For a long time I’ve been resisting the advice to stop reading news.<\/p>\n
The advice comes from so many different sources.<\/p>\n
From Andrew Weil<\/a>, in his book “8 Weeks to Optimum Health”. <\/p>\n I do not want you to become uninformed about the state of the world, but I note that paying attention to news commonly results in anxiety, rage, and other emotional states that probably impedes the healing system […] I do want you to discover and make use of the fact that you have choice as to how much news you allow into your consciousness, especially if it disturbs your mental and spiritual equilibrium.<\/em><\/p>\n Timothy Ferris’<\/a> The 4-hour work week<\/a>“.<\/p>\n I hope you’re sitting down. Take that sandwich out of your mouth do you don’t choke. Cover the baby’s ears. I’m going to tell you something that upsets a lot of people. I never watch the news, and have bought one single newspaper in the last five years, in Stansted Airport in London, and only because it gave me a discount on a Diet Pepsi. I would claim to be Amish, but last time I checked Pepsi wasn’t on the menu. How obscene! I call myself a responsible and informed citizen? How do I stay up-to-date with current affairs? […] And of course there’s Lao Tzu<\/a> – Those who know are not learned, Those who are learned do no know.<\/em><\/p>\n Perhaps Steve Pavilina<\/a> puts it best of all<\/a>, saying news is negative, addictive, myopic, marketing, shallow, untrustworthy, thought conditioning, trivia, redundant, irrelevant, not actionable, problem-obsessed and a waste of time.<\/p>\n Quite scathing isn’t it? <\/p>\n So why then do we read it?<\/p>\n It’s interesting how difficult it is to stop. The addictive quality is powerful, and we feel guilty about not ‘staying informed’. Won’t we be living in our utopian bubble while the world collapses, with us ignorant and unaware, and not making a contribution?<\/p>\n I have found the opposite. As both Steve Pavlina and Timothy Ferris say, most news is outside of our influence, not actionable. There are many, many better ways to make a contribution. During the violence against foreigners a few months ago, the news was filled with terrible cherry-picked stories, but not much in the way of possible constructive action. All the really important and useful information that I could use to help was gained elsewhere.<\/p>\n It’s not much use fretting about who the US is going to elect, but we could so something about the person sleeping under the bridge down the road tonight, or our local school’s crumbling walls, neither of which ever makes the news.<\/p>\n I’ve been closely observing my reactions while reading news, and it has a tremendous power to depress, enrage and disempower. A headline such as an ANC leader saying “There’s no such thing as white poverty” which I saw a few days ago, is designed to cause a reaction. “What the F*@k is the ANC saying now?” you’re supposed to think, “of course there are poor whites” – you’re supposed to become angry. But the actual wording has been twisted, so what was originally a simple, and quite positive message (poverty has no colour), has been twisted to cause anger and tension.<\/p>\n Pavlina suggests there’s a reason for newspapers being negative. “Pessimistic news sources will attract pessimistic readers, partly because those are the best targets for advertising \u2014 negative people are more likely to believe that buying products will change their emotional state.” It’s quite obvious that a headline “beautiful weather today” will attract less readers than “horrific storm brewing”. The negative message is a call to action, promising information about an important crisis that could affect us.<\/p>\n Online is even worse, and the reason the news fast recently came to a head for me. In an attempt at building community, many sites allow fairly unrestricted user comment. Many comments are anonymous, and reflect the worst of human traits. Just read any of the rugby blogs over the last few weeks (perhaps they’ll let up a bit after today’s game<\/a>).<\/p>\n It’s not just a waste of time, it’s harmful to be continually taking in this negativity. <\/p>\n Time to go cold turkey, and restore your motivation to do something constructive!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For a long time I’ve been resisting the advice to stop reading news. The advice comes from so many different sources. From Andrew Weil, in his book “8 Weeks to Optimum Health”. I do not want you to become uninformed about the state of the world, but I note that paying attention to news commonly… Continue reading Time to go cold turkey – no more news<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-earth-literature","category-fire-social","category-wood-spiritual","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMost infomation is time-consuming, negative, irrelevant to your goals, and outside of your influence. I challenge you to look at what you read today, and tell me that it wasn’t at least two of the four.<\/em><\/p>\n