There was a time when events, good or bad, became known to people from a limited area of occurrence. As such there was a threshold to how much bad news one received and responded to psychologically. After all, information leaves an impact and has to be processed by the mind. Excess information can cause an overload, and the processing disrupted to the extent that there is a ‘freeze’ with layers upon layers accumulating in the memory. This is happening in the present day, with everybody having access to instant communication. As such, concern and intervention are not limited to one’s mohalla, town or state – it’s just a limitless compilation of bad news, day after day.
There is, therefore, the need to learn how to cope. Social media algorithms can line up posts that one prefers, so can be used to limit that which is disturbing. Most disturbing, of course, is that which one can do nothing about. It leaves a sense of powerlessness, and it is very much a reason for the mindless acts of violence in societies where social isolation of individuals has become endemic. And that generates even more bad news.
Some balance can be brought about by information providers that have editorial control, such as newspapers. Preference should not be given just to the ‘negative intensity’ of news regardless of how much association it may or may not have with the reader. It should not lead to just a compilation of murders, rapes, etc., on every page at the cost of other information that is positive and useful. A repeatedly negative view of the world can lead to faulty judgement, even misplaced choices. It may be that an area may experience very few incidents of crime. These may even be quickly solved. But, given the dose of bad news every day from all parts of the world, parents may become paranoid about their children’s safety, particularly in the case of girls, leading to anxiety and unjustified restrictions. Once such a glitch is introduced into the system, it can lead to the imagined fear becoming reality. The positive is present everywhere in the world – one needs only to look around to see it. Its bounty should be stored in the psyche so that when challenges emerge, they can be dealt with in the proper way, without accepting defeat or conceding space. It is incumbent, more than ever today, upon leaders in every section of society to provide this necessary balance so that the harm caused by events is limited to just its actual space and no further.
