Is it wrong to follow these catastrophies this closely?

When Friday morning I saw the first tweet about earthquake and tsunami, I tuned in to watch the horrible tragedy going on in Japan.  I felt horrible. I was of course sad about all the people who was about to to suffer and lose their homes, but also I was feeling bad about actual watching. We who were safe had the possibility to see one of the biggest catasrophes in live footage from helicopters and many different cameras all around. It's not fair to say that we were enjoying, but definetely we were curios and wanted to see the enormous strength of mother nature. That felt so wrong.

This all started September 11th 2001 when I came from university to our apartment and my friend called: "quick open CNN, plane just hit the twin towers". I was already watching when the second one hit the another tower and kept watching all the details of that tragedy. That was the first time it was possible to see horrible disasters happening around the world at live footage. All the way after that I have been following these type of tragedies, but always I keep thinking, what's the point. Do I help these people by following closely what's happening or is it just causing extra misery to everyone to see all this.

I've tried to convince myself that it's important to be aware of these things, and that spreading the knowledge will help those who suffer, but I'm not sure anymore. I feel so helpless for not being able to help at all, and for the same reason I feel bad about it. Donating some money to help organizations will have small impact of help, but actual heroes are the ones going there and helping.

Maybe the main benefit of all the media coverage from these is, that people are getting more and knowledgable on the organizations who need more voluntaries and more resources in case of emergency. Also there's always people who need for help, all around the world, but also very near of you. Maybe that's the one reason it makes sense to have this good coverage.

I still think maybe we wouldn't need to be able to follow these catastrophies this closely. Definitely we need to be knowledgable on things happening everywhere in the world, but we also need to continue living and caring about the environment and people around us. I know that as the years go bye, we will be able to follow these in more and more details. Media don't have a consciense and the increasing possibilities of social media will bring us every time more horrible details of the accidents. We need ourselves to make the judgments on what helps these people in pain and what of it is just pure entertainment.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen