Technology and Tragedies
It’s more emotional and painstaking now more than ever to watch these national and worldwide disasters. Of the one that just happened in Orlando, we can see video, snapchats, peoples texts, and tweets, not only while it’s happening, but them on the way to the club and the aftermath. Technology connects us immediately and more intimately than ever. I watched a snapchat of a girl at the club when the shots started being fired and saw her confused reaction. It made me feel like I was there, or more, it made it real instead of just an idea of how it must’ve been in my head and it was overwhelmingly sad.
We have technology, I’m not to say whether this it’s inherently good or bad, but our lives are vastly different because of it. Some think it’s great, that it’s the evolution of humans, and that any advancement in technology is beneficial. Some renounce it, and feel that it isn’t all a good thing, it’s something that changes the nature of who we are as humans. Most fall in between and feel the advancement of technology has brought us many lifesaving and positive inventions, but that it must be used responsibly by us.
Many people are addicted to technology and they know it and sometimes try to reduce the amount of time they spend on technology, especially on social networking. Millennials and older mainly see this as we have been in a world without cell-phones, so we know first hand what it’s like without it. Many others, often younger, aren’t aware that they in fact may have an addiction to technology, or understand what that really entails, including what it does to the psychology of their mind.
Living your life connected to everyone that you ‘kind of’ know, without the awareness to realize most of it is a facade and not important can wreak havoc on a person. It makes you jealous, self-conscious, afraid to show certain aspects of yourself. In short people are unintentionally living lives online. They are living for the camera, doing stuff to post about it, posting about stuff to show that they are doing it.
We’re connected to celebrities, very highly influential people and many of them are shallow, superficial people building their ‘brand’ and shouldn’t be able to reach so many youths. Advertising companies can infiltrate your life, and their job is to make their product the coolest, even to the effect of, you aren’t cool if you don’t use this, or do that.
Back to the massacre’s and tragedies though. We have never been able to know what was going on all over the world as fast and as personally as we do now. We see every terrorist attack right away. We see videos of the victims. We see bombings on the news. We see commercials of kids literally starving to death with bugs all over them, telling us to donate. I don’t think in any way that a good charity that helps people is a negative. It’s great, and organizations have helped us to donate to causes that do save lives. Caring and sensible celebrities use their influence to help good causes too.
My point is that this is new, we haven’t yet in history been able to know of every death around the world, all the bad things, see it everyday. It used to be, you watch out for your family and your village and that was it. If tragedy beset your village or loved ones you would feel the pain and deal with whatever it was. But you weren’t burdened with the pain of problems from around the world because you simply didn’t know. Now, not only do we know because we read about them in newspapers, we see it, and we have a much closer connection to the people who may have been harmed from it. I feel it is important to expand your mind and know about a good many things. But I don’t think the way our world is gives us much in the sense of compartmentalizing, and dealing with things, and giving importance to things. We see thousands pointless murders across the seas on tv, but we cannot shed one tear. Then the news does a report on a beloved local teacher who tragically died of cancer and you can’t stop crying. It’s a real trip on the mind to know and to SEE great horrors and not be affected as you think you should be. I wonder if it’s more about location, or if it’s more about being able to relate, or I’m sure there are many, many factors involved, but it’s a very new phenomenon to the human species.
Figuring out where to place significance is obviously up to each individual, but I think it is an active thing to be done. I think if I am making a point it is to spend some effort on seeing what you are affected by the most and why. Then I think people can do the most good, because they will be more specific in what they want to help change for the better. Thinking about everything all at once is overwhelming and it makes people shut-down or turn off their empathy switch, so it’s something that needs to be cared for and nurtured by people.