A Collective Consciousness Via the Media

The news and the media set the platform to sculpt and mold the public mind. It's amazing that day after day and month after month the news is usually filled with negativity and celebrity gossip. Such a powerful instrument used to promote such volatile behavior and useless information.

Many of the things promoted on television and in the papers are usually geared towards selling products, instilling fear into the general public’s mind, indirectly encouraging behavior that's unacceptable or political topics presented in a fashion that is meant to sculpt the minds of the viewers into favoring one political point or politician over another.

This is News.... For who???

One behavior that the media indirectly promotes that is accepted and mimicked in everyday life is gossiping. People think it's okay to gossip about one another.

 

Why would anyone in the general public believe that gossiping is acceptable behavior? Well, it's because we are constantly hearing useless information about celebrity's life like the recent Jackson family custody battle, Lindsay Lohan's wild partying and just as recent as yesterday, Friday, August 10, 2012, The Daily News highlighted the fact that super model Naomi Campbell was sporting a receding hairline in the Mediterranean.

 

 

This information is useless and not helpful to people in any way, form or fashion. It is all gossip and encourages gossiping within everyday life because the majority of the time people talk about what they see on TV and read in the papers.

Once the mind of a person is used to talking about an individual’s personal life, in one form or another, that behavior is continued and becomes a habit; now people are gossiping everyday about one another because it’s behavior that is indirectly encouraged by the media.

When the media is not busy delving into and gossiping about the private lives of celebrities, it’s busy informing and reminding the world about how unsafe it is by highlighting when people do horrific things like murders, rapes, beatings, racial injustices, white collar crimes and tragic events make headlines and are classified as breaking news. Whether it's on television or in the paper, useless information about celebrities, violent crimes, the worst neighborhoods and terrorism will be found everyday in the news and other media platforms; all this does is sculpt the public’s mind to be afraid of each other and the world around them. In some cases the media sculpts the mind into believing that this behavior is glorified and indirectly encourages future violent acts and behavior.

The fact of the matter is that the media develops a collective consciousness amongst the general public. The media helps develop and promote shared beliefs, morals and behavior amongst viewers and often unifies people of like beliefs. Leading one to ponder:

 If a collective consciousness via the media is being cultivated then why is it constantly pumping and fueling negativity and gossip into the world around it?