Liberalism - Dealing With Ourselves

We’ve got some serious work to do as a society if we hope to hold on to the very nature of public life that made us what, and who, we are.  False divisions have arisen, promoted by a resourced few, that would seek to have us believe that by having a federal government that would just leave us alone, we could hold on to the good life and keep this country strong.  That is actually the voice of the isolationists, using language that strokes the comfortable majority, yet leaves this country virtually unprepared for the upcoming challenges.Nevertheless, I don’t think it’s an authentic voice, and I don’t think the comfortable majority are actually that far removed that they’re willing to sell the country out in order to just satisfy themselves – there is too much that is historically Canadian in them.  But they are distracted at present, and the media has assisted in that diversion by providing brief, emotionally stimulating tidbits that merely enforce the appealing prejudices of their readers.  It can do better, as some of the more serious-minded journalists have shown, but, ultimately, it will have to help us once again by fulfilling its original mandate of assisting us as citizens to have frank, open, and progressive talks with one another. The comfortable are capable of that, if they know the stakes.I am indebted to many of those who commented to the various posts.  While much in the way of observations was heavily prejudicial, some of those writing in from various political persuasions agreed that we need to get back to proper civic engagement.  On respondent said yesterday that traditional media is old school, but that the exciting and new way of citizens engaging one another was through the new digital media.  I’m not so sure.  For one thing, the traditional media still has much to offer citizen life and many still turn to it for their information.  And for the other, the new media has not yet shown itself capable of being responsible guardians of the public’s best interests.  To do that, it will have to find people who give more than just opinions, and it will ultimately have to find a way to deal with the “hacker bloggers” who defile conversations by heavy prejudice, even hatred.Unless the information citizens receive is generated by sustained public debate, most of it will trivial at best, misleading and manipulative at worst.  The new digital media has its own version of “junk mail” that floods our lives with useless anger and untested opinions.  The problem for the traditional and new media alike is that they deliver information that few people really need. In a word, media loses its power to persuade and ends us becoming little more than stimulating entertainment.  Walter Lippmann, the great old grandfather of ethical journalism, used to worry that the media would no longer serve to cultivate “certain vital habits” in the community – “the ability to follow an argument, grasp the point of view of another, expand the boundaries of understanding, debate the alternative purposes that might be pursued.”In other words, by seeing its role as merely informing the public, the media abandons its role as an agency for carrying on the conversation of our culture.  Merely providing an outlet for bigotry, absolutism, or just the unbending opinions of those who have no interest in respecting other views, is hardly the responsible kind of media we require to re-engage in civil discourse.  Citizens will have to discover ways to self-censor those who seek to ruin the national conversation – no easy task in modern society.  Until they find the way, citizen leaders will continue to be plagued by the digital hitmen.The secret, then, is for both kinds of media – traditional and digital – to resist making themselves their own voice, but to instead channel the citizen voice in ways that build communities, locally, provincially, and federally.  And to do that, citizens require information that actually means something and is practical.  People can read anything, but they actually acquire knowledge when they can put it to good use.  What democracy requires is a vigorous public debate, not information.  And for that to happen we have to stop running after the salacious, the temporary, the meaningless, the false assumptions, the trendy – these have their place in any society, but not in the serious politics of the age.  Information is better understood as the by-product of debate.  When we get into arguments or discussions that fully engage our attention, we become avid seekers of relevant information.  Otherwise, we just take information passively, and it does us little good.  Can citizens self-govern themselves to ensure that kind of modern media?  Can traditional media reinvent itself to become the true agents of citizen empowerment?  These are the challenges that must be faced and overcome.We have spent a month attempting to define the context in which liberalism must live and apply itself.  Now we must discern how it actually must act to renew society once more.  But without a responsible array of media services that are citizen driven rather than corporate or prejudicially propelled, the undertaking will be much harder.