To be clear, the example in my first paragraph is rhetorical. Obviously this lovely November morning proves nothing about the state of climate change; and the fact that I cannot hear gunshots doesn’t mean people aren’t being killed across America. My point is just that our information overload distorts how we understand the world in two …
To be clear, the example in my first paragraph is rhetorical. Obviously this lovely November morning proves nothing about the state of climate change; and the fact that I cannot hear gunshots doesn’t mean people aren’t being killed across America. My point is just that our information overload distorts how we understand the world in two different directions.
My experience as someone prone to over-consumption of media is that I am susceptible to losing perspective on the scope of the problems reported in the news. When I was growing up, we read the local paper for 30 minutes in the morning, and watched the news for an hour each evening M-Th; the rest of the time other people’s narratives were set aside as we were out and about in the world. When I was a young adult, I listened to NPR for 20-minutes on my commute each way, and read a monthly magazine or two. Most of my life was free of people chattering about a rise in this or that based on a handful of notable incidents.
But now, as media has become ubiquitous, it’s become easier to be perpetually immersed in the narratives it feeds me. More time listening to people tell me about the latest trends in this and that, and less time being out and not seeing them at all, makes it harder to keep perspective. Especially when the narrative is always in apocalyptic terms.
The antidote, for me, has been to limit the amount of time I spend immersed in these narratives, and go outside to have experiences. Experiences help check the perception that the narratives are all-encompassing. It reminds me that I can generally wish someone a “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” without a culture warrior having a meltdown, and I’m going to speak to 100 people in public today without ever being accosted for wearing a mask. By being out in the world instead of just listening to people talk about it, I can readily see there is no “War on Christmas,” and that the scope and urgency of the increase of public harassment is not at apocalyptic levels.
In short, I’d prescribe for us all to turn off the TV, close the laptop, and shut down the phone and go for a walk. Keep the consumption of news and social media limited to less than an hour a day most days, and spend the rest of our time doing things. If the time we have is best suited for being immersed in narratives, we should read narratives that are not about current events—fiction or a history book or a cookbook or whatever. Don’t let someone else’s story of what’s wrong with the world drown out all the other sources of information available to you—your eyes and ears, the collected and recorded knowledge of the world, and the vast imagination of humanity.
To be clear, the example in my first paragraph is rhetorical. Obviously this lovely November morning proves nothing about the state of climate change; and the fact that I cannot hear gunshots doesn’t mean people aren’t being killed across America. My point is just that our information overload distorts how we understand the world in two different directions.
My experience as someone prone to over-consumption of media is that I am susceptible to losing perspective on the scope of the problems reported in the news. When I was growing up, we read the local paper for 30 minutes in the morning, and watched the news for an hour each evening M-Th; the rest of the time other people’s narratives were set aside as we were out and about in the world. When I was a young adult, I listened to NPR for 20-minutes on my commute each way, and read a monthly magazine or two. Most of my life was free of people chattering about a rise in this or that based on a handful of notable incidents.
But now, as media has become ubiquitous, it’s become easier to be perpetually immersed in the narratives it feeds me. More time listening to people tell me about the latest trends in this and that, and less time being out and not seeing them at all, makes it harder to keep perspective. Especially when the narrative is always in apocalyptic terms.
The antidote, for me, has been to limit the amount of time I spend immersed in these narratives, and go outside to have experiences. Experiences help check the perception that the narratives are all-encompassing. It reminds me that I can generally wish someone a “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” without a culture warrior having a meltdown, and I’m going to speak to 100 people in public today without ever being accosted for wearing a mask. By being out in the world instead of just listening to people talk about it, I can readily see there is no “War on Christmas,” and that the scope and urgency of the increase of public harassment is not at apocalyptic levels.
In short, I’d prescribe for us all to turn off the TV, close the laptop, and shut down the phone and go for a walk. Keep the consumption of news and social media limited to less than an hour a day most days, and spend the rest of our time doing things. If the time we have is best suited for being immersed in narratives, we should read narratives that are not about current events—fiction or a history book or a cookbook or whatever. Don’t let someone else’s story of what’s wrong with the world drown out all the other sources of information available to you—your eyes and ears, the collected and recorded knowledge of the world, and the vast imagination of humanity.
My $.02, anyhow.