The Embodiment Social Conscience

When we lived in smaller social structures, it was easy to be able to perceive who was contributing what to a community. In theory, we would know if someone wasn’t able to pull their own weight and why; since everyone would know if we weren’t pulling our own weight, it would be harder to shirk our duties. As societies expanded, we had more people to keep track of, and instead of tracking individuals, we began tracking groups and cliques within the society. Strategies develop for dealing with this issue, including internal grape vines. Just as societies develop specific individuals tasked with other tasks that would have previously been the shared responsibility of the tribe, a new role develops inside the system, and thus Journalism is born. Initially, the job is simple, to collect and redistribute knowledge so that the society has a better understanding of the things that individuals may understand need fixing, but often have yet to be addressed. The more awareness brought to a problem, the more likely a solution will be developed. As society gets more complicated, and traditional social codes are replaced with laws, these problems potentially have a greater depth and breadth of complexity. The position of journalist becomes one requiring greater skills and one that has greater value to the society. This greater value results in the office being hijacked and converted into pieces of the propaganda engine. Over time, various individuals adjust what it means to be a journalist; how we perceive this embodiment of social conscience. On a grander scale, this social conscience has become less about giving us the truth and more about giving us something to digest, shifting from the role of truth teller to the role of entertainer. There are some individuals who have managed to develop the telling of truthful story into an art, that that is something I greatly respect.

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