Psychic Numbing in the Information Age

“Bombarding the Senses” 

[an excerpt from the book-length essay, Compassion, by Henri Nouwen, Donald McNeill, and Douglas Morrison] --

One of the most tragic events of our time is that we know more than ever before about the pains and sufferings of the world and yet are less and less able to respond to them. Radio, television, and newspapers allow us to follow from day to day—even from hour to hour—what is happening in the world. We hear about terrorism, armed conflicts and wars, assassinations, earthquakes, droughts and floods, famines and epidemics, concentration camps and torture chambers, and countless other forms of human suffering close to home or far away. Not only do we hear about them but also we are daily presented with pictures of starving babies, dying soldiers, burning houses, flooded villages, and wrecked cars. The news seems to have become an almost ceaseless litany of human suffering. The question is, do these highly sophisticated forms of communication and this increasing amount of information lead to a deeper solidarity and a greater compassion? It is very doubtful.

Can we really expect a compassionate response from the millions of individuals who read the paper during breakfast, listen to the radio on the way to work, and watch television after returning home tired from their work in offices or factories? Can we reasonably expect compassion from the many isolated individuals who are constantly being reminded in the privacy of their homes or cars of the vast extent of human suffering?

There appears to be a general assumption that it is good for people to be exposed to the pain and suffering of the world. Not only do newspapers and news broadcasts seem to act on this assumption but also most organizations whose main concern is to help suffering people. Charitable institutions often send letters describing the miserable conditions in different parts of the world and enclose photographs of people whose humanity is hardly recognizable. In so doing, they hope to motivate the receiver to send money for relief projects.

We might ask, however, whether mass communication, directed to millions of people who experience themselves as small, insignificant, powerless individuals does not in fact do more harm than good. When there is no community that can mediate between world needs and personal responses, the burden of the world can only be a crushing burden. When the pains of the world are presented to people who are already overwhelmed by the problems in their small circle of family or friends, how can we hope for a creative response? What we can expect is the opposite of compassion: numbness and anger.

Massive exposure to human misery often leads to psychic numbness. Our minds cannot tolerate being constantly reminded of things which interfere with what we are doing at the moment. When we have to open our store in the morning, go about our business, prepare our classes, to talk to our fellow workers, we cannot be filled with the collective misery of the world. If we let the full content of newscasts enter into our innermost selves, we would become so overwhelmed by the absurdities of existence that we would become paralyzed. If we try to absorb all that is reported by the paper, radio, or television and all that bombards us on computers and cell phones, we would never get any work done. Our continued effectiveness requires a mental filtering system by which we can moderate the impact of the daily news.

But there is more. Exposure to human misery on a mass scale can lead not only to psychic numbness but also to hostility. This might seem strange, but when we look more closely at the human response to disturbing information, we realize that confrontation with human pain often creates anger instead of care, irritation instead of sympathy, and even fury instead of compassion. Human suffering, which comes to us in a way and on a scale that makes identification practically impossible, frequently evokes strong negative feelings. Often, some of the lowest human drives are brought into the open by a confrontation with miserable-looking people. In the most horrendous way, this was the case in the Nazi, Vietnamese, and Chilean concentration camps, where torture and cruelty seemed easier the worse the prisoners looked. When we are no longer able to recognize suffering persons as fellow human beings, their pain evokes more pain and disgust than compassion. It is therefore no wonder that the diary of Anne Frank did more for the understanding of human misery than many of the films showing long lines of hungry faces, dark buildings with ominous chimneys, and heaps of naked, emaciated human corpses. Anne Frank we can understand; piles of human flesh only make us sick.

How can we account for this psychic numbness and anger? Numbness and anger are the reactions of the person who says, “When I can’t do anything about it anyhow, why do you bother me with it!” Confronted with human pain and at the same time reminded of our powerlessness, we feel offended to the very core of our being and fall back on our defenses of numbness and anger. If compassion means entering into solidarity with human beings who are suffering, then the increasing presentation of human suffering by the news media does not serve to evoke compassion. Those who know most about what goes on in the world – those who devote much attention to computers, newspapers, radio, and television – are not necessarily the most compassionate people.

Responding compassionately to what the media present to us is made even more difficult by its “neutrality.” The evening news offers a good example. Whatever the news correspondent announces – war, murder, floods, the weather, and the football scores – is reported with the same ritualized tone of voice and facial expression. Moreover, there is an almost liturgical order to the litany of events: first the great news items about national and international conflicts, then the more homey accidents, then the stock market and the weather, then a short word of “wisdom,” and finally something light or funny. All of this is regularly interrupted by smiling people urging us to buy products of dubious necessity. The whole “service” is so distant and aloof that the most obvious response is to invest no more energy in it that in brushing your teeth before going to bed.

Therefore, the question is, how can we see the suffering in our world and be moved to compassion as Jesus was moved when he saw a great crowd of people without food (Mt 14:14)? This question has become very urgent at a time when we see so much and are moved by so little.

--Henri Nouwen, Donald McNeill, and Douglas Morrison, Compassion. New York: Doubleday -- Image Books, 2005 (Original copyright: 1982). p 50 - 53.