It’s not about how much information we consume. One can suck all the information out of the Twitter firehouse and learn nothing.
News makes our brain fat.
After all, it was Aldous Huxley who forewarned that we’d drown in excess entertainment and not care about anything else. Writes Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death.
“Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”
Neil Postman,Amusing Ourselves to Death
TV and social media silence thought — our opinions quickly become someone else’s. The attention merchants intend to monetize on such passivity through ads. Retweets are endorsements.
But we can still take a proactive stance on the balance of ideas thrown at us.
An ambient awareness keeps the excess noise at bay as we learn to listen and absorb the world’s texture. Our goal is to replace the enormous dent that screens instill in our thoughts with a perspective we call our own.
The more ideas collide with one another, independent or externalized, the tighter authenticity clicks into place. The thinker makes their own rules.