Appetites

I was just responding to a comment on a previous post when I hit upon something. We, as a society of consumers, specifically consumers of "news," don't want relevant information on which we can take informed action - that requires action.

We're too lazy to take action. We want to watch passively as bad things happen to unknown people. The late Kurt Vonnegut Jr. said of writing that "[The writer should] be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of."

The problem is that the people in news reports are not fictional characters, no matter how far-fetched some of them may seem to be. They are real people, and as fellow human beings, we owe it to ourselves to remember that and to do what good we can for those people we can and not simply wallow in the misfortune of strangers.