Stop Reading the News
When I once finished reading the book “The Art of Thinking Clearly,” I became interested in other works by Rolf Dobelli. His (for me) first aforementioned book that I read quite appealed to me. Written clearly, dynamically, argumentatively and insightfully, it prompted me to think about what logical errors I make in life that I’m often not even aware of.
What does this author deal with in his other works?
Let’s take a look at his book “Stop Reading the News.”
I must tell you/admit that I’m quite similar to Dobelli in this regard. I long ago (for the most part) broke the habit of news… or better said, “news.”
And I wasn’t surprised when I realized I didn’t miss anything drastic in my life, nor was I much less informed. Simply, as someone who reads a lot (and writes), from a young age I became aware that newspapers lie to us too. Facts get twisted for the sake of publicity. Shocking headlines. PHOTO! VIDEO! YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HE SAID! AND THEN THIS HAPPENED! NO ONE COULD BELIEVE SHE DID IT! Writing about some tragedies. Or “tragedies” about how some terrible situation happened to our famous person on vacation (and it turns out that of seven days of vacation, it rained for three days, so she couldn’t go on yacht trips, but had to stay in her five-star hotel, #sarcasm). Politicians (whoever’s in power) tell us how good we have it now, and it’ll be even better, while on the other hand a huge number of people live in misery. Russians say how Americans are evil. Americans say how Russians are evil, blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahBLAHBLAHBLAH!
Ultimately, I find out truly important news from people around me, as well as on-duty news addicts.
However, when I’m interested in news, I like to read articles by people/pages who have specialized a bit in the areas they deal with and who won’t bombard you with tons of ads. I know, those people/sites can be counted on the fingers of one hand and aren’t found on TV or social networks under the “SPONSORED” category… generally.
Although I always, for example on “Facebook,” constantly choose the option not to show me articles with news (better said, yellow press sites with absolutely irrelevant news about some so-called famous person who generally spouts such stupidity that a graduate engineer falls off scaffolding in Germany), it happens that my attention slips and I sometimes click on some article about what shocking thing some person said, and when I read the text, I just, like Homer Simpson, say to myself “D’OH!” for being stupid and reading an even stupider article and allowing one neuron in my brain to die out due to the amount of stupidity.
Anyway, enough of my grumbling, let’s get back to the book “Stop Reading the News.”
The book is divided into 35 chapters, which, roughly, we can divide into three parts. The first is the author’s introduction on how, as someone who was a news addict, he managed to give them up (with an explanation that news is to the soul what sugar is to the body). The second part is the most interesting and most extensive, and there the author breaks down what news does to us (badly). And the third part is his argumentation on how democracy can survive without news (as it could in earlier times), what the future of news is, as well as an interesting exercise “news diet.”
Just look at some of the chapter titles which, although not bombastic, will intrigue you more than some instant news:
- News is irrelevant
- News is outside your circle of competence
- News is a waste of time
- News obscures the big picture
- News is toxic to your body
- News confirms our errors
- News strengthens hindsight bias
- News disrupts proper thinking
- News creates false fame
- News makes us passive
- Journalists invent news
- News kills creativity
- News encourages the glorification of nonsense: Sturgeon’s Law
- News creates in us the illusion that we’re compassionate
- News encourages terrorism
- News destroys our peace of mind
Perhaps to you, as an intellectual who likes to read news, those titles seem unfounded? Read the book, maybe you’ll change your mind (if you’re not enslaved to some prejudice that your opinion is always correct?) and start questioning yourself.
Rolf Dobelli follows a similar pattern as in his first book. Each chapter is only a couple of pages long, written clearly, concretely and argumentatively, explained through example and finally followed by his appeal/advice to abstain from news. With this writing style, the 150 pages of the book “Stop Reading the News” reads incredibly easily and quickly.
Here I’d now combine “classic” book analysis with my view of the situation. I really think the author hit the essence. We are simply bombarded with news. The shorter, the more shocking, the juicier… and the more news to “swallow.” The painful reality is that we don’t remember 95% of the news we read, because none of it brought us any benefit (except perhaps temporarily feeding the Ego or boredom). Can you remember at least five important pieces of news you read last week (but to specifically name them, not generally)? You probably can’t because they didn’t concretely “give” you anything, but took your time and energy. Is it really important for your life what Mika said to Žika in some reality show?
Another painful reality I’m quite convinced happens. We read news (though more often through some organization/association) that some tragedy happened somewhere/to someone and help is needed. In us “compassion” (much more often Ego) to help, here’s one text message, somehow it’ll be collected, let’s unite in hardship. And then you hear that some famous person (athlete, singer, writer) donated at once an amount that thousands of people couldn’t collect. I can’t help but wonder, “if he also just reads news, would he have managed to earn that much money?” Probably not, but rather focused on perfecting his skills (circle of competence) and “charging” well for them. He sacrificed his time and energy on something concrete, not on reading news in order. I’m still waiting to see some influencer who boasts about wealth and fame donate serious money to help people, without it being accompanied by huge media fanfare. How many people buy celebrity gossip magazines, I wonder…
Painful reality number 3: news encourages in us hatred, bitterness and pathos or arrogance. Just look at comments under texts/YouTube clips… so much hatred gets written there… insults, spitting, lying, acting pathetic, making things up, provoking… all from the desire to feed our Ego, to prove to the world “see, now you see my opinion, that’s wisdom like you haven’t heard, and moreover it’s true (even if lying), because I’m saying it.” And moreover many deliberately provoke in comments, wanting to manipulate you. You insult others because you’re angry at yourself and your powerlessness and your messy life, and waste time commenting, because you almost never give some concrete idea for realization.
I’ve always said “newspapers (and television) serve what the majority of people want.” People usually protest “that’s not true, they serve us stupidity, and we don’t want to read/watch that.” Media live off your click on a link (and accompanying ad for bedding or a cream for corns sale), like, comment, share, staying on the page. That brings them income. Want to change that? Don’t collectively follow news for three months (six works too). No income, no space for stupid news, panic will arise that journalists (and people working on maintaining sites) will be out of work, and you’ll see how something will change (at least a little).
But if you look at the bigger picture a bit, “Stop Reading the News” isn’t something applicable only to news in the classic sense of the word. Think a bit about what you watch on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. Instant news! You bombard your brain probably with a pile of irrelevant information, and there are “journalists”/social media users who want to sell you their stupidities. How much concrete information do you really get there? And how much, realistically, do you get useful, interesting or relaxing information? Currently very interesting to me are clips with baby pigs. Nothing worthy of a Nobel, but they bring a smile to my face and give a #goodvibe feeling. 😁 But I only watch them for a minute or two during the day.
All in all, like the previous title by Rolf Dobelli, “Stop Reading the News” is also excellent reading material. If you’re too carried away (not to say obsessed) with news, who’s right and who isn’t, who’s a conspiracy theorist and who isn’t, this is a book for you to “open” your eyes a bit. Likewise, if you’re too carried away with social networks, maybe you can apply the texts in this book to that aspect too and “slow down” a bit with flailing your thumb (or index finger) on social networks.
So in any case, you won’t go wrong if you read this book. 🙂
And you, dear reader, how obsessed are you with news? 🙂
Author’s website
Book price: Kontrast | Delfi | Vulkan
Ratings (and purchase) on foreign sites: Goodreads | Amazon | Audible | Waterstones
