Opt out of current affairs.
Medium · Sociocultural Commentary · 2016 · 248 words
Visa argues for studying history over current affairs, and cites confusion and the impact of ADHD.
Opt out of current affairs.
I think it makes a lot more sense to study history than current affairs.
I miss reading books and I'm going to start reading them more.
In the past few weeks I've read Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman, The Box and several chapters of several different books– and I already feel a little less nauseous than I usually do. There's something about everyday media that's really unsettling, frustrating.
I'm reminded of a bit from Alain de Botton's The News. You don't need to use censorship to mess with people, you can just use confusion. It's super effective:
A contemporary dictator wishing to establish power would not need to do anything so obviously sinister as banning the news: he or she would only have to see to it that news organizations broadcast a flow of random-sounding bulletins in great numbers but with little explanation of context, within an agenda that kept changing, without giving any sense of the ongoing relevance of an issue that had seemed pressing only a short while before, the whole interspersed with constant updates about the colorful antics of murderers and film stars. This would be quite enough to undermine most people's capacity to grasp political reality — as well as any resolve they might otherwise have summoned to alter it. The status quo could confidently remain forever undisturbed by a flood of, rather than a ban on, news.
My ADHD is bad enough without it being exacerbated by the daily news. I'm opting out.
Originally published at https://medium.com/@visakanv/opt-out-of-current-affairs-1ebb32be4e45.