the american reality is so...meta!

I've been fascinated by the cultural changes that have happened in America (and Canada) since 9/11. What has occurred is nothing short of a radical transformation in the way that people see the world.

Look at the media first: We've seen the continued radicalization of the punditry, in concert with the divide in the political landscape in general. We've seen the emergence of the blogosphere and instant news via the internet. We've seen the emergence of satire as a dominant form, evidenced by the popularity of Jon Stewart, the Colbert Report, the Onion, Ali G, and Jiminy Glick (to include a Canadian example).

Tastes of media consumers have changed, certainly. The popularity of satire demonstrates the need for political awareness in entertainment. The continued popularity of loud, obnoxious pundits similarly demonstrates the awareness of the public and the desire to make judgments on current events, if not thorough analysis. Indeed these examples demonstrate the blurring of the line between entertainment and news, and reminds us that "everything is political".

The effect is that the public is being trained quick quickly to view the world with a critical eye. Indeed I believe that an awakening of sorts has occurred since 9/11, and not simply because of the shock that single event had on a deeply disturbed populace. The events that followed, including all of the technological advances, and the transformation of the media all account for a public that views the world in a more sophisticated manner. Pattern recognition. Meta-information.

We listen to the pundits because they say what we're all thinking but aren't smart enough to say. Of course, often they are wrong, and we are wrong as a consequence, but the fact remains that the public has neither the time nor resources to sift through the barrage of information we are all subjected to. We no longer view the world through the same lens we did 10 years ago.

At the same time as we have become separated from reality by massive amounts of meta-information, we have become separated from other groups of people. The information I consume is entirely different than that viewed by a conservative Christian in Georgia. How possibly could we reconcile our worldviews when such a divide exists?