•
2 min read
I read books.
I watch science channels.
I pay attention to news around computers and computer programming, after all, it’s my job.
But I don’t read the news.
Why? Well, because it’s stressful and it will not help anything. Media like to focus on single events. Negative events. Most of the time, without a context. Because this is what we like to read.
We like reading stories about how celebrities don’t have an awesome life as it appears, so we don’t have to envy and then we can feel good.
We like reading how everything is wrong. And by everything, we mean everyone around us. That problems are politicians we didn’t vote for and stupidity of people who vote for them.
We like reading about terrorist attacks, mostly when it’s an attack from a group of people we don’t like, such as Muslims. Because it brings fuel to more stories like that.
But we don’t care that our life is awesome. It looks like war is over. Muslims are not the problem. It doesn’t have a catchy title. And then we are depressed and overwhelmed by the amount of news.
In past months I read some old books from different fields and guess what? We haven’t changed much. So-called news isn’t actually news. Sure, it’s what is happening around us.
But… in general, there are still the same problems, just shifted a little bit to some other places. There is so much we can learn from history. I’m sad school helped me not to like history at all. I really hate to remember dates and names. But the story of our history is so amazing, and we can learn so much from it!
And not just from history, there are a lot of fields we can learn a lot from! It’s much better to learn something new than reading news.
We have a big privilege. It hasn’t been long ago when we had very limited or no access at all to books. Or even to books in our language. Nowadays, we have access not only to books but to all the knowledge and all the wisdom of humanity in our pockets at hand.
We should use that privilege.
Read less of the news and read more books. Try science.
It’s worth it.
And if you want or need to watch the news, at least don’t trust them by default. Be skeptical. Check everything before you accept what they say. Definitely verify those sources which use ads to make money. Because when revenue is shaped by the count of ads shown to you; they will show you what many of you want to see instead what is real.
