is it immoral to not pay attention to what is going on in the world?

i go through phases of tracking local/national/global news pretty constantly, and phases where i have to shut myself off from news for the sake of my mental health. my argument to myself is that i have almost no control over all the terrible things happening right now, so knowing about all of them does nothing to help anyone and makes me feel shitty. but closing myself off like this also feels vaguely wrong, like i'm ignoring my responsibilities as a citizen of the world. i think taking breaks from the news occasionally is OK (and probably necessary) but i'd probably feel happiest if i never read the news, but that is what it feels "wrong." what do you think?

If that's immoral, then humans were immoral for most of history, until the availability of widespread media distribution.

I've reached a nice equilibrium of checking the headlines to satisfy that itch, but not getting too deep into following current events. feels quite liberating. helps to be hugely pessimistic and not think anything good is ever going to happen.

I think we all feel some version of this conflict...

xp. I've stopped looking at the politics threads on here other than the one for the country I live in

Short-term, I don't think that's immoral at all--everyone needs a break. Forever...I think it's a hypothetical anyway, at least if you're living where whatever the correct term is for a country where it's a hypothetical.

BTW, you heard about the mass beaching of whales, right?

it's immoral to *never* pay attention to the world (if you're capable of paying attention to it)

taking breaks from paying attention is a good idea for mental health and something you should never feel guilty about

but taking breaks from paying attention because you're busy or enjoying yourself doing something else (i.e. nothing to do with mental health) is also fine!

^^^ sums it up, really.

My take on it is that taking breaks from the world is good and necessary, while at the same time being absolutely cognizant of the fact that there are many, many people out there who, often simply because of who they are, will never have the same luxury to the same extent.

was the proper answer to this question (e.g. "it depends on circumstances and you have to prioritize") ever in great doubt?

It’s not immoral to be an oblivious doofus as long as you do your best to be kind and considerate to the people who are actually around you.

I think it’s unethical to go into the voting booth and not have the slightest clue what you’re doing, almost in the same way that it’s unethical to lie on your resume and pretend to be qualified for a job you’re incompetent at.

The opposite might be true actually. Maybe it’s immoral to pay attention without taking care to learn enough context that your participation is beneficial.

being absolutely cognizant of the fact that there are many, many people out there who, often simply because of who they are, will never have the same luxury to the same extent

You can't spend your whole life thinking about people who have it worse than you, though, because just by virtue of being born in the West, you're better off than literally billions of people. Do what good you can in the world, but spending your life in a state of self-flagellation over things that are utterly beyond your control.

Not immoral, no. Sometimes necessary. I don’t have this so much since I started ssris but a few years back I would be driven into anxiety by just increasingly awful political developments. Was torn between my need to know what was going on, and the absolute helplessness of watching horrible things happening without being able to do anything to affect the outcome.

Obviously, I’m in can’t-look-away mode now, but when it gets really bad, I uninstall twitter and go off and do something else until I feel better about it.

On the macro level, people should obviously be educated about what their vote means and why you should vote, but people turn away from politics for lots of reasons. Given the last few years, I’m a lot more sympathetic to non voters and people who say they don’t pay attention to politics. Whenever i talk to someone like this, I am always interested in why they don’t watch the news/vote, and I’ve had some productive conversations where I’ve talked about issues that mattered to them and the practical implications of policies or votes.

Also, because it suits the status quo for people to be alienated or disinterested in politics, so I do feel strongly about trying to get people to pay some interest not just for themselves but for everyone else. Not enough to actually do activism or anything political irl though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

it suits the status quo for people to be alienated or disinterested in politics

This is generally otm, but sometimes I try to counter this depressing thought by reminding myself that among alienated non-voters, there is also a latent pool of far-right dipshits and I'm glad they're too lazy to cast a ballot when afforded the opportunity.

The opposite might be true actually. Maybe it’s immoral to pay attention without taking care to learn enough context that your participation is beneficial.

it’s a toughie. MLK makes a pretty powerful argument against neutrality in his “autobiography” iirc

I think the connection between what is going on in the world and news media is tenuous and constructs our concept of "the world" in ways that aren't necessarily healthy for us, our societies, or life on earth in general

I'm not sure morality comes into it tho. Morality maybe has more to do with the choices we (believe we) can make at any given moment

neutrality/disengagement

Not quite the same thing tbf. You can be disengaged (e.g. out of a crippling sense of powerlessness) without being an ideologically neutral party at all. Although you could make the case that there is no effective difference between the two from a pragmatic standpoint.

it’s not immoral to be an oblivious doofus as long as you do your best to be kind and considerate to the people who are actually around you

Wouldn’t being kind and considerate make you a non-oblivious doofus?

yeah I agree it’s not the same, Pom, was kind of teasing out the point you make about pragmatic similarities.. I don’t feel strongly one way or another these days (lol) just rambling I guess

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

Me too. Right now I hate that I have to keep up with politics because of my job anyway, so that defers the issue of whether I have a responsibility to stay informed anyway. I'm leaning towards thinking the responsibility argument is bullshit anyway because I do f-all in terms of activism as it is. And voting-wise, I'm pretty stuck in my ways anyway so it's not like I'm going to lapse into being a Tory supporter if I stop following the news.

