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Six headlines . . .
I selected the headlines above from sources as varied as Fox News and Mother Jones, CNN and NPR.
A lot of ink has already been spilled on the subject of news overwhelm. In fact, when I started this post, I assumed I’d put a bunch of links to research articles about it. I am nothing if not predisposed towards science-backed information.
But I noticed something in the articles I came across. The articles acknowledge that we’re all exhausted and stressed out, and that a constant inundation of negative facts only stresses us out more. And they point out that it seems to be contributing to increased disengagement from news, which is a problem; while it may be negative, real news is sometimes relevant to our own choices and political decision-making. Since we seem to instead be filling our time with endless reels of young people whose mental health is clearly crumbling playing video games live 24 hours a day, it doesn’t seem like we’ve replaced the news with anything useful.
But beyond acknowledging the obvious, research articles continue to suffer from the same prejudices most in the industrialized, neoliberal world have: they fall back on solutions that involve will power, more technology, or both. They offer suggestions that involve willing ourselves to stop doom scrolling or, potentially, an app that sets timers on our screen use. All of it lands on individuals, as their responsibility, and all of it (this is the ecopsych/ecophilosophy insight) keeps the conversation in the same terms that the overwhelming technology set in the first place.
. . . and a zoo?
Recently, I’ve gotten into a TV show called The Zoo. It follows zookeepers and animals at the Dublin Zoo, as well as some trips that some of the zookeepers take to where the animals they love originate from.
There’s so much I could say about how non-human animals have been impacting my thinking lately. I’ve been getting so into it that my next philosophical project is to read this book and write about it over on my personal blog/newsletter. (That’s here, if you’re interested.)
But one of the things about animals that keeps rising to the surface for me is what, in a certain light, you could call their limitations, but in another light, you could simply call their immanence. Immanence is a philosophical concept describing “a type of causality that does not operate from outside its effects.” That is, our immanence is all of our constraints. Things as simple as gravity, but also the material realities of complexion, the body we’re born with, and the economic situation we’re born into.
That is, all animals — human and non-human alike — are bounded and specific. They cannot simply opt to do something different than what they are.
One of the examples I keep coming back to is gorillas. On the show, while introducing a particular species, the zookeepers will list off the various threats that species faces in the wild. At the top of the list for every single species is habitat destruction. Over the course of the show, you get to know the Dublin Zoo’s resident gorillas, and then in a later season, one of the zookeepers goes to Africa to see them in their natural habitat.
The zookeeper, Brendan, is a delightfully enthusiastic nerd. And he does get to see some gorillas in their own world. Even via television, I found the encounter unsettling. When they first come upon a silverback who seems ambivalent about their presence, you can feel the gorilla’s aggression and sheer size. His sounds and body language convey exactly what he means: back the fuck off.
When I first learned of gorillas’ status in the world — their rapidly collapsing populations — I didn’t understand why conservationists couldn’t simply create reserves and gather up all the gorillas and put them there.
But then I learned more about how gorilla society operates. There’s some debate amongst scientists whether they should properly be understood to be “territorial” (meaning they actively stake out a specific territory for their group), but regardless of this question, they like a LOT of space. Specifically, the males like a lot of space. In fact, one of the most consistent themes I’ve picked up on in the show is that males of virtually all mammal species have complicated relationships to 1) space (they like lots of it), and 2) other males. (Cue screaming online debate about natural vs. social construction of gender.) Male gorillas, once they reach sexual maturity, cannot simply live in a cramped reserve, shoved up against other male gorillas. Silverbacks are immanently constrained by their own physiology and psychology. If another sexually mature gorilla — Silverback #1 — comes into Silverback #2’s space, they must fight. It is not optional. It is not something we can talk them out of, explaining that they’re driving their species to extinction because the surrounding Ugandan and Rwandan human populations are simply growing too large to accommodate their need for space. The gorillas cannot escape who and what they are, and if humans want the species to continue, we will have to find ways to preserve enough space for their physiological and psychological needs.
No, you cannot simply will yourself off your phone
Going back to the research I read earlier . . . The reason I feel so frequently frustrated by conversations about news overwhelm is that they treat humans as though we were somehow more than an animal.
Let me say this clearly: you are no more than an animal. You’re kind of a fancy animal — no non-human animals I’m aware of could read these words — but that’s it. You’re just a fancy animal.
When you open up a web page with a bunch of headlines on it, your brain does a number of things. One of which is determining prioritization. Because all of the information is coming at you with the same signal type, your brain starts off by suggesting that all of the information is equally important. Which, of course, it isn’t. The fact that respectable news organizations cover shit like British royalty and celebrity non-news is ridiculous. But in the moment, you cannot classify it any differently.
And here’s the rub: you’ll tell yourself that being aware of this problem will allow you to overcome it; that’s the fancy part of your animal nature talking. “Fancy you” thinks that as long as you know that news overwhelm is a problem, you can somehow overcome it. “Fancy you” thinks that as long as you know that climate change is a real problem, that differentiation meaningfully distinguishes the Nepal-China floods and Snow Eater heat waves, from Trump’s ongoing reality TV show.
I concede that you are a little bit fancy. Hey, I’m a little bit fancy, too! Here we are, communicating across time and distance through written language! But that’s about it. Your awareness that climate change is happening doesn’t change anything. Your awareness that phones are addictive doesn’t change anything. You are, at the end of the day, a Silverback who can’t control his temper.