"I’m having trouble deciding whether I understand the world better now that I’m in my seventies than I did when I was younger, or whether I’m becoming more and more clueless every day. The truth is somewhere in between, I suspect, but that doesn’t make me rest any easier at night. Like others growing old, I had expected that after everything I had lived through and learned in my life, I would attain a state of Olympian calm and would regard the news of the day with amusement, like a clip from a bad old movie I had seen far too many times. It hasn’t happened to me yet. My late father, in the final year of his life, claimed that he finally found that long-sought serenity by no longer reading the papers and watching television. Even then, and I was thirty years younger than he, I knew what he meant. What devotees of sadomasochism do to their bodies is nothing compared to the torments that those addicted to the news and political commentary inflict on their minds almost every hour of the day."
I believe this is a quote I came across while reading yet another article about the shit-show that is known as the US. This is something I think about often as well, how discouraging it is to think about what's going on in the world today. Just in 2020 alone, we have (off the top of my head):
- donald trump trumping it up
- high-profile, elite pedophiles being exposed and nobody seeming to care (see Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein)
- COVID-19 and the lack of proper leadership and direction to address it
- a crippled economy due to a very late shelter-in-place (at the time of writing this, many places still don't have any policy in place
- the growing division between fellow Americans due to racism (I suppose this really has always been there, so it is a good thing that it's being brought to light)
- a horrific disaster in Beirut, Lebanon in what couldn't be a worse time
- social media being used in unethical ways only in the name of capitalism
That's a lot of shit. And that's not even all of it.
The reason that this quote really resonates with me is because of how easy and convenient it is to ignore all this crap. I suppose what this boils down to is "ignorance is bliss" and that the world has really been f'd up for generations.
The last part of that quote is especially relevant during times like these.
"What devotees of sadomasochism do to their bodies is nothing compared to the torments that those addicted to the news and political commentary inflict on their minds almost every hour of the day".
I think with the rampant social media abuse going on, this is more relevant than ever. Ironically, as someone who is super interested in the innovative and powerful technology driving these forces, I can't help but think that society would truly be better off without these things. As fascinating and interesting as the newest state-of-the-art machine learning techniques are or how "smart" AGI is getting, these technologies are used to exploit and bring out the worst in people (IMO).
For example, it's absolutely amazing how advanced behavioral modeling has come. We can effectively serve content that is very highly addicting in an incredibly fluid easy to consume way. And companies do this on purpose. People's addictions are exploited to push products and push agendas of people that are higher up in the chain of command. It's absolutely scary how effective these techniques are and the fact that they're only getting better makes it even worse.
Now, I'm definitely not crediting some of the good things that this technology enables (e.g. generative art using GANs, identifying medical conditions via x-rays, etc.). Maybe I'm just not in the right industry. I'd argue that this technology does far more good than bad in the medical industry than in ad-tech. However, technology is largely industry-agnostic and there will always be people looking to exploit others.
Anyways, this quote is just a reminder to myself to never stop caring and that the cognitive load is absolutely worth it. I would rather be knowledgable and jaded than to be blissfully ignorant to all of the bs that goes on in this world. In fact, it might actually give me a greater appreciation to all of the good that goes on in this world.