Barrage of bad news
There has been a torrid bombardment of bad news recently. It makes reading the papers in the morning depressing.
We have the case of a Korean guy being beheaded in Iraq. And then, we have all the bombings and killings in Iraq in the area of Falluja (which at my last reading stated 100 dead). And now, we have an Iran tanker carrying full of gasoline which crashed and killed more than 70 people in a fireball.
Locally, we have the Nicholl Highway which is still very fresh in my mind, together with the site collapse at Ayer Rajah. Then there are those errant cases of someone stabbing someone or killing someone (take for example the case of the youth who was stabbed to death at Westmall). Or you have some poor lass who was abused.
(Of course some people might tell me the Eurocup match when England lost to Portugal on penalties, but are you serious?)
Senseless. Mostly senseless and without reason tragedies.
It makes the world hard to understand and impossible to grapple. I do not remember growing up with so much bad news around me, but that was probably because I was not an avid reader of newspapers last time. But now, everytime I read the papers, it just harden me more. Emotionally, too much bad news and negative reports can wear you down.
How many beheading can you bear? I have already reached my quota for my lifetime.
So you learn to protect yourself. You learn to distant yourself from the happenings and just read them with a poker-straight face. You just continue living in the world that we are all so lucky to be living in, pushing out all the bad news and happenings as if it was a movie because it would never happen to us. We form our own little protective bubble & live in our own little world, pretending that it does not interact with the rest of the globe; taking the blessings that we enjoy as granted such as human rights. In our own little bubble, we engage in our own pursuits, bettering our interests or material comforts. We have to learn to make ourselves happy in our own little ways when all we see is a rush of negative news every morning. And I try to do that, to keep my spirits up.
I will not fully understand whatever point the extremists in the Middle East are trying to make with their ideological adaptation of their religion. I do not grasp the motive of the half-hearted decisions of the Western powers in times like this. But I know opinions of people are the hardest to change, and politics sometimes turn out to be a dirty game without really advancing people's cause.
And this just dampens my spirits more, being a citizen of this world. Not just being a citizen of my country.
I like to ask loudly "WHAT KIND OF WORLD AM I LIVING IN"? But that sounds highly frustrated and angry with the world. It sounds like I no longer have any hope of any advancement of civilization in the world. However that is not the case. We have come a long way as humans, as civilizations. No matter our race, our beliefs and our language, I want to believe that we are progressing together as mankind, as a collective civilization.
In the face of the barrage of bad news, I want to believe in the possibility one day I will wake up and read that there is a ceasefire in Iraq; that people in China not only have economic freedom but also political freedom; that women in Middle East not only can drive but can vote and work in the society; that there are no more ideological franchise of Al-Queada and many other more positive news that will bring a smile to many people's faces.
I do not want to think that the world is regressing. I want to believe, the world is just taking 2 steps forward but 1 step back; that we are still progressing albeit slowly.
We have the case of a Korean guy being beheaded in Iraq. And then, we have all the bombings and killings in Iraq in the area of Falluja (which at my last reading stated 100 dead). And now, we have an Iran tanker carrying full of gasoline which crashed and killed more than 70 people in a fireball.
Locally, we have the Nicholl Highway which is still very fresh in my mind, together with the site collapse at Ayer Rajah. Then there are those errant cases of someone stabbing someone or killing someone (take for example the case of the youth who was stabbed to death at Westmall). Or you have some poor lass who was abused.
(Of course some people might tell me the Eurocup match when England lost to Portugal on penalties, but are you serious?)
Senseless. Mostly senseless and without reason tragedies.
It makes the world hard to understand and impossible to grapple. I do not remember growing up with so much bad news around me, but that was probably because I was not an avid reader of newspapers last time. But now, everytime I read the papers, it just harden me more. Emotionally, too much bad news and negative reports can wear you down.
How many beheading can you bear? I have already reached my quota for my lifetime.
So you learn to protect yourself. You learn to distant yourself from the happenings and just read them with a poker-straight face. You just continue living in the world that we are all so lucky to be living in, pushing out all the bad news and happenings as if it was a movie because it would never happen to us. We form our own little protective bubble & live in our own little world, pretending that it does not interact with the rest of the globe; taking the blessings that we enjoy as granted such as human rights. In our own little bubble, we engage in our own pursuits, bettering our interests or material comforts. We have to learn to make ourselves happy in our own little ways when all we see is a rush of negative news every morning. And I try to do that, to keep my spirits up.
I will not fully understand whatever point the extremists in the Middle East are trying to make with their ideological adaptation of their religion. I do not grasp the motive of the half-hearted decisions of the Western powers in times like this. But I know opinions of people are the hardest to change, and politics sometimes turn out to be a dirty game without really advancing people's cause.
And this just dampens my spirits more, being a citizen of this world. Not just being a citizen of my country.
I like to ask loudly "WHAT KIND OF WORLD AM I LIVING IN"? But that sounds highly frustrated and angry with the world. It sounds like I no longer have any hope of any advancement of civilization in the world. However that is not the case. We have come a long way as humans, as civilizations. No matter our race, our beliefs and our language, I want to believe that we are progressing together as mankind, as a collective civilization.
In the face of the barrage of bad news, I want to believe in the possibility one day I will wake up and read that there is a ceasefire in Iraq; that people in China not only have economic freedom but also political freedom; that women in Middle East not only can drive but can vote and work in the society; that there are no more ideological franchise of Al-Queada and many other more positive news that will bring a smile to many people's faces.
I do not want to think that the world is regressing. I want to believe, the world is just taking 2 steps forward but 1 step back; that we are still progressing albeit slowly.
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