Cultivate your own garden

In Voltaire's most famous work, Candide we follow the poor innocent Candide as he suffers terribly on his journey and witnesses the suffering of his fellow travelers and humans.

By the end of the novel, Candide meets an old man in Turkey who lives happily with his daughters on a small piece of land where they grow fruit.

When Candide asks him about the recent atrocities in the capital, where political leaders were strangled and impaled, the old man responds that he knows nothing of what happens in the city, he sends his fruit there to be sold (and that people involved in politics usually get what they deserve).

Candide thinks deeply about this and concludes,

"We must cultivate our own garden."

Neil Postman recounts in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death that news used to travel at the speed of a human, that is until the invention of the telegraph, and later the radio, television, and of course the blessed internet.

He notes that when news didn't travel at the speed of light it was both more contextual and actionable. The news was about what was happening in your village, community, or city and what you needed to do about it.

The bridge is out, there's a thief on the loose, Mr Smith is hitting golf balls onto other people's property again, and so on.

News is now removed from context, instant, and for the most part not actionable.

We lie awake at night worrying about wars we don't fight and politicians we can hardly influence.

And yes we have a responsibility to support (and read) a free press in a democracy, but perhaps we would do well to take the old Turk's advice and cultivate our own garden.

As you curate your news sources think, how is this helping me to know what to do next? All the while remembering that newspapers are primarily interested in selling newspapers...

pierre

PS: Read ​Candide​ and ​Amusing Ourselves to Death.