What are you doing to fix the issues though? Has the knowledge of the issues increased your agency in a meaningful way such that you've taken actions to improve things or are you just enjoying living in a perpetually outraged state for the sake of it? If your martyrdom isn't doing anything to help fix the problem you're just hurting yourself and stopping yourself from potentially being in a space to ever actually do anything.
Why does one need to be proactively doing anything to justify awareness and holding a point of view?
> Has the knowledge of the issues increased your agency in a meaningful way such that you've taken actions to improve things
Yes.
> What are you doing to fix the issues though?
You can't always expect to be able to fix everything yourself, but you often can take steps to help or at least protect yourself. It just depends on what's in the news. Very recently, I've started avoiding produce from Taylor Farms. Good thing I was paying attention to the news when that mess started. It was only by reading the news that I became aware of a change in how postmarks were being added by the USPS and that saved me some potential headaches.
Being informed can result in things like patching vulnerable software, withdrawing supporting a political candidate, reaching out to your representatives about issues that concern you, asking your doctor about treatments/medications/vaccines, exploring new media, changing or delaying travel plans, changing your spending habits, making adjustments to investments, etc.
What does ignorance get you?
> Very recently, I've started avoiding produce from Taylor Farms Good thing I was paying attention to the news when that mess started.
This is very obviously not the type of situation and behavior marginalia_nu and then I were commenting about.
> This is very obviously not the type of situation and behavior marginalia_nu and then I were commenting about.
marginalia_nu said all news.
You are making valid points, but most people will spend their day reading about other places governments or presidential scandals. For 99% of people, knowing what Trump or whatever politician is doing does not change anything in your life. Also, you have no control or power for changing something about it. If you spent 70% of your day worried about Trump while you live in Estonia (random example), not reading the news is a good choice. You sound like someone who can avoid these traps, but I can say that this is not a common behavior. Most people will bite the ragebait
And what are you doing with the happy mental space you have carved out?
Living a couple years longer in better health from less chronic stress, probably.
I'm surprised by how you need to answer that. I'm not sure if they are being obtuse, contrarian or defending their addiction (yes, I said it).
And I’m surprised by your level of investment in being a jerk in this conversation.
Yes, not thinking about serious problems because they don’t personally impact you will make your life more comfortable. Butler appears to be making the less obviously self serving argument that spending time being aware of serious problems is only hurting your ability to do anything about them, which implies that he is better able to do something about them because he does not spend time knowing about them. I think that he isn’t doing anything about them, and therefore his pretense that people would be more effective by staying offline is crap.