You know, I’ve been thinking for a while about a blog topic. About what I wanted to write about, that I felt passionately about, that I really wanted to have a say on.
It’s not easy, though, to find something that I feel passionately about, for good or for bad. I spend most of my life trying not to feel so strongly about things because I have a very all-or-nothing personality. If I focus on all the bad things that upset me about, say, video games, then it will upset me and I’ll feel very disenfranchised. This is obviously a negative thing.
But for me, the opposite is true too. I can’t become to positively passionate about something, because it will consume me. I’ll become blind to faults, and not question my viewpoints on it as much as I like.
And so I remain in the middling ground. I try to remain fairly low key and contented, and because of that, my life is rather, well, mundane. Not much of excitement happens because each day is filled with contentment and happiness in small or large doses.
In my prior blogs, I’ve tried to reflect this. To demonstrate a middle ground of social thinking and awareness that doesn’t take being angry or upset or overly passionate to discuss or think about.
I’ve ended a lot of my posts by saying things like “so we’re on the road of improvement, and we’re getting better over time,” which is hardly an overly strong opinion to have in terms of the amount of passion involved.
For me, though, this line of thinking saves my life. It keeps me level and content and optimistic about the future of the things that I enjoy such as games, and movies, and other forms of media. People get so bogged down with all the bad things happening, the racism and sexism and issues of equality and presentation and how to handle sensitive topics in different venues of media, but there’s been so much improvement over time.
Progress isn’t a linear scale, and just because there’s some examples we could point to where certain developers or directors created something bigoted or hateful or hurtful, it doesn’t mean things are getting worse.
People are improving. They’re becoming exposed to more ideas, and never before has there been a generation that has been able to access the amount of different ideas that we have. We are connected to a variety of world views, cultures, religions, sexual orientations, and races in a way that previous generations have not.
One of the best way to open people’s minds are exposure to diversity. It’s easy for some people to hate someone of a certain group, but once they’re exposed to individuals belonging to that group, it’s a lot harder to hold them to this stereotype of what they ‘should’ be.
This progress is coming. There are many people in the media now of a variety of colours, races, cultures, genders, orientations, identifications.
We’re getting there, we’re headed towards a more diverse and open minded society which will be reflected in the media we consume. Positively contributing to this in small and large ways will help that progress along. Don’t get discouraged by bumps in the road – they’re only bumps.
