on_holy_ground | WM - 22.3

Now I've been crying lately,
thinking about the world as it is

Avoiding the news, in all its varied forms outside of one person speaking to another, was something that Darius had done for centuries. Person to person had always seemed to him to be the best way for people to share information, and to learn about new goings on in the community and in the world. It allowed for a more personal element, and for shared comfort as well as joy. People came together when there was news that needed to be imparted, and it then became something that was more than just the sharing of information.

However, it was only in the more recent years that he had come to be really bothered by how much things had changed in regards to news. Events had always had a fair share of sensationalism that surrounded them, as it was simple human nature to embellish something to make it more dramatic. These days though it had gone far beyond simple embellishment into a kind of hurtful speculation. Oftentimes a story seemed to also include a twisting of words, acts, and ideas that would then change it into something else completely. Yet people still seemed to accept such things as the truth, oftentimes before the truth had even been discovered.

It saddened Darius far more than he often let on to those that knew him. The world seemed to be slowly sinking deeper into a place where the only thing that mattered was how much entertainment could be squeezed out of other peoples suffering, rather than the suffering itself. So often now, people seemed to want to believe the worst about someone rather than the best, and it had made the world a far sadder and more cynical place.

Darius could only hope that one day humanity would start to see what they had allowed themselves to become. Perhaps then they would start to realize that there was far more to life than simply watching and speculating about it from a distance.