After re-reading my prior posting about the Mass(ive) Media, it got me to thinking about how I was blaming mass-media for the polarizing rift in our society. We shouldn’t be so tough on these guys. I mean the information age has also decimated traditional media outlets. We don’t really need them anymore, we get all of our news instantly on our phones, and at best only indirectly from the three-letter networks sometimes, via the three-letter agencies, or the corner newsboy (erm, news-person).
But the truth is that these schmoes got caught with their pants down and are scrambling, like many of us, just to make ends meet. It is necessary that they keep it sensational to keep the ad revenue flowing and their doors open. And what better way to keep it sensational than to promulgate opposing opinions? I noted in the prior article that necessity and the ubiquitous availability of continuous news, no longer relegated to the 7 am, noon, 5 pm, and 11 pm timeslots for thirty minutes each, has demanded that these outlets keep it fresh 24×7, with new content always in the queue. You can only repeat the dog-bites-man story so many times before the listeners/viewers stop listening and viewing.
So they have, of necessity, sashayed into more editorial positioning in order to keep up with the never-ending news cycle. But scoops are now the bailiwick of the everyman. And what keeps editorials rolling is point/counterpoint.
And with such a preponderance of opinion, in many cases, facts be damned. Keep viewers tuned by selling the sizzle, not the steak.
This is the effect of the divide, most notably in today’s left/right divide. And this keeps the revenue coming into social media in a big way. They get it; hell, they backed it in and invented it.
Red state or Blue state? States being the states of mind, not geographical locations. Stirring the pot, offering outrageous allegations with facts in absentia, is good to get people talking…hey they can always retract later. We’ve got the facts wrong, but at least we spelled the name right. Right?
The downside is that it has fractured our country. And it has not really created a left class and a right class.
If you look at it deeper, perhaps with a little more conspiracy-tainted paranoia, the dividing line is not a vertical between the left and right ideologies. Rather, it’s a horizontal line between the haves and the have-nots. The haves are the ones who are passively raking in the profits while we rabble squabble amongst ourselves. The haves are making bank while the have-nots are making enemies with each other. And the haves are happy because everyone is so busy brawling, the have-nots never see the haves steal away from behind the curtain to visit their bank vaults.
The Wizard of Oz syndrome, as it were. Keep them distracted and at each other’s throats and pay no attention to the man at the controls.
L. Frank Baum was a political visionary.
We’re not seeing the actual division lines. Why?
Because you never hear about it. You can only derive this conclusion by applying critical thought. Critical thought is impossible while being constantly bombarded by exposure to the hypnotic visual medium of television. It has been bred into our DNA over the last 70 years, where we’re in a constant alpha brain-wave state of suggestibility. It has worked for television advertisers since day one, and handily transitioned smoothly into the information age.
So the big question, then, is (time to don the tin-foil hat again):
As many fringe folks might imply, is big government holding us in a perpetual state of programmed slavery to control the masses?
One might be led to think so as well, except that our governmental bureaucracy runs so completely inefficiently, possibly because all of their worker bees are likewise infected with brain-numbing and an appalling lack of critical thinking skills.
It’s like the UFO/government secrecy thing. How can such a deep secret be held by so many thousands and thousands of people? At what point does critical mass take over and the secret is not so secret anymore?
No, and we are indeed tempted to say that it’s all about the money. Partly correct, because although passive profit is ultimately the true cause, there is a nasty side-effect to the ill-gained booty.
Marshall McLuhan thought so. And he passed away an entire decade before the birth of the internet.
McLuhan’s assertion, citing the invention of the Gutenberg press, was that any technological advancement is bound to have a significant ripple effect on all cultures. Not always to the good. It is fueled by money, of course, but the resultant cultural shift from these advances tends to make each of us specialists, in a way.
And with specialty comes diversity. With diversity and especially with the current means to express it instantly, contempt is easily bred. So we quibble and quarrel among ourselves, citing what we heard on the editorial news or the internet as gospel fact.
I don’t hold the government as suspect. I hold the Wizards behind the curtains that you never see suspect. Those wizards who are the ones who own the politicians, whose names you might never know. They who make sure to lobby to keep critical thinking skills out of the public education system, while continuing to churn out television sets hold us perpetually in a suggestible alpha-state, so that we never peer, nor even think to look behind the curtain.
It’s bad for their business. We are trained to value money and material things above all else, work hard and relax in front of the tube at the end of the day, whether it be broadcast television, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or you name it. Just for God’s sake, don’t think, or get the notion that you should look around and question anything.
The medium itself is not to blame.
Greed and general social pathology are the villains here. It is implemented by those who are wise enough to quietly use it for their own betterment exclusively. Sure, they may have endowments and charities with their names affixed to them, but that’s just throwing a bone for tax breaks.
We need to think. We need to think critically. Question everything. Follow the money. You’ll see it leads to the curtain you’re not supposed to look behind. The control is not in the hands of the government, it’s in the hands of those who own the government.
And Rome continues to burn…