The World Is Making Me Dizzy, Let Me Off -OR- Jane, Stop This Crazy Thing!

STOP!  

I want out! I want off! I want to stick my head in the sand! I just want to be out on the open road, alone, at peace, riding along in my automobile, with no particular place to go…

…OK – I’m being dramatic. Melodramatic, even, but here’s my point:  I think we’re over-saturated and over-stimulated with news and stories and opinions and inputs and video clips gone viral. Viral – that’s an interesting word. I’m suffering from OID – Over-Inundated Disease, a virus that is spread through the air on 4G networks and satellite feeds and enters through the eyes and ears. It’s a psychological disease. Symptoms range from anxiety and loss of sleep to near hysteria. There have been some reports of germophobia, depression, irrational behavior, and in some severe cases, seclusion. Maybe a drug company will read this and come up with a good medication to combat the effects of OID. Of course, I’ll have to see my doctor and ask about it, and face a bunch of other symptoms, like blurred vision and period of loss of hearing from trying to block out all of these inputs that come hurling at me from all directions every minute of every day…

…OK – I’m being dramatic. Melodramatic, even, but here’s my point. Those who know me or who have read many of my posts know that clichés (and stereotypes) wouldn’t exist if they weren’t at least partially true, and here’s my cliché of the day:  ignorance is bliss. And there ain’t nothin’ we don’t know anymore.  

What got me started on this rant today is the story that has come out of suburban Rochester this week, about a school bus monitor, an elderly woman, who was very verbally abused. We know about this, of course, because the little perps videotaped themselves doing it and posted the video on Facebook. And yes, since it was posted, the authorities have gotten wind, and the little perps are going to be punished, and hopefully they’ll learn from this. People have started a donation plea to help buy the victim a vacation as a way to help her recover from this, which is a very nice gesture. $300K later, money is still pouring in and I find that interesting, but I’ll leave that alone.

 

But immediately, this incident gets lumped into the bullying area, and correctly so. And that had me thinking, is bullying worse now than it used to be? In one respect, what these kids did happens all the time, all over, and by no means am I saying this to excuse the behavior. But are things getting worse? Or is it that we hear more examples of bullying, because of all various forms of media and communication out there? Was it that life was so much more simple back in the good ol’ days, since we only got our news from one newspaper (or maybe two if you lived near a big city), and maybe two news channels, and every year, there were only 5 bullying incidents per month in our little corner of the world? Are things much worse now that we have access to hundreds of newspapers and news channels, plus Twitter and Facebook and Google and TMZ and _____ and ______  and _____ and the other 746 examples? So that we now know of 3,528 bullying incidents per month that happen across the globe?

And you can substitute any topic into this post, good or bad, happy or sad. Of course, we tend to hear about and focus on the bad and sad, because those topics draw us in and pull at our emotions. The feel-good stories are noted as exceptions, as special, as counterpoint, to the normal, routine, everyday onslaught of trials and tribulations and things to worry about and rally against.

Is it necessary to know everything about everybody, everywhere, all the time? Why can’t we be happy with what we have and who we know, where we are?

People poke fun (and I play along and poke fun at myself) at the fact that I haven’t upgraded my cell phone since 2006. It’s a cell phone – it’s not a smart phone, it’s not even a dumb phone. I could access the internet if I wanted but I would be very limited in what I could look up. My phone is not “app-ready”. And you know what? I’m OK with that. Perfectly OK with that. I do make calls and I do text, although it is getting very annoying when I want to type the world solve, since that is 7-7-7-7-wait-6-6-6-wait-5-5-5-wait-8-8-8-wait-3-3. But, when I am out and about, I don’t want the entire world at my finger tips. I do have an iPod touch, which is internet capable. I use it for music 98% of the time. On a few minor occasions, I will find a Wi-Fi spot and find a functional use for it. And that’s it. I don’t want to know. If I need to know, I will find a way to find out what I need to know. 

What is even more disconcerting to me, is that with all of these inputs, it seems to me that the lines between fact and opinion and very very blurred. Newspaper websites post blogs (opinions) next to, and sometimes above, articles ((supposed to be) fact). (Yes, that was a double-parenthetical.) TV news reports will find an “expert”, flaunt his credentials, and let this expert use his “introduced authority” to basically state his opinion almost as fact.  

And then there are the rumors…stir that into this confusing blend of fact and opinion and I don’t know what to think anymore. I heard some rumors the other day, old rumors that I hadn’t heard before since I tend to not pay attention, about some old-school R&B performers (plural) that almost made me read differently into some of my favorite songs. And I really had to stop and think, and almost talk myself off the ledge (so-to-speak), and remind me that the meaning and the context of things doesn’t have to change because of a rumor, or opinion, no matter if proven true or not. “A House Is Not A Home” can still be the same, regardless.

Those are three examples of the lines being blurred. And with the onslaught of all of this information, at the speed of light, I am starting to believe that as humans, our filters are being eroded. We just don’t possess the capability, because we don’t have the time, to step back and put everything into some kind of perspective, or some kind of context. We’ve stopped thinking and we’ve just been reacting. And jumping and screaming. Immediately.  

I wonder…with all of these different forms of media, have we made it easier for people to achieve their 15 minutes of fame and fortune? And have we subscribed to the theory of “no publicity is bad publicity”? Attention paid is attention paid, and if things in fact are getting worse, maybe it’s because more people want more attention and are willing to submit to deeper levels of public insanity just for their 15 minutes? Why do we want more attention? 

Maybe it’s because we’re giving each other less attention, because spending all of our time being bombarded by opinionated facts about every little negative issue that occurs in every country, all day and all night, and reacting? 

Are things getting worse? Or have we just given up our control over what we pay attention to?  

No, I don’t want off, and I don’t want out. I don’t want to stick my head in the sand. I just want to take a step back every now and then.

(Eric – I could have summed this up in three words…you know what they are…)