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Every now and then you read a book that somewhere inside deeply affects you.
For me Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise has done just that.
This passage I wish to share…
“We want to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can’t. Too many voices, too much scattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism.”
I think there’s so much beauty in wanting believe in something… believing involves trust and a desire accept something as ‘truth’ with or without proof. We do crave things to believe in because we do so on a daily basis… believing this is the best way to do something, the best route to take or that something is real. Whilst this may lead to too many voices or too many thoughts, I don’t think it stops us from believing. I feel that being questioned and criticised on our beliefs can in fact help to make them stronger. It challenges us to substantiate our beliefs and gives us a chance to share or develop them.
“It’s worse in the case of newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern day living to swallow anything but pre-digested good. For two-cents the voter buys his politics, prejudices and philosophy.”
As a journalism student… this view that those with money control the media, doesn’t seemed to have changed much since it was written in 1920. That audiences of traditional media are viewed ‘en masse’ as passive consumers who merely accept everything they’re fed is rapidly changing. Thanks to new mediums like social media, people have ways of responding to the information their fed and side-step media owners by publishing their own news or what some consider… ‘real’ news.