Given the extraordinary speed of modern information exchange it can be difficult to properly triage the many hundreds of crisis declarations demanding our immediate and undivided attention. Hyperventilating for attention is no longer just the brief of a four-year-old who doesn’t want to eat his asparagus. It’s everywhere.
Just this morning, for instance, while doom-scrolling over a cup of tea, I struggled to triage the Debt-Ceiling Crisis, the Ukraine Crisis, the Climate Crisis, The Opioid Crisis, The Migrant Crisis, The Dead Bodies on Everest Crisis, the Bud Light Beer Can Crisis, the Popocatépetl Eruption Crisis, the Mummified Remains of Senator Feinstein Crisis, the Adidas-Yeezy Sneaker Fallout Crisis, the Joe Biden Falls Down Again Crisis, and any number of apocalyptic developments from Kashmir to Kentucky.
Of course, the problem isn’t with perpetual crises—not really—because human history is essentially a scary ghost story, the long-form narrative of our ancestors pinballing between dire predicaments.
Instead, the problem we have today seems to be the sheer volume of incoming conundrums that confront us, the rolling barrage of alleged calamities which come in from every platform imaginable. It can be exhausting to sort through the rack and ruin pumped into our consciousness by lampreys of the administrative state, social media “influencers”, the Vampires of Bilderberg, and the various Titans of Crisis walking the earth disguised as journalists.
We can’t do anything about most of it, of course, which is part of that inarticulable frustration many people feel, and which presents in various ways--from explosive road rage, to save the sea-ice drum circles, to people throwing soup, and then paint, and then soup again on the Mona Lisa.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Craig Rullman on Substack to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.