John Mappin - the Contagion of Hope


John Mappin with David Carradine
As readers of my articles have probably guessed by now, I am a big admirer of newspaper baron-with-a-difference John Mappin.
As I pointed out elsewhere, Mr Mappin may well be the first of a new breed of media baron to influence the international media - those who take their responsibilities to the society around them seriously and seek to elevate it rather than cash in on - and thus compound - its miseries and insecurities.
There is no law after all that says a newspaper baron has to be a doomsayer, defamer of humankind or distributor of despair. In fact, except that they make money for such persons, whose luridly-headlined newspapers the public purchase out of a sense of alarm, doing so is a somewhat turgid and pointless exercise.
This sense of obligation and duty towards the society extends beyond newspaper publishing, for at Camelot Castle, John Mappin, his wife Irina Mappin and their friend and colleague, the renowned artist Ted Stourton, undertake to assist the artists, great minds and cultural icons of tomorrow.
Great cultures do not sort of just happen or spring spontaneously into being. They are the products of human beings, their tone, disposition, dreams and achievements are forged by the ideas, motivations and hard work of human beings.
High ideals, honesty and a sense of love for one's fellows, where they hold sway, produce high and worthy cultures.
Equally, where the avaricious, cruel, selfish and mean of spirit are allowed by the rest of us to become ascendant and to dictate social policies, we all wind up ensared in societies that are... well, avaricious,cruel, selfish and mean of spirit. And they can make our lives a pervasively unpleasant ordeal.
It is for these reasons I applaud John Mappin's effort to bring some hope and positive thinking to the media, which in a drive to make money for itself or its avaricious symbiotes, so often seeks to profit from the spreading of alarm and despair, the fixation of our attention on the bad.
I applaud JohnMappin too for his effort to get us to see the rightnesses in ourselves and others and for daring us to dream. And he does this despite being pilloried and defamed by those who whisper sniggering invective from their dark and squalid corners.
If a man can be said to be as alive as he is able to dream, then John Mappin is very much alive and so, as if by a benign contagion borne by the written word, are so many more of us.
Perhaps even now something vibrant can be reborn from the cooling embers of a culture driven, not fallen to decline.
It will if John Mappin and his many friends have anything to do with it, for all rising cultures have their prophets of hope.
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