Tsunami: The Real Event and Its Television Counterpart - Which is Worse?

I walked at the shoreline today and looked at the water out there, deep and blue.  It looked agitated and unsettled.

Or maybe it was me.  I'd been up last night watching television, CNN, to see what the latest news was about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  All of it showed massive movements of natural forces on a scale seldom seen ever before.  Giant waves swamping whole towns, big buildings being shaken as if each one was in its death throes, swirling gyres of foaming water in a bay, massive quantities of cars, houses and buildings smashing and tumbling on the back of an angry-looking invading tide.

Who knows if the buildings and cars witnessed in the maelstrom contained living people and pets.  It is all grim and horrifying and in some ways fascinating.  People are talking about having no idea about the force of nature, seeing it in real terms for the first time in their lives.  People are asking if this shows an upward trend in significantly destructive natural events, considering Australia's huge flooding storm, New Zealand's destructive earthquake, Chile's massive quake last year and Haiti's devastation.  We have witnessed it all, again and again, as television brings us into the maw of each and every natural disaster on the planet.  Our collective anxiety and unease is rising.  We are eyeing that Mayan calendar that ends in 2012 with widening eyes.  Surely there must be some significance to this, a sign that The End Is Near.

In my opinion, we are victims of our intense need to know everything all at once everywhere, now.  Years ago, news was gathered and dispersed over a longer period of time.  We found out about events over a longer period of time and the media used were still photographs, written eye-witness reports, stories.  Eventually, film became the medium we depended on, but there was a time gap and a psychological filtration of information produced by that lag time that we don't get anymore.  Television cameras took over and real-time broadcasting began to impact us in startling ways.  Censorship, or as they said then, editing for content and the impact the news would have on its viewers, was a prime consideration.

Television grew more widespread and sensationalism rose with its popularization.  Currently, television and cell phone cameras are nearly completely unedited and the push is to obtain dramatic images to show as events are happening, all over the world all the time.  We don't have time to reflect and learn from the events that happen in our communities in meaningful ways; other events distract us away and interfere with the possibility of recovery and development of wisdom.

People wonder why they're anxious.  They wonder why kids are hyperactive and distractible.  Really?

Could it be that we know so much about things that cause harm, that we know about every crime committed in our country every day, that we hear about negative events on a continual basis, that we see massive destructive events as they are happening from 100 different angles, that we have proved that there is no hope beyond 2012?  All that?  You hear it all on the news every day from a few million televisions perched ubiquitously on every wall in every room wherever you go all day long.  Do we really want to live like this?  Why?

I am one person.  I know Japanese people and love them, especially one because she was my exchange student for two months, and I will never forget her.  I so hope she is safe.  The inundation of news, the barrage of statistics and facts about everything in the world is too much.  I have to edit it to what I can cope with.  I think, for the sake of all our sanity, we need to think about the impact of constant news.  It's a tsunami in its own right.