OK, here's a test. Not my test; our test. We take it every day, only we don't usually take time to grade our results. Here's your chance.
The global media -- print, voice, video, digital -- is a 24/7 avalanche of totally disjointed events. But look carefully, because there just may be some coherence in all this chaos. Terrorism on the high seas...violence in the Middle East...traffic pileups on the expressways...immigration clashes at our borders...protesters in state capitols and at funeral services...politicians and pundits declaiming...drug wars raging...Oscar winners prancing...students seaching....Charlie Sheen and Fox News being, well being Charlie Sheen and Fox News.
What in all the world is coherent about all this chaos...?
Here's how some of the great minds of history have tried to answer. Plato suggests its humanity struggling to find its way back to the soul-life it was before being here. Augustine argues its humanity striving to find rest by resting back with its God. Nietzsche concludes there is no God to go back to. Darwin and his modern defenders find that survival is the one consistent coherency to all this animal and human struggling.
Whether we buy any or all of the above, perhaps we can all agree on one thing. Seen from a distance, this seething, relentless maze of daily energy has some of the look of some enormous ant or bee colony. Action, effort movement wherever we look. It's unceasingly kinetic as far as the eye can see and the ear can hear.
In the case of the ants and bees, there's always a focal point and a rationale for everything that's constantly happening. The Queen! As we look to grade this media test we're taking every day, we have to wonder. Is there some kind of intelligible throne around which all this planetary activity is organized as well? Even a Darwinian may have to pause over that possibility....
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