We have all been utterly shocked over the last couple of weeks over the depths of depravity achieved by the British News Paper The News of The World. It would appear that in the darkest hour of murder victims families, terror victims families, families of killed service personnel, this Newspaper hacked into what should be a private and sacred space for consoling, grieving, hurting and healing.
We are exposed to horrendous crimes almost every day. They are so constant that we might be forgiven for being desensitised to it all. The crimes that shock though are the ones against our own society by normal apparently functional people. Worse than that are the crimes committed by those we assume are there for our best interests or provide a service.
Everyone has an opinion about the red top newspapers. Some of us turn our noses up at them, some of us rely on them to supply our view of the world today. Either way a problem exists in that we have elevated the them to an important role in society; to allieviate our boredom. Even if we pick one up to mock it, we may still find ourselves passing comment on the duty celebrity under scrutiny that day.
The News of The World has cashed in on two huge industries; that of aleiviating our boredom and the raising and destroying of randomly chosen people in order to affirm our own sense of standing and living. We have seen celebrities almost revered and then just as quickly demonsied, sometimes purely becuase of the way they acted, spoke or looked.
Perhaps Oscar Wilde put it better:
"The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman like habits, supplies their demands."
Someone else adds to this by saying:
"Journalism is the ability to meet the challenge of filling space."
So actually there is another issue here in that by filling space we are feeding our worst fears. This fear is that; if we entertain that space, if we face our boredom, and if we have no one but ourselves to focus on, we will find nothing of worth and someone we may even dislike more than the personalities we crucify.
Unfortunately religion has a part to play in this. It would appear that since the moment an official scripture was devised for the Christian religion, there has been the assumption of Divine permission to seek and delve into the very intimate aspects of peoples' lives. Those who are members of Churches are accountable, expected to act in a certain way, obey the rules of scripture as interpreted by the Church. This is a Church that has laid down rules on contraception, who you have sex with, when you have sex, what gender you have sex with, what you spend your money on, who you spend it on etc etc. What originated as a message to set people free on the hills surrounding Gallilee has resulted in a microscope for people to focus on another.
One might argue whether this aspect of Church came as a result of human nature or whether this behaviour has come about as a result of the Church. I don't know the answer to that. I know that it is not just exclusive to Christianity. Either way, from the days when society was shaped hugely by the Church, the behaviour of every ones lives have been subject to freeview by all. It has instilled a curiosity and demand for knowledge about other people that actually we have no right to.
Journalism has also persuaded us of the notion that we have the right to know everything, to be all knowing. From the bedroom activities of certain superstars to the grimy, gritty, detail of war, all supplied 24 hours a day. The simple truth is that we cannot and will not know everything. We should not know everything. Why? Because when we know everything, we don't know what to do with it. It has served its purpose in distracting us from ourselves but it has merely confused us further.
Truth, I believe is not always contained in detail. That is the problem with some aspects of journalism and the problem with fundamentalist religions. Both are very similar in that they assume that the truth IS detail. This is perhaps summed up in one more quote I have found by John Hersey:
"Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it."
There is a big difference here. You can recite a creed, believe in the detail and then not experience God. You may see someone falling from the World Trade Centre in their last petrified moments and feel hate instead of compassion. You may feel confident that you are going to heaven over someone else because you have said "the prayer" but you might never experience happiness in this life. You may scoff when you read about yet another footballer and his sexual infidelities and yet resent the life you have.
I think the latest instances with the News of The World and also the child abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church and many other denominations have served a purpose. We have seen that there are institutions we have grown up with which are not fit for purpose other than to help us deny our true meaning and happiness. I commend and honour those who have suffered at the hands of both, those who have been devoured by these hungry soul eaters. I would also commend those journalists who, despite obviously serving an industry have decided to continue watching our backs by reporting on it.
We have a responsibility therefore. If we look upon both institutions and turn our noses up in disgust, we have merely denied the fact that they exist by our own doing, by our own craving to deny ourselves. Journalism and religion are both industries run by humans. Both can serve us beautifully and both can be our downfall. The latter occurs only when we allow it to. This is when we choose to be slaves to the servant, either because they tell what us what we want to here or they let us think we have arrived at a desireable point by crushing others as a benchmark. This point we have arrived at is ofcourse where we are most comfortable but where both industries have us lapping crap out of their hands.
Perhaps then by aspiring towards beauty as opposed to comparing our lives against ugliness, we may grow personally and as a society. Perhaps by also demanding rather than merely feeding from and obeying all institutions, we may start to build faith in them again. If perhaps we reflect on our own responsibility in our own lives, society may start to seem a little less uglier than we have been led to believe.