Escaping the internet on a luxury trip doesn’t disprove political conflict… it just shows how privilege can opt out of reality and sell the experience as clickbaity insight.
It's lame how a timeless Buddhist principle is derided as "privilege" by contemporary leftists. So closed minded and presumptuous towards something so effective and universally applicable.
My personal observation is that those with the least engage in this practice the most, partly because they don't have the bandwidth to bother. It's the middle and upper-middle class who are the terminally online cynics.
>My personal observation is that those with the least engage in this practice the most, partly because they don't have the bandwidth to bother. It's the middle and upper-middle class who are the terminally online cynics.
Look at what the people who were living high on the hog due to tax/graft/dysfunction before losing their heads in the french revolution got up to. Look at the rabbit holes minor British nobility went down. The current american upper-ish middle class is just another cover of the same stupid bad for everyone song.
You really should give specific examples of what the French elites or British nobility did if you want to use those as examples to write off an entire category of people today based solely on their economic position.
I didn't choose the comparison point because it is nonsensical, I chose it specifically because it is relevant.
The french first and second estates convinced the government to debt spend to high heaven in the proceeding years. And much of this spending benefitted them, the .gov going to war with the english and buying warships made with timber and nails they made money off of for example. They also were exempt from the bulk of the taxation and they in turn got to levy their own taxes to a degree. So a lot of them got quite rich over that time as the normal people got hungrier and hungrier.
It's a very good parallel to how the white collar class in the US peddled all sorts of changes to policy and the economy to their relative benefit at the detriment of the industrial and skilled services economy which either got sold overseas or consolidated and financialized to the benefit of the the professional managerial types and white collar workers (and of course the CEOs and whatnot too) and to the detriment of the common man who winds up driving for uber because the factory that employed him went poof.
In what way is hopping on a plane to an island retreat for a week a “timeless Buddhist principle”?
And immediately shilling your next commercial project while you’re at it?
Sounds more like a timeless US-American practice.
Thanks for sharing your personal experience - I do agree that the middle class is the most anxious; anxious about dropping lower and levelling up at the same time.
Terminally online though seems to be a pretty common thing across all classes - just look at Trump or Musk tweeting every 5 minutes…
Yes, exactly. Op escaped because he can allow himself to. He is wealthy and well educated also - knows what a disconnect means and is able to pay for a pricey trip to end of the world why his affairs cater to themselves.
It’s perhaps less than 0.001% of the population that can allow themselves to do it.
Why does it take a trip to the Galapagos to disconnect though? We could just as easily block access to all our socials (including HN) for a week and probably still do fine at our jobs.
Not "privilege" per se, I think that's the wrong word. Republican or Democrat, left or right, rich or very very rich - there is a lot of self-selection bias in judging the world from a pool of people who decided to go on vacation to the Galapagos...
Isn't that exactly what privilege is though? A measure of a person's ability to be part of that self-selected pool, and to shield yourself from issues that affect other people?
"Privilege" has sort of morphed in an mostly-untouchable insult and I don't think it means very much of anything any longer and should not be used. What it means in practice:
- You can't have an opinion because you're in the wrong group.
- Your opinion is wrong because you're in the wrong group.
- Your opinion is hypocritical (and therefore wrong) because of the group you're in.
It's a big step back with regard to argumentation. Ideas are either correct or not, and the fact that they came from someone who might have some advantages does not weigh in on this.
I've not noticed that change in my own conversations, where privilege maintains its pretty clear definition. Maybe you need to find better conversation partners? Or perhaps you're misunderstanding the criticisms that people have of what you're saying?
I like both the options you've proposed for me: either I only speak with awful people, or else I'm always wrong. I'm sure it's one of those two options.
I'm being snarky there, but I've genuinely never seen people make the arguments you're talking about in real life, and I run in some fairly lefty circles. Maybe online, but even then I rarely see people actually trying to argue that privilege has anything to do with the validity of people's opinions. More common is the idea that we need to better promote the voices of those with less privilege, which I don't see as being a particularly objectionable idea.
The only place I regularly see the points you mention are in the opinion pieces of certain types of pundits who like to peddle outrage and invent menaces that don't exist. They regularly tell me that people say those sorts of things, but rarely seem to be able to provide receipts.
Googling it, looks like the trip costs around $6.5k for 2 people for a week. Expensive, but not out of reach for most Americans.
I mean we're on HN... if anything we're more likely to be in a wealthy bubble here. On average. There's plenty outside Silicon Valley but this place is a bubble too.
The US doesn't mandate any vacation or sick leave days, so a huge chunk of the population can't even get a week off work, much less afford $4k per person.
