In a recent repost of an old status update, I encouraged (in a general way) eschewing participation with ‘news’ media. My feelings on this issue are complex, but a few people pushed back, generally claiming something resembling ‘our obligations’ to remain ‘informed’ about world events, particularly, our complicity in atrocities committed by nations, ours and others.

The matter is far more complex than can be easily encompassed by declarations. But I wanted to share my extended reply here, to clarify the brief statement I made long ago:

“It’s unclear to me how exposure to media that is engineered to disorient, divide, and opinionate us is an effective strategy for rescinding our participation in systems that produce the atrocities they advertise to us. Human interiority is delicate, and it’s been formally impossible to ‘pay attention to world events’ for 99.9% of human history.

Are we evolutionarily or emotionally equipped to carry the weight of ‘the world’?

I noticed a certain kind of disease that was most contagious among my intellectual friends, some decades ago, which I thought of as ‘sharing the poison’. The disease is enacted by telling a friend of something terrible that is being done by our nation, some nation, some corporation or some institution. Here is the actual effect it had on those situations: none. But it did affect those complicit in these games, by creating a sense of desperation, helplessness, disorientation, and pain.

Are we capable of carrying the burden of the entire planet? Is this something we ‘should’ do, or are somehow ethically obliged to do? If so, which authorities declare this necessity? Protest generally fails, and often actually produces funding for the problems we’re concerned with. Not always. Often. Until and unless we actively form intelligent cohorts with the capability of successfully inverting the situations we feel are tragic and wrong, consuming ‘the news’ seems to me both (generally toxic) and extremely harmful. That’s not ‘my only perspective’, but it is for me, an aspect of cognitive and emotional hygiene.
Are we not yet suffering enough in an array of aggressively apocalyptic behaviors of human groups and institutions that we must »import more suffering from afar? If I cry for Palestine… or Israel… or both, or if I vilify one and celebrate the other… have I done ‘justice’ to either, or myself, or others? And if so, how. And to what degree?

Is ‘news’ an actually reliable source of intelligence? Does it actually tell us ‘what’s going on’ in a way that’s trustworthy? Or is it a poison that we should form, together the antidote to?”