The inspiration is this simple quote: "The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control." (Epictetus)
I held this resolution for about 5 months and it was profoundly glorious. It's not hard. Treat current events like Game of Thrones spoilers. Focus on what you have control over. Be frank with others that you are taking a break from the news cycle. If your results are anything like mine you will find yourself calmer and able to concentrate on what matters. Your mind wont wander to externalities you don't have control over.
At the end of it, you can go read Wikipedia for 30 minutes and be just as caught up as anyone else because you know the end result of the news cycle instead of suffering through it as it happened.
I know it’s extreme but it’s the reality. For someone who is impacting by politics (say lost their jobs due to COVID), you can’t just stay on the sideline and ignore it.
You just have the great privilege of letting other people take care of that dirty work.
Is taking a news diet good? Absolutely. Lots of crap out there and a mental break is needed once in a while. But ignoring the suffering of people around you is just bad.
My grandparents paid attention to politics, as did many in the United States at the time. TV news was watched, no Internet, lot of newspaper reading.
They were sent to Tule Lake and interned for being Japanese-American all the same; their possessions stolen by a government who doesn't care if its citizens "care" about politics.
The average person has no control over "politics." Caring about it didn't save my grandparents, nor the protests of all of their friends.
No one took care of that dirty work. That's the great delusion.
Are you willing to die for what you believe in? And, before one answers this hastily, think about it.
I have come to realize most are quite selfish in various way, myself included.
So, really, what you're asking is whether people are willing to, once they start acting in a way which risks their life, continue acting in that same way. And it turns out that the vast majority of people killed by this reasoning are killed by genocide or as collateral damage of war; they're swept away by hate and violence which they did not invite.
The question really should be, then, rather one is willing to risk their life for the specific action of interrupting those who are trying to kill others in this way. And such interruptions often turn out to not be very risky, unless the interruption is happening very late in the process, at the moment of violence. It was not risky to yell at street fascists in 2017, before they were creating so many street fights, because they were not yet strong enough to simply fight, but instead had to justify their hate before a largely non-violent crowd. Now in 2021, though, yelling at street fascists is dangerous, but referring them to the FBI is relatively safe. What was acceptable praxis has changed.
From this POV, we must recontextualize your original message. Who is pushing and shoving? Fascists. Who are they pushing and shoving? Undesired minorities. By what means are you allowed to be selfish? Well, you might not be in an affected class! This is a failure of solidarity. You must be willing to defend the rights of others, if you expect them to defend your rights as well.
Allow me to introduce a few samples who disagree with your nuanced analysis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_tol...
Pragmatism cannot be escaped simply by complaining that I am pedantic. Saying something is an action. Practicing a ritual is an action. Dressing a certain way is an action. Eating certain foods is an action.
Recall that your original post insinuated that most people are too selfish to choose to die for their beliefs. I am trying to explain to you that people do not choose to die for their beliefs; rather, they choose to take certain actions, and then their killers choose to kill them because of those actions. It is the selfishness of those personal actions which we are considering.
And, once we have achieved this scale, we can clearly see that killing itself is an action. It is simply another tool for achieving our selfish ends. A person can choose to selfishly kill as many people as they can reach. This suggests that our morality needs to not just account for making the choice to "die for what you believe in", but also the choice to kill for what you believe in.
Finally, let us consider the context of your original comment. The comment recounted a tale of folks who were sent to concentration camps in the USA during WW2. They claimed that the average person has no control over federal politics; you agreed and asked people to consider how they would prefer selfishly to not stick their necks out for the sake of ending the concentration camps. However, there are two grand ironies there: first, that we today claim to have entered WW2 in order to destroy concentration camps; and second, that we today have concentration camps on our southern border.
I don't know exactly what your point is, since you're not using your words well, but I think that you should take a step back and try to figure out where you're headed. I have the luxury of an elected representative who already is trying to close down the concentration camps, so I know which side I'm on.
Also, please stop using HN primarily for political battle. We ban accounts that do that (regardless of which politics they're battling for), because it destroys what HN is supposed to be for. I had to go quite a way back in your comment history to get to a place where you weren't doing that. Fortunately I eventually found it so I'm not going to ban you right now, but can you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN in the intended spirit?