Your (and your parents’, and your peers’) real and perceived economic circumstances and opportunities have a lot to do with what you’ll value and prioritize as an adult - how invested and loyal you’ll be in society. Every poor person we generate due to greedy decisions has a very high likelihood of being a destructive force back to us.
Now consider how many poor people were generated by black slavery, segregation, and explicit racism in America, and how, in a society, we all just swim around in the same trauma soup, deflecting pain towards one another.
Now consider how many poor people were generated by black slavery, segregation, and explicit racism in America, and how, in a society, we all just swim around in the same trauma soup, deflecting pain towards one another.
Imo greed is an lack of education. As education is ideally schooling +life experience. Part of that critical thinking section needs to be taught by experience and society in the us at least didn’t give anyone enough time to see the world before deciding what to do, how to live and what kind of person you want to be.
Education has been fully taken over by Capitalism. For profit schools and “public schools” which are bound by the same economical principles provide an education that’s solely geared towards producing new employees.
Public education wasn’t necessarily “taken over”. It was only ever “allowed” by the rich because they needed trained people to count their fucking money (oversimplifying. Sort of).
Teachers push actual critical thinking in their classrooms and the oligarchs hate that, which is why they try to crush teachers at every turn.
Almost none of my well educated professional-managerial class peers have developed class consciousness. They seem to be even more class clueless than blue & pink collar workers.
Major media bodies are owned by corporations or the state, and the state is also owned by corporations, so they functionally control all of it. QED Socialism or barbarism.
I did the same thing. I still am on social media such as lemmy and discord but its mostly to talk to people. And I havent watched the news since I was a child. Important things come your way eventually and I dont see it as being ignorant. Now I only receive information I can actually do something about if I want to.
More like “don’t stick your head in a pile oft shit”, ignoring these platforms is not ignoring the world, it’s changing your point oft view, you won’t miss anything of importance.
That’s may be true for you, but a lot of these type sites are a great source for news and information about the world. Ignorance is bliss as they say, but the world keeps spinning whether or not you pay attention to it. I’m not saying you HAVE to get news from social media, but that’s what I primarily use it for.
If it doesn’t cause you to act, then the news is just entertainment
Covid vaccines made available was the last news that actually changed my behavior. That was like years ago. The rest is just entertainment written to make people scared and angry
Bullshit. Responsible news consumption is how we make informed decisions about the world. It’s a critical part of any democracy which is why Burke called it “the fourth estate.”
this. A lot of news is kind of inactionable too; what are we supposed to do from knowing about some dictatorship half way across the world having a coup? The thing that actually started lifting me out of passive observation and into action was reading political analysis and political theory. Strongly recommend some introductory political theory for anyone who feels a responsibility to keep up with the news but then finds that all doing so does is make them exhausted and depressed.
That sounds like a ‘you problem’. I change my behaviors and my attitudes accordingly based on what I intake and digest. When McCain first ran against Obama, he was a moderate with decades of experience who had seen the dark side of war and wouldn’t thrust us into one senselessly.
Thanks to the news I saw the rapid conversion of a formerly moral politician into someone who would say anything for power.
When the situation in Maui came up I donated as I have in the past to people affected by disasters.
Should you assume information that doesn’t affect you personally is irrelevant or are you willing to step down from your Main Character title card?
Social media is for social interaction. There are better alternatives for news. I’d rather invest some money in good journalism than picking relevant news in the flood of garbage click and rage bait articles. There is also good, free of charge journalism out there. For example the guardian
This is so honestly so true. Once I moved my news sources onto an RSS app and left my social media interactions for my hobbies or catching up with people my pessimism decreased dramatically.
News on social media is filled with bad actors, misinformation, and bots deliberately to drive up engagement through outrage. 99% of the time it’s not worth the mental blowback.
Sorry in advance for the unsolicited advice, but if you’re a news junkie (like me), try out an RSS feed reader (Feedly, Inoreader, Newsblur is a FOSS option).
You get to bypass the comment section of social media while still being aware of what is going on around you. I use Ino because it’s cross platform. It makes it super easy to subscribe to anything from Nature to Vogue to my local news affiliate, and it has a trending section, as well as curated groups for hobbies/interests and your work industry as well.
You don’t have to stop caring about the world in order to live without social media.
I’ve considered fishing, but the equipment is expensive, and all the closest locations are pretty far. When I need to chill I just play a game or go for a smoke.
I appreciate the concern and know about the potential negative consequences. But with all due respect, you don’t know me or the type of news I seek out or how I feel about it. I prefer to know what’s going on around me and the world so I can work towards making impactful changes. That doesn’t mean everyone else has to but it works well for me.
A healthy diet, if you will. Fastfood is okay once in a while but eating it all the time just as tiring to one’s body as clickbait information to one’s head.
Is not being on most social media sticking your head in the sand now? I still read the news and try to stay informed. It’s just not in my face as much anymore. I would consider that a win.
Arguably that's one of (though not all of) the reason for so many people not voting. They think if they disengage, then that'll fix the problem. When in reality they're just allowing the problem to get worse and pretending there isn't a problem.
Everything under neoliberalism is assessed primarily in terms of money. It thrives on selfishness. Doing things to improve climate and reduce carbon emissions doesn’t have immediate profits and is therefore ignored. The wealth inequality results in the more wealthy thinking they deserve the wealth and seeing the poor as inferior thus destroying social cohesion.
Liberalism does not seem to seek any kind of cohesion, rather it focuses on maximising each individual’s desires regardless of the resulting sum of these individual fulfillments.
Sometimes it’s fun to try doing things differently, but I sort of agree with you. As time goes on it’s harder and harder to break ourselves of our habits
I’ve found that disconnecting helps. Leave your phone at home and go out. Chat with the guy you see every day at the grocery store. Go play chess or pétanque in the park with a friend. You don’t have to do this too often, and you’ll feel less like a product yourself.
Especially the elderly in my experience. The generation that used to tell us not to believe everything we see on the internet is now glued to Facebook.
Well, at least on facebook, you can have various ideologies (at least until Suckerberg decide to ban you). On Wechat, it’s only whatever the govermment allows.
The constant revamping of the production process, the uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, and the everlasting uncertainty and agitation of society distinguish the bourgeois era from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relationships, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away. All new-formed relationships become outdated before they can solidify. All that is fixed melts into air, all that is sacred is profaned, and people are at last compelled to face with sober senses their real conditions of life, and thier relations with each other.
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