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Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life is a 2020 nonfiction book by Swiss author and entrepreneur Rolf Dobelli. It challenges the modern habit of continuous news consumption, arguing that disengaging from the news cycle leads to improved focus, well-being, and perspective in an age of information overload.
Dobelli contends that daily news, while seemingly informative, distorts perception, fuels anxiety, and weakens concentration. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, he likens news addiction to a cognitive pollutant that disrupts deep thinking.
The book suggests that by disengaging with the news we regain mental clarity and time for more meaningful learning and engagement.
The book is written as a concise manifesto composed of short, persuasive essays. Each section dissects a different cost of habitual news consumption: reduced attention span, heightened stress hormones, shallow understanding, and misplaced moral urgency. Dobelli supports his claims with research insights and personal experience, noting that he himself has avoided reading news for over a decade.
Key reasons to stop reading the news:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48581422-stop-reading-the-news
I'll give one more reason that isn't in the book. You can't build things if you are engaged with the news. News puts you in a passive role as a consumer. It's your birthright as a human being to build things. If you aren't building things, something is very wrong. You should diagnose what is holding you back. One possibility. The news.
I remember when the news had both sides of the issue. Suddenly, that changed, and it all became propaganda.
I feel like I'd be better off not reading the news, at least not every day. When I don't though I feel like I'm out of the loop in conversations. I'd like to find a better practice that lets me keep up with what's going on, without wasting time every day on the news cycle. What do you think about podcasts for keeping up with current events?
Personally I think current events are over rated. Within the framework of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, current events are far outside of a person's zone of influence. You can't really act on or influence most of these stories. So it's purely a drain from useful attention. This also lines up with some concepts from Stoicism which encourages emotional detatchment from things you can't control. If something bad happens, and you can't control it, then shifting your emotional presence to that doesn't solve anything. It makes more sense to care about differentials (within your control). If a random fee takes $1,000 from your bank account and there is nothing you could have done to stop it, you didn't really lose $1,000. That loss was a given. But if through your will and attention to something you can control you gained $500, then you actually gained $500.
News pulls us away from things we can do to worry about things we can't control. So now you are missing out on those gains. Not always in terms of money. But in terms of meaningful things learned or meaningful and productive ways to build community. In the worst case, news can take an entire life away in terms of the focus someone could have had towards making things. People blink and whole sections of their life can flash by with most of their limited free and independent time sunk into it.
News sucks. Learn shit. Share it with others.
A vivid analogue to your point:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/592094099403285
"It's your birthright as a human being to build things.
If you aren't building things, something is very wrong."
to build = to make = to conceptualize
"The Gospel of Thomas" makes the same exact point:
22.
When yous make the two one {collaborate},
and yous make
-- the inside {concepts, paradigms} like
the outside {observed from Nature},
-- the outside {world order} like
the inside {desired outcomes: virtuous cycles of improvement}, and
-- the above like the below {the 'heavens' equated with/understood as
the virtuous cycles of betterment on Earth},
When yous will make the male and the female one and the same {equal},
so that will not
the male be ‘male’ {elevated, superior} and
the female be ‘female’ {relegated, inferior}.
When yous make:
-- ‘eyes’ in place of an eye, and
-- a ‘hand’ in place of your hands, and
-- ‘legs’ in place of legs, and
-- an idea / concept / form in place of an idea / concept / form,
at that point, yous will be in the {Zone of Sovereignty}.’
3.
When yous recognize yourselves [NOTE: plural, not singular!!],
then yous {Mankind} will be recognized,
and yous will understand that yous – Man, is the offspring of the living Father {co-creators}.
But if yous do not recognize yourselves,
Mankind is in poverty and Mankind is the poverty.
70.
When yous bring forth that one in yous {your sovereignty = self agency],
what yous have {your sovereignty = self agency} will save yous.
If yous do not have {the ability to bring forth the agency} in yous,
this which have yous not it in yous
--- {your collective lack of agency} will kill yous.
41.
Whoever has {sovereignty = self agency} in his hand,
to him it will be given.
Whoever does not have {sovereignty = self agency},
even the little which he has will be taken from him.
67.
Whoever knows the totality but lacks self {– sovereignty = self agency}
is totally lacking in their being.
Whoever knows everything but not one's own properties (and purpose),
is lacking in existence.
5.
Recognize the one who is before you {your co-creation agency},
and the one that is “hidden” from you will be revealed to you.
For there is no one that it “hides” from, that it will not reveal to.