If you are a consumer of ‘News’ in our society you have probably developed a certain emotional and intellectual obliqueness to the repetition of adverse events coming at you constantly. Indeed you may have come to cultivate a lack of attachment to any and all the issues being exploited in order to grab your attention, just so you can maintain some modicum of balance in your perspective on life. This expressed indifference has become a defining feature of the attitude of many people in our world.
A significant number of people have come to the conclusion that their indifference is necessary in order to maintain their sanity in what many have come to regard as a crazy world. The conscious construction of this wall – this defense mechanism to keep the madness out – might seem necessary - but it is not our only option… nor is it the most viable one. Reality bites, but we can challenge ourselves to find creative ways to avoid being uncritical consumers of the menu of an unconscionable media culture focused solely on their bottom lines.
To be sure, there are things happening in our world that hold grave concerns for the future. There are enduring wars and strife. There are political dramas that raise questions about the assumptions we have cultivated about what constitutes good governance. Challenges to the foundational values that have come to underpin our political systems and the way we expect our societies to operate abound. Beyond the hypocrisies that are a part of the day to day relationships between political factions and nations, we continue to be concerned about the gross demonstrations of immorality and amorality in national and international affairs.
Bad news is a fact of life, but, thankfully, it is not the only news. While the reasons for pessimism persist, the necessity for optimism beckons. We may not be living in the best of times, but it is not true that we are in the worst of times. The dysfunctional perspectives that causes many to retreat are a fact of life; but cultivating hope for a more peaceful and conscientiously compassionate world is an ontological imperative we must not ignore.
Beyond the superficial national, regional, ethnic, political and religious demarcations that divide us, we are constantly being called to reach out and touch each other in recognition of that deeper connection which is our common humanity. That reaching out must be defined by a coupling of the needs we share, and the resources available to us. Resources… spiritual, material, intellectual… .
The development and propagation of dynamic technologies, bring us closer to each other in our world. These technologies avail us of opportunities to break out of the isolationism that partners with ignorance to breed a pessimistic outlook on life. The quality of our intentions go a far way in determining the impact we make in our engagement with these technologies and each other.
We can make choices in our engagement with each other that have positive rather than deleterious consequences for our corporate existence. The revolution in information technologies can facilitate the sharing of our lives and concerns in ways that are uplifting, rather than cultivate the continued devolution of our communal experience. It is in large measure now up to each of us to develop the determination and the spiritual resourcefulness to take advantage of every opportunity to empower ourselves and each other.
Let us, as far as is humanly possible, do so.
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