The Grand Illusion
How many times have you read an article or heard a commercial saying that there’s just one thing that you just HAVE to have? I suppose there are occasions where this might be true, but I suspect that’s largely an overstatement. There are certainly products that can make life easier, but in my experience, the items one has to have fall into three categories: (1) those you must have and already possess; (2) those you must have and cannot afford or cannot obtain; (3) those you need but don’t realize that you need (often until it’s too late to avoid damage, disaster, or mere inconvenience).
But beyond that, the idea that there’s just one product or service that’s vital tends to ignore a basic fact of life. Everything requires something else. Fire requires oxygen, a fuel source, and a means of ignition. For that fire to last requires a benign environment or protection from a hostile environment. Even a simple screwdriver requires the right tip to fit the screw and enough force/torque to screw or unscrew.
As a different facet of this dynamic, when a disaster occurs, too many analysts (and media pundits) immediately start searching for and speculating on what principal factor led to that disaster. Only in very rare cases does a disaster result from a single factor or failure. Often, a disaster is caused by a combination of factors, many of which may be minor in themselves, and all of which were required to cause the disaster.
But multi-factor analysis isn’t usually the strength of the media, besides which, multiple contributing causes don’t grab the headlines or draw the attention to the products of the organizations sponsoring media outlets.
So, the “one thing you have to have” and the one failure that caused the disaster will remain a staple of the news/commercial media for now… and likely for so long as money and human nature dominate news and commerce.
But, but, but – reducing everything to a soundbite is the American way! No matter how complex the issue, it can be oversimplified to the point of incomprehension! I mean, how else can you get all the clicks/mass audience? And that’s all that matters, right?
/sarcasm
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Hello, long-time reader of your work.
As someone who has worked in TV newsrooms, I have a very different take on this. In an ideal world, of course it would be nice if our public discourse were nuanced and more robust and provided detailed information on newsworthy events. But constraints on time and attention make that kind of in-depth analysis impractical. Journalists, by necessity, have to construct narratives in order to describe real-world events. The news is a “story” about what happened, not an analysis. And even the most well-meaning journalist, when forced to distill what they need to get across to an audience, will be influenced by their own perspectives. This leads many journalists down a road of trying to address or describe what they feel are the most pressing concerns in a story, reducing it to just a few, or as you put it “the one”, issue(s).
Commercialism, and the media it instigates, has no defense and doesn’t need one. They tell the truth only because it makes it harder for their consumers to spot the lies. And as our current societal environment shows, without regulation and *enforcement* it can lead to people being unsure about what is and isn’t true.
I don’t have a punchy conclusion, unfortunately. The only real protection for these problems is the understanding that no one, including yourself, is going to have easy answers. You should take hard looks at anyone who claims otherwise.