For some years now I am confronted from different directions with worries regarding the many conflicts and wars in the world, including economy, availability of recourses, and of course the condition of the planet considering human impact. Which aspects dominates varies from person to person, but what they all have in common is fear of the future.
Fear is a good protection against overconfidence, and it can motivate us to implement countermeasures or preparations. When I see a fragile object close to the edge of the table, I will providently move it towards the middle, so it doesn’t fall down in case of a clumsy movement in the future. Fear is always good when it motivates us to do an action that we can immediately implement. This way, a possible accident is prevented and the fear has a purpose. Also, the fear disappears as soon as my reaction removed its cause.
Things get more difficult when my fear is caused by other peoples actions or intentions. If I know them personally, I can maybe talk to them. But when I only know them through the internet or the television, then this becomes more complicated. When a politician in a far away country upsets me, then we have a really difficult situation. When I feel threatened by some politician somewhere in the world, it can be viciousness, incompetence, corruption or simply an opinion that I do not understand. Regardless what it is, it will be difficult for me to change the person who scares me. As long as I hold on to my judgement of the person, I will be unable to calm down and I will get into a condition of permanent fear, which can only be pushed out of my mind temporarily with distraction.
If we fail to derive an action from our fear that we are convinced of, then we feel powerless. We can handle that situation for a while. But long term we must find ways to cause a change that reduces our fear, at least slowly. If we fail to start acting, fear will sooner or later make us ill. This knowledge alone is not very helpful, it is adding to our fear of a dark or unknown future another worry that the fear itself could also make us ill. The situation just escalated further.
Anyone watching the news is confronted with people who escalate conflicts and provoke wars; is confronted with people warning about critical conditions in supply chains, in energy supply, or in the world climate. Anyone who takes that serious will struggle not to become afraid. Anyone who takes that serious will want to change something. But how? And where? Shouldn’t the politicians do something about it? Isn’t the problem cause by other people who fail in their area of responsibility and then leave me alone with my fear? So I get outraged and angry about the behavior of the representatives of power, or those who I consider to have power. The fear has resulted in anger, and has become a bit more bearable. But the fear is only covered up, and a solution is not in sight.
My first recommendation is always not to watch the news. But that is very difficult for many people, because they see the news as equivalent to the real world. Avoiding the news is judged like avoiding reality itself. And reality will catch us sooner or later, and ignoring it will not change that. So it is better to watch the news, and be warned. The news are my telescope that let me see the dark clouds on the horizon, that I would otherwise not notice. This way maybe I get a chance to board up the windows in time and install a lightning conductor. Maybe I will even succeed to blow the clouds away if I try hard enough. We become blind to the beautiful side of the world, that a person not watching the news can still see.
If the news would report that the flowers on my windowsill are running out of water, then I could do something about it right away. The news had a purpose, they would be helpful for me. Unfortunately, the news confront me with a thousand things that I can do nothing about instead. And almost all those things cause worry and fear within me. Four years of torture, so I can make a cross at the right spot in the elections? Or to be always “informed”? Many also believe, that the world today is organized in a way that regularly watching the news will prevent a third world war, while not watching the news will quicken it. Unfortunately, there is an unconsidered wrong assumption or a logical error in that belief.
Certainly we have a problem when the infrastructure, that supplies us with all we need for our comfortable lifestyle, gets destroyed. Probably there are even people with an interest in that destruction. Or maybe we simple loose the ability to maintain the infrastructure at some point. Maybe we even find a hint in the news, where there are deficiencies that we could work on. But then we also need the strength do start acting. And that is easier to find when we switch off the news. The news present enough problems to drown even the strongest human, when we fail to enforce the necessary distance to it.
We are an especially easy victim for the news when we believe that the universe is a product of chance and humanity a derailed animal species. Our image of humanity is essential for the effect that the news have on us. To change the impact of the news and our relationship to it, we must work on our Weltbild. Questioning the completeness of the modern worldview is our chance to recognize more and leave our worries behind.