Onslaught

This evening was supposed to be my night off.

Yet in the past hour I have - without resistance - had to process all of the following (in no particular order):

• the tail end of a Morecambe and Wise compilation show
• Hank Green’s latest vlog brothers update
• a Sexual Assault PSA on Tumblr
• a rather bombastic BBC News outro to Scottish Dependence Day
• some Friends GIFs (of which there have been a number lately…)
• some interesting Tweets reacting to a variety of events in the world
• a familiar but still-frightening post about the double standards of law and order in racist America
• some Facebook pictures of cats

Without even realising it, I have worn my brain out. And yes, it is completely my choice - I could have just stuck a single film on; ignored my phone and called it a night. I recognise my failing there.

But it served as a reminder that the early 21st Century is being defined by a global ‘livestream’ that a significant population of the world subscribes to - certainly in the developed; internet-accessing world: Our Facebook walls, Tumblr feeds, Twitter streams; and all manner of other media is launching a mindless assault, in a scatter-gun approach; on our senses.

Will humanity evolve to control and self-regulate this sudden exposure?

In the past, the little that people knew, was enough to inform their day-to-day lives - allowed them to forge careers, and focus on settling down at some point [crass over-generalisation I know].

In the past, people simply did not have the technological access to our modern world - which is why everything moves at a frighteningly quick pace.

And without realising it; people think they are interacting with the external world - and think they have power to influence and change everything they encounter.

When in fact all we can do is filter what we take on board; and remind ourselves what is really important in all that 'information’ flying around.

A human mind is not sufficient enough to process the whole world’s problems; that’s why we only sip at the millions-upon-billions of daily events that occur - even the mass media can only report a few hundred stories with any convincing amount of coverage.

So I have taken upon myself to remind me to switch off from the bigger, badder world, once in a while - to preserve my sanity.

G'nite.