> Pretty much all the major players were democracies and it isn't that unreasonable to think that democracies can be persuaded to do sensible things.
Again though, how many people were actually in a position to direct that democracy to do something different than it did, but were unable to do so because they were not sufficiently informed with available information for their position? I'm not suggesting that if people who were in power knew different things than they did that things couldn't have been different. I'm arguing that it wasn't a lack of reading available news by every day people not in power that allowed things to get to where they were.
> The world is hardly hopeless and the people in it are not helpless.
I wholeheartedly agree, I just think people vastly overestimate how important "being informed" is over just actually doing something about a local problem. How many things do you read in your daily feed that fundamentally alter or make a difference in the things you plan to do? Let's say you're interested in helping make a change with regards to child abuse. A noble and worthwhile cause. Who is actually helped by you spending even an hour every day scrolling "child abuse tik tok"? Or reading through a daily list of updates on child abuse cases and statistics nation wide? In my opinion almost any time you spend being "informed" about child abuse by mass media would be better spent actually volunteering for local abuse shelters and safety organizations. And the little actual good you or anyone else gains from you scrolling through mass media coverage could be gained in much shorter and more sporadc review of recent events rather than a daily firehose of news.
Again though, how many people were actually in a position to direct that democracy to do something different than it did, but were unable to do so because they were not sufficiently informed with available information for their position? I'm not suggesting that if people who were in power knew different things than they did that things couldn't have been different. I'm arguing that it wasn't a lack of reading available news by every day people not in power that allowed things to get to where they were.
> The world is hardly hopeless and the people in it are not helpless.
I wholeheartedly agree, I just think people vastly overestimate how important "being informed" is over just actually doing something about a local problem. How many things do you read in your daily feed that fundamentally alter or make a difference in the things you plan to do? Let's say you're interested in helping make a change with regards to child abuse. A noble and worthwhile cause. Who is actually helped by you spending even an hour every day scrolling "child abuse tik tok"? Or reading through a daily list of updates on child abuse cases and statistics nation wide? In my opinion almost any time you spend being "informed" about child abuse by mass media would be better spent actually volunteering for local abuse shelters and safety organizations. And the little actual good you or anyone else gains from you scrolling through mass media coverage could be gained in much shorter and more sporadc review of recent events rather than a daily firehose of news.