This article showed up on my facebook feed today. I went to post it here because I found it so interesting.
IMO there is a universal truth here: People's choices and actions are largely determined by the 'normal' of their environment. This is why 'giving the people what they want' is a bullshit rationale to make the world a worse place to live in. No one is more culpable than the creators. No one is a creator of everything, therefore every one of us is a consumer in one sense or another. Where we depend on the work of others, what we have is what someone has chosen to create.
Right ... right? People make choices from among the alternatives that are readily available. The rat will choose to play with other rats instead of consuming more cocaine when there are rats around to play with. Eighty to 90 percent of people who experiment with crack do not become addicted but continue to choose other diversions. This I don't follow. If people are generally capable of making their own choices without spiraling into self-destruction, and we respect their independence, shouldn't we celebrate the fact that creators provide a wide range of entertainment and consumption options? If you don't like CNN, but CNN is popular, I think your problem is with television viewers, not Time Warner.IMO there is a universal truth here: People's choices and actions are largely determined by the 'normal' of their environment.
This is why 'giving the people what they want' is a bullshit rationale ...
I've read through this a couple times and I agree and can make sense of the first sentence. For the second part though my best interpretation in the context of this article is that the crack addicts who would chose to take another hit are not as responsible for their personal decisions as it seems, because given alternatives like a good job or a chance to better their community they would be happier pursuing that endeavor. Is that the gist of it?
Although I agree with that second part, what I am stressing is that it doesn't really matter whether or not the crack addict is responsible when it comes to making policy decisions that will determine what environment the addict will be operating in. For example, if you make policy decisions that enable people to get risky mortgages, you are no less culpable for the result because people made the poor decision to get them. When you create policy, you are responsible for the effects. CNN is a shitty media organization because they choose to be a shitty media organization, the fact that more people watch shitty entertainment news rather than quality news makes them no less culpable for the state of current media. In short, when you create something, you have decided how the world should change, and pushed towards that end.
Ahh Ok. I see what you are saying now. Very good point. I guess we work within the mechanism of the market and this can create a feedback loop (of stupidity and idiocracy). What we need are organizations and institutions with integrity that refuse to degrade their offerings for economic benefit. This brings to mind PBS and NPR and why I always find myself going back to them. They have a certain level of integrity that remains above their corporate competitors.
Amen. If we could only get our collective heads around the fact that economic benefit is not the only one that affects our quality of life.I guess we work within the mechanism of the market and this can create a feedback loop (of stupidity and idiocracy). What we need are organizations and institutions with integrity that refuse to degrade their offerings for economic benefit.