cole marie

I think we have a real problem with a new pandemic: the fear that drives our media frenzy. Besides the economy, pirates, and swine flu, we are a culture with chatter, and media at our greedy fingertips.

With the absence of “making money” (the economy) and gaining material goods, we find a solace in having the “next scary thing,” available at all times. When ESPN mentions how the virus will affect sports, then I think we reached a brink of information greed, bordering on a type of general population insanity perhaps not defined yet.

What makes us, drives us towards finding the next fix for information? What is missing in our lives that forces us to fill every moment with chatter? We are not a culture that sits down for dinner, or talks to each other about our day when the TV is off. We don’t play board games, or take walks, or write for fun anymore… simply writing about our day in a quiet environment - by hand. We are online. We are constantly updating twitter, facebook, blogs, emails, text messaging, leaving status messages… We are in a mainline of constant information. How and why did we get to this state?

Even those of us to take minutes out our day to do yoga, turn off the phone and read, cook, garden, watch baseball, even though we try, we are still bombarded with something - anything that is the next breaking story.

I’d like to blame the media - these storytellers who seem to obsess over stories, for the sake of money. In the long run, baby-boomer parents who taught their kids well-enough, have produced a small mass of people who can think for themselves, who don’t take the bullshit, who have some sort of compass. I hesistate to call it a “moral compass” because morals have been redefined - and probably for the most resonable. I feel that the compass is the same compass that keeps us from panicking like idiot lemmings, that keeps us from doing things that would harm ourselves or family, the compass that makes us reasonable at times, the thing that makes us creative and safe.

There is something at risk for our general psychology in the Western civilizations. We are people who have modified to constant information. We have not developed with it psychologically at the same rate. We are on speed - the speed of information we can barely handle.

The way the media handled this pig flu crap is prime example number one: We took the bait, and “it” is winning - through fear. We can’t even fathom the content of a world wide economic meltdown, we are barely able to hold it together for a new US President that is of mixed race. We are in tears at a murder (craigs list killer), or a rape, or a big sports story (steroids), but we move on like an addict to the next sensational story. We are prime cheerleaders/fear mongers for “the swine flu” - our next big epidemic, THE VIRUS, of course, take your kids out of school, cancel family vacation this summer, no interaction with your friends. Everything is out of the question now… with this FLU. All of a sudden, you are crippled with fear - fear of something that you haven’t researched yourself - because you can’t even find unbiased information - anywhere. And you are connected to every outlet possible, at the speed of light!

This is the fall of our reason. If the age of reason taught us anything, we should stop to think. Digesting information is like digesting food - you eat too fast, too much, you become obese or puke! What will happen to our minds, that compass of reasoning, when we absorb too fast, and furious, all these sensational stories, this information that seems to have us in a grasp we can’t control?

There is something inherently wrong with the direction we are going: we must take a good look at how we convey information and how we communicate - and WHY. Communications are the root of our advancement and existence, we have to tend it like a garden, and right now, it’s overgrown and full of thorns.