Information Overload: Fighting Indifference
Just this morning I read a horrific story. It was from 2013 when a child was playing on some sand dunes at Lake Michigan in Indiana. Apparently, because of erosion, there was a sinkhole because the parents turned around and in one second, he had been sucked into the dune. They frantically dug and got him out but not until they had gone down 11 feet. He had some neurological damage but eventually was able to recover. Even just rewriting the story, I can imagine the shock and fear this poor family experienced. But to be honest, in a month or so, I will forget I ever read about it unless someone reminds me.
We have a lot of access to information these days, which means we have access to a lot of sad stories, too. If you wanted to, you could have at a moment’s notice, a hundred stories of tragically dead children, horrible accidents, and terrible abuses. It is easy to understand why we get overloaded and indifferent. After all, who can keep caring in the face of all that?
Even writing that feels callous, but it’s not, or it’s not meant to be. Human beings were meant to live in small communities. In the 1990’s British anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed that the average human can keep up around 150 social contacts, based on brain structure. He endearingly explained this number as “the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar." I’m not sure my Dunbar Number is that high but I understand his point.
(To be fully truthful, the actual number isn’t agreed upon in the field. Many anthropologists believe it’s higher, closer to 300. That seems insane to me until I remember the many, many Irish cousins I have out there who would be more than happy to welcome me for a drink.)
The prevalence of information, especially compassion inducing sad stories, can make even the kindest of us feel indifferent. Even if we do care, it can be hard to act on that. Which is why, first and foremost, our self-care game should include watching out for our mental health. I don’t mean hiding yourself from the world. But is it really essential that I should read about the child who got stuck in a sand dune a thousand miles from me? How does that help anyone?
Because if we’re going to practice true compassion, the first thing we have to do is fight indifference, even in small, insignificant ways. Interest in someone’s story. Concern for what concerns them. Remembering their difficulties.
We must fight to be interested in the lives of the people around us, to see them as people with struggles and successes, pain and pride. I feel like we’ve been told our whole lives that talk is cheap and the only real, true work is that which produces something. But lives have been saved by someone interested enough to ask, “How are you?” Showing interest is the first step towards a world where we’re not burned out by others’ pain, we’re joining together to alleviate it.
