genocide would be unearthed. And, even then, only those circumstances of particular malevolence or interest to our country would get more than a blurb on the local news or in the newspaper. We were, in many ways, shielded from the woes of the rest of the world. This sheltered life allowed us to focus on our immediate surroundings and the issues that most affect us: our job, our family, our immediate community. Inbetween the world-shaking events, people had the time to find happiness in their immediate community and activities. This time also gave the mass media outlets a chance to provide people with perspective on the issues.

Now we must deal with all the troubles in our town, county, state, country, and the rest of the world. We are bombarded daily, hourly, with these images and the knowledge of these events. We don't have any surcease from this constant barrage. Where before we could breathe a little between events, now there is the constant pressure from all sides. Just as we finish dealing with the education money crisis in Irvine, we are made aware of the emergency room/hospital crisis in Orange County. Even before we can figure out what we are dealing with there, we are forced to reexamine the continuing budget and energy crises in California. During all of this time, we are being fed the rancor between Republicans and Democrats, the fears over the flat economy, and the woes being caused by the war, outsourcing, and trade deficits. We don't even catch our breath from this stress when the news is showing us images of the genocide in certain African nations, the terrorism happening in the Middle East, the death toll from the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, and the fears over nuclear attacks from Iran and North Korea. We are suffocating on the information overload provided to us.

While I believe in freedom of the press and in an American's right to know, I also think the mass media has certain obligations in its presentation of the news. We need a chance to breathe, take stock, and gain perspective. We need help digesting the information provided and people to show some of the pros and cons of the information to help us come to our own conclusions and act on the information provided.

And, maybe most importantly of all, we need time away from this overwhelming deluge of information. Time to sit with our back to a tree and a soft breeze on our face and watch our children play on the grass and gain some perspective on the truly important things in life.