The Voice of the People ... or at least my own

April 29, 2002

Cohesion For me, the world's most pressing problem, is the search for cohesion and togetherness. The forces of visual electronic media have unleashed changes over the last 100 years that are not different than those of environmental and societal changes caused by war and/or disease. These forces have dramatized social interaction beyond subconsciousness, creating interconnected neurotic insecurities by offering massive waves of life by the minute to put into deep storage reference. They have broadcast 5 second gossip "bites" into trivial weightlessness so that the minds of participants are welded with unanalyzed phrases. And by causing an observer to become entranced (for whatever reason) these forces render our thought processes unimportant. Notice I didn't say "non-existent." The essence of the human mind is the automatic creation of thoughts. We are supposed to be inherently aware of our immediate environment. What television does however is train us to stop thinking. We are trained to "listen" and "imbibe" rapid fire sounds and fleeting images. Since the mind responds at a subconscious level, we come to watch so much that we "get used to it." We come to accept statements and pictures without wondering or even considering their origins. We become submerged in a consumer ethos, an icon swimming in a sea of "big deals" and golly-gee fashion models trying to be cool and live the life just like a melange of one million advertisements. This experience is not a harmless facade because every piece of the electronic media is penetrated with commercialism, even the sanctity of the truth we call news. A Baptist minister would say, "You cannot save the devil. Don't let him into your house." The dissolution of the community begins with withdrawal of societies individuals into self-created techno-worlds. The recent hegemony of the electronic network has a multiple of social and political implications, and we will have to recognize this reality. A society that calls itself a democracy will evolve into slavery when the individuals of the democracy lose responsibility for inter-communication. Tyranny will arise if you sit at home pampered by the mega-billion media conglomerates version of reality brought to you by mannequins in nice clothes who read off scrolls. We will lose our voice as a people, because our freedoms will become replaced by the rule of law. The next 100 years will be a challenge for ourselves as a nation and as individuals. I say this because the nature of mankind's relationship with technology and machinery is evolving new ways to interact with people. Ideas of leisure and the means with which we go about our lives, the materials we use, the books we read, the nature of our conversations, the philosophies we are exposed to, the very images that course through our minds are more influenced by electronic parades created by well-funded organizations. The very word "entertainment" is misleading since this accepted experience of everyday normal people occurs when regarding a static replay-able capture of life that has been rehearsed and edited. Time itself has been denuded. Every day is compartmentalized into impermeable slices called seconds which are added together in groups of 60 to create what are called minutes. At each node in this sequential arrangement a moment exists at every spot in the world to be recorded as audio and video. Yet how can the "nightly news" effectively portray the lump sum of the world's nodes in any 24 hour period? There is no conspiracy, but the result is still the same. Now for the crescendo .... do you hear it? Let me plug in the CD player. Eroding the communal ethos leaves a huge void that becomes filled with the speeches, dramas, and romances of sit-com-hollywood-super video cam USA [insert laugh track here.] What does this mean to life in such a manufactured society ? Certainly we will be challenged on how to identify ourselves separately from the impressions formed in our mind by pundits, actors, and actresses whom we will never meet. Our logic may become reversed so that we will be tempted to gain acceptance by repetition, and understand success in terms of acquisition. But the greatest challenge for any society is the ability of that society to make decisions. How will the social traditions of our society be challenged by an economic order which posits rampant consumerism above community? If a people are weaned and bred on ignorance and lies, what possibilities exist for political change when our country needs it most ? If the people are angry, resentful, and afraid ... how will we respond when our awareness is convoluted with deception? We live in interesting times.