In other news of things that are completely obvious...
Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being
11–20 of 333 posts
Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being
#12I was surprised to learn that Bukowski submitted poems and stories to The Atlantic in his early, hungry years. In my lifetime, I've only known it as an outlet for partisan opinion pieces. On the occasions that I do visit the site, I wonder what he would say about what The Atlantic has become. Not in terms of how it would suit his political biases, but in the agenda first, logic last, unimaginative partisan hackery. I…
People in the (very small) poetry world used to know the Atlantic as one of the premier places to have a poem published. If you pick up a physical copy there are two or three poems and those are guaranteed to be by someone huge in the American poetry scene at the moment.
In the last decade or so things have changed, online has boomed, spoken word/slam poetry took off and left it's mark. And now the markers which signify status in the poetry world are shifting. And for the first time in a while I was actually reading the Atlantic for the articles (online) and surprised to find how much of it was, as you said, partisan, ideology-first, logic-last type reporting.
Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being
#13> After controlling for household income, education, age, gender, race, marital status, and political views, I found that people who were “very interested in politics” were about 8 percentage points more likely to be “not very happy” about life than people who were “not very interested” in politics. If we could locate these philosopher-kings from Aristotle and put them in charge, then ignoring politics might be safe.…
This is a good point: opting out of reality is a worse strategy for happiness on a longer timescale. However, reading the 24-hour news cycle and being aware of the real political landscape is not perfectly correlated; I'd argue it's 50% overlap at the upper bound and sub-ten % at the lower. Furthermore, reading the news cycle and being politically active in a way that affects your, your family's, and your "heirs'" wellbeing is probably almost negatively correlated.
Any political wins made by groups exploiting and dominating mainstream media (Trump) are explained by the fact that the barrier to entry in political action is so low—just getting a few people to vote is politically effective because almost everyone is just watching the news instead of doing anything real. Meanwhile Trump's team meets with money and accrues powerful stakeholders by annexing their agenda, building support in institutions and markets.
So ignoring political news and pursuing interfaces with actual nexuses of power is far more politically effective than the hundreds of people with twenty tabs of The Atlantic open and the WSJ draped across their lap like a religious shawl every morning. Go out, meet politically active people in your city, email representative staff, make friends with people with money and vested interests that are vulnerable to political changes.
Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being
#14> After controlling for household income, education, age, gender, race, marital status, and political views, I found that people who were “very interested in politics” were about 8 percentage points more likely to be “not very happy” about life than people who were “not very interested” in politics. If we could locate these philosopher-kings from Aristotle and put them in charge, then ignoring politics might be safe.…
I am very interested in policy, but I do not watch the news. Why? Because it contains no actionable information that changes my decisions: I'm still going to vote in every election, I'm still going to research the candidates when the time comes, I'm still going to volunteer at the polls... The news is trivia, generally speaking. When I have a more active life in politics I'll take the Chomskian approach to news, but…
What is the Chomskian approach to news?
Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being
#15> After controlling for household income, education, age, gender, race, marital status, and political views, I found that people who were “very interested in politics” were about 8 percentage points more likely to be “not very happy” about life than people who were “not very interested” in politics. If we could locate these philosopher-kings from Aristotle and put them in charge, then ignoring politics might be safe.…
Interestingly enough, Plato's proposal for creating an ideal city-state had specific instructions for how to breed philosopher-kings. He advocated eugenics, and he also recommended lying to the citizens about how it was decided who would be paired up with who. So...I'm not sure we should go down that road?
Any quotes to share?
Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being
#16> After controlling for household income, education, age, gender, race, marital status, and political views, I found that people who were “very interested in politics” were about 8 percentage points more likely to be “not very happy” about life than people who were “not very interested” in politics. If we could locate these philosopher-kings from Aristotle and put them in charge, then ignoring politics might be safe.…
I am very interested in policy, but I do not watch the news. Why? Because it contains no actionable information that changes my decisions: I'm still going to vote in every election, I'm still going to research the candidates when the time comes, I'm still going to volunteer at the polls... The news is trivia, generally speaking. When I have a more active life in politics I'll take the Chomskian approach to news, but…
> says person commenting on a news aggregation site
This story didn't contain anything actionable that changes your decisions either, and yet you still read it and spent the time to comment. I don't see a substantive difference between reading HN and reading following political news. Nearly everything on this site (not even just this piece) will not affect your ability to accomplish your goals in anyway. It's a distraction at best.
Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being
#17We should redesign the news. What would it ideally be like?
Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being
#18I think the problem isn't the news, but the obvious injustice that politics gets away with.
In germany, the minister of transportation lost the taxpayer 500 million euros, with a publicity stunt to bolster his party in a local election. He is now lying in people's face about it, everyone knows it and he does not have to step back.
Instead, they wrote a fluff piece about him, because he managed to buy some masks for the nation by using some connections from his home town. The article that came out two weeks later about these masks being fake and another million euros lost was for some reason behind the paywall of the online newspaper.
It's not the news that makes people unhappy, it's the blatant bullshitting we have to endure.
Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a hypothetical, can you imagine a scenario where nobody voted or put faith in the political class? From this perspective, participation only validates the farce.
My (apparently unpopular) point is that non-participation affords no solace.
It isn't non participation though. You can participate in politics (local, state or federal) without consuming the 24/7 news cycle. The "news" is usually pushing doom gloom and fear no matter which side of the spectrum you are on because that gets the clicks. Rarely do political issues have meaningful developments everyday so continually checking not actually enhancing your ability to participate.
Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being
#20We should redesign the news. What would it ideally be like?
I think Axios is on the right path in keeping news reports as short as possible without too much fluff.