Information Anxiety

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
"One of the sneakier pitfalls of an efficiency-based attitude to time is that we start to feel pressured to use our leisure time “productively”, too – an attitude which implies that enjoying leisure for its own sake, which you might have assumed was the whole point of leisure, is somehow not quite enough."

There's a great Meades quote that goes something like: "An activity is recreational in inverse proportion to its utility" - in other words, if what you're doing has some ultimate point to it, then it's not really recreational, even if you're enjoying yourself while doing it. True recreation is quite literally pointless.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
has always seemed to me to be futile and i have taken great pleasure in ribbing diligent colleagues " don't you have better things to do than footling about with emails?

As I think he prob says in the article as well, it seems based upon a fundamental failure to understand that the way to defeat anxiety is not to submit with ever greater 'efficiency' to the dictates of the system that is producing that anxiety. Ever greater quantities of work will follow. It's like an anti-Bartleby.

@Tea that's a good quote. Neoliberalism/whatever we want to call it as an all-consuming ideology, so ingrained that it's barely noticed. Always polishing up the CV first and foremost, whether at business or play, Fromm's 'marketing personality'
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
All these stupid puzzle game apps that can't be marketed as simply a bit of fun, oh no, they have to be 'brain teasers' and 'mental gym equipment' to make you a faster, leaner, smarter worker.

Fuck that shit. Zapping aliens is its own reward, or should be.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
For the first time in my life I have subscribed to a weekly news magazine. Printed. I grew up reading news sites/newspaper sites on the web, naturally, but especially with all the social-media-crap-plugins those sites have become unreadable really, and I have wasted too much time in the comments sections, too.

Now, I read this mag at the weekends, it gives me a nice round news update, I am not distracted by links/comments and whatnot. Question is, however, how long will that form of journalism still exists?
 
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CORP$EY

no mickey mouse ting
I was going to make a thread along the lines of 'How do you believe in anything?' or 'How do you know that what you believe is true?' but I think it's just another manifestation of the neurosis I was describing in post 1 of this thread.

Tree of Knowledge innit!
 

john eden

male pale and stale
I was going to make a thread along the lines of 'How do you believe in anything?' or 'How do you know that what you believe is true?' but I think it's just another manifestation of the neurosis I was describing in post 1 of this thread.

Tree of Knowledge innit!

Start with the basics and stop being so hard on yourself. :D

I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow because it always has, because that fits with my (partial) understanding of astrophysics and because I've not seen anything from a credible source that suggests that it won't.

There is a small chance that I am wrong. I acknowledge this, park it - and then get on with my day.

You can scale that up to all sorts of other things.
 

luka

Well-known member
love is like a magic penny
hold it tight and you wont have any
lend it spend it and youll have so many
they'll roll all over the floor
:love::love::love::love::love:
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I've really been feeling this lately what with all the protests etc.

It seems to me that I've been drifting through life unconsciously, not really knowing much about anything, picking up beliefs and biases without ever examining them or even being aware they're there.

I started diligently plugging away at a book about political ideology the other night but I got into my usual fluster where I start taking notes, so that each page takes about ten minutes, and suddenly a 300 page book is looking like a prison sentence.

But at least I know the glorious revolution was in 1688 now! (Whatever 'the glorious revolution' might be...)
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
A connected anxiety, or epiphany — that I've replaced thinking with taking in information. Or rather, I've taken in information without really thinking about it.

Essentially, I'm lazy. I don't want to do anything that feels like hard work. And it turns out that even reading The Brothers Karamazov can be a way of being lazy.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Reading The Brothers Karamazov sounds rad and I bet you learn all sorts from that. It's not lazy but it might be your comfort zone? But so what? It is a very protestant trait that if you enjoy doing something that it isn't as good for you as something harder or less interesting.

It might be a question of taste - I quite like reading big bastard books of Marx. I mean it goes in waves and sometimes I just sit around scrolling through nonsense and listening to Kevin Drumm like everyone.

A lot of stuff I know about it just because I enjoy reading about it and the more you know the more gaps you're aware of. Follow your nose innit.
 

version

Well-known member
A connected anxiety, or epiphany — that I've replaced thinking with taking in information. Or rather, I've taken in information without really thinking about it.

I'm guilty of this. It's just a constant stream of articles, videos, Wikipedia pages etc.
 
Has anyone taken a break from news? I've cut down to almost fuck all over the last couple of months and the misery is a real shock when you go back on guardian or twitter
 

version

Well-known member
I've been trying, but...

giphy.gif
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Has anyone taken a break from news? I've cut down to almost fuck all over the last couple of months and the misery is a real shock when you go back on guardian or twitter

I did for a bit because there wasn’t any news basically. Like TV and radio news.
 

Leo

Well-known member
we used to have cable news on in the background while making dinner every night, under the notion of catching up on the day's news. then at one point we realized it mostly just gets you annoyed/worried/angry because you're inundated with an endless stream of political corruption, malfeasance and incompetence. so we replaced msnbc with background music and actually found myself feeling less stressed.
 
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