Strategic Info Consumption

I am one of those people who listen to NPR on the way to work every day. I check several news sites every day. During election cycles I am jacked in to cable news TV shows, talk radio, and polls. When major news events happen, I am one of those people that feels the need to stay on the news for hours. Live it and breathe it as if I was there.

I have been critical of this behavior and decided last weekend that I was going to go on a low-information diet to make room for some of the better things in life. That was last Sunday. On Monday a bomb went off in Boston.

After checking in with friends to make sure that they were ok (nobody even close) I decided to stick to my plan and shut the damn news off. I would check my news feed in the morning, and that was it. Music or silence in the car and at home.

Even on Friday when Boston was completely shut down and a massive manhunt was on for the second bomber – I ignored the news coverage. At first I felt stress over this. My mind is like “what if they catch him? What is they don’t? You won’t know…” So I took those questions seriously. The answer of course is: WHO CARES. I am not in law-enforcement or media, so getting the scoop does me no practical good. I then went about my day, just like I did the rest of the week – almost no deliberate news consumption.

I noticed a few things:

1. My sense of needing to know has blown into a sense of “needing to feel like I am right there and that it is happening to me”. This is not information, this is porn. News porn is not good for you.

News porn creates a false sense of fear. You feel that you might be blown up any minute, when in fact your chances are ridiculously slim. You feel that children that are out of your sight for even a second will be kidnapped and molested when in fact this also is slim.

A good historical example of this negative effect of news porn happened after 9/11. Thousands of people decided not to fly after 9/11 because they were afraid that terrorists would hijack their plane. This caused an increase in auto travel. Auto-travel being generally less safe than air travel, this increased the number of auto accident deaths to a number that was greater than what would have happened if 9/11 happened all over again.

2. Throughout the week I was generally happier and more balanced. Not that I am unhappy or unbalanced, but like anyone I have enough stress from my own life without having to feel like I am in a terrorist attack. I was able to focus on my own life more fully and the lives of those people I actually know.

3. Strangely I remained just as informed as I always have been. You hear things by osmosis remarkably quickly, especially on facebook. I knew they caught they guy within the same hour that the story broke. People tell you things. It’s hard NOT to find out about stuff.

4. Another strange one is that I was able to be informed about things OTHER than the main event of the week in a way that I generally am not when I get swept up in event fever. I follow the career of General Musharraf pretty closely (he took over Pakistan in a coup in 1999 exactly three hours after I bought a ticket on PIA that would have me in Karachi for a couple days). He was put on house arrest last week, which most people did not even notice.

5. Compassion and care are not effected at all. Some people seem to stay jacked into a story as an act of compassion or empathy. Not staying jacked in, did not lesson my compassion at all. Indeed it gave it a bit of space to manifest. Not only for the family of the victims, but the families of the bombers as well. How strange it must be. As a father I cannot imagine either loosing my 8 year old to senseless violence OR loosing my young adult to radical ideology and violence. What a nightmare.

6. Being the first to announce a story on FB just seems silly now, but it is exactly the type of thing I used to do. Same things with posts about how the bombers are FBI patsy’s or how they should have their rights taken away, or any other wingnut input. I mean, if you have a strong opinion, by all means share it and act on it. It’s just that facebook seems about the least effectual and non-committal way of protesting/lobbying that there is.

In general I am in the process of revamping my processes for everything I do. I want the rest of 2013 to be meaner and leaner and more productive. One key to that is going to be continuing a low-info news diet. Let’s see if I miss anything. I bet I won’t.

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 8 comments

Charles

it’s spelt ‘losing’ not, ‘loosing’ 🙂

Kevin

N.B. I use “you” below in a general sense; this is not directed as you specifically.

I have spoken to friends about this very topic many times. My personal mantra is:

Accept Your Disempowerment

Most people operate day-to-day in a very limited context. They have not put the time and considerable effort into becoming a high-ranking military leader, politician, and/or member of the intelligence community. They are not leaders in world finance or CEOs.

Therefore, quite obviously, their sphere of material influence is limited. The amount and quality of unadulterated, real information is going to be extremely limited as well. There is little incentive for those in power to provide information even potentially harmful to their interests.

Either take steps to change your status, if greater involvement and more information is really a critical personal goal, or come to terms with your level of relative powerlessness to influence world events. Instead, focus on the things in your personal life that bring you growth and joy.

Sitting there puzzling over media-provided news clips and trying to figure out what’s really going on is like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle when you know damned well the dog ate half of it.

