I WOULD like to give a shout-out to my great friend and colleague Stephen CuUnjieng for his April 17 column (“Jerry West, 5-carat diamonds and employers”) because, even though he discussed a subject matter completely different from what I had in mind when I sat down to write this column, it seems he was in tune with the current vibe. And that vibe — not to put too fine a point on it — is a certain weariness, or perhaps for some people, actual revulsion to the constant stream of ever-changing bad news about the state of the world and the nation.
There is a palpable fatigue starting to set in among those who report and observe the news, and who can blame us? The war of the United States and Israel against Iran — and, by extension, of Israel against Palestine, and Israel against Lebanon — is developing so rapidly that it is difficult to keep up. Of course, this is not at all helped by the fact that one of the significant parties in the conflict — the current dictator of the US — is visibly suffering from profound dementia, stark-raving mad, or both.
Closer to home, we are afflicted with a never-ending stream of developing news. For example, the government’s feeble attempts to deal with the current energy and economic crisis caused by the war, in which it has collectively spent more time developing cute acronyms for its actions (i.e., the PROTECT hearings in the Senate — which does not even match the words in the title given to the ongoing inquiry — and the UNITE committee formed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration). Or the puerile telenovela developing in the House Committee on Justice hearings on the impeachment cases against Vice President Sara Duterte (don’t get me wrong; I believe “Inday” Sara, her brothers, and her political machine are not only so corrupt, they all need the assistance of personal butlers to screw their pants on in the morning, but are also collectively dumber than a bag of hammers). Or the weird reports of the arrest of disgraced lawmaker Zaldy “Freakishly Large Head” Co, the chief suspect in the flood-control scandal, in Europe. Or the bizarrely comical infighting among the Lopez siblings, which would just be ridiculous and embarrassing in a second-hand sense if it didn’t put a couple of the country’s important institutions at risk, namely the ABS-CBN network and power firm First Gen Corp.
It is tempting to shut oneself off from the news of the day, and my friend Stephen’s column acknowledged that in a way. I appreciate that, in the sense that it confirms I am not alone in the feeling: we do not really want to shut ourselves from current events because we need to know about things that are happening that will affect us, but the flood of news is overwhelming. To protect our sanity, we have to occasionally step back from it and try to ignore the flood.
Not everybody gets it. One of the economic research and advisory firms to which I subscribe (I will not identify them, to spare them some embarrassment) sent me earlier on Friday an email inviting me to a webinar next week, in which the economic outlook for the region and the world in general will be discussed. That will be the third one this month on exactly the same topic from this particular organization, and the month is only more than a little half over.
Under the circumstances, it is understandable if the information overload drives some people to close out the stream of news of the world, and retreat into the world that is within their own personal reach. Doing exactly that has been extremely tempting to me, but of course, I cannot simply pull myself into my shell and hide from the world. Knowing what is going on, after all, is my business, not just for what I do for The Manila Times, but outside of that as well.
For those of us who are condemned to know everything, there is little salvation; we can talk about other things — as Stephen did in his aforementioned column — but the longer “significant events” in the world continue, the harder that becomes. That’s our job; we get paid to do it, so we need to suck it up and do it as well as we can.
For everyone else, however, information overload need not be a source of stress and discontent. We are in a perilous time; no one asked to be tested, but we are all being tested, anyway, and the determinant of whether we would endure or not is how clearheaded and self-interested each of us can be during these troubled times. You do not need to know everything, form an opinion of everything, or worry about everything. If you try, you will be mentally overwhelmed. Consider what is important to you, and focus on the news that directly affects that. The rest can be treated as noise. Those of us in the business of reporting and analyzing the news will, of course, keep doing that for every little thing that happens because that is what we do, but you don’t need to pay attention to all of it, and we understand that.
And if a time comes when it becomes too much even for us to bear, we may diverge for the sake of our own sanity, just as Stephen did in his column and just as I am doing, at least partially, in this one. There will be better days ahead; we don’t know when, and we don’t know how, at this point, but we all share that faith. We simply need to keep ourselves together until we get there.
ben.kritz@manilatimes.net
Bluesky: @benkritz.bsky.social
Website: www.badmannersgunclub.com
