I CAN UNDERSTAND concerns about the omnipresence of new media, including social media outlets like Twitter, blogs, and Facebook. Too many people are letting social media seemingly to dominate their lives.
The flip side to these concerns is that new media at least presents in our society the possibility of alternate viewpoints.
Anymore, established media, especially that based on the east coast, gives us one way of thinking. Every “journalist” and spokesperson has the same assumptions about the world, the universe, and this nation. I call it monothink.
Monothink extends to the literary scene. This blog, with its contrary ideas, presents, for those who wish to find it—few as those individuals may be—an alternative way of considering American literature and its players. If it were up to the Overdogs who dominate approved literature, there would exist no contrary ideas. Anyplace.
I’m a rare person in that I enjoy the exhilaration of alternate ideas. Part of the excitement of reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, for instance, is not simply that it’s a terrific novel, but also that it gives the reader a wholly different way of viewing our world. Most of today’s “intellectuals” fear to have their assumptions challenged. They’re incapable of engaging in the give-and-take of clashing ideas.
For now, the Internet remains a place to discover notions, some crazy and others not so crazy, that would never make it past the careful screening of established society’s designated gatekeepers.
********************************
(To read more of my own incorrect views look into my ebooks, offered via Kindle Store or Nook Books. Writing outside the monolith.)
No comments:
Post a Comment