I wonder if this applies to seeing successful people as well.
The brain was not designed for this much bad news
221–230 of 376 posts
Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news
#222Neil Postman called this the “Peekaboo World”. “What steps do you plan to take to reduce the conflict in the Middle East? Or the rates of inflation, crime and unemployment? What are your plans for preserving the environment or reducing the risk of nuclear war? What do you plan to do about NATO, OPEC, the CIA, affirmative action, and the monstrous treatment of the Baha’is in Iran? I shall take the liberty of answering…
Postman wrote this in context of television, which is a broadcast channel with no means to interact with it. But in times of social media, your reaction to the news is something you can broadcast yourself, at the very least to your online followers (if we are talking about story feeds). Now, a lot of groups enforce their members to take political stances and show action as a sign of belonging. These might be anything…
I feel this is somehow reducing all expression of opinion as performative, i.e. serving to heighten the social standing of the expressor. I have a handful of other motivations:
- to persuade
- to develop my worldview (speaking, typing, thinking all use different neural pathways)
- to collect feedback and be challenged
Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Legally, you can do a lot more than ignoring. If you have any talent for it, becoming an activist (say a youtuber) rallying people against whatever you believe is bad, can be pretty powerful. A single person (again, with some talent for public speaking etc.) has a real chance of making meaningful change this way.
Rallying people to do what ? Boycotts? They have some effect, but never enough. The most influential YouTuber I can think of is Louis Rossmann, and you know, he's not a YouTuber, he's a MacBook repair guy who took up YouTube.
No, not boycotts.
The influencial youtubers I think of actually can shape political debate and thus policy - what they say, if it gains enough popularity, sometimes seeps into the political agenda of the ruling party (which is always looking to "score points" with the voters and has its ears to the ground listening which issues and points people are currently responding to). It's basically like being a columnist of an influential newspaper, except you don't need to have the right connections to become one.
Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news
#224Neil Postman called this the “Peekaboo World”. “What steps do you plan to take to reduce the conflict in the Middle East? Or the rates of inflation, crime and unemployment? What are your plans for preserving the environment or reducing the risk of nuclear war? What do you plan to do about NATO, OPEC, the CIA, affirmative action, and the monstrous treatment of the Baha’is in Iran? I shall take the liberty of answering…
> the “Peekaboo World” What a great analogy. And IG/Tiktok reduce it into an even purer state - endless random videos, barely if at all connected, ephemeral stimulation you can't even remember 30 seconds after seeing it. I know 50 year old adults who can spend entire hours just in this mesmerized state of flicking through these random feeds, seeing but not seeing, like some kind of drug induced hypnosis. I wonder wha…
You can read what his son has written on the subject
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-oursel...
Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on the public transport network where you live. I used to work with someone who commuted from London to Cambridge (yes, that way around). And in Berlin, someone else who commuted from half way to Poland. Won't work everywhere, e.g. from what I saw when visiting I don't foresee US cities rapidly integrating enough good public transport to properly replace cars within themselves, and from what I've heard about…
halfway from Berlin to Poland is like a 30 minute ride on regional train. It's quite close to the border.
It's also 100 km to the border. The point is, we actually have trains (and busses) that can do this here. It's actually possible.
I visited Davis CA few times around a decade ago for comparison; Go to google maps, choose public transit, and use Davis as an origin or destination while dragging the other end around and see how many routes it can even find.
The rate of successes I get in the Sacramento conurbation are about the same as the rate of success I get for rural Brandenburg, but for most of the rest central Valley (with a handful of exceptions), Google mostly couldn't find a route at all.
By this measure, California's central valley is worse-connected for long-distance public transport even than rural Wales (measured by "can I route-find to Aberystwyth?").
Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your first paragraph sounds like a religion.
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My favorite is when people are selectively upvote/downvoting a long nested line of argument but fail to notice that the sides "swap" at some point and the voters fail to notice.
Speaks volumes about the community IMO.
Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with this. What was certain and predictable was that Harris was a war candidate (the Democrats presided over the first year of genocide and were intending to continue). MAGA was going to be bad in some way, but the Democrats were very bad in very known ways, so voting for whoever was at least saying they were against war was the rational decision for anyone who cared about not having genociders at the helm of…
>MAGA was going to be bad in some way, but the Democrats were very bad in very known ways, so voting for whoever was at least saying they were against war was the rational decision for anyone who cared about not having genociders at the helm of the state. This implies that Donald Trump/Republicans weren't pro-Zionist and didn't support Israel which is obviously untrue. The truth is there was no "non-genocide" candida…
Both sides are against the genocide of Israel, thank God - and against the genocide of Arabs.
(Unlike the meme-puppets who now believe that some genocides are better than other genocides).
Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rallying people to do what ? Boycotts? They have some effect, but never enough. The most influential YouTuber I can think of is Louis Rossmann, and you know, he's not a YouTuber, he's a MacBook repair guy who took up YouTube.
No, not boycotts. The influencial youtubers I think of actually can shape political debate and thus policy - what they say, if it gains enough popularity, sometimes seeps into the political agenda of the ruling party (which is always looking to "score points" with the voters and has its ears to the ground listening which issues and points people are currently responding to). It's basically like being a columnist of a…
The political establishment is savvy enough to score points on things they don't care about and ignore voters on things they do care about. That's why one party supports LGBTQ pride and the other opposes it, but they both support the genocide. LGBTQ pride doesn't really affect politicians' power, genocide does.
Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news
#229Neil Postman called this the “Peekaboo World”. “What steps do you plan to take to reduce the conflict in the Middle East? Or the rates of inflation, crime and unemployment? What are your plans for preserving the environment or reducing the risk of nuclear war? What do you plan to do about NATO, OPEC, the CIA, affirmative action, and the monstrous treatment of the Baha’is in Iran? I shall take the liberty of answering…
Practically, focusing on the things you can change (mostly small scale evils in your community) will have the highest degree of positive effect, rather than focusing on stuff you are bombarded with online that is out of your control (mostly large scale evils). However, don't think you get vindicated from duty just because the task is impossible. You are as just as much responsible for yourself, your family, your frie…
If you do that the system works around you.
Pretty much all the power of state/local politics has been usurped by fed/state via "in order to get your own people's money back as grants you shall pass a law meeting requirements blah, blah, blah...." type rules. You can want to improve permitting rules or the local school district's priorities all you want but the system is built to prevent you from being able to do so except in the most limited "within the permitted amount of local deviation from the federal norm" way.
Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news
#230All this at a time when world poverty is in continual decline, medical science reaches continual new heights, crime is in multi-year decline, etc.
It is often said that the average person today has better food, shelter, health services, etc. today than a king had just a short while ago.
Bad news sells, though. Don’t buy it.