GUEST POST, Mainstream media and blogs.

I am pleased to present to you a guest post by AllegoryAdvisor.




The media tells us that they reflect society. They try to present both sides of every debate and to ensure we all have the information we need to make informed choices in our day to day lives.

The Blog community tells us that the media is wrong. They say we are being shown a carefully constructed version of society. It has been altered by left wing, right wing and centre bias and that we should not believe it.

So we have 2 institutions telling us what the country we live in is really like.

Is this what you really want? Who's right? Who wants a perfect utopian society so why do we spend so much time pointing out the failings and errors of others?

Consider that we all live in a cave, facing a wall. There is only one source of light behind us and all we can see are the shadows cast on to our wall. We believe what we see on the wall is real. We have no reason or way of proving otherwise. Eventually, one of us turns round and views everything directly. They tell us what we believe, isn't really accurate and we should believe what they now see.

Over time we see this new description of our lives as accurate. We look towards it everyday, we wish we could see it too and get frustrated that we can't. We start to think the person with the better view is too powerful and might not be telling us everything.

Then another person tells us they have a new way of looking at the light. Their way is better and more accurate. They tell everyone the last describer has been biased and we begin to really wonder what to believe and what is true.

With thanks to Plato, this I believe is the the problem with Media and Blogs. To really see what your life is like you need to leave the cave.

Don't look at shadows, don't listen to what someone tells you it's like.

Once you have left the cave and look back in you'll be suprised you believed what was happening in there.

Turn away from it and don't look back.