WAR, FAMINE, PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE November 19 2000 Switch on your television. Is this a co-incidence? On your left we have the United States of America, supposedly the worldıs leading democracy, unable to choose a leader and fighting off allegations of corruption and vote-rigging. On your right, Great Britain- drowning amidst the worst floods in nearly a century and near-crippled by a defunct rail network. In Austria, a terrible and tragic rail disaster ends with the deaths of 170 people, following another awful accident in Hatfield, England only a month earlier. All across the world, nations continue to be ravaged by meaningless wars and endless land disputes. Oh- and throw in an errant meteor with its x percent chance of hitting Earth next December or something. Sounds good? Once you start to add up these calamities, its hard not to think that the planet is going to pot. Are we about to be punished for our capitalist sins, for our environmental carelessness, for our technological arrogance? There were a few pre-Millennial doomsayers last year, but perhaps those temporal pedants were right. Maybe the 20th Century comes to a close at the end of 2000... and maybe it's bringing the Apocalyspe with it. Okay, so they're all but rhetorical questions, you think. No need for alarm, we say - in another show of typically human pride - everything will be okay. You simply feel like the worlds at an end, they say. But hold on. How safe do we really feel? CNN and its cable news sisters play a non-stop loop, drilling current affairs into our skulls with an almost subliminal directness. Lets face it, bad news makes good news- because theres nothing quite as dull as those unconvincingly optimistic "human interest" stories that bookend the news shows. So we lap it up, the worst of what society has to offer: violent crime, murder, war, corruption- and no matter how worthy wed like to think it is, in truth the nastier the news is the better. Its in front of us the whole time, whether we recognise it or not. Death as entertainment. In being exposed to new catastrophes on a daily basis, were in danger of becoming disconnected from them...and disconnected from our natural human responses to those tragedies. We saw the terrible plight of the starving in Africa and rallied around Live Aid the first time, but with several fundraising marathons broadcast every year many of us suffer from charity fatigue. Its surprisingly easy to distance ourselves from the horrors that we see on a TV screen ­ especially when television producers try so hard to blur the line between soap opera and documentary. Why point all this out? Because it could be the end of the world as we know it. We sit around, half-hypnotised, aware of more than ever before, but also more apathetic. Numb. But if we started acting like we werent invincible, perhaps we might wake up a little. We might feel things again- not a smarmy, half-heartedly neutral current affairs response to these problems, but a visceral, human response. Oh, and did I say? Things are going to change around here. readers' reactions to this thought: It could be argued then that we are not to blame for our own ills... comment on this article e-mail this to a friend start a discussion [about i-drive] writing index thoughts index dotmusic index Problems? Questions? Suggestions? Contact me: mail@tobyslater.com back to top back to home page

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