A low-information diet?

There are lots of good reasons for paying as little attention as possible to news and news media. Tim Ferriss, in his “Four Hour Working Week”, recommends a “low information diet”, not only to avoid time-wasting distractions but as a way of asserting the primacy of your own agenda and world-view. Many writers on self-help and personal development put forward a similar argument – that we should focus our attention on our own goals and the changes we can make around us.

The stories in the media are doubly disempowering, this argument runs: firstly they redirect our concern and attention to distant tragedies which we can do nothing about, and secondly they control the discourse by determining what we should be thinking and talking about, and what we shouldn’t. (For instance: Louisiana oil spill and European debt crisis yes, ongoing tragedies in Darfur and Congo, no.) And from there it’s only a small step towards sharing in the conventional wisdom on the topics in view: Obama isn’t doing enough to stop the oil; European countries need to become more competitive and to enhance economic growth. Then you can waste huge amounts of time in internet forums clashing with people who don’t share the same “wisdom” as you – as if either your opinions or theirs made any difference, or challenged the power of governments or corporations in any way whatsoever.

Most creative artists and other highly productive people spend little or no time surfing the media – they’re too full of their own goals and agendas to give headspace to anything else. Shouldn’t we all be emulating them, becoming more effective and productive in the process, and cut these intellectual and spiritual parasites out of our lives?

Largely speaking, yes we should – but there’s a fault in the argument that these tragedies have nothing to do with us, or that we can’t do anything about them. Of course, we can’t directly stop the oil spill (even if we’re the CEO of BP, apparently), but it’s a direct consequence of our oil-focused economies and our general failure to act as caring and responsible stewards of the planet which we go on casually wounding.

Perhaps it’s a duty to feel above all – to feel our connectedness with all humanity and all life, and then to act accordingly. Not in internet forums or saloon-bar discussions, but out there in the world, in our own world, wherever we can make a difference.

A low-information diet yes, but not a no-information diet. To be aware of what’s happening, and then to find our own original and authentic response to it – that’s the way to use the media, and not to be used by them.