No meaning without other people

This book is about meaning. Probably no society has ever been more concerned with meaning than the one in which we live. Never before have so many people felt such an urge to make sense of the world they live in and of the lives they are leading. They find this sense not so much in themselves as in the discourse, which is the entirety of everything that has been said and written by the members of the discourse community to which they owe their identity. It is communication, this verbal interaction with others, which reassures them about their notions and ideas, and in which they find interpretations they can accept, rework or reject, and in which they can recognise themselves.

In principle, everyone has a voice in the discourse. But in reality we find that our modern society is neatly divided into those who are commissioned to produce texts for the media and the rest of us who consume them. While each of us may say whatever we want, it seems to carry less weight than what we are told by the discourse we find on the shelves of our content merchants: newspapers, magazines, television, much of the web, NHS brochures and similar pamphlets issued by our authorities, instruction manuals and even those old-fashioned things called books. Secondary experiences supplied by the media have taken over the role that a person's own experiences and those of their friends and neighbours had for former generations.