I live in the US and I've worked minimum wage jobs for half my life. By minimum wage I mean where they only give you 29 hrs a week to avoid risking you become full time and you have to work two.
Yet, I've always been able to take time off if I really press for it.
You're absolutely right that it's not easy and harder than the average crowd here but it's far from out of reach.
Also, you hiked up the price by 20% by rounding in the wrong direction. While Americans don't have mandated vacation most Americans have access to PTO. You don't need to exaggerate problems to be able to discuss them. It only makes them harder to discuss and easier to dismiss
How often can you get that week off? Most people I know working in the service industry have to fight to get that even once a year. Hopefully someone's OK not going home and seeing their family in a year to take a vacation like this. Hopefully they don't get sick and need the week for that.
To the cost: $6500 for two is low. Just getting there will be a significant amount, especially if you don't live in a major travel hub like LA or NYC.
"My Galapagos excursion took place on a boat with over a dozen other travelers."
The absolute cheapest is the 100-passsenger Galapagos Legend at $2000 per person for 4 days, 3 nights - but a flight to Baltra Airport from, say, Pittsburgh will add another $1800 per person, and even from Chicago it's $1500 on a mix of airlines.
If you want a small ship with only a dozen others it will be significantly more expensive. If you want a week on something of that size you're looking at $4700 per person and up - plus travel. https://www.galapagosislands.com/cruises/catamaran/tiptop-ii
I would imagine the set of people who would spend $4K per person on a week in the Galapagos does not contain very many people who don’t have 3 weeks of vacation per year (or are retired).
That's definitely out of reach of most Americans. I live in rural America, and am pretty active in my community. I can thing of 2 or 3 couples besides myself who could make a trip like that reality. We are all remote-workers working in software.
- Median bank account balances in the U.S. range from $5,400 for those under 35
- ... $13,400 for ages 65–74
So yeah, in range.
Does it require saving? Yes. But most Americans go on vacation each year. Give up the cost of a few years of vacations and you have this one.
I want to stress "not out of reach" doesn't mean easy. It explicitly doesn't mean one doesn't have to reach. I'd have said something very different if I meant most Americans could easily go on that trip. I specifically mean if it's something they really wanted to do, enough to save over a few years (or more) then that's something that could be accomplished.
It's definitely privileged to take a trip to the Galapagos, but I don't think it's privileged to ignore the news. A lot of poor people ignore the news. They may be too busy, or they may feel powerless to change anything. I think the real question is what exactly this entirely content-free statement means: "I’ll be focusing more on stories that actually matter instead of chasing the flash-in-the-pan ephemera that nobody remembers the next week."
The point is that 90% of the news is unimportant. Often you can read a weekly and that is enough
A politician said something and other politicians reacted. Usually unimportant unless it was backed by a law or something. If it was important then the weekly will cover it.
Main Character of the day on Social media. unimportant
A crime happened nearby. Unimportant
A celeb did something. Unimportant
Something happened to random person. Unimportant
Sport result. If you follow that team you already know, if not then not important.
Seriously go to the front page of the New York times or some other outfit and count the stories that you needed to read today.
All of this is very easy to filter out while browsing the internet. Not when you are speaking with actual persons. Believe or not, there are still people who watch television and believe in old media.
Television teaches them that the proper response to someone disagreeing is to get angry and shout when the opposing party tries to explain their point of view. Something that is useless or even technically impossible in anonymous net forums.
If you look at the old media, important decisions are mentioned but completely ignored after someone has said something offensive or an accident happened somewhere.
Social media is people and people are the problem, not technology or anonymity. Everyone who has spent Christmas with relatives knows this.
I guess I would always wonder who's paying them. YouTube doesn't pay them a salary so is it the ads or is this one side of the story paying for exposure
I think OP's point is that if your life is so blessed that "90% of the news is unimportant to you" then that itself is a great, fortunate privilege.
For example, I can tell you that if you are an immigrant in the USA from one of the (now many) targeted countries, even one with legal residency, news about ICE's actions is very relevant and very important to you.
> For example, I can tell you that if you are an immigrant in the USA from one of the (now many) targeted countries, even one with legal residency, news about ICE's actions is very relevant and very important to you.
Exactly. There's a post from last week on how media/journalism became more entertainment than information, and I think the complete opposite of the first reply: If you have bandwidth and time to consume most of those "world news", then you're the privileged.
One example: In Germany if you watch/read the state regional public broadcast from Berlin[1] for 2 days you will learn more about the whereabouts of Donald Trump, the President of Ukraine, sports news, or some broad reporting about "cultural" aspect of the city (e.g. about Hildegard Knef, something about Karl Lagerfeld and so on), or general gossip.
