A few people have asked me what I mean by “Mediate Yourself” — see previous post.

Most of us are almost totally mediated by “the media”. We obtain our views, much of our knowledge, and virtually all of our obsessions from these rich sources.

The result is a kind of addiction by which we become dependent on being fed experiences we should be getting from real life. The media’s lack of actuality is its unique selling point. It allows us to stand back from life’s messier aspects, while getting a taste of them via the media. The blackside is that this lack of actuality means young people don’t learn the lessons of bad decisions, like criminality and violence, until it’s too late.

The obvious question then arises: who mediates the media? The answer is, in almost all cases, the zealots.

Zealots have a long history. You may remember them from the New Testament, or any other ancient and modern text. Whatever the purpose, there is always zealotry in the background. Smart readers may quickly spot that these very texts were often written by other zealots masquerading as friends of humanity. Who else but zealots would go to all that trouble?

Far from history being driven by “the economy, stupid”, as the Marxist zealots insist, it is in fact powered by all manner of zealousness. Jihadist zealotry, for example, is not conspicuously driven by money.

Now, there is nothing wrong with some elements of zeal per se. Without enthusiasm there would be no progress, and probably no fun either. But we must distinguish between zealotry and enthusiasm. The latter is harmless, the former has an unbreakable intent and a belief in their mental construct, often the fashionable assumptions of the age.

Since the media — especially television — will not tolerate anyone who is dull or uninteresting, the zealots have a head start in the race to be media performers, and even controllers of the pipes.

So we are mediated by the media, which in turn is mediated by various species of zealot.

That brings us on to what a zealot does and why zealotry is bad for us.

Zealots take hold of the unmediated, infinitely variable, analog nature of existence and pull out a range of simplistic propositions, like magicians with a hat, which, they say, represent the truth of the world. Being zealots, any opposition will not be tolerated.

For example, the present Western zealotry can be summed up in a few words and phrases: “carbon footprint”, “sustainability”, “global warming”, “climate change”. The drama of disaster movies is their weapon of choice. Fear is their stock in trade. Mediocrity and conformity the result.

Zealots of the Roman Empire turned the practical and spiritual Jesus story into the all-pervasive controlling orthodoxy of the Middle Ages — the first real totalitarianism. That zeal is still with us and has spread to other religions. Thus religion has become the possession of zealots the world over.

In politics, the “natural philosophy” of Edmund Burke, which once characterized England and the common law countries, has been transformed into the iron-girder prescriptiveness of “human rights” and the equality agenda, among many other humanmade straitjackets we have to tolerate. These are vigorously underpinned by the tyranny of statute law and various “international” institutions notorious for their bleak influence and ineffectiveness.

Zealots rule. They mediate us from their positions in the media, religion, politics, education and much of current discourse. Of course, truth eventually surfaces again, but there’s no respite. They are quickly replaced by counter-zealots who deliver fresh dollops of anxiety and suspicion.

There is no such thing as a sustainable zealotry. They last just long enough to do their damage before being overtaken by other merchants of zeal. Worse, many hide their sense of entitlement behind a benevolent front.

In the age of an overwhelmingly powerful media, we must learn to mediate ourselves or become the slaves of zealotry and mediocrity. Or might that be “mediacrity”?

Mediate Yourself — Stand Out From The Crowd, by John Evans, will be published within the next 12 months.