Comment is Free

A Dead Newspaperman’s Perspective

by Bill Ingle

Meanwhile, here’s my (I really should qualify “my” — maybe I’ll do so later) latest missive to the Guardian in my multi-year effort to gain respectability for dead newspapermen and their on-line interactivity. This effort (possibly a bit on the Quixotic side, I admit) might also gain a measure of respectability for both Seth and trance writing, at least in some future probable realities:

The following comment is a response to the item found at http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/05/guardian-wins-three-webby-awards.

05 May 09, 7:09pm

“As well as being named best newspaper website, GNM’s website network guardian.co.uk, which includes MediaGuardian.co.uk, won the Webby for best podcasts and came out on top in the religion and spirituality category for the Comment is Free blog’s Belief subsite.”

I’m impressed. Good going, Guardian!

I’m also perpetually amused at the words “Comment is Free” from my own 1921 essay serving as the title for a section on a contemporary website.

Your time is a strange place from my perspective; there’s a degree of absurdity to the situation that reminds my newer edition of a Philip K. Dick story, too.

(I became aware of this newer edition even as he became aware of me, such that I could view this absurdity — and your strange world — through his eyes and personality.) The situation is even stranger than these words can do justice to, owing to the very distorted ideas of time, life, and death that were prevalent not just in my time but now, in this present mass reality, with its electronic media.

I’m aware that in some future probable realities the dead begin to interact much more frequently with the living, in on-line environments.

I would hope the Guardian site will gain awards for its participation in such activities as well as those areas for which it has already received recognition.

There are those who will scoff at such possibilities while others are not likely to enjoy posts and comments from bygone personalities, responding with typically nasty CiF comments to the “real-time” thoughts of, say, Churchill, Wells, George, or even Montague, Sidebottom, and others, perhaps insisting they stay dead and not interfere with the activities of the living.

In response, I’d suggest that the total human community is much larger than many realize, encompassing as it does not just the dead and the living but also those inner beings everyone is an expression of, no matter that their existence is shrouded in great ignorance; I speak of the souls of humanity.

These souls and their many dead personalities have no need for the Internet or web pages, of course; the chief advantage to expressing themselves on-line — perhaps on some future Guardian page — is the conscious interaction with the living this would enable.

This could prove to be both highly entertaining and educational for all involved parties.

Regards

C.P. Scott
Editor of the Guardian (1846 – 1932)