1/ The deepest attention problem in conservative circles is de-location. We've let news make the place we actually inhabit feel irrelevant. Neil Postman diagnosed this in 1985. The cause goes back further.
2/ Postman traces it to the telegraph. The moment news could travel faster than a horse, information became untethered from place. "The annihilation of space," one paper called it in 1844. We've been living in that annihilation ever since.
3/ Thoreau, for all his issues, saw it coming: "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate." It took 170 years to learn that lesson, and we still haven't.
4/ What the telegraph introduced, Postman called "context-free information": news valued for novelty rather than relevance to any decision you might make. It has nowhere to land.
5/ The result: our thoughts are everywhere but nowhere in particular. Our knowledge is abundant but irrelevant to daily existence. In place of action, there's an unending awareness campaign where we share news that leads nowhere.
6/ One practical filter: Does this information require me to take some action today, this month, or this year? If no, it's inert. Most news is inert. The ratio has only gotten worse since Postman wrote that sentence in 1985.
7/ Your attention is a limited resource. Invest it primarily on the place God put you. This is the basic premise of biblical localism, and the direct opposite of what your news feed is training you to do.
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