now

It seems we have saturation coverage and unprecedented media access to disasters nowadays; we can watch in realtime as these unimaginable horrors suddenly become not only imaginable but in your front room, on your pc and even your mobile phone. Scenes previously watched from the sofa or cinema seat with popcorn, made in a studio for millions of dollars, now actually happening to real people in real places. Are we right to do this? 'Right' or 'wrong' are subjective; if it was me being washed away, or watching my every possession being destroyed, would I want to turn on those mute, dumb cameras and scream at them to fuck off and leave me alone? Are we becoming disaster tourists, or worse, will we gradually get compassion fatigue? From an overdose of pain, fear and sympathy? Of course we should have access to facts, and knowledge of news, but at what cost? There is no privacy, no dignity; no hiding place from the all encroaching eye of the media machine; itself a sort of tsunami of information which we have to filter. Are we psychologically strong enough to watch this snuff movie unfolding? What boundaries can we draw and redraw over how much we do/give/switch off? Do we do everything humanly possible because next time it might be 'us' who need help? or do we turn the channel to a nice harmless sitcom and try to forget the anguish and horror that we can't possibly do anything about? I don't just mean the earthquakes, the floods, the extreme weather, the Earth shaking us off like fleas. I mean the famines, the wars, the atrocities men do in the name of religion. All of this and more, brought to you by News channels the world over, with no PG certificate. I loathe the way the Press will gloss over 10,000 missing persons, and follow it with a huge chapter on 2 missing people from OUR country. There is no sliding scale of human worth, surely? I don't know enough, but I know too much. Are we really all nothing more than road side gawpers at a house fire or road accident? Is it inherent in Human Nature to have this fascination with Death and Disaster, to reassure ourselves we are still alive? Are we drawn by our own mortality, or a curiousity beyond the morbid? Watching the footage over again, hoping this time you will see someone escape, hoping you will somehow comprehend the true scale of things. I lose sight of the question; is it 'right' to watch all these things? Does anyone gain from it?