Two hundred years ago, the advent of national and international media really lay in the future. Major metropolitan newspapers published stories about national and international events. However, those stories generally lagged the actual event by days if not weeks or months. Stories of violent crimes rightly remained the purview of the local area in which the incident occurred. Electronic media was not yet on anyone’s horizon.
Even if possible, I would not want to turn back the clock on progress. Being more aware of what is happening around the world confers many positive advantages, e.g., an ability for nations to intervene as genocide occurs, to respond in a more timely fashion to natural disasters, and for voters to have more awareness of the issues they and their nation face.
However, one significant negative consequences of a global perspective is that much of the media profits from reporting what are truly local incidents, e.g., a horrific murder that is not part of a broader crime wave or perpetrated by a serial killer. Such reporting can make people who are secure feel threatened and create the false impression that crime has become more prevalent than in prior generations. The fact that media that report emotionally intense stories often attract a larger market share promotes this unfortunate practice.
This week, I surprised someone when I remarked that I did not read reports of sensational crimes in the local paper. I explained that I knew such crimes occurred and that I had concern for the victims and the criminals. But I also emphasized that reading such reports did nothing to improve the quality of my life. Specific knowledge of specific crimes, sometimes with shocking visual images, polluted rather than enriched my life.
Life, as I have observed before in this blog, is inherently risky. Every individual should take prudential precautions to safeguard loved ones, self, and possessions. Nevertheless, absolute security does not exist. Succumbing to the an unhealthy fascination with spectacular evil does not promote human flourishing. Similarly, the media pandering to that human proclivity does not promote human flourishing even though it may increase corporate revenues.
Government censorship is not the answer. Instead, people must develop self-discipline, choosing to bring into the self only that information which seems likely to promote human flourishing. This practice parallels the self-discipline by which people choose to eat and to drink only those substances likely to promote human flourishing. Nobody ever achieves perfection with respect to these goals. Yet overtime a person can truly cultivate a healthier body, mind, and spirit by trying to control intentionally what he or she allows in.
The gospels report that Jesus said that what comes out of a person, not what goes into a person, is the source of pollution (cf. Matthew 5:10-20). He spoke of ritual pollution, Jews refusing to eat certain foods because they believed those foods ritually unclean.
Jesus’ point is a very different than my point. All foods are ritually clean. Not all food is healthy, e.g., a person with gluten intolerance should abstain from foods with gluten. Furthermore, people either had not recognized or invented the problems of impure water, contaminated foodstuffs, and food additives. Scripture teaches that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:190); humans are to exercise good care for the body. Likewise, Jesus promoted healthy thoughts, denouncing thoughts of adultery as being as bad as the act itself (Matthew 5:27-28).
What do you feed your mind?
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