Truth and Trauma

I mentioned in my post about ASMR that one of the reasons I felt it was so popular was because of the escape it provides for those that feel it.  I think that desire to escape the world if only for a while is driven by the fact that every day we are bombarded with stimuli that are really designed to make us feel worse about our lives.  Take the news for example, something which as children we generally avoid, either because we find it boring or because adults try to hide it from us.  As we grow older however there comes an expectation with age that you should watch or read the news regularly.  The question is why?  For the most part what you see will be events that have already happened, or developing stories all of which you personally can't do anything about.  There are only a handful of stories that will make the news that you could actually get involved with and do something about.

Despite that fact, almost every story you read or see on the news is something negative, or something that makes the world seem like it's worse than it really is, or to make you feel like the world is in a constant state of decline.  People have felt this for decades and the world has not ended, it has not fallen apart, it keeps turning and society keeps going.  Every now and then there's a story that obsesses a nation or even the world over for a while but they all pass in the end.  No matter how endless it may seem, it will come and go no matter what it is. 

There will be an immediate, predictable response to these statements that to avoid the news is ignorant, and to live in ignorance is bad, etc.  I would ask you to stop and ask yourself why you say that.  Children every day live their lives in complete ignorance to it and you don't demonise them for it.  At what point does not caring about what is on the news stop being something of innocence and start being something of ignorance?  For every story you have read today, and every news report you have watched today, how many of those will you act upon?  Beyond making conversation with people about how bad it is and how horrible the world has become, how long will it be before you return to your life and continue to live it exactly as you did before?  What are you really gaining from watching it, reading it, and most importantly, coming back to it over and over looking for more?

If it was anything else, a food or a drink that made you feel bad, and you came back to it every single day, multiple times a day, continued to consume it knowing it would make you feel unwell, but consuming it anyway, would you not consider that a destructive behaviour?  When you think about addiction, one thing that sets it apart from every other behaviour is the fact that the addict continues to indulge their habit despite the negative impact upon them it has, to the extent where they feel like they could not live without indulging in their habit.  Ask yourself how long you could live without reading or watching the news and then ask yourself if you are addicted to it.  If you even think for a moment that you might be, then you should ask yourself what you really get from doing it.

Is the desire to be informed, and know what's going on in the world, worth the negative feelings and control it has over you all the while knowing you can not, will not, or simply do not want, to do anything about it?

The Black Eyed Peas song 'Where Is The Love' suggests the whole world is distracted by the drama, and addicted to the trauma.  I can't help feel with everything that has happened in the last few years that this might actually be true to a far deeper extent than those lyrics first said.  Could you give up on the news?