We Know Too Much

Are we designed to know as much every day as we do?

By which I mean - is the knowing of multiple things all at once good for mankind’s thriving?

This morning, I know (or can know, if I wish), news of wars, threats of war, coups, plagues, crime, fashion, showbiz, travel, shark attacks, wildfires and a hundred other things from every continent and every ocean. The internet has enmeshed us in a veritable sea of news. News that is “updated” every few seconds; news that is “current;” news that has several “experts” analyzing its importance, all at the same time; news that contradicts other news; news that is “shared” with a false sense of triumph with other poor news addicts; news that the intelligence agencies want you to see - and don’t want you to see; news that makes you laugh aloud (with an instinctive sharing of a “ha-ha-ha” emoji!); news that makes you cry (with a cartoon emoji shedding very big tears); and news that some people take to the bathroom with them, lest they miss the latest iteration of the news!

Is all this “knowing” good for us? Does it enhance the wellbeing of our minds, our bodies, our souls? Or does it rather make for a shallow and superficial existence that cannot be called life?

Only a few generations ago, the newspaper arrived every morning at one’s doorstep or was slipped under our door  - it was picked up mostly with nightclothes still on and over morning coffee, yesterday’s news would be read, with the smell of raw newsprint rising up and mixing with the smell of coffee every time the paper’s pristine pages were ruffled or opened. Yesterday’s news - and that was it!

News through the radio came exactly a hundred years ago - but most people could not afford the radio; nor the TV, when it started broadcasting both sound and images with the news in 1940. Both TV and radio had only one or two “news bulletins” a day - brief, 15 minute summaries of the news.

The newspaper still reigned supreme - until colour TV, cheaper devices and 24 hour news programming started consuming the airwaves. Mankind’s fate was then sealed and to millions of people all over the world, the news became mostly entertainment, with a vice-like grip on the attention and lives of its consumers. Between news and images of murders, rape and other crimes, people would soon cease to flinch when commercials told them how terribly incomplete their lives were - and how a bowl of cereal or a new toothpaste would make them happier and more complete!

Primitive societies lived with knowledge only of one’s immediate surroundings. Even in Roman times, when the emperor Augustus’ Pax Romana built roads and bridges and other infrastructure marvels to make travel easier than ever before, the news travelled slowly. On horseback, it took several days; by ship, it took at least a few weeks.

The newspaper, when it first arrived in the seventeenth century, was costly to produce and only a small minority could read and understand its contents. Presumably they were better “informed” - but there is no evidence that its arrival contributed to their well being or improvement.

In the history of human beings being on planet earth therefore, many thousands of years had passed before people could know (or care) about more than what was happening in their immediate neighbourhoods. In the very rapid change that occurred in our consumption of news in the last 400 years, perhaps we ought to have stopped with the daily newspaper and its rather benign, stately, crisp and gentle delivery of yesterday’s news.

The covid tyranny with its lockdowns and mandates would not have been possible, but for the rapid delivery of “news” through the internet and through propaganda television. Continuous and regularly “updated” fear propaganda was its most potent tool.

In our personal and family lives, we are living through an unprecedented era in human history. Before the age of the internet and email for example, we prayed for  those we heard about through word of mouth, the physical letter, or perhaps a phone call. Now, we are asked to pray for many hundreds of relatives and friends, people we have never heard about, things happening thousands of miles away, “worthy” causes that spring up like dandelions in springtime and for traveling relatives who are texting us for prayer before, during and after their flight to distant destinations!

With a hand on our hearts, how many of us can say that after a 3-week holiday, when we are either too blissfully busy or too distracted to “catch up” on the news, we come back home with a sense of having missed something? In reality of course, during the three weeks away from television and the internet, the sun still rose from the East, the sky was still a brilliant blue and our hearts, minds and souls were freed from its own prison walls of streaming news and propaganda.

Like Atlas, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, we pretend we can carry the weight of a continuous avalanche of news on us, and not bend and break under its weight.

Instead, we ought to heed the words of Jesus in the Gospel according to St. Matthew: “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden - and I will give you rest.”