The Immediate Man

The Media interposes itself between Life - past, present, and future - and the man or woman.
(immediate = in the middle)

By this interposition, the Media arrogates to itself the role of The Past (History), the role of the Present (News), and the role of the Future (Politics).
Who has not heard the statement that something is true because someone saw it on TV, or heard it on Radio, or someone read it in the News? All of us have experienced this, and it is exactly a demonstration of the interposition of Media into its role as Interpreter of Life, the dragoman who interprets the shock of new and old things to us.

I have given up on Media. I rarely read the news, much less watch it.

I have found that by doing so, slowly but surely I am withdrawing from the Imaginary reality that has been created by the Media. I no longer can accept the simplistic summary of events, for I realize that the very act of simplifying or abridgement of complex events necessarily turns those events into something entirely different: there is no such thing as a "simplification" which retains full, deep meaning.

I am reading the entire record now of the Congressional hearings on J. Robert Oppenheimer which eventuated in the withdrawal of security clearance from the father of the atomic bomb. The detail and complexity is overwhleming and borders on the oppressive.

It is clear why so many of us reach out for simplicity and ease and rapidity.

It is also clear that the majority of important situations that succumb to simplicity, ease, and rapidity of judgement end up as a gross miscarriage of justice.

We stand between the past and the future, we who live in this present! It is time to take back our Immediacy!
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