The sense of "the World"

[Magical Realist]

I am interested lately in what I can only term our sense of the World. By that I mean all the issues and events and discourses we view ourselves as living within and being a part of. Now by far the major driving source of this sense of the World lies in the media, be it television news and talk shows, print, or online. Traversing these domains as habitually as we do, we pick up on the common themes that are interesting us at this time. Skirmishes in the middle east, gun control debate, catastrophic weather changes, seasonal economic trends, and politics. A basic thumbnail sketch is formed for us of what is going on out there, consisting of only about 4 or 5 domains of discourse that we take to be dominating collective consciousness. But realize that this sense of the dominant discourse is largely contructed BY the media. Other topics that are being noticed collectively largely remain off our radar, since including all these would exceed the 30 minute time limit of the newscast. We live in a media constructed world, cued and prodded to care about what they present is important and relevant. We need to be guided by our own sense of what is relevant and true. We need to search for the events and news stories that involve us in the world rather than being herded into collective opinion polls and binary positions on controversial sound byted issues.

[C C]

We live in a media constructed world, cued and prodded to care about what they present is important and relevant.

What obliterated worlds of the past were once brought to isolated communities by traders, sailors, minstrels, criers, news-arbitrating local priests, mercenaries, etc. Oh, for the days when the media buzz was over Prester John bringing aid to the West from his fabulous kingdom. Where resided Monopods, Panotti, Blemmyae (headless people), and Cynocephali.

[Magical Realist]

We live in a media constructed world, cued and prodded to care about what they present is important and relevant.

What obliterated worlds of the past were once brought to isolated communities by traders, sailors, minstrels, criers, news-arbitrating local priests, mercenaries, etc. Oh, for the days when the media buzz was over Prester John bringing aid to the West from his fabulous kingdom. Where resided Monopods, Panotti, Blemmyae (headless people), and Cynocephali.

When they weren't daydreaming about far off legends and adventures, the world for most people back then consisted of the 10 or 20 miles of land that surrounded their home. There was none of the farflung anxiety over what was going on beyond that. The "world" was largely present and compressed in the microcosm of their everyday sojourns and peregrinations. Nowadays it isn't sufficient to be occupied with our local terrain. We speed past it all going to work or to the movies. Our food sits prepackaged for us well-lighted stores. This is the void of wordlly involvement that we fill with newclips and headlines and breaking news. We are obligated to have the same universal concerns and interests, as if that latest school shooting or that earthquake in South America impinges immediately on our lives. But it doesn't. We must concern ourselves with global drama to make up for the lack of life drama in our automated and daily routines. The work that has been taken out of daily survival is replaced with angst over the plight of the human race on an epic scale.

[elte]

Indeed, life is easy enough for a large portion of the population that they have time to reflect on the societally and naturally tumultuous world.  

However, I often leave the NPR on the radio turned down and haven't watched TV in over a year since I got this tablet computer to read Internet content.   I mostly used the over-the-air TV to get the weather forecast while a local station had a subchannel dedicated to to the weather.  Now that service has been ended.