Joe Bageant’s recent piece, Escape from the Zombie Food Court, is a classic. He clearly and concisely dismisses the notion that our lives are lived in anything resembling freedom. The corporate media and their primary brainwashing device, television, have taken care of that:
“TV regulates holiday marketing opportunities and the national neurological seasons. It tells us, ‘It’s Christmas! Time to shop!. Or .it’s election season, time to vote.’ Or ‘it’s football season, let us rally passions and buy beer and cheer.’ Or that America’s major deity, ‘The Economy,’ is suffering badly. ‘Sacred temples on Wall Street make great sickness upon the land!’ Or most ominous of all, ‘It’s time to make war! Again.’
It is fair to say that television and the American culture are the same thing. More than any other factor, it is the glue of society and the mediator of our experience. American culture is stone cold dead without it. If all the TVs in America went black, so would most of America’s collective consciousness and knowledge. Because corporate media have replaced nearly all other previous forms of accumulated knowledge.
The media have colonized our inner lives like a virus. The virus is not going away. This commoditization of our human consciousness is probably the most astounding, most chilling accomplishment of American capitalist culture.”
It’s a relatively long piece of excellent, humorous, and insightful writing based on a series of talks Bageant delivered on a recent trip back to this country from his home in Belize. It’s well worth the time, in part because the mind-fuck of Americans continues. Consider, for example, the latest “news” from the big banks: “JPMorgan and Wells Fargo play up an obscure measure of their profitability to show how strong they are.” But, of course, they’re not. Surging credit losses suggest another wave of real estate defaults is rapidly gathering strength, this time in the commercial sector. We’re not even close to the bottom of the collapse in residential real estate (as even the New York Times admits), and already nature is taking back subdivisions in Florida.
We’re at the leading edge of the mother of all economic crises, and the business and political elite are still flying blind. Fortunately, it’s becoming increasingly clear the economic collapse will be complete this year, with the worst (for industrial humans), and the best (for everybody else on this planet), coming shortly thereafter.
The International Monetary Fund, late as always to the party, finally is warning about parallels between the current economic situation and the Great Depression. But there’s no political solution, and the U.S. Treasury and financial regulators cannot even decide how much bad news to release, or how to release it. Meanwhile, Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke are trying to inflate the U.S. economy with hot air. It’ll probably work for a while, if only because the ongoing sucker rally on Wall Street has pacified the sheeple at the television trough.
How long with the smoke and mirrors work? I’d guess the economic wheels will start coming off shortly after the Memorial Day weekend, coincident with the summer “driving” season and in anticipation of another round of disastrous “profit” reports.
April 18th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Guy –
The mesmirization of the masses through television is a fait accompli. People believe what they see and hear on CNN and Fox News and even the left wingers, who above all should be questioning authority are being suckered into submission by a confident president who keeps telling them he is on their side and working for their best interests. Oh, but if it were true!
But there is an additional component to this that I have never heard anyone comment on before, and I would like to introduce a new term. The term is “digital massage” and it explains why Facebook and YouTube and all these digital, web-based communications tools are so popular with the latest generations of teens andtwnty-somethings. In the 1950′s and 1960′s, as television emerged as an information and entertainment massage device for the masses, many a kid’s ultimate ambition was to get on television on the Mickey Mouse Club, a Disney special, or local programming. Some of our current young rock icons such as Justin Timberlake and Brittney Spears, among others, were Mickey Mouse Club participants who started very young and have forged careers in professional entertainment.
Now, though, anyone and everyone can be a media star! Just post some photos of yourself and your friends on a digital site and you have become like Brittney and Justin! Better yet, you can gossip and communicate and build networks and even sell stuff if you become popular. The call girl who was made famous by her trysts with former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer used that notoriety to sell over a million copies of her music.
This digital massage has begun affected politics in a profound way. Viral advertising boosted Barack Obama once the young digitally affluent generation became enthused at his message. And professional marketers and network strategists used the influence of this digitial media to ergize and catalyze a feel-good message in a way very similar to the way Ronald Reagan and his marketing team utilized older media a generation earlier.
The difference between Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama is less about philosophy than about technology. Reagan was of the age of movies and television and Barack Obama has kept those technologies and added digital technology in a huge way. Both used feel-good approaches to manipulate false or misleading impressions of what the candidates actually were offering the public. Reagan offered union busting and tax breaks for the rich, while Obama offers bailouts for billionaires and a disappearing act for pensions of workers of the industrial age of America.
