We treat keeping up with the news as a moral duty. Being an informed citizen is a virtue. Alain de Botton argues it's a trap that costs us the very thing we seek: wisdom.
David: "There's a part early in your book about Hegel, where he says a society becomes modern when it elevates the news to the level of what religious faiths used to be.
It's a weird head scratcher about the modern world: this obsession with people we'll never meet, places we'll never go. It shapes the mental horizon in an unbelievable way. It gives us a sense of what you're supposed to be thinking about."
Alain: "People will routinely say things like: of course, we're living in this very sad age. And I think, okay, let's take a step back. Says who? When did this age get anointed? Compared to what? The fourth century in Abyssinia? The twelfth century in Syria? And they're like: well, because of certain things that have happened in place X, that CNN has alerted them to."
Alain: "We've got to take care around this thing called the news. You're not really a responsible adult until you don't know certain significant things that people around you think of as very important. If there's a singer you don't know about at all, congratulate yourself. You're doing well. You're keeping a bit of your mental experience for yourself."
Alain: "We don't need to know everything that everybody else knows. We need to know the interesting bits of our own experience."
David: "Knowing all the new things is almost the antithesis of the pursuit of wisdom."
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