Dealing With Overload

Photo by Fahrul Razi on Unsplash

There are days when it feels like my head is going to explode. The tension in the back of my neck creeps up to the back of my head and over the top, threatening to pop my eyeballs out of their sockets, narrowing my focus and rendering me monosyllabic and grumpy. While there are always issues close to home that contribute to this I have to admit that having so much more time on my hands has drawn me into being a bit of an internet junkie. Not so much that I have lost my social skills (although the squeeze on my time leaves less space for socialising) but enough to weigh me down with the ills of the world.

Regardless of truthfulness the internet has an overwhelming quantity of information available. In one respect this just reflects the complexity and diversity of the world. So many contributors and responses. It is, on the surface, much like the natural world which is an amazingly and mind-bogglingly complex web of life and we can only assimilate parts of it at any one time

The internet though is peculiarly human. It doesn’t follow natural laws in the same way and can’t be said to be a ‘system’ in the sense that it should be coherent and self-sustaining. We humans have the ability to impose our our own laws on our world and by virtue of a myopic inclination are able to pretend to an omnipotent status that not just puts off but rejects the self-destructive nature of our actions.

This internet, this ethereal repository of our eagerness to communicate, trade and influence is not unlike the mountains of waste that are deposited all over the land. A confusing mass of detritus that is in parts toxic, redundant and irrelevant and in parts fertile, useful and meaningful. We are, by extension, the scavengers that pick through this mountainous deposit to find the things that we think we need and, like my own loveable but rather indiscriminate Labrador, we are wont to consume things that look nourishing but are, in fact, not at all good for us.

So how do we discriminate between what is good for us and what is injurious? This is not a simple question - or, at least, not one that is simple to answer. Given the addictive nature of both the physical and psychological experience we are not always best placed to make that judgement. Like the Lab, you may only find out after the fact but unlike her you have a greater ability to make the connection. The question is how much do you want to?

Assuming you want to enough there are a range of responses. 'Take a couple of paracetamol’ is an injunction that while temporarily effective fails to address the causes of the symptoms. ‘Spend less time looking at a screen’; ‘only look at or read calming or positive things’ are both practical suggestions but again fail to address the causes and like the eponymous ‘junkie’ we will not prevent the eventual slide back into doom scrolling.

This is about a state of mind. It is no coincidence that we are living in an age of increasing depression and anxiety and not just in the younger age groups. The internet has brought an immediacy to the bad news that constitutes much of its current affairs output that days-old newspaper reports could never match. They inadvertently provided an emotional buffer, not only filtering the facts but putting time between us and the events that acted like a mute button on our sense of grief. It was only the persistent news, like the iniquities of the apartheid regime in South Africa in the ’70’s, that provoked the true ire in far away lands and led to international action. For the most part bad news was greeted with a brief expression of regret or frustration before the soma of the good life that constituted much of the later 20th Century smothered the natural human response.

Now, we are - and have been for some time - able to witness the inhumanity we perpetrate on each other across the world in real time. Unfiltered and unmediated by the regular journalists, wherever a phone camera has been pointed the content is uploaded. As with many things this is both a blessing and a curse. With conventional press there was a good deal of editing so whatever was going on in the world you only got to hear about a small portion of it. Now, everything is available 24/7 in vivid detail with on the ground commentary by those involved as it happens. I don’t think we are equipped to process this global output. On the plus side we are able to empathise in a much more visceral way as most of the filters have been removed.

I first became aware of this with the reports on the Twin Tower attacks in 2001 and the accounts of phone calls and text messages sent by those who understood their death to be imminent and I was reminded today by similar reports from Texas and the floods that devastated the area. But the assault on Gaza which is being all but lived streamed is something no feeling human being can fail to be moved to tears and anger over.

I confess I am unable to bring myself to look at this content now, aware that like those tasked to wade through child pornography to teach AI to recognise it or for policing purposes directly, there is a personal cost to being regularly exposed to such trauma. And the one thing that would help - for it all to stop - is agonisingly postponed by political tiptoeing that tries to walk the line between support for a government that is classed as an ally and upholding the rule of international law and has, in my view, disastrously strayed into complicity in war crimes.