The city itself has fewer private investments than 5 years, the schools lack basic infrastructure, educational ratings are dropping, delays in public transportation, the hospitals are lacking personnel, 10% unemployment, and an awful housing situation, squeezing the working people.
[1] - I'm totally in favor of public broadcasting that comes from the principle called "broadcast what you want to become or aspire to be" that is more focused on factual journalism (i.e., no commentary), educational programs (especially with Public Universities STEM lectures being broadcasted), educational cartoons, classic music and orchestras, and space/nature/technology documentaries.
> ICE's actions is very relevant and very important to you.
Maybe the first few stories are, but what past masked goons throwing up Nazi salutes and sending people to foreign labor camps do you need to keep up on? If you're into politics, then sure, but your average Joe probably doesn't need to know that they're, yet again, terrorizing people and acting like a secret police force.
Are we forgetting that this specific policy we are discussing was voted in by the public and won the popular vote barely more than a year ago?
I think if more people were legitimately better educated and informed that outcome might not have happened.
The problem is…who is doing the informing and educating? Oftentimes the sources taking up that role are doing so with motives that are not in the people’s best interests.
Wow. Great. Which term is our President on again and can you confirm that time flows linearly and cannot, in fact, flow backwards to undo the election?
The public has no ability to affect change on the policy this Presidency makes. Especially not the public that is predisposed to dislike the President.
This is sadistic and selfish to believe the public must be relentlessly informed of these individual policies that they cannot do anything about. Anything they are informed about present day will almost certainly be forgotten years down the line. But they'll be stressed and unhappy along the way.
Well now you’re moving goalposts by adding specific time periods as qualifiers. So when you made your original statement, you meant to say that the ability to affect change ended recently? And now “This is foisting misery on people who have no capacity to affect change.”
Well, even that isn’t true. The congressional midterms are next year. Control over congress is on the ballot. Turnout will be the decider as it always is.
If “did not vote” was a candidate, it often wins elections.
In addition, local politics happen every year with higher levels of influence per person, and they often directly affect individuals more than national politics.
Going around telling people they have no impact guarantees that outcome.
Considering time does, in fact, move linearly and only in one direction - it's a default. Not a moved goalpost.
And referring to the present in contrast with the next Presidential election - an event thematically related to the previous Presidential election that you referenced - it seemed relevant.
As for what people need to be informed about - they'll inform themselves via increased prices on just about everything due to tarriffs + continued lowered interest rates despite notable inflationary pressures.
I maintain it is cruel to relentlessly and aggressively inform people of the horrors of the world that they - and I repeat myself - cannot do anything about. From news media fewer and fewer trust every year.
If you were right, it wouldn't be so egregious. Unfortunately, due to lower hiring standards, expedited processes, and a general nonchalance towards the law, plenty of legal immigrants, green card holders, and even natural-born citizens have been wrongfully arrested by ICE because they fit the profile of who they're looking for. Just look up "ICE deports legal immigrant", and you'll find dozens and dozens of stories about various cases involving it.
And regardless of if it's intentional, if it's negligence, if it's just an acceptable margin of error, either way, if you're a legal immigrant, you very much do still have to worry about ICE.
Categorically false. You might need to brush up on current events regarding ICE actions being taken against legal permanent residents and even US Citizens.
This is a lie. I call this a lie because you should know better if you are informed on this subject. I assume that one would be informed to make a statement such as yours.
There are legal immigrants being detained in secrecy for weeks on end with no due process, today, in this country. It is not made up, it is easily verifiable with a quick internet search and a look into one of multiple stories available.
“Lie”
I suggest not just reading clickbait headlines. Read the last 2 or 3 paragraphs of story where the writers often bury the inconvenient facts. Such as charges that would invalidate a legal immigrant’s status.
Millions of people who are from other countries are living perfectly fine in the US and not hiding in fear.
That's just it though, the "news" is not providing valuable information to the majority of people, it's mostly a series of takes designed to fit into easily digestible narratives so they can attract enough viewers to survive as a business.
99.9% of people would be better voters if they put five hours a week toward reading about and better understanding shit from an undergrad liberal arts program (history, political philosophy, statistics, media studies, basic physical science, economics) and five hours a year into catching up on the news, than vice versa.
Increase education funding, mandate a couple of levels of free choice liberal arts/philosophy type courses to ensure people have to expand their thinking a little, focus on critical thinking and media analysis skills in primary and secondary education - not as the main focus but certainly as important, civic building classes.
News media gets harsh anti-monopoly rules: no more billionaires owning every station in every jurisdiction, in fact no more conglomerates whatsoever. More independent funding for local news: I'm content for a bunch of these to go bankrupt on a regular basis but we'll sponsor more people putting out independent journalism.
