How interestingly this cyberage of ours is forcing us to "evolve," to "re-wire," to learn a new "protocol" of perception and filtration of "input." Input that simply wasn't there before and, so, never required filtration.
What I'm learning, with accelerating rapidity, might be called The Fine Art of Not Caring. For example, I enjoy YouTube videos on things like history, cosmology, language, nature, and to some extent political topics, though I'm getting weary of the latter. And, of course, I follow certain channels dealing with the war in Ukraine.
But to get to the videos you'd like to watch you have to plow through a million screaming headlines about things that are "SHOCKING!" and "EXPLOSIVE!"--in short, clickbait.
It is indeed a very healthy thing finally to realize that it's ALL to some extent "clickbait" (just like to some extent ALL advertising is lying) and, then, better armed cognitively, assess which clickbait might all the same contain something of substance behind it.
That is, you have to stop "caring."
You could if you wanted to (if you were crazy enough to) be in touch every minute of every day with every disaster, murder, tragedy, outrage, scandal, controversy, desperate cause and need taking place everywhere in the world. And what would that do to you? And your real, "local" life? Among the people you make a real difference to?
Obviously none of us can sanely live that way. And yet we're exposed to a tsunami of demands for our attention the like of which has never existed in all of human history. It would be incredibly naive to underestimate the toll that takes on us individually and collectively.
Understanding how to respond and deal with that doesn't happen by default. It takes awareness and decisions. Intentionality. This is what I meant by "The Fine Art of Not Caring." It's a new learned instinct, to let the infinite mass of screaming data flow by psychoemotionallly unengaged, unacknowledged, as little more than the trickle of a stream or the wind rustling leaves, or the trundling of a train outside the window (as happens here where I live). It's there but really not in any way that has meaning.
Case in point: Russell Brand. Celebrity. Rape accusations. Scandal. Massive media brouhaha. Yeah, I noted the headlines (HEADLINES!!!). I know it's there. I don't care. Haven't wasted my time opening a single story on it. It's a thing happening somewhere among people I don't know and have nothing to do with, just like a billion other things, including the worst and most awful of things, going on in the world among people I don't know and have nothing immediately to do with. Go on, headlines, flow right by. Whatever that's all about has no stake in my involvement on any cognitive or affective level. In other words, even more than my having no "investment" in it, none of that, in a manner of speaking, has any investment in me. Except, that is, for the financial gain generated by my click.
None of which means I wouldn't "care," wouldn't be empathetic and supportive if faced directly with a rape victim telling me of the horror she went through. But that's not what we're talking about here, is it. We're talking about headlines. We're talking about staring at a screen. We're talking about getting minds and feelings all bunched up in a knot over a news story. It really is a completely different thing, and woe betide anyone who doesn't understand that difference. Not understanding the difference is the recipe for Cyber-Madness.
Each of us has a certain and very limited "caring" quotient, and it spreads only so far, because none of us is God. It doesn't mean we are actively callous toward the reality of suffering and injustice anywhere at any time. It simply means none of can carry the psychoemotional burden of all the suffering and injustice everywhere and all the time. We're not made for that. It's not normal.
Ultimately it's not even real but, rather, becomes a farce and parody of itself if you try it.
Which, somehow, we understood instinctively before the internet cropped up to "connect" us (it sounded so wonderful, didn't it!) to the whole world all the time.
It felt like power. And, indeed, there was power in it.
Only the power wasn't ours.
I find myself lately re-taking power through "The Fine Art of Not Caring." I am, actually, a deeply caring person, and I don't say that as a boast. I think, really, we all are, aren't we? We all feel. But we need to learn a decided sort of executive functioning and what may seem (until we get used to it) a cruel, summary sort of instinct to ignore and dismiss input screaming for our attention, in order to exploit the tools presented by today's cyberspace rather than be exploited by them. To be people, not cyberspace cogs.
