Dropping Out?

If you want to give your system a shock, drop out of the news cycle for about a week and then re-enter it.  It is enough to bring you to despair.

Dwelling in the cycle from day to day, I suppose that one gains some sort of immunity to it; it just becomes part of the background noise to our daily lives.  But step away for a time, focus on anything and forget that for the most part there is a world out there and come back in, and you find yourself horrified.

When did we become a civilization and a people defined by anger?  When did denouncing hating by hating become a thing?  When did rejoicing over the defeat of one's foe become not just a part of life but something to be ground into the dirt and celebrated?

Maybe most would find me to be not ready for the world and in many ways I am not:  I am simply not a debater nor an apologist.  I react poorly to criticism (take the whole thing personally) and would generally rather flee the room when anger is present.  I am in many ways ill-suited to begin with.

But I have to confess that confronting the barrage head on after being out for a bit was a shock I was not ready for.  And for the first time in a long time I asked the question:  "What if I just dropped out completely?"

There is in actuality very little I can change.  Yes, I can advocate for this or that in my family and perhaps a bit beyond that, but there my reach ends.  And maybe that's okay.  There are things to be ready for and things that do need to be reacted to - but by far they do not make up the plethora of anger and hatred I see before me.

If I completely dropped out, dropped away from following the world and its issues (all of immediate importance, of course), would I truly be any worse?  Yes, one would miss the occasional thing that really was important (which seems to be found out anyway), but one would miss the bulk of the things that matter not at all.

I have come to value silence and quiet.  And what see and hear leads not to that at all, but only the clamor of a humanity that seems determined to tear itself apart.