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>Novels. Non-fiction. Memoirs. Biographies. Self-Help and the Classics. Just about anything bound between two covers will teach you something more than the late

>Novels. Non-fiction. Memoirs. Biographies. Self-Help and the Classics. Just about anything bound between two covers will teach you something more than the latest headlines — and will do far more in regards to settling your soul. This is an awfully privileged point of view and you may want to examine your own privileges to think about why that might be. Example: I'm willing to bet the author and many people reading this don't have to worry about their voter registration information getting purged/invalidated or their polling place closing because that happens more often to lower income people who live in impoverished areas. If you have no awareness of current events, you could be unable to vote and it's likely that you would find out too late to correct it. Consuming the news will give you a chance to correct or protest these issues before registration deadlines pass.

beat 8y ago
Being fully conscious of privilege issues here... your comment sounds like Outrage Addiction to me. Yes, aware of problems with vote access. But those problems are fundamentally legislative, and won't be solved by treating the symptoms. Go to a state with sensible voting laws (my beloved Minnesota), and the system is immune, thanks to same day registration and provisional ballots. Even a concerted purge effort would crash against the well-designed system. These short-term election issues are a product of fundamentally bad design. Focus on fixing the design, not "protest". Moreover - and speaking of privileged perspective - there is nothing that says you can't pay attention to the news and read novels, memoirs, self-help books, and of course the classics. There is no plausible political situation where you can't squeeze an hour a day off your Twitter feed in order to spend it reading, say, American Nations, or The Cooking Gene, and learn some of the historical roots behind the news that's ruining your blood pressure today. There's a real distinction between urgent and important. I can recommend multiple good books on exactly that.
- minikites 8y ago
  >But those problems are fundamentally legislative, and won't be solved by treating the symptoms. Voting for new legislators isn't the way for citizens to address legislative issues?
  - beat 8y ago
    New legislators won't help if they're not focused on the issue, or don't know what to do with that focus. (As a Democrat, I'm exceedingly frustrated with my party's lack of action on voter suppression, electronic voting machines, and other hazards.) But that ignores my other point... that nothing about this is actually a matter of privilege. Reading books for education and/or pleasure does not interfere with keeping up with current events. And to the original article's point, the constant news feed drives anger, outrage, poor decisions, and a skewed and usually incorrect view of the facts. May I suggest a good book on this topic? Read Factfulness, by Hans Rosling. His takedown of all the ways our brains lie to us, and how the media feeds those inherent flaws in our thinking, blew my mind and significantly focused how I look at the world. As he points out, even the smartest and best educated people in the world - business and political leaders, graduate students, etc - actually perform worse than random chance on simple factual questions about our world. It's amazing. Read it!

beat 8y ago

Being fully conscious of privilege issues here... your comment sounds like Outrage Addiction to me. Yes, aware of problems with vote access. But those problems are fundamentally legislative, and won't be solved by treating the symptoms. Go to a state with sensible voting laws (my beloved Minnesota), and the system is immune, thanks to same day registration and provisional ballots. Even a concerted purge effort would crash against the well-designed system. These short-term election issues are a product of fundamentally bad design. Focus on fixing the design, not "protest". Moreover - and speaking of privileged perspective - there is nothing that says you can't pay attention to the news and read novels, memoirs, self-help books, and of course the classics. There is no plausible political situation where you can't squeeze an hour a day off your Twitter feed in order to spend it reading, say, American Nations, or The Cooking Gene, and learn some of the historical roots behind the news that's ruining your blood pressure today. There's a real distinction between urgent and important. I can recommend multiple good books on exactly that.

minikites 8y ago
>But those problems are fundamentally legislative, and won't be solved by treating the symptoms. Voting for new legislators isn't the way for citizens to address legislative issues?
- beat 8y ago
  New legislators won't help if they're not focused on the issue, or don't know what to do with that focus. (As a Democrat, I'm exceedingly frustrated with my party's lack of action on voter suppression, electronic voting machines, and other hazards.) But that ignores my other point... that nothing about this is actually a matter of privilege. Reading books for education and/or pleasure does not interfere with keeping up with current events. And to the original article's point, the constant news feed drives anger, outrage, poor decisions, and a skewed and usually incorrect view of the facts. May I suggest a good book on this topic? Read Factfulness, by Hans Rosling. His takedown of all the ways our brains lie to us, and how the media feeds those inherent flaws in our thinking, blew my mind and significantly focused how I look at the world. As he points out, even the smartest and best educated people in the world - business and political leaders, graduate students, etc - actually perform worse than random chance on simple factual questions about our world. It's amazing. Read it!