Piercing anguish, then turn the page for a distracting laugh 
Our society has become a predictable and mechanized one, regularly presented with the anguish and torment of other human beings, only to cut off into a commercial break, then move on to a page of laughter and entertainment. We have been robbed of the ability to think longer, to stay with a long laugh, or to remain with concern and sadness. We are the instant coffee that instantly comes into being and is gulped down in less than a minute.
Our society is so directed by the agendas of corporations that care only for increasing profits and not at all for the well-being of human beings around the world. We are dissected, analyzed, then served the dishes that best serve the corporations and our attention span. Simply put, we are no longer in control.
The world today is racked by conflict, senselessly stealing human lives. Israelis are simply permitted to continue killing innocent people in Gaza by the tens of thousands, starving them, and destroying every building left standing. Russians may continue their onslaught on Ukrainians who asked for nothing more but to live in peace away from the manipulations of others.
In Sudan, hundreds of people have been killed in a matter of days, amid loud warnings of genocide, but most of the world is not even aware anything is happening in that country today. Above all, these daily tragedies, and the laughter we are served in between to lighten the atmosphere, have distracted us from the greatest concern of our time — that of our environment, which we are destroying by the day, coming ever closer to the edge of the cliff. We are not only assenting to the harm of others, but also assenting to harming ourselves and our loved ones, as our determination not to be bothered by anything distracts us even from our own increasingly disastrous fate.
In our short moments of consciousness, we want to shout to everyone: Wake up. But as we look around, it seems our entire society has been drugged. We have seen people marching in cities and universities to protest the genocide that is taking place in Gaza, to demand that our governments put a stop to it. These people have been marching for seven months now and even concerned citizens have lost interest. It is as if our society is following a recurring script: It no longer surprises us that nobody cares.
News items are a brief flash, allowed to pass us by without stealing too much of our attention. Headlines and breaking news banners are an invitation to a bathroom break, and when we come back, we are ready to move on to the next love story or be entertained by the next horror movie. Our cheeks are dry even as a lone tear hits them. Our human emotions, our empathy, and our attention have been co-opted by some machinery that simply keeps on churning away, keeping us blindly consuming without paying too much attention.
We are not the people we once were; I remember a time when we used to care. Today, even when we do care for one second, the feeling is taken away from us and thrown into the grinder to create something more opportune for a mechanized society. But as we keep ignoring all-important elements that see us inching toward the edge of the cliff, we are already standing in mid-air with a sandwich and a soft drink, not realizing the earth has subsided from beneath us and all we can do is fall.
• Hassan bin Youssef Yassin worked closely with Saudi Arabia’s petroleum ministers, Abdullah Tariki and Ahmed Zaki Yamani, from 1959-1967. He led the Saudi Information Office in Washington from 1972-1981 and served with the Arab League’s observer delegation to the UN from 1981-1983.
