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Sunday, July 08, 2018

The Novel We Need To Read

The news media doesn't tell you the news. It serializes chapters from a novel it wants you to hear.
The reason those (heavily slanted stories) were written (by the news media) ... was that they were the next chapter in the story (they were) telling you. Just like a regular novel, there are stories going on all around the hero, but it's the hero's story and one story in particular that is laid out in the book. It's not even the most important story, either.
What story should we be reading instead of the one the media feeds us? Last time, I said it needed to be about sex because there's something dreadfully wrong with our culture. Despite the benign environment, we're not reproducing. That's a huge telltale that something is broken. On this blog, I've ranted for years about the decline of the traditional family and all of the pernicious effects that causes. A healthy media, desiring a healthy culture, would be telling that story.

More of this, please!
(Image 
©Zdenka Darula - Adobe Stock Images)
Imagine that instead of trying to push a political viewpoint, the media wanted healthier and happier children, higher family incomes, less crime, fewer people on drugs, fewer people in prison and better performance in school. What novel would they serialize? Certainly not the one they're doing now. Think of all the rags-to-riches stories you could find out there among stable, married, traditional families. There are millions of them. If they wanted to choose only the sensational and photogenic, so be it.

When we saw Dr. Jordan Peterson a while back, the last question in the Q&A session was about all of the left-wing violence and public shaming we're seeing. Asked what caused it, he replied that sometimes you look at the end result, the actual product of the actions and wonder if that's not what was intended in the first place.

Maybe instead of wanting healthier and happier children, higher family incomes, less crime, fewer people on drugs, fewer people in prison and better performance in school, the media wants conflict and violence.

Hey, they're reading us the current novel for  reason.

1 comment:

  1. You make a good point about how the media is pushing the book that they think will sell, not the one that will actually do anyone any good. But then, what do you expect from a medium that has to sell in order to stay in business?

    I mean, just look at what is in actual novels. How many novels have you read where the main characters are in stable, happy relationships[1]? Practically everyone in any novel that comes to mind comes from families that are broken in some way. And this isn't new: how may of the old fairy tales can you think of that don't feature orphans, or evil step-parents, or widows/widowers struggling with their children, or third children tossed out into the world with no support because they are surplus to their family's need for extra heirs?

    The story the news media is pushing is not good for us, but they aren'd doing this because of any particular bad motives of the news media. It's because they have determined that that's the story that will sell.

    And speaking of which, whatever happened to your WOG posts?


    [1] The Anna Karenina principle: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

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