Anyone who’s watched television in the last decade has noticed the advent of the “ticker”. The ticker is the small scrolling bar that pans right to left, giving you the most time to read the summarized tidbits of news, sports scores or stock prices. The desire to know as much about as many things as possible is a fairly new advent for humans, as even a hundred years ago the resources to be well educated in world news were outlandish. Moreover, the idea of celebrity didn’t really exist outside world leaders and religious figures until Charles Limburg, so our fascination with the private lives of public people seems to have brought us to a new level of obsession with mundane trivia. So why is it that most Americans have no idea what’s going on in the world, outside of which former senator is on this seasons “Dancing with the Stars”?

The answer comes in first year business school. When we think about what we need in life to be happy, the most scientific model we have is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It tells us that people have, in order, physiological, safety, love, esteem and self-actualization needs that must be met to allow the next to address. The dumbed down version is you need food and water before you need a safe house to sleep in, and you need that before you need a mate or family, and you need that before you can really worry about mental image, and so on. This theory has been rammed down the throat of everyone who’s gone to school for business or psychology for the last 70 years, but it’s still irrefutably true. We all have very simple needs, and they need addressing before you can worry about anyone but yourself. So what shifted that lets people dwell on the least important issues, if not completely ignore the things that have the most impact on them?

I think the ticker was the start. And we’re all complacent in this. When I go to work (I work in a bar), I stare off into the television during sports games I have no interest in, and watch the scores other games I have no interest in. I do the same thing when watching business news (watching the values of stocks I don’t invest in). Now why is it that I don’t spend a fraction of that same time going all Descartes and thinking about the world around me in a meaningful way? Don’t get me wrong, I try, but I might spend half as much time thinking about how to really change health care as I do thinking about “Lost” or watching Nostalgia Chick again.

So then I get depressed thinking on this. Ratings for network news shows are sky high, but the viewers consistently show that they have no idea why pundit x is saying what they’re saying. The barrage of news flow leads to being reactionary as opposed to delegated in our response. We’re so well off that we feel free to sit back on our laurels and let someone else think for us. This is not a good sign for where people are headed as technology allows for even easier access to media, and as we become more Boolean in our thinking. A generation of “if/then” thinkers probably won’t have the attention span to balance a budget, unless it can be dropped into excel.

So how do you fix this? Really, it’s such a positive statement about the quality of life in America that is almost sounds silly to try and adjust it. But if we aren’t willing to think hard on the big problems, they’re going to get a whole hell of a lot worse, and complacency will just become another issue to fret about. So, if you’re reading this (and you aren’t my mother checking in to see what I’m all worked up about this week), you seem to have the free time, or possibly the headline news drive that I’m trying to address. When you’re done, turn off your computer, and go read something more then five pages long. Hell, this essay is less then two. If we ever hope to fix anything, knowing more about why it’s a problem seems like a good first step.

Levi Starbird is a retired punk rocker living under the guise of a college student in western Colorado. He is a chain smoking, often overdressed twenty-something of an ogre-ish persuasion. He is just as confused as you are as to how he got this job.