Yeah I’m sure it’s the phone and not the declining material conditions
The irony is most folks will read and share this on their phone.
Edit: Some of the links and references look interesting and I hadn’t clocked The Guardian had a bookshop.
“It’s definitely not all the doom” - Peter Lewis.
I’m surprised The Guardian is running an article that’s basically, ignore the world’s problems. They’re a newspaper who reports on the worlds problems, literally called the guardian.
While there is that, there’s also some truth in the article.
Look back in time, image living through WW2, Japan bombing northern Australia. Image being a young bloke and dreading being drafted into the Vietnam War, or a young woman and being told to leave your job if you get married, or your husband being able to legally rape you, or not be able to walk or breath becase you caught polio or the Cokd War and practising hiding under your desk due to a perceived likely nuclear holocaust.
With all we know, the weird shit is persisting with the same politcans who got us here. We’ve faced decades of warning, so I cant even imagine what gordion knot of logic people must have twisted to justify voting LNP or ALP.
We live in interesting times. That said I’m speaking as a privileged white Gen X dude, who has lived a very frugal life, lives debt free and retired decades ago. The few houses for sale in my tiny village here in Tassie start with a $3 and the “flash” ones with a $4, which seems incredibly reasonable when similar looking houses in say Bright in Vic start with a $9.
My suggestion? more stocism (as in the philosophy) becase this will only get worse.
Surely the solution is to just bury our heads in the sand and ignore everything falling apart around us until we can’t ignore it anymore.
The article is more about reading actual books and not about ignoring reality. In other words, having a deeper understanding of societal conditions and not just the shallow interpretations that filter through social media.
There’s certainly an irony in commenting on it, seemingly without first reading it 🫠
It also says that younger generations (who presumably consume the most social media) are the biggest readers of books, and that they appear to be the most ready/keen to enact change.
Based on the data presented in the article, it’s clear that you can consume both types of media/information simultaneously without “throwing away your phone”.
“Phone users have hitherto only read about the world on various sites; the point, however, is to change it.”
The state of the world is horrifying, it should horrify us, and the solution isn’t to ignore that knowledge, but to apply it. Find organisations working to improve the world and do your part. Don’t doomscroll, immobilising ourselves isn’t helpful either, so sure “put the phone down” in that sense, but (preaching to the choir here) feeling bad about the state of the world is not a problem, it’s a healthy sign.
“Just don’t look up!”
It’s the feelings of doom and feeling not being able to do anything to positively change how we live that is harmful.
We all need reminding , me included, that we so have agency, that we can do things to change our personal lives and help change our society and environment too.
it won’t be easy and it won’t be perfect and it won’t be much but it is something
first thing is to stop thinking we can do nothing, next is see what we want done, and then stop fighting and start fining things to agree on and to work on together.
but no fighting, we need tolerance of imperfection to work together
