Jan 12, 2015 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Current Affairs / General Interest

On My Compulsive Urge to Seek Out The News of the World

©January 12th, 2015

By Vijaya Sundaram

What is wrong with me?

I never read the news fanatically when I was younger, and now, I go and look for it every day.  No, I don’t watch television, and I’ve even stopped reading the newspapers.  That is no protection.  I am a creature trapped by the Internet.  So, I read all the time — BBC news, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, other newspapers from all over the world, and various new sites that I learned about through Facebook.  Why?  Why do I do this?  Why do I punish myself with this onslaught of (let’s face it) mostly horrors?  Okay, I do find nice things too, which I pursue just as fanatically.  I love reading about innovations in ‘Green Technology’ or following articles about space, or about music, or about ‘Tiny Homes’ (something I adore), and I look for news about people doing good in the world as well.  Mostly, however, I find the bad news first.

WHY do I keep doing this?

Is it a compulsive habit now?

Is it that I need to make more sense of an insane reality, and discuss it with people?

Ultimately, does knowing change things?

I would hope so.  I’d like to think so.  I mean, if I know more, could I be more alert to injustice or to an increasingly hostile planetary climate?  Would I take more of an interest in my fellow humans, in whom I already take a great interest?  Would it help me teach those who don’t know, or those who do know, but don’t care?

I know what this need of mine is.  It’s about finding connection in an increasingly disconnected world.  It’s about understanding reality and how the injustices in one part of the world will affect my life and the lives of those about whom I care.  It’s about taking action wherever and whenever possible.

There have to be limits to this seeking out news, though.  Otherwise, I fear I’ll go mad with all this knowing, and be helpless about doing anything to change the course of human events.

I fear that it is crippling my creative impulse.

I feel my mind getting more and more cluttered with facts and opinions, both mine and others’.  I can barely move around without bumping up against some reminder of some horrible event or injustice that’s happening in the world right now.  And I am reminded of Oscar Wilde, who, back in the 19th century in The Picture of Dorian Gray, remarked, “The thoroughly well-informed man — that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.”

I need to do some spring cleaning.

And yet, and yet … I need to know.  Everything helps me formulate and re-formulate my reality.  While fantasy beckons, and it’s only too easy to lose myself in that world in my mind, I cannot afford to do so.

It’s sad.

I think I’ll wean myself from the Internet for a bit, or at least, check it every couple of days, instead of every single day.

Perhaps, I’ll be able to be more carefree, then.

And yet …

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Tags: Hostile reality and climate change, Media hound, News, Oscar Wilde reference, the Internet, The need to know things, The need to pursue the latest news of the world