大象传媒

Free Thinking : The nation

From the UK, philosopher Jonathan Rée

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1. Last post

   • Jonathan Rée
   • 9 Nov 06, 02:04 PM

   The Freethinking Festival is over, for this year at least. It wrapped up with a big bash in Liverpool last weekend, featuring dozens of public talks, debates and discussions, most of them recorded for broadcast on 大象传媒 Radio 3.

   
   The idea behind the whole project was, I guess, to thow open the bedroom windows and let a bit of fresh air into the speech output of Radio 3, though some observers may also have been reminded of George Orwell’s famous description of the 大象传媒 as ‘halfway between a boarding school and a lunatic asylum’ (actually he said ‘girl’s school’ but never mind).

   
   So how did the experiment go?

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1. Why bad news pleases

   • Jonathan Rée
   • 3 Nov 06, 10:01 AM

   Very intertesting points about good news / bad news. I would like to give the question another spin though, especially as my next post to this blog is going to be my last. (As you probably know, all the Freethinking blogs are going to be put to sleep shortly after the Freethinking Festival in Liverpool this weekend.)

   The basic problem is this: most of us accept that on the whole the world is a better place now than it was a few decades ago or a few centuries ago, and yet when we consider day to day events, we are always inclined to think that more bad things are happening than good. So a form of prejudice seems to be at work here – another enemy of genuine freethinking: a prejudice in favour of bad news. How can we account for this prejudice?

   I see what William Cope means when he says that people in power are always giving us false good news, and I understand the implication that we should welcome bad news because it restores the balance. But I do not quite agree: it seems to me that there are several forces at work – vested interests if you like – that tend to generate a prejudice in favour of bad news. Three in fact.
   

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