Our exposure, through media, to what I will call ‘generalized others’ is profoundly deceptive and disorienting. It caters to fears, biases, and, over time, produces expectations or evaluations of ‘what people are like’ (in general).

There are forests of problems with the processes and habits that produce these results, but I want to mention a few specific issues that would probably be beneficial to anyone who is interested in gaining a clearer perspective.

The vast field of other humans is not like what we are shown in media, and the limited and intentionally distorted perspectives projected by much of modern media have vastly smaller populations associated with them than we are led to imagine. What media usually shows us is an image of ‘the worst common denominator’ not of people, or humans, but some specifically selected group(s) or cohort.

Humanity is an astonishingly broad field of persons across every age and ethnicity. The intentional selection of the worst actors for the purposes of acquiring and mediating our attention is a symptom of a disease that tells us little or nothing about humans in general, but it tells us a great deal about the priorities of media companies.

The simplest take-away is this: don’t take the ‘worst common denominator’ that news creates as indicative of the thinking, behavior or humanity of people in general. The fact that there may be relatively broad cohorts of racists and other arrogantly self-aggrandizing people is not indicative of what the general population is like, actually cares about, or is doing. Though there may be exceptions, it’s important to imagine humans as a topology or field rather than a single derived quality or behavior.

In the field of human existence, there are high mountains of actual excellence, and low valleys of vulnerability and ignorance. But the field itself is extremely complex, and never really resembles the crude derivations that media serves up in order to hook, divide, and deceive us.

Always remain aware that when someone else is adjusting the focus, scope and perspective of our view on distant situations and persons… they’re nearly never doing this for our benefit. Rather, they have some other agenda. This usually involves profit, overt manipulation, and intentional deception.

Resist the urge to collapse your idea of humans, or even Americans… into the cohorts who behave least intelligently or humanely. Yes, there are populations who are ignorant or hateful, and some of them are strident. But if we actually looked at people in general, we would find great diversity, care, humanity… and some confusion as well.

When presented with an image of the worst common denominator, it’s a good time to remind each other that this image is constructed on purpose, and isn’t actually much like people in general. In fact… there are no people in general. It’s a concept, and one too easily used to occlude, rather than reveal… the actual depth and diversity of our human nature and experience.