Quote:
Originally Posted by Russic
I don't often share this opinion because it's unpopular and flammable in certain circles, but I've removed my attention from the news almost entirely, and it's almost all upside.
Voting is not the Manhattan Project... do some candidate research for 10 minutes and you're probably going to settle on the person you otherwise would have had you bathed in cortisol for the previous 4 years.
If we acknowledge that the human brain focuses on the negative, and we acknowledge that the news media uses this to its advantage, we can begin to question is what we're seeing is "the news" or just a greatest hits collection of awful things that happened during the day.
I have friends that live in the news cycle and they playfully (or earnestly) judge me for this stance. At the same time.... ehhh... they don't seem to be enjoying any of this. They're cranky and pessimistic, they have no hobbies, and they seem to spend a lot of their kids lives worrying about their kids instead of doing literally anything else. They say things like "if you're not furious you're not paying attention", yet they seem to curiously not pay attention to anything that truly matters or that they have control over.
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Preach.
While it feels like the world is falling apart if you're plugged in and feeding these headlines to your brain ad nauseam, we're also quietly living in the most prosperous and lucrative time there has ever been for someone living in the western world.
While Trump and co. are likely to make things worse for many people relatively speaking, this is just worse in relation to the best of the best times humanity has ever experienced on this earth which has been the past 50-60 years. And meanwhile we continue to progress and develop new innovations that may solve many global issues.
While I'm guilty of paying more attention to the news cycle lately (and I recognize that it functions similar to an addiction), I want to try to keep it in moderation because the news does present hardly anything but negativity and fear (playing on our negativity bias), and is continually replenished with something new, making anything you invested time and energy into debating or discussing irrelevant a week on. In many ways it's a waste of time and mental bandwidth. The 'news machine' functions like a hamster wheel that continues to sell the idea to people that they're being productive members of society by staying up to date. But a lot of stories are essentially a bunch of hot air about nothing. He said/she said followed up by reactions of shock and outrage from people on the outside. It's a formula to keep people paying attention, but it doesn't actually serve the audience in a meaningful way other than to rile up their anger, fear and concerns, which in turn motivates them to invest more time into it.
And those negative headlines aren't all that's going on. There is probably as much if not more in the way of positive developments that don't get coverage (because it doesn't draw an audience like drama and negativity). Seeing only one side skews people's perceptions and it's unhealthy. It disconnects us from gratitude, happiness, and basically all that we could be doing right now but instead are hunched in front of the TV or computer absorbing some news outlet's curated ####.
It's important to disconnect for periods of time and reconnect with life and being present (so you don't miss it!). You don't have to be disconnected from important developments altogether, but just constraining the amount of time given to absorbing negative news, and capping it before it starts to affect your overall mental well being.