[Neurons] 2008 Meta Reflection #12

[meta]

From: L. Michael Hall

2008 Meta Reflections #12

March 24, 2008



TIME-BINDING, SELF-ACTUALIZATION,

AND THE MEDIA




We all know that "the media" is negative. Every morning when you open up the newspaper, or listen to the radio on the way to work, or every evening when you tune into the news programs whether on cable or via public television- you are going to hear stories and reports about what's wrong, what's bad, and what's terrible. You are going to see and hear people going on and on about catastrophes, scandals, betrayals, murders, deaths, drugs, wars, economic crisis, mobs, riots, and on and on.

The week I wrote this (March 15, 2008) was like every week-full of scandals, disasters, crime, etc. The democratic governor of New York was discovered using a call-girl service and had to resign. The media's frenzy of excitement acted as if this was a great and wonderful thing; it so dominated the media in the US that you would have thought this was the most important news on the planet! Later tornados hit Atlanta creating 150 million dollars of damage. Then the worst labor disaster in years in New York-a crane fell off a building in New York City killing several, and so on.

What is this attraction to disaster? What is this thirst in reporters, the media, and the buying public for hurt and pain, for destruction and scandal, for crime and hypocrisy? Why? What is this fascination with the dark side of human nature?

The easy answer: Blame the media! Blame the publishers, reporters, and all the people who deliver all this bad news. But that's too simplistic. After all, we live in a free market. So not only does "bad news sell," but the public, that is, everyday people including you and me, keep buying this bad news and so want it! They want it? Yes. A few years ago after there had been months and months of preoccupation about President Clinton and his sexual behaviors with the intern, The Boston Globe newspaper decided to take it off the front page. But the outcry from the public was so strong, they had to put it back on the front page! What gives with this? Why do so many people hunger for, want, and even demand bad news?

Welcome to The Jungle

There must be a need and a drive for the dark side within us. Somehow the answer to this must involve the motivational need level at which people live. If people are living at the lower needs (survival, safety, social, and self-regard), at the deficiency level, then they are living at a dimension of life that Abraham Maslow called "The Jungle."

Our lower driving needs are biological or animal needs. And we share these with all of the higher intelligent animals. As deficiency needs, when you live at that level, you live in a world of scarcity-in a world where there is not enough. That's why you compete- there's not enough. There's only so much and if you don't get yours, someone else will. And if someone else is having problems, troubles, and disasters, that's good for you! Their dis-advantage gives us an advantage. So if you live at the level of the Jungle Life, you live in the domain of the darker side of human nature where deficiency signals your subconscious mind to feel threatened and in danger which leads to aggressively fighting for yours. And that approach values when others are worsened.

Maslow considered this as the source of the great majority, perhaps 95%, of all human evil. We do evil to each other, hurtful and ugly things, because we feel threatened. As we then become desperate, we lash out, we play games, we manipulate.

The hunger of deficiency, scarcity, distrust of others, competition, etc. drives people to want to hear about the bad news of others. We feel better about ourselves and our world when we hear that their world is falling apart. We especially feel better about ourselves when that someone is successful, famous, rich, beautiful, etc. Ah, the Jungle!

Obviously, this is not rational and most of it is not even conscious. It's not that we consciously want bad news. Yet while we claim to dislike it, we buy the scandal journals and financially support disaster news, movies, blogs, etc. The unconscious hunger for bad news, for catastrophe, for disaster reveals where a person lives motivationally.

Alongside this, there is another deficiency hunger, a hunger for the trivial. People also hunger for news, television shows, books, magazines, etc. about the exciting lives of others. It's as if the boredom of our own lives drives us to live our lives vicariously through the lives of celebrities, politicians, and people in the news. The gossip level of meaning is more exciting. This, again, is a sign that motivationally, we are living at a low meaning level, that we have not moved up to the level of meaningfulness at the being-needs of self-actualization.

Sure, good news programs, books, magazines, movies, websites, blogs, etc. are out there and indicate that there are lots of people living at the higher human level of self-actualization. Yet in comparison, these are few and small. The positive side of life shows up from time to time in the media as "human interest" segments, but there is far too little of it.

I'm not arguing here that the negative and dark side should not be presented. Of course it should. We need to know about problems and challenges so that we can tackle them with our creativity and resources. The problem is the proportion of bad to good; of disaster to inspirational, of deficiency and scarcity to abundance, of competition to cooperation and collaboration, of dark side to bright side of human nature. The problem is that when the mass media focuses most of its attention to the dark side, it becomes a socially destructive force diminishing human possibilities and potentials because it seems to present this as the norm.


>From the perspective of Self-Actualization Psychology, we need being-level newspapers, television programs, news programs, movies, books, magazines, etc. to provide a clearer and more compelling vision of what's possible. We need being-level mass media that works as an empowering and enhancing influence for the self-actualization level of life.


While those who make decisions at newspapers, news programs, magazines, screenplay writers, etc. are not fully responsible for the current hunger and taste for the dark side, they are responsible for how they feed the dark side and the degree they feed it. A self-actualizing media could begin by slowly minimizing the daily reporting of murders, crimes, scandals, disasters and slowly increasing and encouraging a hunger and taste for the bright side. After all, as Maslow once noted, "What's news? There's nothing new about death."

Don't you think it's time that we not only talk about self-actualization leaders, but self-actualization news reporters, anchors, screenplay writers, investors, publishers, etc.? I do. And that's why our focus on self-actualization in individuals and organizations at all levels.

----

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L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Neuro-Semantics Ltd., Executive Director
ISNS - International Society of Neuro-Semantics
P.O. Box 8
Clifton, Colorado, 81520 USA
www.neurosemantics.com 
www.meta-coaching.org
www.self-actualizing.org 

Email: meta @onlinecol.com @acsol.net @mindfocus.co.za
(970) 523-7877
(970) 523-5790 FAX
(877) 686-2867 toll free in the USA only
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