Have writers forgotten that they are there to inspire, rather than to impose?

Over the last couple of days, I have been traveling by inter-city bus across the Usa. It's a trip I make often between a coastal city where I have relatives, and my home in a mountain state. I have been musing deeply about where I would want or not want to live in the next few years. I established that, in general, I prefer the plains and mountain communities over the large coastal usa cities. Then I had to examine exactly why I had that preference. It comes down to the quality of public discussion, and the amount of success people have in their own lives, because they are seeing the world around them rightly, and are acting in a way which meets the situation well. The allusion that came to mind was that people in the small towns of the plains states are like people living a natural life daily in the woods without a map - they have learned how to see situations around them, and assess them, and apply themselves to making their life work really smoothly in the midst of these situations. On the other hand, people in Seattle, are like folks with a map and a compass - whose conception of the terrain they live in is somewhat less organic. These people may get overconfident about exactly how the map tells them they can get from place to place. And they might end up having troubles because of this.

The map I'm talking about here, is that of the discourse and commentary on current events which comes out on the pages of newspapers and on the screens of television every day.

Listening to the conversations of plains people on the bus, I saw that they talk and think in simple terms; and according to my sensibilities, they are often in error about the things that writers discuss so earnestly in places like the west coast cities, Canada, and New Zealand. However, these plains people have practical wisdom about the situations they deal with in life, which I fear they might lose if they went to one of these other countries or cities, where journalists have this incessant narrative which is a filter through which they make us see the events of the world around us.

Taking another look at New Zealand journalism tonight, I realised that Kiwis journalists work to manage the message more than those in any other country I've studied. They want to impose their vision of how society should work on the other people around them. Even though for myself, I really enjoy kiwi journalism, I think this is quite arrogant of them to think that a human society can be molded from the top down through policies of micromanagement. And now when I look at New Zealanders in the background of news broadcasts, I see a browbeaten people, who feel that they have to knuckle under to this imposition which the thinkers and writers in their country make on them. I think that deep thinking writers should seek to facilitate people - to see the passions which others have, and try to harness them for the good of the overall society. They should nurture the visions and aspirations OF THE PEOPLE around them, instead of trying to impose their own visions unilaterally on a society.

And so I tend to like a society where people address life on its own terms, rather than buying into a narrative which writers try to sell to them. I see that people in plains towns seem to have more success in their personal lives than folks in cities like Seattle or Portland, because of this. For example, on the plains, people seem to happily adapt their lifestyle to whatever services different employers are seeking to purchase that year. On the other hand, in the west coast cities, writers lay certain very strong value judgements on the value of some types of jobs over others. Writers particularly are of a creative group of folks who feel personally maligned when they aren't able to utilise their skills, or develop their aptitudes - when they're stuck in the grind of a 40 hour a week job that doesn't give them these opportunities. What they forget is that they themselves are a minority of people in any society, and that most people honestly would enjoy the economic well being they experience by being adaptable, and working whatever job happens to be available that day.

Furthermore, the children I see in plains towns seem much much happier than children in the big city. In the big city, there are certain errors in judgement that the thinkers and writers of that city make in how they design the frame of reference for their articles, and quite frankly - one of those errors is the "stranger-danger" narrative. Kids who grow up learning to mistrust all their neighbors until each one proves herself or himself will not be kindhearted neighbors; and quite frankly, the dramatised way in which journalists tend to report things leaves parents with a very unrealistic view of what is and isn't a danger to their children. And children are the future of any community our country. Those children will be adults someday with the same attitudes and perspectives they learned from their early years.

In short, I think writers would do well to be a bit more humble. They should share their ideas eagerly. They should find a way to make money with their prose and by putting their ideas into motion. But they should not be so haughty as to try to dictate the course of the society around them. The people around them are those whose passions and visions and agendas will form the fabric of society. And that is as it should be.

I like the trend we see on the internet - where at link sharing sites such as reddit.com, and digg.com - people can gather information from a variety of sources. No editor controls what people read on a link sharing site. Instead, the passions of the internet community bring certain topics up in the queue. I believe that's a better way for people to get their news about the events happening in the world.