{"id":30172,"date":"2019-09-05T20:32:48","date_gmt":"2019-09-06T01:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=30172"},"modified":"2019-09-05T20:33:34","modified_gmt":"2019-09-06T01:33:34","slug":"briefly-taking-control-of-our-thoughts-requires-rejecting-useless-media-overload","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=30172","title":{"rendered":"Briefly: Taking control of our thoughts requires rejecting toxic media overload"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Information-overload.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-30173\" src=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Information-overload.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"306\" srcset=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Information-overload.jpg 460w, https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Information-overload-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 460px) 100vw, 460px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>You and I aren\u2019t required to have opinions about anything outside of our own lives. We\u2019re not even required to know about the idiotic controversies which take up so much time and energy in modern media. We can ignore them if we choose. We don\u2019t need to be able to converse about what Celebrity X said or what \u201csocial media\u201d is saying about Politician Y. The more we fill our minds with this extraneous garbage, the less attention and energy we have for the things which do matter to us. It\u2019s hard to be active on social media or to consume much other media and still maintain this stance, but what that suggests is that maybe media consumption is making it more difficult for us to live meaningful lives \u2014 and maybe it\u2019s time for us to make more changes in our habits. Taking back control over our lives demands that we know what\u2019s important to us \u2014 and it demands that we say no to agendas driven by gossip and advertising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You and I aren\u2019t required to have opinions about anything outside of our own lives. We\u2019re not even required to know about the idiotic controversies which take up so much time and energy in modern media. We can ignore them if we choose. We don\u2019t need to be able to converse about what Celebrity X <a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=30172\" class=\"more-link\">Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[556],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-briefly","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-7QE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30172"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30175,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30172\/revisions\/30175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}