Need the Press: The Isolated Medieval World
When my alarm sounded this morning I immediately jumped up and turned on the TV to watch the morning news. After a quick breakfast, I listened to ESPN Radio as I pedaled to the library, and, upon arrival, I immediately pulled out my computer and checked the politics section on Huffington Post. Even now, as I write this essay, I’m fighting the urge to check my RSS feed reader as the bold, red “78” (standing for 78 new blog posts) is staring at me.
With this incredible sense of connectedness to the world in my background, I am shocked by a description of the medieval world where “each hamlet was inbred, isolated, unaware of the world beyond the most familiar local landmark: a creek, or mill, or tall tree scarred by lightning.” The medieval world of isolation where “generations succeeded one another in a meaningless, timeless blur” is unfathomable to this child of the 21st century.
The clash of worlds–one without newspapers or magazines, the other with 24 hour news coverage of sports, weather, entertainment, and a plethora of other kinds–is the topic of my essay. I imagine a thought experiment comparing our news-saturated world with its radical antithesis, a medieval world of citizens in isolated villages ignorant of the great events of the world. I argue that there are both disadvantages and benefits to living in a world without news. A modern bias tempts me to levy a full-fledged condemnation of the medieval mind’s unawareness of the world outside their village; however, I want to explore a possible benefit to their newsless world.
First, the disadvantages. In a world where there are no news sources and the only pamphlets are written in Latin, a language no longer understood, each citizen is completely blind to the world outside of their own village. For the medieval citizens whose world consisted of only a few square miles, they experienced two kinds of disadvantages: reflective disadvantages and pleasure disadvantages.
The reflective disadvantages refer to the citizens’ difficulty in reflecting philosophically due to a lack of exposure to the world beyond their village. Reflecting on the lives of others is very valuable in putting one’s own beliefs and opinions about the world in proper perspective. If the village is all that a person knows, then they cannot help but accept the beliefs and opinions about the world that have been passed down to them. Contra to the modern world where diversity constantly challenges well-accepted beliefs and opinions, the medieval mind had a much more difficult time reflecting on philosophical questions if for no other reason than the dirth of intellectual options.
Additionally, there is a pleasure disadvantage for those who are not privy to news. I read the news, listen to ESPN Radio, and watch CNN because I like it. Yes, I believe that it helps a person’s ability to reflect philosophically on the world, but it is also simply a luxury that creates enjoyment and pleasure for people. Perhaps the euphoria of thinking about the news is caused by a desire to know more (in the case of a news station like NPR) or maybe it is the emotional response to witty rhetoric (ESPN Radio’s Colin Cowherd comes to mind). Whatever the cause, the medieval mind was disadvantaged in their lack of access to this form of pleasure.
The disadvantages of a lack of access to news seem so obvious that I hardly need to elucidate them. A world without news seems barbaric, primitive, perhaps even inhuman. But is it possible that a world where people are born, live, and die “never dreaming that they should be informed about great events, let alone have any voice in them” could have certain advantages over the contemporary melange of voices and opinions? One benefit of the medieval world is the concern that each citizen necessarily had for the immediate needs of their community. This can be seen especially well in light of the modern citizen’s distraction from attending to the immediate needs of our communities.
For all of its advantages, the way that I guzzle news from every source can quickly become a way of becoming distracted from actual engagement with the world. There are countless examples of people who are concerned with issues, but do little or nothing to solve the issues. In fact, some of the most politically informed citizens do the least to help fix a hot-button political issue (poverty, for example). This could be viewed as a situation where the pleasure of news outweighs the reflective benefits. This means, ironically, that news access could detach people from the world rather than causing them to be more reflective and responsible. Contra to this contemporary context, the medieval citizen could not help but be focused on their present time and surroundings. There was no virtual escape into the wider world that could detract from attention to their immediate neighbors and the immediate issues of their village–this is all that they knew. The issues that could easily become ethereal were ignored in exchange for constant attention on the present.
While the modern world is more equipped to reflect on broad philosophical issues and is privy to the pleasure of becoming individually educated on a broad number of news-related issues, this news access comes with the accompanied dangers of noise addiction and hyper-individualism. Reflecting on the historical situation of medieval citizens should inspire the contemporary Western citizen to utilize the value of news access, but to augment it with a desire to focus on the immediate needs of those around us.
