THE UNTAPPED POTENTIAL OF THE MASS MEDIA

The anti-element is always able to attract the media, but the positive element hasn’t learned how to do that. And the media has a disease, which I call dis-empathitis. It’s a communicable disease. It’s a pun. The communicable disease of the communications media is that they are dead on empathy. And they communicate dis-empathy. They communicate pain, and then the people who communicate it tend to be in pain. So, the people running the media tend to think pain is more real than creativity and joy, and you get a very distorted view in the general public of what possibilities exist. 

When I say I’m a futurist, quite often people say, “What? Do you think there will be a future? I’m very pessimistic.” Well, if they came to conferences like this, and saw the millions of opportunities, that are equally real, they wouldn’t be pessimistic. They’d be angry. Why aren’t we doing this? 

So, the mass media is not doing its job of communicating the positive side of the human story. And the most important thing to do is get the word out through the mass media—and develop a mechanism of participation for everyone that turns on. Now in my own television show, I’m modeling this. And putting on potential lists like Buckminster Fuller, Norman Cousins, Marilyn Ferguson. And then people are able to write in for information on their books, tapes and local activities that they can get involved in to start right where they are unlocking their own potentials. So, we need to use the media not just to communicate but to network. And I believe that when the mass media start enabling the networking on the local level, you’ll have a mass movement.