A political human condition that we can feel but don\u2019t quite know how to name. When every other news headline speaks of disaster, conflict, death, war, etc. how are we meant to react? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Humans evolved under conditions distinct to modern ones. Knowing the happenings of the world at this level of instant detail is a quite new phenomenon. Hundreds of years ago local populations may have found out about a foreign war only long after it had concluded as the message was sent by boat to empires. Now just scroll on the magical phone-box for one minute and we\u2019re suddenly empathizing with people we will never meet in our lifetime, with lands we have never touched. This is the new normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Imagine back in the day, not even go so far\u2026 before radios and after newspapers. Newpapers were considered insanely fast for knowing current events, printed daily and we barely considered the 24 hour wait time. Wake up, read the news while eating breakfast, then go about your day at work, come home, eat, sleep, repeat. Now put news livestreams and international conflict exposure in between all of those activities, with a buffer of 30 seconds to a couple hours if you have the self control to not look at The Phone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This can create a feeling of constant crisis. The problem is that humans have evolved in contexts with slower information exposure and local dangers. Our \u2018hardware\u2019 is still programmed to alert when a predator is nearby in the wild, yet with 2026 software that tells us to worry about every specific foreign current event as if it were our own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One point of debate in that line of thought is processing in communities. Depending on your stance regarding modern technology, this could be a lost tradition, or our original software on super-mode. Globalization and technology now allow us to connect with international communities in minutes if not seconds, we should be able to complete this necessity for communal processing better<\/em> than before. But do we? On the pessimistic side of things, algorithms and platform dynamics can trick us into thinking we\u2019re alone in our experience. When only the extremes show up in the feed; influencers buying million dollar houses, wars continuing around the world\u2014 the \u2018normal\u2019 day to day human experience starts to feel alien and more unique than it actually is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Highlight reels show the best-of followed by the worst-of human experience. That sets up a trap of \u2018I could be more successful\u2019 but also \u2018I could be worse off\u2019. Ultimately the feeling often concludes in invalidation, desperation, and hopelessness. That\u2019s exhausting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n From that exhaustion, we mentally disengage yet can\u2019t seem to put the phone down. Once we\u2019re broken down emotionally and the feed keeps scrolling, advertisements are conveniently placed. Not just as a conspiracy, there is research that shows how marketing algorithms are strategic. They optimize for interaction, and engagement naturally peaks when we are emotionally vulnerable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pair this marketing with the crisis feed saturation and what\u2019s left is a power strategy; an emotionally exhausted public is less politically participative (Tandoc et al., 2022). Side effects include but are not limited to: internalized apathy from necessity, and excessive anxiety labeled as awareness.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n On top of that, we can see the globalization of fear. International headlines heat up (January 2026<\/a>), suddenly influencers from the Netherlands are sharing the pamphlets sent by their government outlining how to prepare for emergencies. The first reaction is \u2018oh no! We\u2019re preparing for world war three!\u2019. Then, if your pattern recognition fires up, it starts to feel like the Covid pandemic \u2018panic scarcity\u2019 (David et al., 2021). They tell us there will be conflict, and therefore, we must prepare through consumption. Buy everything you might need, they say, toilet paper, water, food. Humans are generally empathetic creatures, and that empathy is being exploited.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Side note: What\u2019s even more interesting as I look into these sources is that the Dutch government was planning since November of 2025 (Pascoe, 2025) to send out these emergency guides, yet they appear on social media as if it were a direct reaction to current events. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If we were never meant to know this much, but knowing this much is now unavoidable, how are we supposed to manage? Is apathy the correct answer to protect our empathy? Empathizing with every crisis on earth is not sustainable nor healthy. Enter empathy and we inherit fear; if the Dutch government is preparing for crisis, we should be too, right? Then before your YouTube video even plays, starved children from Gaza appear in high resolution asking for your support. The empathetic heart does a flip-flop and suddenly \u2018free Palestine\u2019 comments flood irrelevant videos as if symbolic participation in the digital space will result in physical political change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where apathy starts to look appealing (as an idealist, it hurts me to admit the reality). Considering it as a coping mechanism, not an ideal solution. With a healthy dose of apathy we realize, the Dutch government is a foreign region, and those suffering children on YouTube are a representation of conflict, our donations do not go directly to the faces we see. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As a theoretical contrast, esoterically, gurus and philosophers argue that we are all one, one humanity on one planet. That would be the solution to world peace logically, if all<\/em> of the world\u2019s citizens woke up one day with pure empathy\u2026 wars would end and governments would talk about their problems until finding a solution instead of running back to the arms race. Considering the international legal system is based on good faith, this should<\/em> be the solution. Should, the doomed word of an optimist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So we find ourselves at the most horrific crossroads; empathy and exploitation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Humans have empathy, though being aware of all<\/em> of empathy\u2019s functions and implications is less common if not impossible. This leaves a moral power vacuum that can turn the masses emotions into an economic and political chessboard. Empathy has led us to exhaustion instead of inspiring new solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What links globalized panic, emotional ad targeting, and crisis discourse seems to be less coincidental and more of a structural alignment. Crisis news is embedded in our algorithms and optimized for guiding our attention and fatigue towards consumption. In this modern digital environment, empathy becomes a key player in extractive world systems and our fear is a scalable factor in the economic supply chain.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n To retake our emotional sovereignty is no easy task. Pure apathy isn\u2019t the solution, but incomplete empathy is unsustainable. Reactive engagement only perpetuates the cycle when we\u2019re constantly fatigued by crisis exposure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where you\u2019d think the article turns into a \u2018put down your phone\u2019 and \u2018touch grass\u2019 advice, but that\u2019s out of place and simply not viable for modern daily life. Healthy relationships encourage boundaries; based on that, our relationship with smartphones (and crisis news headlines) is structurally toxic.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe the goal isn\u2019t to feel more or to feel less about tragic daily happenings, maybe we\u2019re meant to relearn how to feel on our own terms and how to create healthy mental boundaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remembering that we are built for finite responsibility, whenever a headline or reel sparks panic and despair we could take note and double check; is this my fear to feel? Is there action I can take? If the answer is no, invite Stoic philosophy to revive itself and reenter the conversation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As said by Marcus Aurelius, \u201cYou have power over your mind \u2014 not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n References<\/p>\n\n\n\n A political human condition that we can feel but don\u2019t quite know how to name. When every other news headline speaks of disaster, conflict, death, war, etc. how are we meant to react? Humans evolved under conditions distinct to modern ones. Knowing the happenings of the world at this level of instant detail is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"saved_in_kubio":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,1,124],"tags":[275,32,284,24,282,245,283,286],"class_list":["post-1521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-blog","category-written-by-human","tag-275","tag-constructivism","tag-crisis","tag-culture","tag-media","tag-philosophy","tag-smartphones","tag-stoicism"],"yoast_head":"\n
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