TRUTH
I recently listened to a lecture about the media which was given by a spokesperson for the Rossport Five, Dr Mark Garavan. In it, he spoke about about the pressure to translate people’s motives into categories which ‘the media’ can readily understand.
Instead of trying to ‘put out into’ the depth and complexity of human motivation, the media would
appear to be ‘rowing in the opposite direction’ by trying to ’squeeze’ peoples motives into some pre-existing categories which might have very little to do with what is really driving them.
It would seem to me that this media strategy bears a startling resemblance to one used by children. In Piaget’s understanding of childhood mental development, for example, the immature mind uses organizing mental frameworks for everyday objects, which Piaget referred to as schemata.
A little girl may have one schema for all objects of, say, a certain size which are placed in her cot. Using this schema, she interprets these objects as toy rattles, no mater what they really are. From a crayon to an ipod, in the child’s eyes, it’s a rattle!
But all this obviously prompts the question: Is ‘the media’ at a similar stage developmentally to young children? Are deep concepts such as truth and beauty being ‘dumbed down’ in order that they may be better ‘assimilated’?
This is a serious question, because the work of the media should be to reveal the truth, not run away from it or dress it up as something else. However, instead of going ‘further up and further in’ to reality — as C.S. Lewis would have it — we seem to be satisfying ourselves with mediocrity, a mere Platonic shadow of the real world?
And what could be fuelling our ascent of Mount Mediocrity? Is it our postmodern lack of confidence in the ability to know The Truth or, perhaps more likely, the fear of having to follow that Truth when we find it?
Today, at Mass, I listened to a reading about the rebuilding of the temple in ancient Jerusalem. Perhaps this could be interpreted as a metaphor for a rejection of mediocrity and a re-dedication to The Truth in all it’s depth.
Monday, September 24th, 2007 and is filed under GOD, Thoughts & Questions, Views on News.
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