A few days ago, a colleague of mine said he had just posted the following question to his blog: “What is the difference between Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein?”

I genuinely had no idea what he was talking about.

In early October, news broke of a man who had deliberately put bullets into hundreds of people in the desert. When I picked up my boys from school that afternoon, I realized that I couldn’t responsibly listen to any news on the radio. I couldn’t read articles on my desktop computer if they were anywhere in the room. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it on the phone if they were within earshot.

So I avoided it all.

When they were in bed for the night, safe, with an extra tight hug from their parents, I decided not to look, listen or learn the details of the senselessness. I began to think about the constellation of chaos in our world: Houston underwater. Rocket Man and the guy who gave him that nickname. The moral shell game lawmakers are playing with our health care. Rage, frustration, bewilderment and empathy about how grown-ups comport themselves during the playing of a song before sporting events. Rope around the neck of an Upper Valley boy.

I asked myself, “What if I just gave all of that up for a while?”

It would be a genuine sacrifice. When it comes to the red meat of news and politics, I am a carnivore. My intellect salivates at the prospect of recess appointments, special elections and filibusters. I pay more attention to the White House Correspondents Dinner than I do to the Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tonys combined. Like any true news nerd, I can recognize Michael Smerconish and Tim Farley by voice or tell you where NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Eleanor Beardsley and Wade Goodwyn are based. I recall the recall of Gray Davis. I believe we should officially characterize the terms gaggle, pool spray, above the fold, anonymous sources, on background, whistle-blower, senior administration officials, no comment and off the record as aphrodisiacs.

In short, I am a conspicuous consumer of news, hopelessly hooked.

But since Oct. 2, I have been in a news-free zone. My method was simple: With the exception of sports, I would not seek out any news in print, online or on the radio. If people talked about events in the world, I was free to participate, ask questions, learn. But I wouldn’t actively pursue it.

Cosseted inside the Upper Valley bubble, the stories dominating the national headlines began to fall away, like autumn leaves. Initially, it was work. I had to concentrate to make sure I didn’t load news websites or turn the radio to my favorite talk shows. I realized that my eye naturally sought out the front page of newspapers, and that training my gaze elsewhere required effort. Once I got the hang of it, though, it became just as automatic to not read the news as it was previously automatic to devour it.

What surprised me during my perambulations and social encounters around the region was that almost all conversation had nothing to do with what I always considered the big events happening in the world.

In my corner of the Upper Valley, people have enough letters after their names (Ph.D, M.D., MBA, CPA, RN, LLM, EMT, BS, etc.) to populate a batch of alphabet soup, so surely it wasn’t a question of education. I know that people in this area thrive on information, journalism, controversy and challenges. But the topics on their tongues were, well, local, benign or both. Instead of exploring all the polemics floating around the planet, discussions focused on children’s schedules, the pros and cons of nearby ski hills, the origins of the high-five, the ebb and flow of professional satisfaction, or picayune tidbits collected from the community. No one even talked to me about the Red Sox playoff flameout. For the record, I made sure to eavesdrop plenty during my experiment to ensure I was working with a sufficient data set.

I had anticipated that there would be one or two sensations, unavoidable world events, that would bubble up into the talk around me. In the end, there were none. It seems implausible that I simply hit three weeks of slow news; the idea of peace and quiet on a global scale in the 21st century is a bit far-fetched, don’t you think?

The experience has me scratching my head. Is it simply that people make a choice about how to deal with the information that is out there, with most of us choosing to keep it to ourselves? Do our times demand that we put the craziness away while we deal with our day-to-day lives? Are we in the midst of a massive wave of mental self-preservation through silence about world events?

Or is there something more nefarious afoot? Is it possible that the avalanche of drama and hyperbole and big banners claiming “BREAKING NEWS!” has become social novocaine, numbing us to the woes of the world? Are we so accustomed to getting so much information that we no longer feel it necessary to talk about it among ourselves, to search for solutions and answers that will push us forward to a better future? Like you, I know there is evil and mayhem and disaster and tragedy out there in the world. Like you, I feel largely powerless to change it. Could that explain why we do not want to talk about troubling things together?

Is it possible that our transition from a society of face-to-face debate to a society of digital discourse is complete?

While I will probably go back to my normal news diet, I am not certain my life will be any richer for it. Chris Rock was on to something when he observed, “We always say ignorance is bliss. Well, if so, what’s the opposite? Some form of misery.”

Before I dive back into the world of current events, I will devote some serious thought to whether or not I even want to equip myself with the tools to answer my colleague’s question.

But this Sunday, I’ll allow myself one more day to play ostrich.

Mark Lilienthal lives in Norwich. He can be reached at mlilient@gmail.com.