I make an exception, of course, for those who wish to stay informed for the purposes of doing magical work in that direction. However, most of the time, staying glued to the news is simple “news porn”, as you put it. The news today is designed as entertainment that keeps you fearful.

The more fear you feel, the more you focus on the lower end of Maslow’s Hierarchy, and the less expansive (and, well, magical) your mindsets tend to be, and the more easily controlled you become.

In short: http://apt46.net/wp-content/upload/less-fear-of-terrorism.jpg

Charles (not the same one!!!)

Dr Andrew Weil recommends news fasts for a few days ” or even a week”, since the news has a tendency to focus on negative”news”, which only serves to enhance negative mindsets such as anxiety and depression.Such news primes the viewer for negativity, which creates a vicious circle, the more depressed a person becomes, the more they focus on purely negative news which only exacerbates the anxiety and depression. Maybe if people watched the news less, there would be less need of Prozac.

Lee Christopher

I stopped watching, listening,and reading the news in July 2006 at the advice of a good friend and mentor. I haven’t missed anything important, and life us exceedingly better. You and your family will be grateful. I recommend this to everyone!

Nenad Ristic

I have never followed the news, except in specific areas that I find interesting or enjoyable (movie news, gaming that type of thing), mostly picking things up by osmosis (in my case on g+).

Strangely enough, most people I know consider me very knowledgeable and well informed.

Charles

I used to work in an open plan office where four or five radios were quietly burbling away, four, including our small section had rolling news and one had easy music and mindless DJ banter. That small section of people were far happier than the rest of us.
One by one we all plumped for oldies and a minute of news every hour…and we WERE better off for it. At home all day i check the headlines on the BBC website, then the weather, that’s it really.The news IS newsporn now !

Christina

Jason, I agree with everything you say in this post. I did it in my own life a very long time ago, more than 15 years ago… we even gave up TV in the house 8 years ago and contemplated it several years before then. When I listen to news, it’s usually from sources like NPR and 99% of the time, I make a play list on the computer and listen only to that which I choose to listen to… it’s like a buffet, you can choose the healthier options!

For me it was a matter of survival. The constant stream of normal media’s “If it bleeds, it leads!” had me in a tailspin of depression much of the time and it got worse as I aged, or maybe it’s more accurate to say as I was exposed to the environmental toxin that it arguably is. Upon consideration, I reasoned that either I had to get involved in politics 110% and try to make a difference, or I had to give it up completely and work to better the Universe through other means. I chose the other means of alternative medicine and a spiritual path. (Trust me when I say, I would make a really lousy politician!)

In my experience you are correct that you cannot escape notification of the important events likely to affect you and yours. I, like you, reasoned that would be the case when I took this path and it has proven to be true. However, I also admit that it might cause you to have some odd gaps in your knowledge. For instance, I missed Regan’s death for something like 3 years maybe longer… if I thought anything about him at all, I just thought he was out of public view (locked in a closet somewhere maybe?) because of his deteriorating cognitive functions. When I learned it from friends, they were really incredulous that I could have missed it (and so was I.) But, in truth, it was not necessary for my well-being to know nor for that of my loved ones. Important maybe. Urgent? No. In my experience, all urgent things make it onto your plate pretty much as soon as they would otherwise, even if you are on a purposeful media-fast.

As a side benefit, I find that avoiding the usual sources of news and information leaves more room for life in general, and for my spiritual path, and for contemplation, but also leaves more room for alternative sources of information like the brilliant Gordon of RuneSoup. That has been of great benefit to me, to my intellect, my heart and also my Practices.

May you find the same!

Anna Greenflame

Agree 100%. I consume very little news. Actually, I take that back. I consume an appropriate amount of news. Also keep in mind that what passes for “news,” rarely is; these days it’s merely a rehash of one fact and nine suppositions, talking heads talking for the sake of keeping us jacked up, plugged in, and subject to their advertising messages.

In my small, Southern town, a trend that truly sickens me is to walk into many doctors’ offices and see a flatscreen TV with a news channel blaring on it. Yes, being where we are, it’s usually Fox, but occasionally. It staggers me to think that a place of healing, where you want someone to be in a state of low stress, would stream a constant barrage of badness out into their waiting rooms. The times I’ve protested, I’ve been questioned as if I am a subversive and/or viewed as an eccentric crank. Not exaggerating there.

Strategic Info Consumption

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