One of the sessions here at the Practice of Peace conference was about the media, and after the session, I grabbed one of the participants, Doug who is a psychotherapist, and asked him a little about his views. Specifically, I wonder why negative news have a much stronger pull on us than positive news, since that goes a long way towards explaining why the media mostly carry bad news.
He offered two insights:
1. The media are a collective bad dream, that we need to wake up from.
2. The media reflect whatever we repress, because what we repress is what we seek out, and what has the greatest psychological energy for us. So, if we as a culture repress our negative side, then that aspect of the world attracts us the most, and the media pick up on that. The solution therefore, is not to change the media, but to change our own perception of the world, to be more in tune with our own negative sides.
Again, change starts with us.
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