Tuning Out

This morning I am thinking of how we deal with available information that bombards us in petabytes on a daily basis and how we have to make sense of it all for ourselves and for our children. This from a semi avid blogger who contributes in kilos to the petas. What got me thinking was an off hand remark from an acquaintance recently. When asked if he had heard about a recent large scale, headline item, power outage in India he remarked that he did not pay much attention to the news - in fact he did NOT listen to them as a rule. That got me thinking. Was he serious or delusional or somehow had more sense than most of us walking around? Recent tragedies including the one in Connecticut just yesterday which had our president step out and say 'Our Hearts Are Broken Today' was headline news. Whether that is something you can ignore or take in stride and move on is what I am trying to determine. For all its achievements humanity stuns us yet again. Media plays an important role in curating all this data and presenting for mass consumption. But given today's rating driven society the objective is not always clear. I think the bottom line if there is one is that you have to do an immensely solid job of putting things in perspective. Further you have to be able to constantly extend your perspective that you may have gained in the past so that new data can define the range of possibilties and be clear about outliers versus the standard practices. There is no escaping that the so called Black Swan events have always been around and will continue to rattle the status quo. Whether its a massive Tsunami or a human losing its balance causing untold sorrow our perspective to value 'life as the ultimate there is' makes us vulnerable. There is no getting around that and tuning it out.