Stoicism begins with a hard truth. Your attention is finite, and what you give it to shapes your character. The daily news is almost entirely about events you did not cause and cannot directly control. Epictetus warned that when we tie our peace of mind to externals, we surrender our freedom. Consuming outrage, tragedy, and speculation hour after hour does not make you informed in a useful sense, it makes you reactive. And when your inner life is ruled by reaction, you arrive depleted to the roles that actually constitute your moral life, as a partner, a parent, a sibling, a neighbor.

The strongest objection is also the most serious one. To ignore the news, some say, is a privilege. Real suffering demands attention, protest, and solidarity, not withdrawal. Stoicism does not disagree. What it rejects is the confusion of exposure with action. Marcus Aurelius would insist that moral duty is measured by effectiveness, not intensity of feeling. Constant immersion in horrific news often substitutes emotional churn for deliberate help. If the news leads you to concrete action you can actually take, organizing locally, supporting those targeted in your own community, showing up in ways that reduce harm, then attention is justified. If it leaves you anxious, furious, and inert, it weakens your ability to serve anyone well. Detachment, in the Stoic sense, is discipline of attention, not indifference to injustice. You do not owe the world your constant outrage. You owe it steadiness, judgment, and action where your agency is real.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it. - Marcus Aurelius