I beg to differ… but I might not

I remain conflicted. Which might be a good or a bad thing. Or perhaps neither.

Others have attempted to muse philosophically in the open press. It usually results in a communications train wreck. The reader is not happy. The author doesn’t really say what they wanted to say. An editor confronts a barren comments section. Everyone remains unsatisfied.

But, sometimes the frustration fair boils over. I just want to scream loudly, existentially, and utterly inarticulately, in the ear of every media commentator and journalist in the country that ‘fuck fuck fuck nuance and fuck!!!!!!’

But the problem is with me, not the press. To blame the press for my own personal dissatisfactions regarding the state of the current media discourse would be stupid and futile.

So, I am confronted with a philosophical dilemma. Which is the worst sort of thing to ever try and write about. Because my philosophical dilemma might very well be your philosophical dilemma, most reasonable and well-adjusted people will stop reading right about now. After all, nobody sane needs to go looking for brand-new things to worry about.

(Still there?)

You see, like you, I don’t expect much of any given part of the modern media. However, when we abandoned sharing an anticipation of there being such a thing as a ‘mainstream media’ environment, it seems that we also swam out into new and dangerous waters, filled with a range of largely uncharted shoals and narrows – and there doesn’t seem to be any clear boundaries in sight?

In this new mediascape, while the talking heads commonly use words and tell stories that are readily recognisable, in the main they generally seem to be talking about a (one or another) world that none of us actually inhabit. But then you and I (apparently) don’t mind too much. After all, just like you, I am now a ridiculously sophisticated, post-modern, multi-media, audience member. (And we are all uniquely hard-etched against the modern skyline; articulate, intelligent, sophisticated media consumers, one and all.)

So, just like you, I apply a critical analytical lens to every utterance I encounter. First, I dissect it with heartless logical precision, then I nibble upon only those particular parts of the carcass that I find personally appealing. Moreover, it is therefore accepted that the media personalities and systems that interlink to create our modern media utopia all recognise that the consumer is now king. Consequently, they all happily narrowcast their thousand-and- one weird but pleasing (and mostly wrong) ideas – and it is now up to us -the audience – to be discerning and sort it all out.

I am not suggesting that it is possible or preferable to aspire to returning to some mythical past where the press was ‘objective’ but I am pointing out that we have sort of thrown the baby, the bathwater, and the entire bath, out the window. I just looked out the porthole people: it appears we are now flying at an unknown altitude, over unfamiliar territory, with no one in charge. I am not saying that I am not currently quite comfortable but… (dilemma).

Of course, we all desire a wonderfully black and white world. It is human nature to demand elegantly simple answers. Religion was our first and worst attempt at simplifying everything. Then came the theatre, politics, fan-fiction, a stock exchange, and finally the quaint idea of an objective press who are reporting on the ‘news’. These are all elegantly wrought systems that serve to simplify chaos by inventing understandable urgencies, desires and answers. They serve as ways of simplifying and rendering a dangerously changeable universe into understandable and compelling narratives that all variously help us as we make our way to work on a train.

Additionally, I love our full-blown-modern-multi-media-paradise.^TM I long for a mythical past where there was colour in the reporting and people acknowledged their own our corporate limitations. Yet I also know that there never was such a time. I was simpler once, not the past. And on the net a presenter has to stand out. A simple message, advanced forcefully, is essential. Doubt is a downer. Indecision is weakness. Equivocation is ill-informed. Ignorance is unappealing. So in this new snap-chat world I feel sometimes that I am drowning in black and white. But my relief valve then lets out an existential scream (see above) and then I feel marginally better. It solves little but does clarify exactly how utterly stuffed we are, collectively, and also how futile and silly it is to even embark on trying to write an article like this one.

… (time and coffee)

Nevertheless, I am stuck.

I am a post-modern cool-guy with a post-apocalyptic preset. I get ‘it’. Fuck: I helped jointly create ‘it’.

But as a discerning consumer I am also getting bloody tired. I have no right to whinge about a desire to go back to some woolly conception of a mainstream press or express a whimsical desire to inhabit a world where we can all agree on a basic set of facts and what is important. The place ever existed. I was once simpler: the world has always been chaotic and ridiculously complicated. Get over it.

BUT, with all that being said… What about a bit of care and self-doubt? How about a bit of not knowing things? What about dissipating the illusion that there are always simple answers, or good or viable answers? I sometimes long for a press where authors sometimes – just sometimes – frame a question and then admit that it has them stumped; that there seems to be no viable answer in sight.

In our brand-new multi-media paradise, the media narratives still generally continue to be all about recognisable goodies and baddies, all doing recognisably good and bad things. With most stories a simplistic layering of opposing ‘good’ and ‘bad’ narratives. Trump good or Trump bad. Israel good or Israel bad. Right good, left good, radical bad, conservative bad. Etc. Progressive, liberal religious capitalistic… Pick your cause or demographic.

Simplistic contrasts and emphatic statements seem to be everywhere. And everyone is ever urging me to ‘take a stand’ and make my voice heard. But I remain conflicted.

It just ain’t that black and white.

And I got nothing new to offer.

Except maybe to scream into the void every now and again.

(And no, it doesn’t make me feel better. Nor should it. This is philosophy, not journalism.)

I did warn you this was going nowhere. I might go get coffee…

 

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