When I wrote about how much I abstract myself from daily news (1, 2, 3), many people asked me how I can stop worrying about a gazillion things happening in the world. I pondered whether I had become numb. I found out, over time, that I developed a high level of attention to certain things and serenity to worry less about many, many others.
My attention became laser-focused on what’s in my immediate surroundings or what’s influencing them. Instead of worrying about what’s going on thousands of kilometers away, I narrowed down my worry to one to two thousand kilometers. I still care about what’s going on in far lands. Yet, I choose ignorance; I prefer not to hear them. When I say this aloud, it sounds wrong, doesn’t it?
It’s wrong only if knowing problems far away brings any benefit to the people there or me. If knowing what’s going on helps me act on issues with my actions’ success rate higher than, let’s say, 5%, then what I’m doing is wrong. Let me say again: 5%. It’s a low bar.
The best I can offer is either financial assistance or attending a protest. The last protest I attended was “Occupy Gezi” in 2013. Although I find protesting people admirable and support them, I can’t see a huge influence when the protests focus on issues in faraway lands. I don’t know what protesting Putin or Trump in Berlin would achieve. We can argue that our protests put pressure on our government to act, but I rarely see any successful results.
On the money side, I already have a recurring donation to certain places and still do extra whenever I can. Even with this, knowing minor problems in faraway lands every day doesn’t change much. Instead, when I can combine monetary help with other support for issues nearby, then they become more effective.
In addition, I choose ignorance because the more I know, the less I act. It feels overwhelming due to the paradox of choice—increasing anxiety when there are many things to choose from. I can’t worry about all the things happening around the world because I have one life to live (sounds selfish, doesn’t it?). I can’t protest against all political decisions, wars, and more because I have a family to feed. I have certain things I care about, and I can focus on helping with them as much as I can. The rest, I can’t do much; so, instead of cognizant inertia, I choose illiteracy on the concerning topic.
Also, knowing all causes desensitization—reducing the psychological arousal to concerning events and lowering the likelihood of helping victims. The more I know, the more I normalize what should be abnormal. My threshold to act on issues increases, and I stop acting on anything because I see them all day, every day. I want bad things to be still unusual.
What puzzles me is how people choose the other way: high knowledge and no action. It’s our reality. The interconnectedness of the world has led to it, and it’s worsening continuously.
The world wasn’t interconnected this much for thousands of years. We had no idea what was happening even in our close family’s lives until we saw them face-to-face and they told us what had happened. Now, the majority of humans are connected and learn when something is wrong, regardless of where. While we survived for thousands of years without knowing what was happening hundreds of kilometers away, today’s reality is different; a reality I can’t deny.
I can’t deny it, but the problem is that we still don’t know how to live with this much interconnectedness and information overload. Therefore, we need to explore various approaches to learn how to play with the cards we have.
Hence, I’m taking a stand that many may find unorthodox. Instead of creating an illusion for myself, I intentionally don’t learn about certain things so I can focus on helping with what I care about every day. That means I carefully curate my news feed, ignore a lot of news, and don’t follow micro news. Instead, I want to understand the immediate things that directly affect my life or the lives of my loved ones, and the long-term trends and movements that change the direction of a large population (hence the world).
We might argue that whatever happens on the other side of the world affects me whether I like it or not. True. When the US President announces a trade bill, it, of course, affects me. However, there is nothing I can do about it when the day this news hits the headlines. I neither live in the US nor am I a US citizen who can vote, nor do I engage in any trade myself. I have practically zero influence. Knowing all the details of the trade bill won’t change anything in my daily life compared to learning it vaguely. Therefore, I spend time understanding how it will change the world order and whether I should adjust how I position myself in the new movement.
I hold a specific position in life. The reason I’m writing here about the struggle of living, mediating between many issues, learning various things, is my ethical stand: I care about humanity. Without actively luring anyone into any political side, I’m trying to bring a perspective that hopefully can slightly impact someone’s life (I think I barely succeed in that). I’m focused on people surrounding me; trying to bring joy and peace to their lives (which in itself is a really demanding task that I still don’t succeed at) and make their lives a little better every day so they return the favor to someone else, and eventually, we can reach masses of compassion.
I try to stand with anyone around me who brings peace and shows compassion. I can’t fly to Taiwan to support the oppressed, or I can’t go to Gaza to bring food with my hands to many orphans. Yet, I also know the power of the words that I write here. I know these words influence people (so far, very few). The words that might change people whose names I don’t even know.
I know that certain groups will try to oppress and dominate others in all parts of the world. These groups need to be prevented somehow. The only people who stand against them are often the people who are closest to the problem. We can argue that we can create international pressure, but I don’t believe it works in this age (I am probably wrong. Prove me wrong, please). Look at Russia and Israel, the conflict-ridden countries of today. The pressure I can create here on Putin or Netanyahu by active protesting doesn’t even make a dent. I’m not a pessimist. Quite contrary, what I’m trying is the most optimistic approach I could find.
Here is my optimism: Imagine that you somehow make the place around you a little better. Then your next street neighbor does the same after seeing you. Then their neighbor replicates the behavior. We start a chain of compassion. This compassion chain can spread everywhere in enough time. It is very slow progress and can take centuries. But any other approach is the same; the mass changes always need, at least, decades.
While abstracting myself from the distant problems I can do nothing about, I create a headspace for the problems around me. Instead of spending hours learning about anything going on at the other corner of the world today, I can learn much more about what’s going on in the city/country I’m living in and can act on it. That said, I’m not recommending my approach to anyone. I know that this type of living is not for everyone.
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