john76 said
In case you haven’t seen it yet, we held last month’s Biblical Studies Carnival on The Secular Frontier blog.  Check it out: ** you do not have permission to see this link **

  

Cool.  I’m not interested in all of it but I would love to see James McGrath’s work on John the B and the Mandaeans.   I guess I’ll have to wait on the pubs.

Looking at the topics in the abortion debate I have to wonder why, in this age of media saturation and instantaneous communication, it remains impossible to have a serious public conversation about anything.  

JAS said

Stephen said 

Looking at the topics in the abortion debate I have to wonder why, in this age of media saturation and instantaneous communication, it remains impossible to have a serious public conversation about anything.  

In part, I think it is impossible precisely due to that media saturation and instantaneous communication, plus social media. To a great extend, it has all made propaganda more efficient, and allowed people to stay more deeply in their own bubble. The big news organizations are all owned by corporations with business interests as their primary function. The public increasingly gets only the information that more powerful entities wish them to get . . . and what they want to get. Even many of the “grass roots” groups are little more than fronts for dark money. Movements that would actually benefit society do not seem able to get the same level of funding.

  

In times past, under the sway of “old media”, we had gatekeepers.  The problem with gatekeepers is obvious.  How are they selected and by whom?   Now we have tried the opposite experiment.  We have provided to everyone a microphone with only one setting, extra loud.  Now that we have a basis of comparison perhaps we detect the previously underappreciated virtues of gatekeeping.  The hard truth is that not everyone has something interesting to say.   It reminds me why I am an elitist*.  But it’s our own fault.  These wounds are largely self-inflicted.  Fool me once shame on you.  Fool me twice shame on me.  

*An elitist but not a snob. The difference is that a snob believes that one class of people is intrinsically, even metaphysically better than another.   An elitist believes that some people are better than others because of their accomplishments.