Knowledge is always a good thing. Anyone who says otherwise is a con artist. Those who preach avoiding information are seeking ignorant prey to feast upon.

If you're overwhelmed, focus on smaller things. You can't do anything about the biggest rock in the quarry, but there are rocks you CAN move there. So find the biggest thing you can lift, and lift. Become a member of your community. Join the local merchants council or something similar if one exists in your area. Try to improve your community's sense of community. Fostering empathy is usually a good thing to do, since it is harder to break up a cohesive and empathetic community into its component parts to abuse and use, than one that is pre-broken by the media.

If that rock is still too big for you, focus smaller. Your direct neighbors, your family. Relationships require work: Work on them, on getting people to care about those around them again.