The Media reflects but also modifies the society it mirrors. The Media can only survive and prosper if it hits the funny bone every time. So it always has concentrated on permutations of the gory, the tragic, the spectacular, the shameful, the lusting and the voyeuristic. It is just that nowadays the media has so refined its targets, honed in on our subconscious trigger, it can hit the G-spot of sensitivity each and every time. This is distorting our perception of what we are, how we respond and is leading us to adopt new attitudes that are not reflective us as people or a society. The media distortion of us and our view of our reflections is channelling our future reactions, the role model we hold and use to navigate life by.
When our favourite soap 'deals' with a difficult issue, what ever it is this time round, child abuse, family rape, racial hatred, partner beating, gang banging, let us just stop and pause for thought. They are not 'dealing with it' they are cashing in on horrendous social issues, using those issues to pull in viewers and push up their ratings. We must learn to rush to our social networks, by twitter or facebook or what ever and challenge all those simplistic, one dimensional characters and situations and scream out loud, this is not true. Life is much more complicated and convoluted. Life is not simple black and white with a single start and stop point. Protest out load that their representation is selling us and all victims, so so short. The emotional nightmare of love in jeopardy, distrust and hate cannot be conveyed by one line put downs.There is no one person walking off into the sunset or taken off to jail, or some such simple resolution. Everyone that comes into contact with the events is tainted and carry the corruption onwards about their person for years into the future and on into all their furture relationships. Get that across and then you are 'dealing with it' and doing us all a service by sharing the visceral agonies of life when it goes off the rails.
The next time we surrender to a fantasy world, to escape the gritty realities, let us hang on to some semblance of logic, connection, plausibility, some portrayal of life as all of us do experience it. As we lose ourselves in impossible relationships, gut wrenching bodies torn asunder and mechanical Armageddon, just pause and reflect you are a member of the human race that has to negioate, deal and some how live in a kind of harmony with all other humans. This is not the way life is. Again use your networks and protest out loud at all improbable, implausible plots characters and situations. Beyond your experience sure but not beyond any imagaineable reality. Escape yes but keep some semblance of realism. Keep it possible to translate back to a life we actually have to live. Ridicule plots that jump from one imponderable to another and another without any rythme or reason ever offered. Suspense, oh yes but not adondonment of all logic.
Time for us shape the media we use to reflect the society we aspire to be. Do not accept being pandered to, do not accept pap, stand up and demand to be treated as an adult going about in a adult world. Challenge all that offer anything other, use your voice.
Showing posts with label experience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label experience. Show all posts
Monday, 29 October 2012
Friday, 8 June 2012
Know Yourself
My experience has been that employment agencies look only to find the best fit box to stuff you in that they can then promote to likely employers. Despite all the profiling and other gimmicky that they might surround themselves with, their primary objective is to find that best fit box with the highest turnover and the best commission and then move on as fast as possible. They are certainly not in the business of looking at you as a blank piece of paper to assess the skills and experience you have to offer. All too complicated and time consuming. The best fit box is a fast but dirty way of summing you up into readily recognisable sectors, be it sales, education, health or whatever.
Likewise with your employer, their primary goal is to get you productive and income generating as fast and cleanly as possible. They too are looking for nice neat boxes to put you in, best fitting your past with their operational needs. No niceties, a people person, a problem solver, a task finisher, find and stuff you into the best fit box and get you working fast. Fair enough they need to profit out of your labour. The box you are put into of course only reflects the opportunities and experience's you have been allowed in the past. They are in no way reflective of your actual skill or mind set or where your aptitude really lies, if only you were given the chance. No one has the time or even perhaps the judgement set to gauge how good you might be, but only what you have previously demonstrated. Those boxes you find yourself in you get to carry forward throughout your working life. The chance to breakfree and start with a clean slate, or that white piece of paper, just never comes. You carry your past baggage forward with you, not your choice, not your wish, not your aspiration, it just accumulates and becomes the measure yardstick for all your futures.
