Thursday, October 5, 2017

The Feature Thinker

What is disturbing about the times we live in, even more so than the vacant political leadership, the resurgence of right-wing extremism, the increasing legitimacy of discredited nativist philosophies and foundational myths of ethnic parochialism around the world, and the continuing denialist environmental policies we enact to ostensibly guard our way of life while inexorably degrading it, is this over-riding obsession the majority of us has with the 24-hour news cycle. For journalists, it is their bread and butter; a captured market hanging on every new disclosure and sensational advent, searching for deeper meaning that begs to be gleaned via another paid shill well-connected enough with the HR wings of multi-media conglomerates to bestow on the rest of us his/her analysis of an event in its aftermath. For those sceptical of the value these analyses bring to their own interpretations of the assault of practically unbelievable news stories that emerge in the public domain day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, there is a desperate search for considered deliberation mostly from trusted sources such as historians and op-ed writers from earlier eras and disparate backgrounds. Even these sources have to earn their bread and butter, though, and the rigors of the 24 hour cycle do the quality of their analyses no favours - fast cut and paste jobs culled from their own work of the past, desperately fitted in to match the present mood and circumstance, projecting inauthenticity and a tired jadedness, and not doing justice to their own standards. How are we meant to understand this era we live in, then? An event occurs, facts and outright lies emerge simultaneously in our curated news feeds, investigations are conducted and delayed indefinitely, and cover-ups inevitably begin, in plain and recorded sight, amidst all the confusion. How are we meant to make any sense of this world when we can't even figure out which way we're headed? Where is the framework, where are the benchmarks, where are the goalposts, and where, in God's name, are the referees? It seems like the systems we put in place over generations of community living have not so much broken down as a result of the onslaught of forces beyond their capacity to mitigate against, as brushed aside in a wanton anarchic release that overcomes every sense of orientation. Are we condemned to begin organising, once more, as small incestuous units of like-minded and outsider-wary communities that trust our own interpretations of the facts more than the facts themselves? Can we risk going back to ethnic and communal vacuity when we were fearful of our own shadows and superimposed on them a predatory visage of those who do not immediately resemble us in physicality and philosophy?
Or are we becoming feature thinkers; letting each passing controversy wash over us without impact, except as an addendum to a previously held belief, providing a supporting argument to the main discussion at hand, content in the knowledge that the centre cannot hold, that the breach will eventually turn into a gulf, that the past will inform the present and co-opt it for a future of looking back in intellectual disdain at the kind of people we once were? Can we really be this blasé about the world our young people are growing up in, bereft of an ethical superstructure, a celebration of dissent, a healthy scepticism of the powers that be, a sense of agency and control in one's own ability to positively effect social change?
I guess the question we need to ask ourselves is whether we are of this world or just living in it?

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