That's been my experience. When I turn off the news and just get outside and in the company of strangers, I get a much more uplifted view of humanity. I would love to walk/bike on a long journey like this guy did, but it may remain a fantasy the rest of my life. I do road-trip every chance I can.
When I turn off the news and just get outside and in the company of strangers, I get a much more uplifted view of humanity.
In that, it's addictive, and/but not useful nor efficient nor representative of humanity state and progress (of which you get a broader perspective when you get to meet different people everyday).
In that perspective, skipping the news is not so much burying the head in the sand, rather the opposite.
...if less in some of the systems we live under
People put those systems we live under in place, and, importantly, people continue, even go out of their way, to keep these systems in place. It's not enough to simply recognize that issues are systemic. Good people would actually do something to address them.
It is a type of commercial entertainment. It it simultaneously inane and culturally violent. Here are people dying in an ongoing struggle for power between warlords and a corrupt government; here are professional athletes winning a tournament. Here's the weather forecast. These subjects merit approximately equal time and similar sentiment in tone. As a viewer of TV news, you are not empowered to change anything because you are not informed of any of the forces and complexities driving the violence and there is no call to action.
I'd see it as the same effect as thugs choosing targets not based on sheer fighting skills, but also the overall behavior and "out of place"ness.
(The plural is worth nothing to man, as soon as we are more than four, we are a bunch of idiots)
But I'm a white english-speaking (albeit with a slight accent) reasonably-well-off male so of course they're nice.
Then they add me on facebook or twitter or ask me to come to their church, or I hang out with them at their BBQ, and god damn it, they turn out to be angry racist homophobic xenophobic folks actively working to make life as difficult as they can for [women|people of colour|homosexuals|immigrants|poor people|anybody different], while promoting black salve and homeopathy and power of prayer as remedies and planning how they're going to "get" the biden/trudau/scientists/leftie/woke/socialist/pinkie/commie/etc bastards and their vaccines and chips and jewish world domination plans.
I've been genuinely morally/philosophically/existentially torn last decade: do I try to see only the good in people? Do I try to engage them in commonalities, build from positions of mutual agreement? OR, does that make me an enabler of evil if I'm not tackling and facing and acknowledging and arguing their darker demons?
But I am always wary of the risk and danger of my new country going the way of my old country. I don't think it's a given that Canada and Canadians will be tolerant, open minded, welcoming, friendly - and indeed, many people underneath their veneer, are not.
In this context, mentioning in my post that I'm english speaking is to acknowledge my privilege of not immediatelly appearing to some people as being an immigrant, poor, or different than some of my neighbours. I imagine e.g. a dark-skinned woman with a less Western name and more obviously non-christian, would find out some of these fine folks' true nature a lot faster :-/
A lot of Québécois have stories of relatives being arrested without probable cause by the RCMP during the october crisis of 1970. Some of us have indigenous friends whose parents were in the residential school system. A lot of us have witnessed unconstitutional arrests during g20 protests in Toronto in 2011 or in Québec in 2012 go unpunished for the politicians who ordered them and the cops who carried them out (it's literally kidnapping).
Canada is a corporatocracy. Read Alain Denault's books. Canada acts as a legal shelter for natural ressource extraction companies that commit crimes in developing countries. A lot of the big markets in the country (groceries, telecom, etc.) are full on oligopolies that are protected by the government. This country is part of the british empire and when you pull back the veneer of politeness and decency you see a very violent country.
It's also almost impossible to convert people like that out of their cesspit of ignorance and hate.
If you want to spend time with them, despite all that, you're not a bad person. If you don't, you're not a bad person either. It's a personal choice.
A lot of people who have those people as relatives struggle with the question of whether to cut them out of their lives. Ultimately, I can't judge them, regardless of what decision they make.
Figuring out what you can do within your own sphere of influence can be hard, but you certainly don't have to pretend like bigots are nice people because they invite you to their BBQ.
I find that when I strip away group dynamics, people all have similar basic needs; that many fears are shared; that many people have similar hopes even if specific struggles or needs vary greatly.
Yes it's disappointing to find out that a nice person turns out to be part of a digusting group, but on the flip side, sometimes seeing the humanity in different people can help lessen the ideologic stronghold on some people. I have some narrow-minded friends and relatives who have been a bit less categorical just by hanging out with nice people who think totally differently than them.