Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor
Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor
There are honest and good journalists out there, but most of this media stuff now is just press releases and opinions—all dressed up to draw our attention, break us into camps and fight.
The individuals who want us at one another’s throats have captured the game. It’s about that simple. Read, or more likely watch, just about any “controversial” story or even just the headlines about social issues, finance, security, celebrities, war, race or anything else and the unwritten rule seems to be to create divisiveness.
“Choose a side” is the insidious message, as if taking a stand on fake ground has some patriotic or noble beauty. This kind of thing could be fun, as in a sport or children playing, but they know they are playing while we become less aware because the volume is on so high until we no longer see that we are being played.
There are bad actors, no doubt, individuals who get off on this sort of thing. But they are few and rarely visible, I believe. Their hearts are cold, colder than most of us can adequately imagine. If a side is useful, the side that exposes them might be a good one, but if you think you know who they are because your favorite news outlet tells you…
The ones we do see, those players plastering the screens front and center in the media in this endless fracturing can be in that camp, the camp that gets its jollies from others breaking into camps, hating, pointing fingers, altering the courses of lives in order to destroy or avoid.
But these personalities are using the assumed idea that we should be divided, they didn’t make it up. They are not the source of the division, they are a product of it. We all are, to some degree. Fear. Distrust. Bravado. The great “unfriending” of the 21st Century.
To no longer look and be curious about others but to categorize and point fingers or ignore are steps down from who we are.
Thing is, the vast, vast majority of people are decent and kind and left to their own native reason would rarely come to a categorical us vs them. It’s just not natural, though it certainly seems to be but only because it is constantly there, an invisible assumption of what we want, to fight one another.
I pulled back from viewing media of any kind even farther than I had before—now over three years since I have watched a curated opinion video or show. I pulled back to “check out” of the game to the degree that one can and then return and see if, with fresh eyes, I could more clearly see what was really going on.
Returning to the circus is like coming to in the midst of a high rise fire. Noise, noise, divisive noise.
Then I did a little experiment.
Go back 5 years and read the headlines, look at the stories and then look at today’s stories. Look at what we are being asked to feel, to do. Look at the eerie similarities. Then go back 20 years and take a look at that. It’s basically similar muckraking.
I know there are honest and good journalists, courageous persons and I honor them, but most of this stuff now is just press releases and opinion. All dressed up to draw your attention and break us into camps. Both “sides” are using the same assumption of sides.
Shun it. Avoid it. Drain it of eyes and ears because it has no product, it serves no purpose that makes us happier, or more productive, or “knowlegable” or saner, or better people to one another.
There are diamonds of data and truth in that rough, but if you aren’t really digging deep to find them but just accepting what is being fed to you, there is just more hate and distance in that trap.
Peter Kjenaas is an author, screenwriter, theater director, producer, chef, AirBnB host, parent and caregiver extraordinaire. And now he adds travel writer to his resumé as he sets off across the country in a 1971 VW camper bus. But first and foremost he is a caring and productive human who has graciously allowed us to post some of his writings to this site. See his latest book at PeterKjenaas.com, and his travel adventures at Riders on the Storm Bus.
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