Sam Smith - Thanks in no small part to modern media, we all live these days in two cultures: a superculture of the powerful and one defined by our actual community. There is a huge difference in the two yet we don't discuss it much.
The superculture includes our national government and, thanks to mass media, national and international institutions, values and habits. Our mass media trains us in this information and habits and decreasingly attends to views and behavior of real groups of people with whom we live and experience each day.
To get a feel for how different these two communities are, check your TV and newspapers for the lack of news and information about things that directly affect you and your friends on a daily basis. Is news of a potential new cabinet member really so important that there is little time and space for news of things that might change your daily life.
I have long lived with this contrast having been involved with national news while also starting a neighborhood newspaper on Capitol Hill in the 1960s and much later a web site for my Maine town's news. I was also an elected neighborhood commissioner in my DC 'hood.
When I started as a journalist the difference was clear. As a radio reporter in DC I covered everything from White House news conferences to fires and local labor crises. Lately, however, I've become increasingly aware of the media's increased disinterest in the human, the community, the individuals and small groups that define so much of our lives. Instead we are informed of things in major government, huge institutions, and the tiny community of the highly powerful as well as other news predominantly from that far above us in size or strength.
We need to reclaim our community cultures, respect and be proud of them more, and make those who prefer the artificial intelligence of power more aware of what they have thrown away.
