There's no shadow of doubt to the notion that people have an unexplained attraction to bad news, but what has become of our reaction to it?
Over the years, I've watched news reports evolve from objective bulletins into almost gossip-like rundowns of miserable tales. The longer I watch the apathetic faces of newscasters listing off tragedies as if this is the way life is suppose to be, the less I, myself, notice atrocity in our world.
Sure, once in a great while a story so brutal comes along that we all look up from our microwave dinners and stare in a mildly amused daze; truly following in fascinated horror, but what of those between?
Think of the murders that fell between The D.C. Snipers and Today. Think of all of the mornings you didn't bother to turn your head from your coffee as a reported droned emotionlessly passed "Three shot in city home" into "Father's arson claims lives of children."
It doesn't bother me that we've stopped caring. Fuck, it barely surprises me that we've stopped noticing. It just makes me wonder.
Was morality truly so short lived? We dove deep from animal instinct into a seemingly endless quest for excellence and splendor, so how, only a few hundred years later, are we back to selfishly caring only of our own continued survival? Without the magnificence we once strove to achieve, society is simply organization. Without feeling, we're nothing more than a virus; instituting survival and expansion over the cherishing of individuality and memory.
Maybe we're just in a slum; slowly rebuilding from the collapse each new generation brings to the foundations of the last. Maybe we'll rise up again in search of beauty and perfection. Maybe one day we'll realize we've been lacking in our efforts to turn instinct into poetry. And maybe, even, one day I'll give a damn about that.
Until then, rest in peace humanity. The machines that are our species have claimed supremacy over this world. I welcome any thoughts or hellos to the comment board, but again, I know it's a futile effort. I'll see you all in hell.