Living in a time of media and mixed messages

Like 98% of the general US population I have been both saddened and inundated with the news of the “massacre at Virginia Tech”. It seems like events like this are growing in both magnitude and frequency. Is it as simple as blaming this event on the popular culture, selfishness, and godlessness that pervades our society? That’s a thesis paper that I don’t have the time or aptitude to answer. I only wanted to share a brief observation that I made yesterday at lunch while working out.
For the most part it was the usual workout environment. Plenty of people of various ages doing their routines. Also, as usual, there were the usual distractions to help the dedicated patrons pass the time, namely numerous banks of televisions and the radio. Today about 2/3rd of the TV’s were playing some sort of coverage of the shootings. The others being watched were displaying anything as diverse as motocross racing, day time soaps, or financial news. Everybody seemed disaffected by whatever they were watching while working out. Why the big deal?
For me this whole observation is illustrative of our culture in general. We are virtually soaked in media messages all day long. A good majority of these messages are violent, tawdry, or of little value…well, other then to provide a temporary source of entertainment or amazement. The media perpetuates this problem because that is what we crave. These kinds of images pass in and out of us all day long, to the point of where they really lose their impact. We were temporarily shocked when we heard about the news in the morning but by the afternoon we are already moving on and wondering what Ben and Angelina are up to.
I guess that is what was so amazing to me. Here we were in the midst of a pretty big national tragedy and nobody really seemed that affected by it. We were either too involved with our own selves or we didn’t have the attention or interest to truly ask why this happened and what this tells us about our society. I don’t know if any of this makes sense, it’s just what was on my mind.