Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Year end!

It strikes me as we near the end of 2008, that the capacity of events to surprise us is diminishing fast. Can this be a good thing? If you look back at the events both good and bad over the last year each of the main events would stand out on their own as a major news event. However because there have been so many major news events we are now sensitised to the breaking news and are not all standing around in front of the TV set saying " imagine that, it's unbelievable".

I ask the question again, is this a good place for the world to be in? What can happen that will truly surprise us, shake us up, put us into action? For myself I look back to the tsunami off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.This happened in 2004 and resulted in the lifeforce of 225,000 people being wiped out in hours. This resulting loss of humanity, the largest single loss in terms of hours that the current population has seen. The resulting shock wave of anguish never materialised and set forth the view that we are immune to large news events.

This would suggest that a nuclear incident in a large city would not have us in too large of a panic, in other words after the first 24 hour news cycle we will have started to move onto the next event. So large or small, the effect of news to impact on our lives diminishes in direct proportion to the more outlandish the news becomes. Again the question, is this a good thing?

Happy new year to all, we as humans can only be positive and look after each other.