At one time in the history of mankind there was a scarcity of knowledge and of those who could use that knowledge to govern things. Ever since the printing press and now the electronic flood of cable channels, PCs and IPhones, scarcity has become abundance. And abundance a kind of ideological anarchy....!
Today, instead of a few tribal elders, clerics, newspapers, and Walter Cronkites to speak truth for us, we are engulfed 24/7 in a cast-of-thousands each of whom claims to speak the truth.Their voices and images assault our sensorium wherever and whenever we are. The Sunday morning voices-from-Olympus on the network interview shows....the talking/screaming heads on call-in radio and cable....the bloggers-by-the millions...the iconic images of Hollywood directors, TV commercial-spokesmen, Orpahs and Ellens. It's like waking up not to one tribal elder speaking wisdom, but to a countless relentless chorus.
Ever notice a French Impressionist painting...? That's right. A chorus of little dots and flecks -- like the pixels on our screens -- which bunch together to create the image we are experiencing. However, because the single image has been created by this countless chorus of dots and flecks, the image we are experiencing is being experienced differently by everyone experiencing it. The image is no longer a truth, simply my impression.
To live in this abundance is to live in a vast impressionistic anarchy where the concept of truth is elusive if not impossible. In the noble name of freedom and liberty and democracy, everyone's impression is just as valid as everyone else's. Which sounds appropriately inspiring and freeing. And yet, 300 million citizens each living inside their own impression of their world is a hard world to make work.
I grant this may smack of authoritarianism to some. I'm not a political philosopher. But I am one of the minds that is so free to draw whatever impressions of the truth that I wish, there are times I hunger for an over-arching truth
to connect with. Not a tribal eider, not an emperor, not a pope or a rabbi or a mullah. But something I can perceive as a clearly defined truth rather than a flurry of little competing truths.
Our Founding Fathers wisely said the best way to do this was with the constitutional doctrine: The will of the majority balanced by the rights of the minority. I love that, I taught that. Now I brood over that. I'm as yet unsure 21st century America has made this 18th century principle work.
But then that's just my impression.....
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Again, a thought piece of prose. I like particularly the comparison to a French Impressionism painting! If you are seek "the truth," it doesn't exist except in God.
ReplyDeleteI can only affirm your belief. To live forever inside the thousand-points-of-light-and-darkness that is an Impressionist painting strikes me as a chaos. Some something or some someone must stand fixed in place and absolute in time. You and I suspect the same one...!
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