Rolling Blackouts and Pressure

Fort Worth Rolling Blackouts

Thanks to all the snow, or to be more accurate—the ice, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) mandated “rolling power outages.” This was a last resort and ERCOT claims that controlled outages are good and should last no longer than thirty minutes.

Well that’s all pretty boring information, and the article attached is as well. So why did I post this article? I posted it in response to all the facebook statuses I read in relation to the blackouts.

In the age of information we are all pumped full of more information than we know what to do with (just look at how beautifully the Bing commercials have captured this concept).

For the amount of information readily available at the click of a button I was appaled by the ignorance of many of the posts that I read.

This got me thinking about the Shantung Compound and how my generation would act if put “under pressure.” Sure one could argue that in this day and age that we do live under all sorts of stress or pressure. Our generation lives under the pressure of a failing economy, unstable weather, a lack of jobs, the list goes on and on for each individual.

The question still remains of how does the pressure we in the modern world face stack up against that of those in the Shantung Compound Internment Camp?

I feel that we act quite the same as those in the book—we go about our daily lives, and occasionally we recognize the situation we are dealing with, but just as quickly we turn and go back to our normal conversations and daily activities. That is unless there is a spectacle to be made, much like the trial depicted in the Shantung Compound. It captures our full attention--Michael Vick is torturing animals, Genocide is happening in Darfur--*gasp* but these things only hold our attention for a brief moment. The cruelty and injustice in the world soon goes back under the radar and continues on.

So shouldn’t our generation be different?

We have the ability to obtain information, to google the rolling blackouts and understand their necessity. We do live in the “Age of Information.” So why do we choose to be ignorant, as facebook so often points out through our friends and maybe sometimes even our own statuses? The people in Shantung Compound didn’t have google, or plasma screen 48’ T.V.s or let alone a newspaper to gain information from—ignorance was their only option. It’s not our only option. So I leave with one last question:

Will ignorance always be bliss?