Dealing with Emotional Overload and the Spirituality of Television

I recently had a moment of insight into the life of a computer. While typing away, I experienced something very typical of computers - and I responded in a very atypical manner. You see, my computer froze.
And instead of swearing at it, I empathized. I felt its pain.

Computers are asked to do a lot. They are counted upon to receive, compute and respond to hundreds of pieces of information at any given moment. And sometimes, they just can't take it anymore. It's as if my computer was saying "NO, enough is enough, I need a break! Turn me off! I can't handle anymore flipping information!! And quit banging your forehead on the keyboard! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE"

The other day I was flipping through a magazine and experienced a similar sensation. I experienced information overload. There were ads, articles, photo's, reviews, editorials and surveys galore, all clamoring for my attention with slick new fonts and cleverly designed layouts that the magazine people are hoping will catch my eye and make me want to buy their products.

How am I supposed to pay attention to all this stuff?

But this is what it's like living in North America these days, isn't it...

I was brought up to be very polite. My grandparents used to sit me down for tea in their old-English style dining room and ask me to behave as I would if the Queen were present. So when someone asks for my attention, naturally, I'm inclined to give it, because that's what a polite person would do.
The problem is that nowadays everyone wants your attention. Have you ever been in the middle of a conversation when your phone rings? Of course, you pick up the phone because you just want that ring tone you once thought was funny but is now really annoying to stop, just to hear a beeping noise signaling someone else is calling you a minute later?
I have.
Naturally, I want to pay proper attention to everybody - but I can't. And my relationships suffer for it. Sure my conversations are efficient - but are they really conversations, or just the exchange of information? What's the difference?

Moving on... you could be driving along on a sunny afternoon and in less than a minute be bombarded by the advertising on the radio, billboards, people holding signs all while trying to find change to give the homeless guy who just knocked on your window.

It's in times like these that I have the urge to suddenly become unresponsive, to make like a PC and freeze, hoping the people will just go away and stop asking me to talk, pay attention or give money.

I was listening to a particularly good sermon given at Mars Hill, Rob Bell's Church in Michigan, by a guy named Shane Hipps. If you get the chance, download it here:

http://www.marshill.org/teaching/

He spent some time discussing the insights of a gentlemen I vaguely remember hearing about in Grade Eleven Social Studies named Marshall McLuhan.
Marshall McLuhan was a pop-culture prophet - it seemed he knew what was coming down the chute for our culture before anyone else. He even predicted amazon.com thirty years before it showed up.
His two most influential statements included calling the world a "global village" and saying that "the medium is the message."

I never really understood the second one, until Shane Hipps explained it to me. What message is your couch, your TV, and your remote telling you?
They're telling you that its OK to experience the exiting adventures and terrible tragedies of lives both fictional and real from the comfort of your own home.
My brother and I went on an expedition to Mt Everest Base Camp last October. A few weeks ago my brother was telling a friend of his about his trip, when his friend replied - "I've been there as well! Or I might as well have been. I saw the IMAX movie on it. Pretty much the same as being there."
I couldn't believe it. There was a whole realm of experience that contributed to our adventure through the Himalayas that could never be conveyed through a television screen, even one as big as the IMAX. The excitement of flying through the mountains into a town perched on a cliff, of feeling the burn in your legs as you climb so high your lungs scream for thicker air, of sleeping on a wooden bed using your arm as a pillow - these experiences don't make it onto the screen.

Shane mentioned that this attitude, that we can experience the world from the comfort of our couches, has affected our mindset towards the world's problems as well. When you flip on the news, you are bombarded with images from problems the world over: devastating images from across the globe of disaster inflicted by man and nature - all clamoring for your attention, for your sympathies. If it's impolite to ignore a man who's asking you a question, what is it when you ignore someone asking for help to build a new house when their old one floated down the street? Inhuman?
When this happens, I feel emotional overload. My heart wants to freeze. And in a way, it does.

Here's a paraphrase of what Shane has to say about this issue of emotional overload:

"The electronic age is creating a spirituality of empathy at a distance.... this is what happens when, through your tv or computer, you begin to experience the weight of planetary suffering... We do have an empathetic encounter, and we want to help, but then it's something else... One minute it's 9/11, then hurricane Katrina... and then the Tsunami...
It has a strange effect upon us. Sure, it's great, we tell ourselves. We are connected with everything that's going on in the world. But in fact, because there's so much of it,
the human psyche is not designed to withstand the totality of human suffering. And what's the natural reaction? Helplessness.... hopelessness... numbness... apathy. Then our everyday priorities of paying bills and going to work begin to take over.
When you extend your emotional life globally, it has the effect of cauterizing the nerves of compassion in our own back yards. Theres just too much to deal with. So we stop dealing with any of it."

I have been a victim of this. I want to care - but most of the time, I just don't. My thoughts are that there's always something or someone I'm forgetting, what I do doesn't matter, and I'm never doing enough - I will always be guilty of these things, it seems, so in the end I don't even bother. Excuses, I know. But we all use them, don't we.

A friend of mine who initiated our trip to base camp had a great impact upon my thoughts on this subject. He told me that I should pick a problem, even if it's just a small one, and invest in a solution. He gives financial support to a few orphanages in India, and visits them once in a while to provide encouragement and blessing. This way he also appreciates their need much more than if he simply saw a special on TV.
So when the phone rings and someone asks him to pledge money for cancer, or someone knocks on the door looking for a donation to some cause, he replies by saying that he appreciates the cause, but he has already committed to giving to those kids in India, and they are his priority.

I think that if all of us picked a cause or two, we'd get a lot more done than if we try to fix all the worlds problems at once. And we might stop feeling so guilty about the fact that we can't change anything - because we can, and we are. However slowly it may seem.

It might also help if we stuck our televisions in the closet for a while, or threw our computers out the window...