Modern media would have you believe the world is precariously hanging by a string and lunatics are running with scissors trying to end life as we know it. It is not necessary to even watch the news or immerse yourself in current events any longer, just observe your fellow man. You hear it in the conversations and you see it all around you. Life is not fun any longer. They have sucked the joy out of living. It is hard to enjoy today while the world is heading to certain doom, environmental collapse, political uncertainty and possible financial meltdown.
Social media has given us all a platform to express our opinions or evangelize the world with our specific interests or unique challenges. Every people group seems to be frustrated. There is a daily battle to see who has it worse, who is persecuting who and who needs to be eliminated. We are living in a social war. Dominance is the goal, harmony and peace must step aside.
When information and entertainment can be controlled by a few, society may seem more stable. As a youth we got a morning newspaper and watched the evening news. Schools were pumping out good citizens and patriots. All I needed to worry about was Russian nukes or weird, psycho serial killers. Don’t talk to strangers or get in a van with puppies. Be a hard worker and everything will work out. Hulk Hogan had the rest of the formula to take your vitamins and say your prayers. They taught us to say no to drugs and to respect others. Somehow we have accepted a narrative that older people are all intolerant and racist. Someday maybe we will realize the vast majority of the population is powerless and not responsible for the ills of the world and society at large. But this war is a blame game of ideology and confusion. Smoke and mirrors have you looking at the wrong things.
Every one who is a vocal warrior is looking to get an audience and a reaction of some sort. They are looking for those that are in agreement and those that are not. Every cause and idea has become important. There are so many issues one cannot keep up anymore. You want to be outraged? Just hang on, today there will come a time for outrage. We cannot have time for discovery or understanding. We have to have outrage and crumble into a heap. We are required to sob for the cause. We go from zero to one hundred immediately. We laugh about the people “being triggered”. We call people snow flakes who seem to struggle with society and life. But once the snow flake warriors hit the streets the outrage and triggering consumes both sides.
Haven’t we seen this drama play out time and time again? Hippies and war protestors would ruin the country. Kids with their rock and roll music would ruin the world. Yet life has continued. I’m sure some of those free love hippies went on to be community leaders and members of congress. Do we think that our current President is the only bumbling, stumbling, space cadet to ascend to political heights and leadership? Yet life goes on.
The internet age has brought us to a place of connectivity and instant emotional response that has never been seen in the known history of the world. As soon as we had access to the web the information wars began. We respond with care emojis, crying emojis and outrage emojis. We heart what we love and acknowledge things with a thumbs up. We are trained and taught to respond. We try and figure out if we should like so and so’s social media posts and calculate the cost of not responding. We need to send birthday wishes and compliments. When our friends declare they don’t feel cute that day, while they post a selfie in the bathroom mirror, we pick them up with compliments of how awesome they look and what a great person they are. When people struggle we send crying emojis and crocodile tears. We pretend to suffer along with them and immediately continue our life.
At some point people started to believe life is supposed to be easy. That the struggles common to all of us were somehow optional. We only struggle because of the shortcomings of those around us. Things are not fair. Others have it easier than me. Some people seem to get all the breaks. Some people seem to be more popular than others. Do we think the day we live in is so different from times past? We have immediate access to the lives of people around us. The complainers amongst us have a platform to complain, social justice warriors have instant access to an audience. The use of media, social media and infused entertainment is being perfected to influence the world. This itself is nothing new. Just new technology. Easier access and quicker response times. Yet life goes on.
There was a time in the early days of internet life when we had a president who was going to destroy life as we knew it. Bill Clinton was impeached yet not convicted. He was tried daily on the web and in the media. I didn’t realize then, life as I had known it was changing before my eyes. The rumors and stories that came out were amazing as I look back. I too believed the world hung in a precarious place back then, yet somehow we have survived. That was before the days of Twitter and social media. We had dial up internet, chatrooms and blogs. The tech of today is more powerful, finely tuned and more invasive than ever. The world is more and more divisive. Am I seeing a common cause and effect?
Before you collapse in a heap of distress today and shed crocodile tears for the cause or person of the moment take a breathe. Life will go on. The emergencies of today will become the subject of a CNN documentary of the decades past. The headlines, the famous and the notorious will spark memories of times gone by. Times that some swore would ruin life as they had known it. Yet life went on……..