Contempt for the not so perfect or rising like a Phoenix from the Ashes…

The Swedish journalist Dan Josefsson writes in the article "’Debatt’ ska inte bygga på verbalt underhållningsvåld” or ”Debate shall not be built on verbal warnography” about:

“The knotty problem is how you make as many people as possible interested in watching a [TV-] programme not built on verbal warnography or populist contempt for knowledge and where the guests are treated with respect even if they aren’t communicating with cogent one-liners.”

This triggered other thoughts on a more personal level (as a one that works a lot and thus have limited time polishing my expressions up and am one who studied English a long time ago, but want to express things and share it with friends over the world who aren't Swedish speaking):

Yes, people have the right to express themselves with the language and the words they have - even if it isn’t perfect! Or even if they don't express themselves as well as a Nobel prize winner.

How many people haven’t become silenced when it comes to expressing themselves in both written and spoken words? Maybe in a similar manner as many have become stunted when it comes to music, something I as music teacher and my colleagues have heard many times! Quite ironically.

Something quite horrible especially when it has been shown how important narrating can be!

Maybe people need to become encouraged instead, as I and my colleagues are trying to (I hope) with our students!?

And if you don't get the opportunity to train how can you, or are you supposed to, develop skills in any area, respect?

Is it the belief that you just rise like a Phoenix from the Ashes, from nothing, in a similar way (with the underlying, maybe not conscious belief) as many of us were treated by an impatient parent? With demands on perfection and that the child should manage everything at once? Perfectly and like a grown up (or even better!). Even in cases when the child managed things (way) above average!?

PS. Josefsson also writes about "Black-and-white pictures in the media about the tsunami."

Individualism, competition, escapism...

[Slightly updated/edited January 12]. The American director Courtney Hunt in an interview about her film ”Frozen River” said something in the style that:

“The big companies think stories like this one are too depressing. Instead products are produced attracting a big audience. Seen to what sort of films that sell best the American movie visitor prefer warnography rather than realistic descriptions of life, especially if they have a gloomy note.

There’s a strong movement of individualism; that we are all separate isles who can manage without ever asking each other or the authorities for help [False Power – denial of needs?]. I think we are going to become over flown with detached fiction, by the fantasy’s escapism.

It sounds hard, but I welcome an economic crisis. I hope it will give us a necessary understanding. It isn’t worth aiming at becoming rich to whatever prize and with all means, and it isn’t shameful being poor.”

Loud thinking: Does it has to be either/or? Can we be both individuals AND cooperate? Can we be both independent AND dependent? Can we be needing and other times not needing? Sometimes strong and other times weak? Does the one exclude the other? And if it does, why does it? Where are the roots?

Is this about contempt for weakness? Looking down on and despising weakness? Looking down on the not so perfect? What is perfectionism about?

Addition: See Miller on societal denial and traditional moral. And the reader's letter on her web stating that all physicians have been traumatized, first by their first caregivers and then during their education... Why they have reached this goal (this profession, with all which follows with it)...

I get so upset over the state of the affairs in the world and not least in our society so I don't find words, neither spoken nor written!!! But I write and talk nevertheless, though many times with blushing cheeks, over my language... Not over things like swearwords though, but over how I express things, and don't find the proper words or expressions...