For me, living in America is a true blessing, and I am eternally grateful everyday for the life that I get to live and the freedoms I get to enjoy. Some of these freedoms encapsulate religion, speech, mobility, and trade. Unfortunately, there is one freedom that I know of that has been degraded by the media and relinquished by the populace, and that freedom is the freedom of thought. In my opinion, this freedom is of the utmost importance, as it allows individuals the ability to formulate new theories and hypotheses, and then test them in the real world. Human progression is only possible if one experiments with different societal, economic, and political views and beliefs. This experimentation will allow an individual to construct and formulate their own views, and depending on their societal experience, the beliefs may conform or disassociate themselves with those of the particular society.
Recently in my Humanities class we underwent a reading titled, “What is Enlightenment?,” by Immanuel Kant. From the outset of this work, Kant immediately addresses the idea of self thought and reflection, and he seems to be touching on the same theme that I was pondering over. He states that “Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority,” and for clarity of understanding the word “Minority is [the] inability to make use of one’s own understanding without direction from another” (Kant 17). Although using unconventional diction for our time, the basic portrayal of Kant’s argument can be interpreted in a way that emphasizes self-preservation of thought and a hint of individualism. For Kant, however, individualism could have its dramatic drawbacks. Kant explains this by detailing that clarity of thought can only be achieved if an individual is willing to emerge outside of social norms and strive forward with a defiant will to succeed. He states, “This minority is self-incurred when its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another… Have courage to make use of your own understanding! is thus the motto of enlightenment” (Kant 17). Thus reaffirming my original point, Kant states that for one to truly shed the shackles of a minority state, they must live their lives in a courageous and resolute state, which will allow them to ignore the incessant deluge of opinions thrown on them from society.
Kant’s view is completely ignored in today’s society. From personal experience, I am completely aware that there are not only many people afraid to speak their minds, but there also exists an intellectual and opinionated takeover by our news media. Because our population is so reliant on various news outlets for information regarding global events, politics, and domestic issues, there is a profound possibility for agencies that supply this information to corrupt and input bias into the minds of the populace. For example, ” About nine-in-ten U.S. adults (91%) learned about the election in the past week from at least one of 11 types of sources asked about, ranging from television to digital to radio to print” (Gottfried 1). Furthermore, only “a third (34%) of those who watch the liberal MSNBC in their homes also tune in to the conservative Fox News Channel” (Olmstead 1). There are two very important deductions that we can take away from these statistics. Firstly, from the first quote derives the fact that nearly 100% of our population is reliant on some form of media outlet to gain information about internal happenings in this country. The fact that so many people rely on a particular group can be seen as a monopolistic control mechanism, in which a news agency has the ability to feed their audience news that they want circulated, as well as opinions and statistics that help advance that agency’s agenda. Such an act is contrary to the ideas espoused by Kant, and effectively renders this particular audience as a minority, to reference Kant. Kant seems to offer an explanation for why so many people rely on news networks. He states, “It is because of laziness and cowardice that so great a part of humankind…gladly remains minors for life” (Kant 17). Because it is quite easy for us to flip on the TV or check our internet homepage, we lose our ability to do our own investigative journalism and fact checking, and therefore our opinions can be skewed based upon the sources we listen to. The second quote mentioned provides an even more startling concept.
In summary, it details that only a third of viewers of one station tune into another station that offers a different viewpoint. This reveals that there is a sizable proportion of viewers who are only seeing one side of the argument, and therefore there will exist no contrary opinions to challenge their deeply held beliefs. To grow as an individual, it is imperative that we expose ourselves to a diverse background of beliefs, instead of blindly following a news agency’s rhetoric or some other form of monopolistic idea. If we do this, it will be extremely hard for us to extract ourselves from the minority position, as Kant reveals when he states, “Thus it is difficult for any single individual to extricate himself from the minority that has become almost nature to him” (Kant 17).
(This image is supposed to representative of the control that various news outlets have asserted upon the populace. Like I mentioned before, nearly 100% of the population gets their news from a media source, but from a particular analysis on this subject only about 1/3 view different news sources in addition to their parent source. This would be particularly worrying for Kant, as he believed and was a strong proponent of freedom of thought and liberating one’s self from the state of minority. Thus, it seems that in today’s society people are controlled by a “puppeteer,” which represents the self-interested elitist media sources.)
I would like to summarize the theme of this post into a simple, yet detailed, thesis statement: In order to become an “enlightened” and informed individual in society, it is imperative for us to strive to create our own beliefs, our own identity, and our own values out of our societal experience and encounters with all matters of views, opinions, and facts. If we simply fall captive to the minority position, which effectively is a position of subservience, we will become sheep blindly following the shepherd (a monopolistic opinion or view) and will lose any and all ability to think for ourselves, which should be, and is, an inherent freedom instilled in all human beings. Try to be the brown sheep in the cover image associated with this post. He stands out from the crowd, is not ashamed, and is seemingly adamant among a crowd of “regulars” and followers who conform to the status quo. I encourage and implore you, the reader, to try this, and I will guarantee that you will experience a feeling of freedom so unrivaled and so welcoming that you will never look back, forging ahead your own life journey toward the promise of enlightenment.
Word Count- 1176
Image link- http://advisoranalyst.advisoranalystgr.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/think-for-yourself .jpg
Works Cited
Jonathan Ellett 