5 ms·

I'm amazed to see an article trying to inform me that, indeed, ignorance is bliss. While I think people should watch their garbage intake, I'd certainly not enc

I'm amazed to see an article trying to inform me that, indeed, ignorance is bliss. While I think people should watch their garbage intake, I'd certainly not encourage tuning out world events any more than I'd encourage running with both earbuds in. In either case one is likely to be taken off guard.

ruswick 14y ago
Indeed. The article seemed quite hypocritical. For someone who decries the public knowing about how miserable the world is and emphatically preaches ignorance, he seems quite keen on informing the world about how much news sucks. (And undoubtedly selling books in the process.)
alexqgb 14y ago
That's not what it says at all. What it says is that there are really big, deep, important, and world-changing stories happening all around us, but you won't get them from what passes for news. What you will get is a fragmentary sugar-high that actually damages your ability to grasp more meaningful accounts of the world. That is to say, the kind of news this story refers to (and which the Guardian sees itself as being above) will make you ignorant. Moreover, that ignorance is characterizes by anxiety and aggression. In other words, the opposite of bliss.
- vy8vWJlco 14y ago
  I see what you're saying... It's just that the author says "news" when he means "the stuff called news that isn't news" which is hard to talk about without sounding like a hypocrite; he describes the phenomena - factoids - for example, but is ultimately participating in the proliferation of exactly the type of water-cooler/factoid/self-help pseudo-intellectual article that he's deriding. His article is filler in the "Media" section on guardiannews.com. The author might have said "too much junk 'news' makes people unhappy" and I'd have promptly carried on ignoring those types of articles. :)

5 ms·

I'm amazed to see an article trying to inform me that, indeed, ignorance is bliss. While I think people should watch their garbage intake, I'd certainly not enc

by vy8vWJlco 14y ago

ruswick 14y ago
Indeed. The article seemed quite hypocritical. For someone who decries the public knowing about how miserable the world is and emphatically preaches ignorance, he seems quite keen on informing the world about how much news sucks. (And undoubtedly selling books in the process.)
alexqgb 14y ago
That's not what it says at all. What it says is that there are really big, deep, important, and world-changing stories happening all around us, but you won't get them from what passes for news. What you will get is a fragmentary sugar-high that actually damages your ability to grasp more meaningful accounts of the world. That is to say, the kind of news this story refers to (and which the Guardian sees itself as being above) will make you ignorant. Moreover, that ignorance is characterizes by anxiety and aggression. In other words, the opposite of bliss.
- vy8vWJlco 14y ago
  I see what you're saying... It's just that the author says "news" when he means "the stuff called news that isn't news" which is hard to talk about without sounding like a hypocrite; he describes the phenomena - factoids - for example, but is ultimately participating in the proliferation of exactly the type of water-cooler/factoid/self-help pseudo-intellectual article that he's deriding. His article is filler in the "Media" section on guardiannews.com. The author might have said "too much junk 'news' makes people unhappy" and I'd have promptly carried on ignoring those types of articles. :)