At an international scale spin off an entity like the Federal Reserve which would be the Federal International Reporting Bureau with some iron clad rules about funding changes and the sole mission to baseline the availability of boots-on-the-ground international journalism, with a mission charter the citizenry must have accurate reporting to understand how they will choose leaders to guide international politics. This one would be tricky to get right, I suspect you'd probably end up tying resource allocation to government funding alotments and the like via some automatic mechanisms.
The first and last are probably pie in the sky: really let's start by shredding a couple of media empires into 50 different fiefdoms and let them battle it out for views, but there'll be no more mergers or cross-media ownership that's for sure.
Personally I'm all for breaking up the media conglomerates. Especially the news. There is a tremendous amount of group-think from professional elites who all goto the same universities and then go work in the same newsrooms. When combined with endless M&A it creates insular monoculture with low tolerance for opposing views in most of these news outlets.
> At an international scale spin off an entity like the Federal Reserve which would be the Federal International Reporting Bureau with some iron clad rules about funding changes and the sole mission to baseline the availability of boots-on-the-ground international journalism
That sounds great in theory, but given the recent scandals at the BBC and uncovering of systematic bias there we can see how fragile such institutions can be. Even without M&A driving it the BBC has become a primarily leftist monoculture.
> Increase education funding, mandate a couple of levels of free choice liberal arts/philosophy type courses to ensure people have to expand their thinking a little
Sounds great, but also prone to systemic bias. Universities in general have become echo chambers in liberal arts departments.
Perhaps combine that with options for doing national service of some sort that would balance out education. Afterall, classroom learning only gives one aspect of life and experience. Often just exposing people to new places and environments broadens their outlooks.
German peasants in the 17th century seemed to manage just fine without 24/7 news coverage.
Almost all news that's actually important - that might actually affect your life - will find you one way or another. Most news isn't important (eg sports drama). Or it isn't urgent (eg tariff news). Or both, like celebrity gossip.
Only a vanishingly small percentage of news is both urgent and important. And there's plenty of people in my life who would tell me if - for example - we needed to evacuate the city due to a fire.
Really. You can switch off. It'll be ok. Try it, and you'll see.
He referred to the Thirty Years War where instead of doomscrolling the peasant especially living in southwestern Germany would get his war news by getting killed or starved and his home burned down.
I ignore the news a lot too. For the reasons you mention, I can't change anything and it only makes me angry seeing all the far right nonsense happening. There's no point anymore. I just follow the tech news now. It does lead to me being out of touch with some local stuff though but who cares. I'm in some pretty niche communities anyway so what goes on in the mainstream isn't that relevant to me.
It's important to have principles and to speak up for them around others, and to get your information from sources of truth.
But it is not important for most people to be plugged into a news mainline every day to read about the latest absurdity of our flailing country. Until or unless there is mass unrest and sustained protests or a general strike, the only thing we can do is vote and boycott, and if you live in a swing district or state, write a politician.
I think "escaping the internet" by stopping news consumption most of the week would benefit most of us, rich and poor, all races, unless you need realtime updates for your safety.
Finishing my PhD I kinda did this same disconnect. Only really getting news by word of mouth or maybe weekly checking Reuters front page. Effectively quit Twitter and BlueSky. It's about a year since I started and I don't regret it for a second. I rarely feel like I've missed something important. Honestly, if it it's important then people will be talking about it.
I'm on HN more now and honestly a bit disappointed with myself for that but even here is less baity than social media and news. It's easier to select topics as well. I just feel myself get angry when I get on those platforms and it reminds me to get off.
can a poor person not disconnect in the same way? I think plenty already do without meaning too, lots of tech-illiterate truck drivers and construction workers with flip phones.
Exactly. People who are stupid enough to afford dysfunction peddle stupid policy that makes everyone's lives worse. They don't care because they're not affected and when they are it's not bad enough to make them question the beliefs that got there.
All the stuff the "rich but not nobility" people did to pour gas on the fire in the lead up to the french revolution is a good comparison point IMO.
As with all addictive goods, the evidence will show that socio-economic factors influence the degree of psychological healthy/unhealthy or growth focused use of a medium/substance.
Smart phones are ubiquitous, and influencer is a key path for many to try and move out of their economic bracket.
Interesting. I live in a pretty rural part of the US, most of the people I know around here in construction have been doing well the last few years. That could always change, housing sure seems like a bubble today, but so far they've mostly been finding as much work as they can handle.
Technically you don't even need a flip phone to disconnect from the media and the news. Plenty of people have smartphone but choose not to care about what happens in the world, at least what we have no say in it.
Although if I was American, I think I'd be pretty interested (worried) in what my country is becoming under Trump presidency.
But then, until the elections there is not much one can do.
