Virtual Reality!

I avoid newspapers and T.V. news reports as now I am de-sensitized, not moved by the documented misery of others. Plane crashes, building collapses, war, terror killings, bomb blasts, cyclones, tsunamis, war, rapes, murder and mayhem, very rarely good news is seen in reportage.

We have all become inured, a sort of conscience comatose has set in our minds, and society too has become indifferent to all this misery in the world. Even Governments have cultivated a sense of neglect paying only lip service, reflecting a spiritual vacuity. Corruption, scams, oppression, bureaucratic inefficiency and recessions seem to be the order of the day. There is something perverse about these times, where goodness and compassion seems to have disappeared from the shelves/malls and supermarkets of the world.

What has happened to those people who rise above others to attain compassionate beatitude, those clear people who pick up stray dogs and cats or fight against tyranny and injustice, who oppose child labor and poverty, who care for the homeless- where are they, after Mother Theresa there seems to be a deep vacuum. We all seem to be floundering in some terrible and sublime a fate.

We read about the tortured lives and anguish all around ….. Yet in the next moment yell “Is dinner ready”? Others watch T.V. often it was as if the machine was merely a way of filtering out meandering thoughts – reflecting a diffused illusion of being in the real world, without having to deal with it. That wisdom comes of suffering, at least for prophets and tragic heroes, is an ancient truth; but is it wisdom to chase after suffering, as though the evil of the day were insufficient? We are free to surf the net capture truth in one body and delete the soul from another in a sort of virtual duality. We have so many channels to keep us entertained that the pursuit of unhappiness assumes too large a place in our souls. – Vinay-