|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The platforms, channels, and websites that we consume the news on vastly shapes our attitudes and awareness, and there is a major gap between what we think about ourselves, about our ability to filter and critique information, and what actually happens.
Let us start at the beginning. If we were ideally connected to each other, we would not need communication, language, or speech. For example, in our body, the hand, leg, and brain are connected. They understand one another and feel that they belong to the same body. Each organ acts with full force for the system’s benefit, and everything operates in harmony.
In the human system, however, as we became more egoistic and less internally connected, the need for external communication increased. So we developed languages and cultures, communication tools, newspapers, radio, the Internet, and social networks.
Naturally, humanity is structured like a pyramid, and there are always those near the top, i.e., people who want to shape the opinions of others, determine policy, and dictate perspectives. They lead the media and own the agendas.
Human beings develop over time and feel a growing need to know what is happening everywhere, in every corner of the world. When we consume information from the media, whether we want it or not, it shapes our perception. The news selected for us, the way it is presented, the angle it takes, all of these shape the “cells” of our brain, our internal systems of perception and processing, and they define how we relate to everything.
In this way, communication shapes consciousness. It serves an essentially educational function. We are used to thinking about education as something belonging to children and schools, but we adults also undergo communicative-cultural processes that guide how we think. Just as religions shaped humanity’s worldview in the past, in the last century Hollywood has done so.
No media outlet or journalist can deliver completely pure and unbiased information. Every report is subjective, biased from the outset, whether consciously or unconsciously. If we accept this as a given, we can move on to a more meaningful inquiry: Does what the media tells us today help us meet our evolutionary demands?
What, then, are those evolutionary demands? We see that humanity is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent. At the same time, each person’s ego continues to grow. People like to think of themselves as right, smart, in charge, and wish everyone else to be quiet. These are the two opposing directions we find ourselves in today, those of increasing interconnectedness versus intensifying ego. The collision between them could lead to a total systemic collapse.
The only hope for salvation lies in changing the human being. In tomorrow’s world, only a connected person will survive, i.e., someone more empathetic, integral, and better able to connect with others, with a more mature approach to life and a deeper understanding of how to solve problems.
This is what communication must provide. It needs to create an environment of integral values for every person. Through films, programs, series, reality shows, theater, music, through all the forms of expression we have created and will create, we must advance day by day.
Indeed, we are facing a developmental process unlike any before, a fundamental upgrade of human nature.
In the first stage, we will need to recognize the problem, to identify what in our current relationships and communication is misaligned with the integral direction of the world’s development, what we are already losing because of it, and what we might still lose.
When we reach a clear diagnosis of what needs to change and what form it should assume, we can move on to building new relationships and communication. Here, it is important to emphasize the benefits that harmonious connection and complementarity will bring us. Indeed, we each have a large ego, what is also called the “evil inclination,” but together we can find a method to rise above it, toward a mutual and complementary connection that aligns with the harmony that naturally exists among all parts of creation. For us, as human beings, it must be built through conscious examination, awareness, and choice.
The next stage of our evolution is for us to internally match the interconnected and interdependent world that has formed around us, that we upgrade our attitudes to those of mutual consideration, support, encouragement, and ultimately, love. Mass media can greatly assist in this process if it was indeed used as an educational tool to promote such values throughout humanity. It is my hope that we embark on this path sooner rather than later, and enjoy the fruits of a harmonious and peaceful connection to each other instead of having to undergo much suffering from our failure to upgrade our attitudes.
Based on “New Life 131 – Mass Media, Part 1” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.