People are naturally inquisitive, always hoping to solve the mystery, understand the hidden meaning, learn the back-story. Not satisfied with our sensory look at the world, we must analyze its composition down to atoms. Yet it is the fate of modern man, casually connected to all worldwide malevolence, that he is almost daily made aware of events he cannot bear to contemplate.
His office is to shoulder the burden of evil without even the luxury of understanding it. Imagine modern man of a mere few hundred years ago, aware only of his own travails and those in his immediate vicinity; unenlightened by news of the most recent depredation placed upon members of his species, of anonymous sadness he can mourn only, never console or prevent. He has not been afflicted by history lessons poisoning his outlook with the knowledge of every god-awful horror ever perpetrated on a scale grand enough to be remembered by strangers. He was not weighed down, his days drained of their sunshine, by hundreds of years of misery. Imagine how lovely to live unaware of genocides occurring halfway around the world to people unknown to us beyond their terrible fate. How delightful not to toil under the weight of World Wars, knowing that multitudes suffered yet ignorant of the actual suffering. How excellent not to measure our happiness by the millions outrageously denied it. How much finer not to live in the age of information. Let’s face it. Humans aren’t newsworthy anymore.
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