I'm of the 'don't look away' persuasion at the moment since I'm pretty certain we're headed toward a coup or civil war or both, but I've had months where I couldn't be bothered. My beliefs haven't really changed much, just grown more informed and nuanced over time, I hope

One simple yet fundamental belief I hold is that humans are, on balance, amoral, i.e. neither wholly good nor wholly bad. This simultaneously means that we are capable of tremendous ethical breakthroughs and that a more or less sizable caste of sociopathic shitheads who fuck it up for the rest of us will always exist. Always. The best we can do is to mitigate the inevitable ill-effects of said caste in an optimal fashion, a political endeavour that cannot but fall short of perfection but that must tend toward it as much as is humanly possible, without devolving into its polar opposite in the process (what this means in practice is anyone's guess). So I can try to do the right or 'moral' thing, and doing so is my responsibility, but that will never make me a 'good' person per se. Conversely, it would be a mistake to assume that all of (y)our political enemies are merely driven by a borderline nihilistic will to power and nothing else – plenty of (to us) sociopathic shitheads are just as committed to fulfilling their own values.

This is all quite banal, of course, but it's what see when I look at history (and the present).

Also, there is only one ILXor and we are all their socks.

I think every human being pays attention to (what is going on in) the world, but "the world" is something uniquely different to each and every one of us. It's the daily news cycle/politics for one (meant here, I take it), but can be one's close surroundings like the natural world or surroundings/environment to someone else.

I'm with Pom that we're amoral, at a base level. And there's so many reasons one can have for not paying attention to the news/current affairs. Often it is a choice borne out of self-protection, not indifference. This, to me, can not be immoral in any way, as we all have to relate to the world in our own way, every day we're alive. Just like so many people cannot afford to not pay attention to what's going on in the world, the opposite applies to a lot of people, too, on an individual level. To preserve sanity or live life the way you want to, or need, to not go insane or be crushed under the weight.

It is immoral for the sole ILXor to fill this thread with posts exploring all sides of the matter, but here I am.

Is it immoral to start a thread about whether it's immoral to ignore this thread?

Would it be immoral to start a thread about whether it would be immoral to ignore the thread about ignoring this thread?

Continue ad nultem

Please advise list of certified and approved distributors of news suitable for moral edification.

it would be a mistake to assume that all of (y)our political enemies are merely driven by a borderline nihilistic will to power and nothing else – plenty of (to us) sociopathic shitheads are just as committed to fulfilling their own values.

Something I frequently remind people whose novels I’m editing: remember that the villain likely thinks he’s the hero.

So then what's the problem with me killing the people I consider villains?

Please advise list of certified and approved distributors of news suitable for moral edification.

there are so many aspects of "current events" that don't really matter, particularly getting down the rabbit hole of Nate Silver poll watching, etc

wrt the election I'm pretty checked out except for stuff I see on ilx.

at a certain point I realized the only action I was going to take was sending some money to the Biden campaign and voting. outside of that nothing I could read or think about the election matters at all.

Please advise list of certified and approved distributors of news suitable for moral edification.

at a certain point I realized the only action I was going to take was sending some money to the Biden campaign and voting. outside of that nothing I could read or think about the election matters at all.

I don't have any money to spare, and I've already voted. So...yeah.

I’ve been thinking of taking a media fast until the U.S election. I’ve been following the news obsessively since 2015 and at times I’m not sure why I am doing this to myself. Everything is horrible and it only makes me feel worse but I feel like I have some obligation to track it. Also it’s hard to look away from revolving disasters. I took a one-week break at the height of the coronavirus in NY—ambulances were going by every 10 minutes and I just binged Schitt’s Creek because I couldn’t handle it anymore. I still feel a little guilty that i felt I wasn’t strong enough to keep up with the death count at that time, but it was something I felt I had to do for my sanity. Maybe a combination of the news media and the objectively dire state of the world makes some of us feel that it’s somehow necessary to bear witness. Also, I follow way too many journalists on Twitter—so even my downtime leads me right back to the media. Thanks for posting this—it’s something I’ve been struggling with and am still trying to reconcile.

I realized yesterday that the pandemic is changing my reactions to things. when I look at my social media statuses from a year ago and then recall what I was feeling at the time, I was fired up in a way that had me unwilling to disengage, but that's because I had activities I could do to blow off steam.

without those, and due to the constant mental overload I feel, I find myself retreating more, and it's not like me, but i get why it's happening.