SOCRATES
THE PHILOSOPHERS’
MAIL
What This Is All
About
The Philosopher's Mail is a new news organisation, with bureaux
in London , Amsterdam
and Melbourne ,
run and staffed entirely by philosophers.
It is committed to bringing you the latest, biggest stories,
as interpreted by philosophers rather than journalists.
Why did this
organisation start? Because today, the most attractive, charming, sexy and
compelling news outlets enjoy unparalled influence over the minds of tens of
millions of people. But unfortunately, they rarely put out content that might
make the world a better place.
At the same time, there are lots of serious, earnest good
people attempting to change things, but they put out publications full of very
interesting and dense articles that only reach tiny and already-convinced audiences.
So the good ideas go nowhere and the not-so-great ideas
mesmerise us from every screen. Therefore, the world doesn't change.
The goal of the Philosopher's Mail is to prove a genuinely
popular and populist news outlet which at the same time is alive to traditional
philosophical virtues.
For too long, philosophers have been happy merely to be wise
and right. This has offered them huge professional satisfaction but it has not
influenced the course of society. The average work of philosophy currently
reaches 300 people.
Hence the challenge that explains the birth of The
Philosophers' Mail, a new media outlet rooted in popular interests,
sensibilities and inclinations of the day - but that tries to read and caption
the news with an eye to traditional central philosophical concerns - for
compassion, truth, justice, complexity, calm, empathy and wisdom.
The site views the rolling succession of the day's news as
an occasion for the development of insight, generosity and emotional
intelligence.
News is not simply information about what is happening in
the world. It is one of the key places where we daily shape our underlying assumptions
about life - about what is important, admirable, scandalous, normal; where we
rehearse attitudes to fear, hope, good and evil. This is why the news is a
major target of concern for real philosophers.
The Philosophers' Mail makes use of popular starting points
- the stories a lot of people like to read and talk about already. It is
generous to our natural inclinations: to read celebrity gossip, look at erotic
images and read shock stories. It is sympathetic (as a starting point) to
popular biases: anxiety about whatever feels foreign, a taste for vengeance,
lack of empathy for the very poor, envy of the very rich, resentment of the
powerful, suspicion of those who seem clever, dislike of awkward truths...
We start by acknowledging such attitudes: it isn't strange
to be unnerved by a Romanian family begging on a French train; it would be
thrilling to have sex with Jennifer Lawrence; one can empathise with the
feeling that George Osborne doesn't quite know what real life is like; it is
natural to want to switch off when hearing about trouble in Africa.
We don't start by asking what the wise or good or serious
outlook might be. There are plenty of people pushing such lines already - for
that one could turn to the Economist, or the New York Times.
The epochal challenge is to reach the people who don't
engage with complex news.
**END**
'Cheerful Sin' – a song by Victor
Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8
Posted here by Glenn
Rikowski
Glenn Rikowski at Academia: https://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
Online
Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski
Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment