Reply #35: Feeling overwhelmed [View All]

[hyphenate]

is natural, expecially nowadays. There is an information overload, and everyone gets bombarded from all sides without pause. I can imagine that the number of them has increased exponentiality over the centuries, with a far greater percentage of the overall population.

I find that some people also seem to grow so fascinated by something that they will often fixate on it and become obsessed. A friend kept watching the WTC disaster over and over again, while I saw it fully once, and then avoided it thereafter. I believe such a sense of captivation hearkens back to the atrocities of history, where people were executed in the city squre for everyone, burned alive, or other horrific death method, all in front of the crowds who gathered there. It was as much a spectacle as a circus would be, or any one of a series of events meant to degrade or execute people who were out of favor with their current government.

People are natural voyeurs. It will always be true, regardless of how many of us would like to think we've evolved beyond that.