The Natural Understanding of Things

I’ve always prized myself on my ability to turn a phrase.

Said Dumbledore.

I am in many ways like Dumbledore except less loved, less tolerant and no one really pays me much attention, or cares what I have to say.

In a social media comment section I recently replied to someone regarding people's perceptions of the main stream media:

People naturally accept whatever the media says as natural.

And without realising at the time of authorship, I had created an aphorism to explain one of the greatest obstacles to democracy.

This is what we're up against. Ours is a world mediated by fantasy and fetishism, as journalists prophecise election outcomes or insist the unelectability of viable candidates. Many people in this country will accept these words, not as an opinion, but as a statement of reality as we know it; as fact. They will not care of the corporate influence on main stream reporting, nor for the many other biases that fabricate the narratives we are exposed to. Few are predisposed to challenge 'accepted' opinion. Many accept the authority of a handful of hacks who speak from virtually the same platform, accepting their words as reason and truth, their opinion as natural: the natural description of our situation as current.

There are many acts of persuasion at work here, including the availability heuristic, a term to describe the over emphasis people place upon familiar ideas over more important but less familiar ideas; but one of the simplest acts of persuasion the main stream media use is to narrow the field of debate and, in virtual unison, repeat the same few, tired expressions.

What is the effect here but to give the impression of an accepted truth?; a reality only a crazy person would contest; a version of the real made credible by our populace's unshakeable faith in journalists; as if journalists are somehow experts whose words cannot be challenged, whose describing of our world and it vicissitudes is not just an opinion, biased and partisan, but is the acceptedopinion: the natural understanding of things.

Of course, what journalists and politicians say is not the be all and end all of the realities of life; but in a world where the rich own the newspapers and can purchase the air time and can buy the opinions they choose to broadcast, it is largely only the opinions in favour of the rich and corporate hegemony that the wider public get to read, see or hear.

Over and out for now, guys!

xxx