ORCAS ISLAND, Wash. (RNS) I live on a small island in the middle of Puget Sound, separated from Seattle by a ferry and car commute of more than two hours. Most of the headline news stories seem more distant to me now.
Truth be told, that’s part of the reason I moved here.
But thanks to modern technology, the daily news is as accessible to me as it is to you city and suburban dwellers. News comes to my iPhone on a 3G network, and is fed into my home by satellite and cable. I get my New York Times on a Kindle, and my news magazines still arrive the old-fashioned way.
No man is an island from the news, whether local, regional, national or global — even if he lives on one.
But since very few of the stories happen here (the one exception was the “Barefoot Bandit,” Colton Harris-Moore, who escaped the FBI), what should I think, feel and do about breaking news? Why should I even care?
Rahm Emanuel is shaking hands outside Chicago L stops because he’s looking for votes. Rahm who? Do I care?
The terror alert is raised for Americans in Europe. This one hits closer to home, because our 22-year-old daughter is on a hard-earned, one-month European travel adventure. She was in Paris the day the State Department warned Americans traveling abroad, and we stayed in touch via e-mail.
What am I supposed to feel when I read about marauding bands of armed rapists mowing their way through helpless woman, young and old, in small rural villages in the Republic of Congo? How should I react to the news that U.N. forces are stationed blocks away and do not intervene?
It seems I should feel something when I watch the news. After all, our human capacity for rational thought and complex language makes us different from animals, and to lack emotions puts us somewhere on a psychopathic spectrum.
But it’s not just me. This matters to you, too, because you live on your own island — a geographic or neighborhood bubble, just as isolated and distanced from most news stories as I am.
So what are we to think, feel and do about the daily news, most of which has no direct bearing on our daily lives?
Some people connect too deeply to news stories and become immobilized by irrational fear. Every day I receive news stories from the mainland, e-mailed by fellow islanders trapped in a cycle of hysteria triggered by events happening thousands of miles away.
News stories are fertile ground for fundraisers and politicians who wish to exploit hysteria and fear. Deborah Tannen reminded us in her book, “The Argument Culture,” that the media generally view controversy as a form of entertainment that engages and retains the audience advertisers are paying for.
Rational discourse aimed at mutual understanding and common ground might be good for democracy, but too often the media see it as bad for business.
I moved to the island partly to get away from it all, but I’ve learned I can’t. The news of the world came with me, and I can’t tune it out. So once again I have to figure out how to avoid desensitization when bombarded with stories I can’t do anything about.
Over the years I’ve learned there are ways to get involved in even the remotest of stories. I can pray. I can vote. I can financially support enterprises that address the issues that matter most to me.
But I’ve also concluded that the most productive outlet for my news-driven thoughts and anxieties is to get involved in addressing local issues in my own neighborhood.
Global transformation begins with local grassroots activism in our own communities where humans like you and me get involved in the bad news in our own backyard.
We all live on an island. Get involved in yours.
(Dick Staub is author of the just-released “About You: Fully Human and Fully Alive” and the host of The Kindlings Muse (http://www.thekindlings.com). His blog can be read at http://www.dickstaub.com)