You of course know yourself extremely well. Right? Wrong! Imagine yourself in a totally white room, floor, walls, ceiling, no windows no doors, just white sound, white scent and white surrounds. Now who are you? Not your name, not your history, not your description. But who are you, that inner person? What we are, this inner person, is in response. In response to your surroundings, to the people you last had contact with, with the after tremors of the last physical experience. Your sub-concious and concious responses to these other stimuli are what drives your awareness of who you are. But it is more than this because we too bring baggage. We are not white pieces of paper with each fresh encounter. We bring the past along with us which shapes our reactions this time and moulds the future possibles. Worse still prior experiences limit our range of possible responses and the people we meet recognise and or have preconceptions of your reactions which limit the range of what you can or cannot do in response. We are limited by our past. Not immutable, subtly shifting and adapting, we evolve but within the constraints of what we were and did last time. Not fixed, you could wake up and start out with a clean white piece of paper, inventing a new personality for yourself. Except your physical baggage and all those people you associate with drag you back to what you were. Not you, the who you would like to be, within the constraints of your innate personality. The me that I can be and am, are but reflections of my past and peoples expectations of me.
It is a leap, a small leap, more of just a progression really. How the government views or has expectations of its citizens, directly influences how the citizen sees themselves, how they respond and react. Treated with disdain, suspicion, regarded as flawed, with limit capacity to think rationally or behave with a modicum of decency, they get citizens just like that but pushed to extremes. Regard your citizens with respect, expect the highest standards and they will rise to that confidence in them and often exceed expectations. The we, whether employer, individual or citizen just want recognition and encouragement to do better. Not much to ask is it.
Likewise with your employer, their primary goal is to get you productive and income generating as fast and cleanly as possible. They too are looking for nice neat boxes to put you in, best fitting your past with their operational needs. No niceties, a people person, a problem solver, a task finisher, find and stuff you into the best fit box and get you working fast. Fair enough they need to profit out of your labour. The box you are put into of course only reflects the opportunities and experience's you have been allowed in the past. They are in no way reflective of your actual skill or mind set or where your aptitude really lies, if only you were given the chance. No one has the time or even perhaps the judgement set to gauge how good you might be, but only what you have previously demonstrated. Those boxes you find yourself in you get to carry forward throughout your working life. The chance to breakfree and start with a clean slate, or that white piece of paper, just never comes. You carry your past baggage forward with you, not your choice, not your wish, not your aspiration, it just accumulates and becomes the measure yardstick for all your futures.
You of course know yourself extremely well. Right? Wrong! Imagine yourself in a totally white room, floor, walls, ceiling, no windows no doors, just white sound, white scent and white surrounds. Now who are you? Not your name, not your history, not your description. But who are you, that inner person? What we are, this inner person, is in response. In response to your surroundings, to the people you last had contact with, with the after tremors of the last physical experience. Your sub-concious and concious responses to these other stimuli are what drives your awareness of who you are. But it is more than this because we too bring baggage. We are not white pieces of paper with each fresh encounter. We bring the past along with us which shapes our reactions this time and moulds the future possibles. Worse still prior experiences limit our range of possible responses and the people we meet recognise and or have preconceptions of your reactions which limit the range of what you can or cannot do in response. We are limited by our past. Not immutable, subtly shifting and adapting, we evolve but within the constraints of what we were and did last time. Not fixed, you could wake up and start out with a clean white piece of paper, inventing a new personality for yourself. Except your physical baggage and all those people you associate with drag you back to what you were. Not you, the who you would like to be, within the constraints of your innate personality. The me that I can be and am, are but reflections of my past and peoples expectations of me.
It is a leap, a small leap, more of just a progression really. How the government views or has expectations of its citizens, directly influences how the citizen sees themselves, how they respond and react. Treated with disdain, suspicion, regarded as flawed, with limit capacity to think rationally or behave with a modicum of decency, they get citizens just like that but pushed to extremes. Regard your citizens with respect, expect the highest standards and they will rise to that confidence in them and often exceed expectations. The we, whether employer, individual or citizen just want recognition and encouragement to do better. Not much to ask is it.
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