Comment by coldpie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldpie | Hacker News Reader

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> News has been able to sell itself with the dictum that you "have to know what's happening!"

Yeah. A couple years ago when I was about 24, I decided I "should be more informed" because that's what adults do, so I bought a year subscription to Minneapolis's major newspaper with the goal of reading it mostly every day. I did for a while, but quickly realised that I didn't give a shit about almost anything in the paper. And worse, the things I read made me actively depressed. You know what? I don't care about how the war in Iraq is going. I don't care what some dumb conservative politician had to say about my friends and family. I don't care what crazy shit Russia or North Korea are getting up to. I don't care how many people are dying in a genocide on the other side of the world.

I guess maybe that makes me a bad person or something, but boy am I happier and more productive not knowing it. I canceled that subscription and I'm never looking back. "Keeping up with the news" was one of the worst things I ever did.

> You know what? I don't care about how the war in Iraq is going.

Well, that's the problem with being informed. If you don't get off your ass and protest (or do something one way or the other) -- either cognitive dissonance will drive you towards being a less caring person ("My government is killing civilians with hellfire missiles without declaring a war and I do nothing - it must be ok, then") -- or it makes you depressed. Or both.

I think the happy balance is to accept that you can only do/care about so much: engage locally and do something meaningful -- work on one or two issues that have global implications -- and not let the fact that you can't right all wrongs (or support all rights) get you down.

I don't care about how the war in Iraq is going.... I don't care how many people are dying in a genocide on the other side of the world.

I am sure this is not quite how you mean it, but to me this comes across as saying "if it doesn't affect my life, or my friends, then who cares." You should care about things that don't directly impact your life -- partly because you can make a difference in these things, sometimes, if you get involved.

Time to get out of the shire and see the world, bilbo.

> I am sure this is not quite how you mean it, but to me this comes across as saying "if it doesn't affect my life, or my friends, then who cares."

No, that sounds about right. I don't blame others for caring, or think they shouldn't care. In fact, I'm glad they do. But I don't.

> You should care about things that don't directly impact your life -- partly because you can make a difference in these things, sometimes, if you get involved.

Fixing the military industrial complex or some other country's fucked up government isn't really on my TODO list. For better or worse, it's not how I want to spend my life.

No the parent comment is right.

Aligning your circle of influence and circle of concern is the key to productivity and happiness.

Moral fashion is all the rage, but unless you are going to engage in the political process (properly, not just retweeting hashtags or sticking bumper stickers) then you're better off not bothering with it. People spend far too much energy on fashionable 'global' causes when there are a pile of local causes that need their help.

Give up on that newspaper, not news.

With a few exceptions (NYTimes, WSJ) newspapers tend to go just deep enough to distract, but not deep enough to inform. Read The Atlantic or Salon or other long-form stuff, read the more substantive news links off HN, but read.

Your initial instinct was a good one, reading well enriches you. Not reading makes you boring. And while I think it's profoundly worth it in the long run, learning about the world isn't necessarily supposed to make you happy.

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