And as long as it feels good, the happily manipulated generation of kids who adore seeing themselves on a computer screen worry little about the crumbling infrastructure all around them, the disappearing global endowment of petroleum fuels, and only barely do they grasp the debt slavery that awaits them even as Obama commits them to debt obligations that will be impossible to ever repay.
But as I have said in the past, reality has a way of intervening, and it will because it must.
And since Obama is not likely to start telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in the midst of collapse, all he will be able to do is to tell Americans that they are in danger and must all organize for defense and hope to survive the onslaught of the cave-dwellers and the mighty enemies who put us at mortal risk even though we outspend them on military hardware by the tune of a billion to one. It seems a shame that God would put such a burden on America when we are, after all, a good and a decent people who only try to do right by the world at large.
The fun part of the Obama administration is about over. As Alex Cockburn pointed out, Obama is skating on very thin ice and the climate is doing nothing but getting warmer by the day.
Unfortunately, the worst is still yet to come. The recovery has not begun to occur and the recovery expected by many can never occur. And I would venture to say that within the year a lot of jubilant young Democrats and lovers of technology will begin to wonder why all of a sudden things have gotten so awful and why even the mighty Obama seems to have his hands tied in bringing about change they can count on and believe in.
April 18th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Thanks for the insightful comment, Stan. For those of you who care about life on this planet, Stan Moore has an excellent blog dedicated to the biology of raptors. You can view it here.
April 19th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Just left a message on Our Stan’s voice mail as his telephone number is on his web site.Thought it would be interesting to see what he sounded like.Will report back if I hear from him.There is a real danger in not using a pseudonym on line.I wouldn’t do it anywhere else.With some ,such as Total Turboguy it’s an absolute neccesity.
April 19th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
More symptoms of an incurably sick society.
Hi Guy –
The Joe Bageant article/speech reflects several issues that I have been dwelling on in my mind. In continuation of the points I posted yesterday, I would like to continue a bit –
The power of media is best known to those who long ago figured out how to use it to influence public opinion. Radio was an early form of public media, and long before the citizenry had televisions in every room, families would gather in the living rooms of their homes in the evening to hear “Fireside Chats” by the President, explaining the state of the world, why war was necessary, why total war involving public sacrifice and mobilization of the entire national economy towards war aims, etc.
Movies were great for entertainment, but pretty quickly newsreels shown at movie theaters also interjected the politics of how loose lips sink ships, combined with “public service announcement” such as Smokey Bear telling people how only they can prevent forest fires (while adding to fuel loads and increasingly future likelihood of catastrophic fires when they did occur and get out of control compared with smaller, natural, patchy fires).
Television became ubuiquitous and provided entertainment, news, emergence of the science of news-spin and the “pundit” class of “journalism”. And equally telling, the television became the one-eyed baby-sitter that captured the attention of infants to young adults, plying them with social consciousness, consumer habits, and a guided worldview unique to America that totally ignored realities seen in every other country about the effects of war, the terror of imperialism, the injustices associated with colonialism, and so forth. Children received their social imprinting via television, including programming on how to think, how to understand their place in the world, how important it was to consume, consume, consume, and how to go along with “the program”.
Coincidentally, I have noticed in the past few years how public libraries have become part of the process of child molding. My mother taught me to read long before I entered kindergarten, and so when I went to the library, it was to check out a book or two. Nowadays, even tiny infants are brought to the library, and they are not there to learn how to think. They are there to be entertained. Instead of being taught to read (and begin thinking and critical thinking) at an early age, little children are read to as entertainment. Singers and entertainers book rooms at the public library to sink for the children in whole rooms full of delirious consumers of “edu-tainment” and I see this affecting the mentality of children as they become adults. In California, the entertainment mentality is ubiquitous across the world of retail sales and consumerism. Clerks at retail stores and waitresses at restaurants not only facilitate sales, but they do so with drama and extreme commercial friendliness, and a big show is made of asking about the welfare of the customer, creating a feel good experience that overrides sensible thought. Feel good consumers think less about needs and seek to satisfy manipulated wants and they are trained to do so from infancy.
Now, though, we are in a new era with a new generation of youth, raised on the one-eyed monsters that are no longer confined to living rooms. In fact, families hardly gather together for meals, much less family-oriented evening get-togethers. The televisions are portable (inbedded in hand-held devices) such as I Pods, I Phones, Blackberries, and laptops. Networking is more likely to be with friends in the ether rather than family members dispersed across the landscape sleep under a common roof for a few hours per night.