This alone creates an unbearable tension, made worse by the fear of speaking out after the Government’s unconscionable decision to class a non-violent group a terrorist organisation. The implicit irony and lack of wisdom in this decision is likely to intensify the sense of injustice and create a pressure cooker effect that may ultimately backfire on Labour.

As awful as the Gaza situation is it is still just one of many contributors to this sense of being overwhelmed. The algorithms, too, play their part as they push more content on to your screen like dealers on the corner of the road making a bad situation worse.

And, if you have been following me, you will know I already think the old order is in decline and collapse is in train. Even if your assessment is not as brutal as mine you are still living in an age of uncertainty where in truth nothing can be ruled out and the cards may fall either side of our expected outcome whatever it is and at a time none of us can predict.

In that atmosphere it is far more difficult to access joy and lightness of spirit. These are not things that can be conjured on demand. They require a certain sense of freedom, a disposition that is open to the possibility of their appearance. When looked for they vanish into the air like warm breath on an ice-cold day. Neither can they be held on to as by the same token the very act of focussing on them sends them away. It is like being in the flow. When it happens you have moved imperceptibly into that space and you can acknowledge somewhere inside that this is happening. The moment you change that to a need to prolong it you have exchanged a free gift for a caged bird that won’t sing.

There is therefore a need to resist living in the past or the future; the one a place where we can change nothing, the other an unmade time we cannot shape with any predictability. The logic of this drives us to live in the present - which doesn’t exist as the past flows seamlessly into the future and any attempt to pin down a point as being ‘the present’ is foiled. As soon as you have identified this instant it is already in the past.

So to be in what we call the present is really to be present. Language, while imperfect and often the subject of pedantry, can subtly and seismically change perspective. Western-style nations typically use nouns much more than many eastern languages do - particularly Japanese - which rely on verbs instead. It is the difference between viewing something as an object as opposed to a process. The present is not a thing that we can pin down and examine from different perspectives but an unending flow, a wave that is constantly cresting and we ride this crest for as long as we are being present.

Neither is this just an external phenomenon. Our thoughts about what we are experiencing are another part of this crest and help to create our unfolding experience and the view of the world we have built up.

The problem of overload is an invitation to glorify the past and catastrophise the future and reduce oneself to a twig tossed on the waves. A view of the world that casts us as powerless onlookers when in fact we are anything but. The paradox is that the quality that casts us down is also the quality that can raise us up. We care.

To care is to live. The world we experience matters to us which includes the people, the more than human and the stuff we label inanimate. If we care we open ourselves up to joy and grief in equal measure. Being present, though, is just that. No thought of the past, no expectation of the future and therefore no tally of rights or wrongs. While we cannot predict the future with certainty we can steer ourselves to the quieter shallows or the noisy rapids and expect something from the range of experiences each of those provide. What we think about the past and the shadow it casts on the future will almost inevitably steer us in that direction. This is agency.

Caring is important. It can also be meaningless if it does not find its way out of our interior life and find expression in real life. We can, of course, make a donation to any of the numerous organisations that campaign or provide food for the hungry, medical supplies for the ill and injured and clean water where none is available. This is - if affordable - a first step to translating a sense of care into an action that will make something of a difference. But is doesn’t tend to get you out of your armchair and comfort zone of doom scrolling. Caring requires a live connection as a minimum. It could be an online conversation but at some point we have to get out of that comfort zone and meet people face to face.

Care happens while being present and the joy of care is exponentially increased when the people caring and being cared for are physically in the same place. While the ideal is “to give and not to count the cost…to labour and not to ask for any reward” we all benefit from the knowledge that what we have given is appreciated. Expecting appreciation may lead to occasional disappointment but care freely given is almost always appreciated even if that appreciation is not expressed. People are complicated! On the surface, at least.

So! You don’t have to jump on the next flight to Jerusalem or Beirut, Sanaa or Kiev. Just bear in mind the butterfly effect. An act of kindness for your next-door neighbour could have unforeseen effects across the world. Think Global, act local. There are worse ways to live.