The World Is On Fire And I Must Look Away

The world is on fire and I must look away. The reality of our world in 2025 is horrific. Gaza, Ukraine, Trump, Republicans in general, the so-called opposition Democrats, the rightwing here in Norway trying to win an election and punish poor people for existing…

I don’t seek out news anymore, and haven’t for a few years. I used to read both of Norway’s two biggest newspapers when I was a teenager/early twenties, but after the terror attack on 22 July 2011 I stopped. The news was having a negative impact on my mental health, in more ways than one. The main focus of the biggest newspapers in Norway seemed to be sports, which was fine in a way because I wanted to read about that, but there was also endless focus on stupid fucking celebrity gossip, and this isn’t actually important news that should be on the front page of newspapers.

And after Anders Behring Breivik (I will always deadname ABB, I will always deadname Twitter) did his horrific crime I turned away from the big two newspapers for good, because it was just too much to read about that stuff all day every day. I had to look away.

I’ve picked up some other newspapers for short periods, local news, Klassekampen (leftwing Norwegian newspaper), but none of them stuck with me. Not that it’s bad, but it also isn’t good, in my opinion. And it’s also pretty expensive and I couldn’t justify the cost vs the amount of enjoyment I got out of it.

TV news is also just mindbendingly stupid for the most part, from what I see. But I fully acknowledge that I only see the worst parts of TV news clips and newspaper headlines because I don’t follow them, so I only see the most egregious parts that make people upset on social media. But the things that get put in front of me really doesn’t make me want to see or read any of these publications, it just makes me mad.

Just today Norway's biggest newspaper, VG, has published an opinion piece or an editorial, who gives a shit, about how a boycott of Israel might benefit Hamas and I mean fucking come on! The whole world has been watching a genocide and daily war crimes being commited in front of our eyes for almost two years now, and that’s an arbitrary cutoff in a way because Israel has been doing this shit since it was created.

But I cannot watch or read about this tragedy every day, I have to look away. My mental health isn’t able to deal with pictures of dead babies and kids and adults, and horrifically injured bodies through deliberate starvation. I can’t “consume” this “content” because it would break me.

So I look away.

We’ve got president Dumbfuck Turd over in the USA, just tearing that whole country down, and it’s horrible. Every day there is a new low reached, a new horror. And it’s all so incredibly stupid as well. These are utter morons in charge of the world’s last remaining superpower and they’re just destroying it. And the horrors come to me in bits and pieces on social media, and I get deeper dives on YouTube and Last Week Tonight, but that’s all I can do. I can’t sit and read articles about some new horror every single day, because it would ruin my precious mental wellbeing. I know from experience.

So I look away.

Ever since the inauguration of the ugliest human being in history as president of the United States of America for a second time I’ve been deep in fiction books in a way that’s unusual for me. I used to read non-fiction pretty often, getting upset and angry at the real world, but since reading The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein in early February I’ve just been escaping into fiction in a way I never have before. I did read a non-fiction history of football in France last week, and I do feel like I might be able to read some non-fiction again, but who knows how that’ll play out..

But the world is on fire and I can’t look. I’ve been experiencing good mental health for the last five years for the first time in my life. Yet in the last two years or so I’ve felt the bad thoughts and feelings being just a small tear in a curtain away from flooding back whenever I get too much of the real world, as it actually is these days, in front of my eyes.

So I look away.

Not sure if this is a good articulation of my thoughts, but I’m publishing either way because it doesn’t really matter. Nine blogs in nine weeks, we keep pushing!

I also did a little bit of fiction writing last week, and the story took a turn I didn’t want it to, but over the course of the day I figured it out and now I know what the story is again, and I must keep on writing it.