Saturday 8 February 2014

Our problem is summed up ....

rather well in this article by Graham Cunningham at The Imaginative Conservative: he is for the most part addressing political issues, but for traditional Christians, 'Catholics' and Evangelicals alike, the problem he identifies is writ large: 
"Moreover, journalists, scriptwriters, film-makers, comedians, creators of advertising copy, etc. (society’s unofficial teachers)—are typically just the kind to have taken to this student radical chic in a big way. Grasp this and you begin to account for the huge (unelective) power of liberal political correctness in Western democracies and understand how, once established, it became self-perpetuating. It would be a rare apostle of “reactionary” conservative self-reliance and individualism who would think to apply for a job at the BBC or MSNBC.
The, often seemingly apolitical, trickle down of politically correct “radical” group-think into every corner of the Western mind—into the cultural water supply—is the great flaw in our pluralist democratic system—of competing political parties, with alternative political philosophies, each taking their turn at the national helm. The Left bias in our education system never alternates with a Right bias and nor does similar bias in the arts, film and television drama, talks shows, comedy shows, documentaries etc. If conservative values like self-reliance and personal responsibility are in a secular retreat, this is not because these voices are absent. It is because the wider public has pre-absorbed a mental paradox that—whilst we in the West do cherish our Left/Right pluralism—Left equals kind (if perhaps sometimes naive) and forward-looking whereas Right equals selfish, atavistic and, well, just plain wrong. And once this paradox has become entrenched, politics will always be refracted through its prism. With the result that voices—battling against this head-wind—will come across to that wider public as shrill or anachronistic. "
What no one has done, of course, is come up with any coherent strategy with which to counter the modern cultural elite's clear - but always vehemently denied - bias (politically left-liberal and culturally hostile to religious faith and traditional Judeo-Christian morality) - the steady 'drip, drip' of ideas through the largely politically and culturally monochrome mass media which, perhaps more than anything else, is responsible for the continuing decline of the Christian faith here and elsewhere in the developed world. There are no other voices heard, or if they are, their words fall into the stony ground of cultural incomprehension.

But perhaps there is a tiny glimmer of hope: 
"...Mass media “news” may seem as intrinsic to modern life as electricity and motor cars—but maybe not. Everything changes. And maybe the post-internet generations are starting to get their (still highly selective) take on the world, at least from a less monolithic source. It may be that even the TV is losing its mass mind-bending power over the young, at least compared to their parents and grandparents. Having so many alternative gadgets to play with, they are less and less likely to watch it and especially “The News” and “Current Affairs”. But overall, the power of the Media-Academia Complex is likely to remain undiminished for a very long time to come. Its power comes ultimately from the illusion it creates that you can sit back and soak up all you need to “know” about the big wide world without actually having to be all that curious about it. If conservative intellectuals want to win hearts and minds, it is to the psychology underpinning this now ubiquitous mass-mediated liberal folklore that they must address themselves...."



No comments:

Post a Comment

Anonymous comments will not be published