This phrase appeared in a comment on a Facebook friend’s newsfeeds. Lamenting the general state of things, my FB friend’s commenter (who I won’t name cos she isn’t my own contact, so I don’t feel it’s right) advised our mutual friend to stop accessing the news altogether, as she was doing, and ‘feeling much less cross’ as a result.
I have friends on both the hard left and hard right of the political spectrum and interestingly, they are all griping in a hardcore way in their blogs.
Ni by ears-and-eyes sounds like good advice.
I’m almost there myself. I stopped watching TV news about 10 years ago, on account of the ridiculous sensationalism and manipulation of all news programmes. Lately, I hear, they barely report actual news, the kind that isn’t about minor celebrities, that is.
Newspapers have always been banned from our house – they take up valuable space and require endless recycling.
The last thing to go was Radio 4’s Today programme, which I gave up about 5 years ago.
I’m not quite nil-by; I read TIME magazine until about two years ago and I still subscribe to THE SPECTATOR but that’s thin on news, it’s more essays, arts reviews and analysis (of issues of which I’m barely aware).
And that’s it. I am blissfully only vaguely aware of what’s going on in the world. As far as I can tell it’s the same as ever, war, pointless war, drugs, gangs, violence, stupid government reforms and of course, we’re going to hell in a handbasket.
Same as last year, same as the year before or any year I’ve ever lived.
Why do people need to tune in to the news to hear that every day? I must admit I don’t understand.
Okay I’m ill-equipped now to do what I once did i.e. argue noisily at dinner parties about things I can’t affect and matters that I probably don’t have enough factual information to understand.
Solution – don’t bother with dinner parties, at least not with people who think that the problems of the world can be understood or solved by a bunch of overfed, semi-drunk members of the bourgeousie trying to impress each other.
The problem is – when you have to make a decision – for example a vote – it’s probably wise to have a clue.
It may be the fact that I don’t have a vote – not being British – may be part of my decision to go (almost) nil-by-ears-and-eyes.
Or maybe it’s the longer term impact of my scientific training.
Living as a scientist teaches you – in the most weary way possible; the 90% failure/inconclusiveness of most of your experiments – that things are very rarely what they seem. They are something else. Something that you can’t know today. You may know tomorrow, or later, when new facts have come to light. But not today. Life surprises, delights and disappoints.
So why worry on a daily basis?
Surely reading the news once a month is enough for anyone, unless you are one of those who needs to make a decision, or you can actually get your information from a primary source and don’t just regurgitate your favourite propaganda rag.
And if you want to sound smart at dinner parties – here’s a suggestion: read history books.
That way you don’t have to speculate and pontificate about how things are going to end up.
(Any child readers who are still reading this far…all I got is this…study your lessons, get some fresh air, eat yer greens and read the odd good book now and again. Can’t give you any better advice than that.)
3 replies on “Nil by ears-and-eyes”
LOL!
Don’t know what got you going, but it was worth it! Look out world, MG has arrived!
I repeat: LOL!
I’m dealing with the perennial problem of information overload, Es.
Because there’s a danger of being so overloaded that I can’t even find my own words any longer: in the words of T.S. Eliot “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
And in the words of Umberto Eco, “My problem is not to answer the telephone; my problem is to destroy the fax;the unrequested fax as soon as it arrives. … e-mail account, my problem will be how not to receive anything. Because if there is something that has to reach me at any cost, it will. There will be some way by which I will be informed.”
Hmmm, Most Glamorous, I can see what you mean. But if there was no outlet for information, and the information finders ceased, we would lose the ability to find things, to unearth things. The world can seem like a huge hive, at times. The capacity for creation, invention, is part of it and, related to it, the human capacity for taking in and then expelling even more information seems as vital as breathing.
I do get irritated by the constant bombardment, but also fear the disappearance of it, too – especially if someone else made the decision to withhold it from me. Once the buzzing stopped, I would fear the worst!