Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because we don’t have time This part is a huge society-wide problem that can theoretically be fixed so people can become more informed and active participants in the framework of their daily lives. Don’t ask me how, though, because I just got off work and am too exhausted to do anything except let the news tell me what to be afraid of today, then probably binge The Office and slam a few brewskis until I fall asleep…
Even if I do have time and energy, my lack of knowledge on the subject matter would probably lead me to waste that time on dead ends, wrong conclusions, or learning things I will never use again outside of fact-checking one study.
You have to trust yourself to try anyway. Beats doomscrolling even if both are equally meaningless in the long run. Something that helps me is refusing to accept any narrative or conclusion about any topic where it would require a specific named group of people (e.g. members of any nationality, profession, corporation, ancestry, presentation, etc — anything) to be uniformly dumb or malicious.
That might sound silly but it means there’s no downside to entertaining any consideration, not even the downside of my own bad feelings from negative ideas. It totally removes a layer of mental latency I didn’t even realize I had until recently, even about topics where that wouldn’t ever be a question that’s possible to ask.
Instead of getting bogged down checking one story after another it’s easier to ignore entire storyline arcs at a time once they’re more obviously one set of jangling keys after another all vying for my attention at a higher priority than any self-directed interests :)
