Putting Things Into Perspective
A “fact” without context, tells one nothing. That is the major problem of news and information in Hawaii (and anywhere, for that matter) -- paradoxically offered as its great strength and value -- that it has no relationship to anything, anywhere else, no context, no perspective, when really, that is the significance of any piece of information -- deriving the context that gives it meaning.
Thus, when a person asks, “Is the number of deaths occurring in the War on Terror in Iraq, acceptable or not acceptable?”, most people are inclined to say, “Any deaths are not acceptable.” The propagandists know this, and why they offer to find out for us, what response people will provide us in such biased and loaded questions. People have always died for one reason or another, and so for there to be no deaths at all, would be a remarkable achievement, under the most optimal conditions.
Somebody would have an accident -- often because of an overconfidence that “nothing can go wrong” -- which are the proverbial last words. But something fails, and something always will. To reduce that possibility to an impossibility would not only be impossible but raise the cost of attempting to reduce risk to impossibility would consume all the wealth and resources of any society and ecosystem.
So one has to make that determination when one has provided for 95% of the risks to get 95% of the rewards in making that choice. Only modern demagogues and con-artists will guarantee that nothing can ever go wrong, and the dream scenario will play out exactly as they want everybody to believe -- with of course, no intent or obligation to have to honor their words. They can just say something else -- until one becomes frustrated at attempting to hold such persons to their words -- because they are totally meaningless and unrelated to any reality.
That is the ultimate achievement in not having any perspective -- no connection to any reality, and one then can feel free to say whatever they want -- as much as they are allowed to get away with it. They know that the entire bureaucracy has been set up to provide them cover for whatever wrongdoings they attempt -- rather than that it will provide assurance to the consumer/client, of any genuine intent to honor one’s agreement. In fact, the supposed agreement, tends out to be no agreement at all, but an intention to defraud, deceive and manipulate all along -- and the betrayed, are then chastised for being so naive, innocent, simple-minded and gullible -- while the offender swells with pride that he has once again been able to “beat the system,” as the truly smart in that society, are deserving and entitled to.
If no precedent is established for honorable behavior, then there is no context (standard) of what it should be like, and then anything that the most devious and dishonorable can get away with, is the standard and expectation of behavior. So it is very important to develop that context as the reality that provides the perspective of reasonable and decent behavior -- as an actuality of reality, and not just a wishful thinking that nobody has ever achieved before, and thus, there is no reasonable expectation that there can ever be good and honest behavior.
posted by Mike Hu @ 7:46 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
A burning issue on the national scene is the decline of "traditional" mainstream media, as most of us have grown up to know it. The most perceptive and honest know that change is not only in the air but rattling them to their very bones.
The Hawaii media will go into its usual response to the challenge of change by going into denial and pretending they don't see it happening -- just as car drivers think that if they pretend not to see a pedestrian, then they have the right of way, and it is the pedestrian who has to look out for them.
This is all about the worldview that ignorance makes one innocent -- and so the best policy is to be ignorant and judgment-proof. This is the ultimate manifestation and actualization of those without responsibility and accountability for their own actions, thoughts and lives -- which is the worldview of a previous generation because there were no other options.
the world of today is really about choices that far exceed the traditional institutions' ability to keep pace -- to even consider being competitive. And so the only course available to them is that denial of change and all reality, futilely hoping for a return to their old reality.
And so that is what the local institutions work to revive and resuscitate -- a return to the "good old days" when they were seemingly functional, or at least, could live their lives undisturbed by the challenge of change.
I guess that is what people who write and otherwise comment about this blog and my continuing social commentary on other forums, appreciate about it and often turn to it as their daily meditation.
Once a person is clear, and has a sense of clarity, they can more easily see the smoke and confusion of other people's writing.
People don't normally do this because they are almost invariably interested in selling us their idea -- as though we thought of it ourselves, which is the niche of mass marketing and mass communications.
Only in personal communications (between friends and peers) is this not done, but unfortunately, this is not taught -- but rather the mass media techniques for controlling and manipulating the thinking of the other.
When practiced on a personal scale and in one's own life, it invariably and inevitably wreaks havoc on all one's relations and goodwill with every other. Many will go through their entire lives in that familiar fashion of the alienation and isolation of 20th century life and its personalities.
That's a dominant theme in the literature of the 20th century -- this depersonalization of the individual into the mass of the anonymous (collective) experience.
Those leading the struggle against this group-think were the artists and leading edge thinkers of every field -- and predictably not the bureaucrats, although many who thought they were in creative fields succumbed to the lure that only by giving up their individuality to the collective, would they find their fulfillment and "success."
Of course this was a huge deception that even its brightest stars not only fell for but made them what they were. So when they wanted to reclaim themselves, they found out it was no longer possible -- that their lives were not what they created for themselves, but what they allowed everybody else to create for them -- and thus they were popular.
And so while becoming well-known, they no longer recognized or knew themselves -- which of course, is the greatest failing in any life.
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