Why Humankind Made Me Step Away from the News

—and how I’m doing a 30-day news detox

A few years ago, I read Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman. It’s one of those books that doesn’t just add knowledge — it subtly rearranges how you see the world.

At its core, Humankind challenges one of the most deeply ingrained assumptions of modern society: that humans are fundamentally selfish, violent, and unreliable, and that civilisation only works because strong systems keep our darker instincts in check. Bregman argues the opposite. Drawing on history, psychology, anthropology, and social science, he shows again and again that people are, by default, more cooperative, caring, and trustworthy than we assume — especially in moments of crisis.

This is far from naïve optimism – It’s evidence-based, uncomfortable, and at times almost provocative. And one of the places where this distorted view of humanity shows up most clearly, according to Bregman, is in the modern news cycle.

The problem with the news (according to Bregman)

Bregman doesn’t claim that the news is lying. His point is more subtle — and more troubling.

News is structurally biased toward:

conflict rather than cooperation
breakdown rather than repair
shock rather than continuity
exceptions rather than patterns

If something works, stabilises, or quietly improves, it rarely becomes news. If something breaks, escalates, or provokes outrage, it almost certainly does.

Over time, this creates a systematic distortion of reality. We are fed a steady diet of worst-case snapshots, stripped of historical context and long-term perspective. The result is that rare events feel normal, and normal human decency becomes invisible.

Bregman argues that this doesn’t just affect our mood — it affects our worldview. When we constantly consume stories that imply people are dangerous, institutions are failing, and the world is spiralling, we begin to expect less of each other. And when expectations drop, behaviour follows.

In other words: pessimism becomes self-fulfilling.

https://rutgerbregman.com/books/humankind

Why this feels especially hard right now

Reading Humankind today hits differently than it did a few years ago.

The geopolitical landscape feels unstable. Long-standing assumptions about alliances, borders, and global order are being questioned. Statements that would once have been unthinkable are now floated casually. When headlines suggest that powerful leaders are willing to redraw maps, annex territory, or abandon norms overnight, it’s not irrational to feel alarmed.

But this is exactly the moment Bregman warns about.

When the world feels uncertain, the news cycle intensifies its grip. Updates multiply. Analysis turns into speculation. Speculation turns into emotional rehearsal of worst-case scenarios. Late-night scrolling becomes a way of trying to regain control — even as it quietly erodes it.

Bregman’s argument here is not to disengage from reality. It’s to recognise that constant exposure to emotionally charged information reduces our ability to think clearly, proportionally, and constructively.

You don’t become better informed. You become more flooded.

Optimism is not denial — it’s discipline

One of the most important ideas I took from Humankind is that optimism is often misunderstood.

Optimism is not saying “everything is fine.”
Optimism is not ignoring power, conflict, or risk.

For Bregman, optimism is a discipline of attention. It’s the decision to base your understanding of the world on:

long-term trends rather than daily alerts
evidence rather than anecdotes
how people usually behave rather than how they behave in headlines

Pessimism feels realistic because it is loud, immediate, and emotionally charged. But realism, in Bregman’s sense, requires distance. It requires stepping back far enough to see patterns — including patterns of resilience, cooperation, and adaptation that rarely make the news.

Why I’m doing a 30-day news detox

This brings me to a personal decision I’ve made recently.

For the next 30 days, I’m stepping away from the daily news cycle.

Not because the world isn’t changing.
Not because geopolitics doesn’t matter.
But because I want to relate to what does matter with more clarity and less reflexive anxiety.

Inspired in part by Bregman’s thinking, I’ve treated this as a designed intervention, not a willpower test.

Using iOS Screen Time, I’ve deliberately blocked my most habitual news and high-arousal platforms — including:

YouTube
Instagram (short-form scrolling)
Danish Radio
Politiken
The New York Times
and other news outlets I’ve been scanning compulsively for a long time

I’ve placed them under content restrictions so that late-night or unconscious “just checking” moments are structurally prevented. This isn’t about moralising the platforms — it’s about recognising how my nervous system responds to them.

For now, the goal is simple: break the loop. And it is funny that I now have to place these genuine news channels as “Adult Websites” in order to get help from Apple to conquer my own daily news addiction, which I think so many of us could use at the moment. I don’t know how limiting I will feel as we go further into the 30 day awayness, but I will keep the blog posted.

What I’m hoping to regain

This detox is not about becoming uninformed. Truly important events have a way of reaching us anyway — through people, conversations, and lived consequences.

What I’m hoping to regain is:

a steadier emotional baseline
a sense of proportionality
the ability to think in weeks, months, and years rather than hours

If Humankind is right — and I increasingly believe it is — then our biggest challenge is not that humans are incapable of navigating change. It’s that we undermine ourselves by constantly feeding the most alarmist interpretation of reality into our minds.

Stepping away from the news, temporarily, is my way of testing a different relationship with the world: one grounded in trust, evidence, and longer arcs of understanding.

I’ll share reflections as this month unfolds.

And if you’d like to receive future essays like this — on design, leadership, AI, and how we shape our attention in changing times — you can subscribe on mckayconsulting.dk.

Sometimes, the most responsible way to engage with the world is to pause… and learn how to look again.