„My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.”

Could this be more accurate than now? As media is flooded with images and news reports from Aleppo, one feels the urge to look away to cope with the way Germany and other countries have looked away instead of helping. The crisis in Syria only became a crisis for Germany when it turned into a refugee crisis. More people demonstrated against TTIP on the streets than against the war in Syria and the regimes supporting it. Now, I don’t want to present myself as a saint, I have not been better than the people I am judging with this statement. But I am ashamed. Ashamed of myself, ashamed of the others. That we are so weak that we prefer looking away than facing the fact that we failed. But this issue occupies me for years now. Why is it so hard to not look away? Is it because of the fear that this brutality is real and could happen to us, too? Is it the fact that I am ignorant enough to say: This is a civilized country, we would never let anything like this happen! Is it mere laziness? Am I that bad of a person? Are we all? Or are we all overwhelmed by the news and their consequences? The fact that people can be so cruel to one another, it’s scary. It makes you wonder how and why it could get so far. The further you dig and investigate, the more you find out about your country that you wish, you didn’t know. Selling weapons to a country to benefit from the profit. A great way to make money, a great way to generate and support war. A war that they judge from their parliaments and bureaus, yet know that it is them that keeps it going.

Learning about these things makes you sick! Thus it’s understandable that you need a break. Nowadays we cannot escape the news, they are everywhere. Yet sometimes you need a break. And I think one cannot judge you for that but you need to stay informed to know what you are taking a break of.