Operation: Exit Our Echo Chambers (Final Issue)

Where have you been?!

I was quite fired up about the need for us to escape our own echo chambers following the inauguration. I thought maybe things would calm down once President Trump assumed office, but the “pointing fingers and malicious talk” – and just plain crazy – seems to only have intensified in these first 100 days of the administration.

I became overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information coming out each day, and, because of the nature of the news, it began to effect my mood and attitude. I think it is important to be informed, yes, but I think it’s better to be a good human, especially to the people you live with all day every day.

So after only two issues of this little newsletter, I’ve decided to call it quits. I am going to leave you with what I think are some good resources moving forward, but I am not going to get dragged down into the muck by trying to stay too much on top of things.

I read a (great) book in March: The Unsettlers. In it, the author spends a good deal of time telling the story of an activist family that is completely off the grid, living in community and off the land at a farm in Missouri. Their values line up with the lifestyle. Their “resistance” is so much more impactful because of the coherency between what they say and how they live. I have a long way to go to get even marginally close to that kind of coherency, but I’m resolving to spend more of my time and energy on building a life that better reflects my values. 

Thanks for your understanding!
Sara

Tools for Moving Forward

Feedly. Create a Feedly account and follow your favorite news sources. Feedly is an RSS reader, so you can see your entire collection of blogs/magazines/newspapers/etc. in one spot – without having to log onto social media. This alone will get you out of your echo chamber if you commit to picking well-balanced sources. Use this for help, and here are some more helpful ideas to help you round out your Feedly.

Check a few sources for major news stories to make sure you’re getting the whole picture. Here are some additional tips and resources and a quick checklist to bookmark if you’re concerned about fake news.

Check your own echo chamber regularly. Here’s a great tool for Google Chrome to make it super easy.

Escape your bubble. I haven’t actually tried this, but if you’re getting most of your news from Facebook (first, see above recommendation), this might be a good thing to try.

Read more books. Books “pull us out, give us a place of escape, confront our intellectual and spiritual weaknesses, then send us back into the online community better than when we stepped out of it.” We only have so many reading minutes in a day. You’re mental health and intellectual life will be better spent when the majority of your reading minutes are spent in books versus online.

Support better journalism. Good journalism is more thoughtful and careful than what the 24-hour news cycle is capable of producing – seek out sources that don’t play the 24-hour game. And then pay for the ones you really like once you find them. Longform.org and Longreads are great aggregator sites to get you started.
 

Why Exit our Echo Chambers?

The original inspiration for these emails comes from this blog post. And this.