News

In one of those rare occasions and certainly the one that epitomised my growing disillusionment about keeping up with daily news, I scrolled down the pages of todayonline.com and in an act of exasperation shut the window.

The axiom no news is good news seems to hold true.

I've often felt compelled to keep up with the affairs of the world on a daily basis (or at least I try) - not just for the sake of my profession but as an act of knowing the happenings that are occurring outside this air-conditioned nation. But every piece of news is 'bad' news - it is about the number of deaths caused by guerilla attacks in Iraq, the political tensions in the Middle East with Hamas now in power, and deals on nuclear talks. They are all about conflict or the attempts at avoiding and/or resolving conflict.

And apart from that triviality takes centre stage particularly when we live on this homogenous islet of conformity: jail and caning for matchmakers, newly appointed chief of airforce, schools with radical celebrations for National Day, interviews with top A-level students, best-looking dog, new laws for seat-belts on buses ... The utter ludricrousness and lunacy of it all

How did we arrive at this state? How did existence come to mean a need to know what my neighbour is up to? How did living come to mean implicitly one had to be part of the global citizenship? We have become complicit in the troubles we did not create; we have become unwilling participants in the conflicts that occur. Our need to know is no longer fuelled by curiousity but by fear.

How did life become so difficult that one man's business - when it is a man who does not know my existence; nor would one necessarily like to know - become mine? Why should it be?