After I freaked out during the last couple elections, I basically stopped most news. It’s pretty unclear what I could do with it anyway. The theoretical benefit was mostly around politics, but the vast masses just do it as a team sport, so my being “informed” by the news isn’t helping hold politicians accountable or affecting elections. Outside of politics, except for the information about COVID during the pandemic, most specifically the vaccines, I have a hard time thinking of any useful information.
Even local news usually isn’t too relevant. I guess the “avoid this intersection because of power out to lights, flooding, icing or whatever” could be helpful, but usually I don’t get it till it’s later on anyway.
This article is a great example of the struggles of living in our highly constructed world. It has been thousands of years since the mathematically average human lived a natural lifestyle and the rest of us trying to make big interconnected settlements work have been blundering it because what a big society needs is for us to constantly work against many aspects of our nature. No one can just live by their instincts and expect everything to work out, and anyone encouraging people not to think are literally trying to take advantage of what people tend to do when they forgo rationally considering key decisions.
It is very uncomfortable and distressing to hear about major disasters my government is responsible for, and it would be much more natural and fulfilling to me if all I needed to know was how to master my local environment with the rest of my band, but we have historical examples of atrocities being allowed for long periods of time due to nothing more than popular carelessness. If more people had the moral courage to expose themselves to the realities of our government and their own beliefs, I can’t imagine Hillary, Trump, or Biden would have come anywhere close to winning their respective primaries over the past so many years. These elections took place as a consequence of trusting that there were no ulterior motives for any information offered by the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News by most who cared to vote and the rest simply closing themselves off from the process. Just carelessness. Simply hearing about the information spread by these outlets second-hand is probably even worse since it will be filtered through an individual’s interpretation of it. The solution can’t be to try to close oneself off from the outside world.
Uncritical reading of the product of highly compromised information companies is a bad thing, as this article discusses. The solution is not willful ignorance, but the more difficult and less comfortable path which is ultimately more beneficial to oneself and their society. Continue to read the news and in addition, be critical of it. Understand that the news starts with a reporter and then goes through a process of edits influenced by the editors’ biases, the advertisers’ desires, and the orientation toward maximizing profit. Reading foreign news coverage of the same events filtered through an often totally different set of biases can make the important information itself more clear. Just as important as what the major news sources are covering are important events they aren’t covering which tend to get picked up by independent outlets with fewer restrictions. The American media blackout of the Standing Rock protest was particularly notable. I have always wondered how that event may have turned out if it were given more coverage than page 7 of the AP one time.
It almost certainly is better for our mental health to block out unpleasant information. We weren’t built for this society we have. We have a lot of work to do before we can approximate a natural lifestyle in our constructed society. There are powerful forces creating an information environment to manufacture our consent, and ignoring that they are doing that will not fix anything.
Playing DND for the first time in months so I’m in an excellent mood. I wish it wasn’t so hard getting people together, and I know I’m definitely part of the difficulty in making that happen.
It might not help you as it seems you might be in the US, but I regularly donate to MIND (a UK mental health charity), mermaids UK (A UK trans youth charity), Stonewall, and Greenpeace. I think they’re all awesome.
I also support the Awesome Socks Club, which isn’t really a charity donation but they’re donating 100% of profits to various charities, they said they’re trying to beat Paul Newman’s company’s charitable contributions which is a huge effort, it supports independent artists, and you get cool socks to top it off. (www.good.store)
You’re right-- I am in the States, but your input is still welcome!
I don’t have an Awesome Socks subscription, but I do have a Sun Basin Soap one with good.store! I like Daydreamer, even though it sorta reminds me of allspice (and therefore chicken).
I’ve grown disillusioned with Greenpeace, they seem to have lost their north a long time ago, and only hop onto the bandwagon of what’s cool at any given moment. Like, “no fossil, no nuclear, no global warming” are all cool and all… but a contradiction. Or the silliness they’re doing right now in Spain, of combing whole beaches to remove a few pounds of plastic pellets from each… only for more to come the next day… while 30-odd years ago we already used to wonder what were all the multicolored “sand” grains, and some kids used to pick up chunks of tar to chew like gum.
I would suggest either Extinction Rebellion, which has an interesting open governance system with local chapters, and is “effective” in the sense of pissing people off enough to get itself on TV… or any local charity focused on a single achievable goal (sifting plastic pellets from a multi-ton dump at a rate of a few pounds per day, is a populist waste of resources; reforesting some area with native species, is direct and effective; and so on).
When it comes to creative stuff (non-essential goods), I try to only support people with good conscience.
I have cut Netflix because of what the CEO has said. I have boycotted Ubisoft and Activision games because of the continued harassment issues in the company.
There are things I want to watch or play. But if this means supporting shitty people, I would instead prefer to use those resources to support the people I like. After all, its not like there are lack of entertainment in this world.
For essential goods (supermarket chains, goods made in less developed countries with labour issues, etc.), I am less strict because…well sometimes they are impossible to avoid.
That’s a really hard question for me. It’s mostly a feeling more than a science so it becomes a bit hard to lay it down rationally and I know that doing that will result in weird inconsistencies but if I had to define it, it’s probably these three things.
The influence of the author or vibe
I find myself thinking that if I associate a particular piece of art as the vision of a single person rather than a collective work, I tend to be more critical of that art or product. Rationally speaking, I know Kagi is made by more than one person and I know the same to be true of Brave but the fact that I strongly associate both to, in my view, very concrete people whose ideology is very clearly shown in the product, it becomes very hard for me to dissociate the product from supporting that person. Of course, if the vibe of the product or art is off, I just don’t want to indulge with it - it’s essentially an instant turn off. Sometimes it’s just a little thing but it lives rent free in my mind.
The timeframe
If the person that has an influence is dead, well, I don’t have a feeling of contribution to something bad and I might overlook that dislike for the author.
The need
If I don’t need it and I don’t vibe with the author, well, I won’t buy it. There’s better things out there. On the other hand, if I have no option but to use that product, I might swallow my pride.
Up until yesterday, I was doing better, but last two days have been weird.
It’d be nice if I get a full week of “chill” at some point. Well, “chill” as in “good vibes”, not the weather that some of you in the northern hemisphere are dealing with (although, it’s surprisingly cold where I am today, despite it being the middle of summer).
Also, I’m sick of searching for headphones. Like legitimately tired of it. I don’t need perfect, but I need a good compromise between comfort and sound that I can vibe with, which seems to be fucking impossible for me. Probably because of sensory issues, but also because everyone hears shit differently, so reviews are generally pointless.
Edit, 11 hours later: Lol, I feel okay now. Think I just woke up to a bunch of bullshit. Gonna go watch some Sonic Prime and hopefully get a decent rest after that.
My local food bank is my favorite place to donate and volunteer at. My friend also works as a CASA so I donate to them as well (link is for the national organization, but they’re may be a local group you can donate to directly). Other than that, look around your area for local nonprofits. There are lots of local charities that work with kids, help solve local problems, etc that can always use some financial help. There are several organizations that you can go to if you want to vet and check on the charities to make sure they’re legit.
It’s going, I got my medical cannabis second prescription and it arrived today which is nice, waiting on some blackmarket ritalin to deal with my ADHD until my psychiatrist can see me and prescribe it legally. Not being able to think is a fucking nightmare.
Got like 3 hours sleep last night, slept in, ate too fast, stomach ache all day due to that. Other than that, easy work day and the week is light on work to boot. Might get snow where I live too. That would be…cool.
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