“Up north, we never had bad weather until we got the radio and heard how damn good the weather was down south.” What started as a joke from Norwegian comedian Arthur Arntzen says surprisingly much about the world we live in today. We are constantly surrounded by news, notifications, crises, and comparisons that shape how we experience reality. The world may not necessarily be more dangerous than before, but we have never been more exposed to everything happening around us, all the time.
Introduction
The quote comes from Arthur Arntzen, one of Norway’s most influential comedians and storytellers. Through his legendary character “Oluf,” Arntzen used humor and satire to portray life in Northern Norway while poking fun at politics, media, regional differences, and everyday life. During the 1970s and 1980s, he became a cultural phenomenon in Norway and helped shape modern Norwegian humor through sharp observations, warmth, and self-irony.
The quote itself was meant as humor, but it also contains a surprising amount of truth.
Before weather forecasts, push notifications, and endless news updates became part of daily life, people often just dealt with things as they came. Today, we analyze everything. We name storms, follow disasters in real time, and worry about events happening on the other side of the planet before we have even finished our morning coffee.
Our phones constantly notify us about war, climate change, economic uncertainty, and new crises around the clock. Maybe that is why the world feels more chaotic than before. But is it actually worse, or are we simply exposed to everything all the time?
Why the World Feels More Dangerous
Throughout history, people have always fought over land, resources, power, or ideology. The Crusades, the Napoleonic Wars, and the two World Wars are just a few examples of conflicts that shaped humanity for centuries. War and unrest are nothing new.
At the same time, research from Our World in Data and PRIO shows that the long-term risk of dying in war has generally been lower after World War II than during many earlier periods in history, even though the number of conflicts has increased again in recent years.
What has changed is how we experience these conflicts.
Technology and social media continuously expose us to wars and crises, even those happening far away from us. In the 1800s, a conflict could remain largely unknown outside the affected region. Today, you can follow wars live on your phone through TikTok, Telegram, YouTube, and 24-hour news coverage.
When Negative News Becomes Background Noise
A few years ago, I had an office at Skullerud Park in Oslo. One of the other tenants told me he had stopped reading the news in the morning. Instead, he dedicated one or two fixed days each week to catching up on current events.
The result was a better mood, less stress, and surprisingly, improved sales performance.
Our brains constantly process information in the background. When the day starts with war, disasters, and conflict, it creates a mental backdrop that often stays with us for the rest of the day. People who meet others with energy and mental clarity generally perform better than those who already feel emotionally drained before the workday even begins.
KClimate Change, Consumption, and the Endless Pursuit of Growth
Climate change is often presented as a modern problem, but nature has always changed. History is full of droughts, extreme weather, and climate shifts that affected societies for centuries.
The difference today is that we can measure almost everything. Technology allows us to monitor temperatures, CO2 emissions, sea levels, and melting ice in real time. We know more than ever before, and because of that, climate challenges also feel more immediate and overwhelming.
There is little doubt that human activity affects this development. We are becoming more numerous, consuming more, and replacing products at a pace the world has never seen before. Organizations like NASA point to human activity as a major driver of global warming, while companies such as McKinsey estimate that climate change will affect everything from agriculture to insurance and working life in the years ahead.
Still, much of the climate debate focuses on the consequences while spending less time discussing the systems driving the development itself.
We live in a world where fully functional products are replaced simply because a new model is slightly faster, thinner, or includes a few small adjustments. The market rewards constant consumption, while sustainability is often used more as marketing than actual long-term strategy.
Think about how often new technology launches with minimal improvements while the pressure to upgrade continues to grow. Many people replace products that still work perfectly fine because the market is built around the feeling that newer automatically means better.
Personally, I believe more pressure should be directed toward manufacturers rather than consumers. What if new products had to document clear improvements in functionality, durability, or sustainability before being released?
Sometimes we become so focused on measuring the consequences that we forget to examine the mechanisms creating them in the first place.
The Information Society: When Everything Happens All the Time
In the 1800s, a person could live an entire life without hearing about a war in Asia or a drought in Africa. Today, the entire world reaches us instantly. News, notifications, emails, reports, and social media constantly compete for our attention.
Research from Pew Research Center shows that many adults feel overwhelmed by the amount of information they are expected to process daily. This applies not only to news but also to modern working life, where meetings, notifications, and digital interruptions consume large parts of the day.
The result is often decision fatigue. The brain becomes overloaded, focus weakens, and our ability to make good decisions declines.
Arthur Arntzen captured this brilliantly through humor decades ago. Information does not only affect what we know. It also shapes how we experience the world around us.
How Constant Information Affects Us
The world may not necessarily have become dramatically worse, but we have never been more informed. At the same time, we have never been exposed to this much information before.
News, notifications, social media, meetings, emails, and constant interruptions fill much of modern life, both privately and professionally. Information is powerful, but when the brain never gets a break, it also becomes a burden.
Research suggests that limiting information intake can reduce stress, improve concentration, and support better mental health. Studies on digital detoxes also point to positive effects on relationships, self-control, and general well-being.
We do not necessarily need to disconnect completely from the world, but we do need more control over what we let in and when.
I thought a lot about this after speaking with that tenant at the office hotel in Oslo. He had stopped reading the news in the morning and waited until later in the day to catch up instead. The result was more energy, a better mood, and increased sales performance.
I tried the same myself and quickly noticed how much calmer and more focused I became when my day did not begin with war, disasters, and conflict.
What surprised me most was how quickly old habits returned. After a few weeks, I slowly drifted back into the same information patterns as before. That says something about how accustomed we have become to constant stimulation and how easy it is to believe we need to stay updated on everything all the time.
We cannot control everything happening in the world, but we can control how much noise we bring into our everyday lives.
Sometimes the most important news of the day is the news you choose not to read.
Kilder og referanser
- Arthur Arntzen, The Damned Northerner (Den fordømte nordlendingen).
- Roser, M., Nagdy, M., & Ritchie, H. (2018). Our World in Data: “War and Peace”.
- NASA. (2023). “Climate Change: Evidence and Causes”.
- Pew Research Center. (2023). “Americans and Information Overload”.
- McKinsey & Company. (2020). “Climate Risk and Response: Physical Hazards and Socioeconomic Impacts”.
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