and another thing...: information overload.

The prophet Daniel predicted that in the Last Days knowledge would increase.

"The world is in chaos," wept Frances Lawrence, widow of Philip Lawrence, the Catholic headmaster stabbed to death by a 15-year-old boy outside his school earlier this year.

She had reason to think so.

In a British courtroom nearby, a judge was accused of being cruel for denying a 31-year-old woman permission to be artificially inseminated with the sperm of her dead husband on the grounds that he had not given written consent while alive.

As evidenced by this and so many other stories this year, one can't help but think what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to artificially conceive. But never mind.

In Moscow the same week, the ailing Boris Yeltsin accused General Lebed of plotting a coup against him. Then he sacked him on live television before . . . gasp . . . slipping back into his oxygen tent. "I'll be back," promised the unfazed Lebed.

In Washington, Bill Clinton's re-election was a fait accompli, despite the likelihood his wife Hillary would soon be indicted--providing that, in America at least, character no longer counts because nobody has any.

In Isreal, the fragile peace was breaking down too. Again. As were the puzzled peaces in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Northern Ireland.

This while Saddam Hussein remained in power the easy way--by assassinating all his opposition.

The good news is that the stockmarket hasn't crashed yet, though many think it should.

How do I know? I too, dear reader, am bombarded daily by an indecent number of wire service reports, though the `real story' behind all the world-wearying headlines and hype will doubtless be in my bookstore next spring after I'm beyond caring.

I'm exhausted by the sheer overload of it all. It hurts my brain just to think about the things I know.

Until relatively recently, knowledge was neither overwhelming nor problematic. But nowadays, there is no limit to the things you can know and need to know.

In fact, more information has been produced in the past three decades than in the past 5,000 years. A single edition of the Globe and Mail now contains more information than most 17th-century men and women came across in an entire lifetime.

The result? Too much knowledge is making us ill with a previously unheard-of malaise - Information Fatigue Syndrome.

According to Dying for Information, a recent report released by Reuters, information overload is making managers mentally and physically sick; wasting time; interfering with good decision making; clogging business; and, in particular, making women vulnerable to stress. Which means it is information overload - not housework--that is the real cause of the female discontent feminists have been misdiagnosing for years.

Ditto for the much--extolled benefits of ultimated choice. Have you checked the deodorant section at your pharmacy lately? Given the dizzying number of scented and unscented sticks, roll-ons, creams and sprays guaranteeing that none of us need stink till decades after our deaths, one must ask: is all this choice really necessary?

And how about those vitamins? Of the thousands available, which is best? Which is worst? Which can guarantee immortality?

Nor should it surprise anyone that compassion fatigue, based largely in information fatigue, is merely another form of choice fatigue. I mean, with all the starving babies from all the starving countries around the world, why this one? With all the children being sold into sexual slavery to service slavering paedophiles, why that one? Why don't we just ignore them all?

The truth is that despite the fact most of us are burnt-out by too much information and too many options, the world is not in chaos. It remains remarkably orderly. The sun still rises and sets exactly on time; the seasons change with certainty; the tides continue to rush in and out; fire still burns; the moon still phases; and God is still God.

When people say the world is "in chaos', what they really mean is that the world is `in evil'. They sense, as did W.B. Yeats in his prescient poem The Second Coming, that there may be a terrible reckoning approaching.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

The darkness drops again but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem, to be born?

Whether or not these post-modern, premillennial days are the last ones, one thing is certain:things don't look good. But there is an answer.

In their brilliant new book His Holiness, authors Carl Bernstein and Marco Polliti quote Pope John Paul as saying again and again, like a mantra, that the solution to all things - however frightening or trivial - is prayer:

Prayer brings peace of mind and peace on earth.

"Fear not, little flock," Jesus said.

"Be not afraid," repeats His faithful disciple John Paul II.

This blessed Christmas season, let us rejoice and be glad that we have such a good shepherd.