CRASHING ON FAST

Fast is the drug of choice in today's western culture. But like all drugs, you have to deal with the crash that follows....!

At this point in time, mankind has never been in faster communication with his world. Radio, television, and a portable Internet means most of us -- even in the remotest hills of Asia and Africa -- are within nano-seconds of news. Some call this the electronic global village. Has a nice ring to it, but here's the thing. It's no longer just a matter of all-the-news-that's-fit-to-print; it's now a matter of all-the-news-that's-fit-to-use.

The brain is a prodigious instrument for information, and yet it along with our sensorium can only process so much so fast. In some critical instances -- from local flood warnings to global pandemic alerts -- fast is fine. Fast is necessary. But threading the informational needle calls for steady hands on our part. How steady are we when assaulted 24/7 by dozens of networks, hundreds of channels, and thousands of websites each working hard to stagger us with their next headline?

One of the least articulated losses we face without our morning newspapers is no longer having the efficacious luxury of processing the news through the filters and clockworks of our own mind. Even our monster computers have to slice and dice the data fed into them. How, then, can the much smaller computers of our brain hope to keep up?

Here's a simple test. Spend the next 60 minutes scanning CNN, HuffingtonPost and Salon.com. Simply permit yourself to be the human receptacle they hope you are. Watch, listen, read, and ingest their breathless gorging of news. Now turn it off and ask yourself three questions:
* What do I know now that I didn't know 60 minutes ago?
* What do I know now that is a functionable fact?
* What can I really do about it?
According to my Bell Curve, most test-takers will come to the verifiable conclusion that their pulse rate is now higher! their sense of control is now lower! and, except for the pre-requisite touch of humor somewhere in there, they are one fatal step closer to blowing their brains out!

Which would, of course, be a shame, for none of these news sources would bother to report it.....