Who's Your Daddy? Er... Uhm... I Mean, Who's Your Source?

Damn well nigh unto impossible to know the world, our self, existence, truth, meaning beyond any and all mediation. Even if it weren't for the hyper-media-infested age that we live in we would still experience mediation in the form of stories, parables, and legends passed from generation to generation. No TV? Then one would probably still be sitting on Grandma and Grandpa's lap, listening to the tall-tales, being told the origin myths--discovering right from wrong.

Much of what we come to discover about existence--the Whole Shebang, if you will--is through some form of mediation. In business, one calls it 'word of mouth.' That is how the shit travels fastest--whether good or bad, pro or con, thumbs up or thumbs down.

So if we can't prevent a certain degree of mediation, if we have it for good or for ill, then it seems to me that we need to keep in mind a few select points that will help our mediated existence work for us rather than against us. Foremost, one has to keep in mind an principle that is well known in 12-step groups around the world. Whether AA or NA, Al-anon or Sex Addicts Anonymous there is a constant reminder to 'Know the source.'

Where is the information coming from? Who is the source?

In other words, would you take nutritional advice from someone morbidly obese? Would you take financial advice from someone who just went through bankruptcy proceedings? Is the source of the information legitimate? Is that source trustworthy? Is that source reliable? Is that source someone you can trust to mediate existence for you?

My own personal gut feeling is that a question as to the 'mediated vs. unmediated existence' obscures the larger question of determining the value, integrity, reliability, and sincerity of those sources of mediation that we simply cannot live apart from. We are going to have sources of mediation (schoolteachers, preachers, mentors, parents, grandparents, politicians, journalists, authours, artists), period. Which means that the question surrounding mediation ought to be 'about the nature and motives of what is being mediated, as well as who is meditating,' rather than is there a 'mediation-free zone' we can somehow attain.

So if everyone is, in a way, a media-outlet, then the matter of affiliating and tuning into those media-outlets that we know to have a track-record of trustworthiness, honesty, integrity, truthfulness, and even an ability to report all sides of a story (which is a huge feat for a single person!), becomes a matter of our own well-being. In both a practical sense and a psychological one it is important to know who we are 'tuning in' to. Cause if we tune into crap... then by George that is what we will get, crap.