There are times when I must admit that to belong to the great group of uninformed people, or perhaps uncaring people, or unthinking people, would be a much easier way to get through life.
The developed countries of the world have the wealth to create systems of distraction for the populace, systems generally called the media ranging from the old standard television through to the modern mind-trivia pursuits of Twitter and Facebook, controlled by the corporations that require a non-critical unthinking participation in the diversions that are there to keep the populace amused, distracted, entertained, pseudo-informed, patriotically biased, and generally blasé about the world around them.
This cocoon of media hype provides a few glimpses of various man made and natural disasters around the world to provide conversational talking points, but seldom if ever with any context or depth of research, and always isolated one from another as if each incident exists entirely in its own sphere to be ‘ooh’ed and ’ahh’ed at and then forgotten in the daily drive to be the richest sexiest best-looking most consumptive pawn on the block.
Somehow I cannot do that, and it leaves me dazed and confused when the mass of information that is available reveals quite transparently that all the major disaster news items are related and that the sum total of them all is that on our current course, we are all facing dramatic and perhaps traumatic changes to our lifestyles.
Today’s news items that leave me dazed and confused run the full spectrum of scary items: Euro devaluation; massive oil pools in Gulf of Mexico heading towards Gulf Stream; Arctic long term ice rotting away; 145th Canadian and 1000th U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan; Israel continues occupying Palestine.