Today, one can know practically anything about anything through the machine we have in our pocket. Information is the most avaliable commodity that we have, yet we choose not to be selective about it. We are bombarded with information daily to the extent that we can’t even handle.
A couple of years ago, I was a news junkie. I had my notifications on for the different newschannels I followed as well as checking in on them several times per day. I talked about few other things than the latest news with my friends. All and all, there was little room for any reflection from my own part as I was constantly fed with views from others. I rarely checked the sender either, other than listening to where the attention of my friends were and following that.
There are several problems with this. As I newer chose myself which channels to follow, I didn’t have any control over what kind of information I consumed. As the classical saying, “We are the product of the five people we spend the most time with.” I was a product of the five news channels I consumed the most. We tend to choose our friends carefully.
I tend to ask those carefully chosen friends carefully chosen questions about the things that they say. I seldom take their word for what they say if I don’t know that they have good grounds for saying it. When in dialouge, we can exchange questions, statements and experiences. That is a lot harder to do with a newspaper, a news channel or even a single journalist. And even if we could do it, we’re usually comfortable enough not doing it.
My feed in all of my social medias nowadays is heavily attuned. That said, I don’t follow people, companies or the likes that I don’t feel like seeing. My high school friend that only posts memes about how hard it is to be a student is not my top priority. I don’t see that person anymore and that’s cause of a reason. I see no point in seeing them virtually. There’s the same principle.
The danger of watching the news from the channels or in the papers you choose yourself is the same as when choosing friends. You are probable to end up in an echo chamber. We generally think that our echo chamber is one of the good ones. Seeing it from the perspective of the echo chamber, that’s a perfectly reasonable conclusion, but all of the chambers are saying that. Most of the people reading breitbart regularly think that those who don’t are the fooled ones and vice versa.
My point with all of this is for you to stop readin the news at all, and I stand by that. The news feeds were created for us to be controlled and are still being used in that fasion. We’re constantly fed with distasters, death, negativity and so on. That’s in a micro perspective. The deaths, the disasters and the violence is real, it’s just not the whole story. On a macro level, the globe has never done better. We’re materialisticly better off than ever. More people die of obiecety than of fatigue. And so on.
The news aren’t designed to talk about this kind of macro perspective. They were invented to create something to talk about and to induce fear into communities.
Each time I visit my Father and his wife, we have a discussion about how dangerous it is to live in Malmö today. How dangerous it is with taking in people of other cultures and letting them live here. How much of a cost it is to society and how poorly they function with our societal norms. How many rapes and shootings there are in all of Malmö.
Sure thing, as far as I know, the statistics show that shootings have gone up this year. That’s horrible, of course, but that’s no danger to me. The shootings are arranged and in between neighborhoods that are in conflict. I know this from friends and professionals living and working in the areas. The news never told me. And so, my father is scared for my life.
My plea here: keep a micro macro perspective. What’s good for you on a micro level? Is it to induce fear into yourself on a daily basis? Always look at the macro statistics and knowledge in relation to the micro events.