Why I Hate the World

A Reaction

I hate the news and yet I love it. I hate politics but I can’t stand it. I used to eat up every opportunity to read about what was going on around the world and now I don’t care.

The last few years my apathy has skyrocketed. It seems to me that our society has become more puerile. We do not think for ourselves. At times it appears that we don’t even think.

With the events in Washington over the last year and the whole Phil Robertson fiasco in the news the last week (fiasco more aptly describes how the news handled it). My apathy has quickly turned to loathing.

I think I have figured out why I, and many others, have stopped caring and become hateful towards the world. I will take the news as my example but I think it can be applied to everything else we see.

In the news, we typically see a host who is in theory neutral. It is always only in theory. They never really are. The host invites two guests onto the show for their reactions to news items. I use the word news lightly here.

Neither guest gives any sort of in depth commentary about what is going on. They only react to what is happening.

Phil Robertson said he doesn’t understand how someone can be gay (somewhat vulgarly): react! Obama’s website doesn’t work: react! NSA is spying on you: react!

Here lies my issue with where we have gone. We have become a society of reactbots. There is no give and play as there should be in a debate. A conversation should not exist to prove ourselves right. We are supposed to transmit ideas to other people and interpret the thoughts sent back to us.

The end result in news, on the internet, and everywhere else is typically manifest by two people trying to talk over the other one. One person claims the other is misrepresenting the facts using facts that they are probably misrepresenting as well. Then the “discussion” is brought to a new high as someone calls the other person a racist, bigot, or idiot.

This is the issue, in my humble opinion, with society. We have become a society of reactors. We no longer communicate. The transmission and interpretation of ideas and thoughts is no longer important. We are constantly thinking of our response, our reaction. We do not care what the person says when what we want to do is prove our side to be correct.

I don’t know if a society ever existed where people lived without the need of always being right. Wouldn’t it be great, though, if we could all move past ourselves and try to actually communicate with others instead of react to their reactions. Maybe it wouldn’t, but just about anything is better than the mess we have now.