Monday 13 September 2010

Read All About It





I'd like to put something to you today.

If no-one watched the news, listened to the radio or read the newspaper/glossies, (particularly the red-tops) or aimlessly surfed the web and social networking sites, we'd be much less afraid of life. You wouldn't think every single man over a certain age was a perv/pedo, they wouldn't be afraid of being branded one. You wouldn't be afraid of killer foxes jumping on your children while they sleep, you wouldn't think that immigration is the biggest problem in the UK at the moment. Hell, you might even think it was your's and my individual general selfishness or something out there like that. Sure, there's problems. But the hysterical mob mentality wouldn't exist, and the whipping up of bad blood wouldn't occur so frequently.

Maybe you wouldn't think you had to be a certain shape to be beautiful, whether you're getting pummelled with indications that you need to lose weight, or that you need to be curvy. You'd make an informed decision for yourself if you wanted to change your body, whether it be be with vigorous movement and what you put in your tummy, or with a scalpel a syringe and a general anaesthetic, not a decision based on shiny pictures of airbrushed people who are really just like me and you.

Maybe we'd actually try and find things out about different cultures and countries instead of being fattened on excellently made programmes, spoon-feeding us the angle or slant that the producers had, whatever angle that may be. Why don't we work out our own stance before drinking in someone else's research, jumping on the back of their ideas without knowing enough to truly have our own informed opinion?


Maybe we'd read stuff, like really read stuff, and we'd value knowledge so much more because we'd worked for it, we'd cultivated our brains with it, and it'd stick, not fade with the next wikipedia page.

Maybe we'd talk to people. Audibly. So we can see the light reflected in their eyes and the pores in their skin. Perhaps the world would get a bit quieter if the tap tap tap of the keyboards stopped.

And I'm saying this while at a computer, with the radio on, with Twitter and Facebook running in the background, and I'm aware of the numerous benefits of the media. I'm also aware I am at the risk of sounding like a museli munching, sandal wearing do-gooder complaining in a clichéd way about the Big Bad Media perhaps superficially...but just think about it. Sometimes, take it all off and think with your mind, not with what's forcing it's way in there every day. Imagine the possibilties. Oh wait, you can't, they're endless.