And the whole shebang is focused on a world of make-believe. It is a culture of make-believe, as Derrick Jensen revealed. Yes, there are problems, but technology offers the solutions, according to those selling yet more technology. The world is one, according to those selling wireless communications, which sprang from research into wireless warfare, which allows Air Force personnel in Las Vegas to commute to their military workstations during the day, while they pilot bombing missions of drone aircraft over Afghanistan, returning home to eat dinner at night and hopefully catching a glimpse at the lives of their very busy children.
Little attention is given to the ecology of the planet. There are professionals in the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency who take care of those concerns. The important thing is to grow the economy and pay for more good results so that we can be prosperous and everyone can be happy. Even the Palestinians could have happiness if they would just give up terrorism. And the Iraqis would be best off if they would just take responsibility for their own affairs so that we could stop killing them and occupying their land with American soldiers who just want to go home.
The manipulations of the one-eyed monsters who our society desperately needs to be weaned from are profound and highly desired by those who are imprinted on them. Young folks are increasingly ambivilent towards wild nature. It seems better to leave crisis
handling to the “experts” whose jobs depend on them not acting effectively. An expert like Guy McPherson who rocks the boat finds really quickly that his seat is not guaranteed and that his presence is disruptive and unwelcome.
A society with this sort of sickness cannot survive indefinitely. And guess what — it will not. The crises have been building for decades and the birth pangs of tragedy are getting closer and closer in temporal spacing, and more severe in intensity.
And it is all completely engineered into the complexity of the system. The United States of America will prove to be the culmination of a human experiment that failed and the U.S. will lead the world to tragedy before equilibrium with our planet is reached.
A planet in equilibrium will probably not hold a mass market for YouTube or Facebook. So enjoy it now while you can. On the other hand, some valuable survival information might reach a few if some of Guy’s students launch survival pages with tips on how to harvest water from the desert or that sort of thing.
But I wonder what Barack Obama is telling his young daughters about their future in a world he is in a position to influence right now…
April 19th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
We have a huge great horned owl,two Harris Hawks,Mocking birds (endlessly fascinating),many coyotes,too many rabbits,many species of birds,ghekos(I need spell check)in my neighborhood.We used to get Javelinas,until some fools had to put up fences for their dogs,which kept them from coming up from the dry river bottom.The
Sonoran desert is beautiful.
April 19th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
“Coincidentally, I have noticed in the past few years how public libraries have become part of the process of child molding. My mother taught me to read long before I entered kindergarten, and so when I went to the library, it was to check out a book or two. Nowadays, even tiny infants are brought to the library, and they are not there to learn how to think. They are there to be entertained. Instead of being taught to read (and begin thinking and critical thinking) at an early age, little children are read to as entertainment. Singers and entertainers book rooms at the public library to sink for the children in whole rooms full of delirious consumers of “edu-tainment” and I see this affecting the mentality of children as they become adults.”
Blah. We spend a lot of time at the library ourselves, and I have to say, I’ve experienced far more diversity there than your tut-tutting would suggest. The kids, and I, have participated in classes, discussion groups, and yes even a little entertainment. Every other night we read about history and my eldest son has grown quite fond of a series of biographical books on notable philosophers, scientists, and artists.
Sure, there are plenty of idiots in the world, but good grief. There are still many good people (particularly in libraries and other areas devoted to learning) who are fighting the good fight. Granted, they are a minority (look at history–they usually are)…but they’re there nonetheless.
April 19th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
‘linear narratives and other absurdities’
.
All politicians are slaves to special interest groups.
It would be naive to think otherwise.
Obama was seen as a saviour, and now everyone is disappointed
somewhat with his performance. This sounds a little theatrical
to me, it wont be long before he is demonised in some way.
Obama knows whats going on, seriously whats he going to do?
He is a puppet, all politicians clip their words, ethics, conscience
and thoughts. keep the party going just another quarter.
Your post Guy reminds me of Nassim Talebs ‘Black Swan’.
(I suggests you all read it, particularly the chapter
on the statisticians delusion the GIF – ‘great intellectual fraud’
- ie the bell curve).
On that note, peak oil may not be a ‘black swan’, however the ‘black swans’
will be the ‘unkown unknowns’ that create inumerable opportunities, innovations and negative consequences and descructiveness. He discusses the pricinples of uncertainty, unpredictability and randomness. He has given intellectual riguer to my fracas
with our resident poetic migratory ‘twitcher’ on the problems with prediction.
Who would of thought the price of oil would fall to $31, and hover at $50 for several
months. The auto and airline industries world wide are suffering. China and India
are going to start flogging an EV. China is spending its SWF on commodities at bargain prices – particularly on shitloads of copper since december. Who predicted that the oil price would stay so low as to affect oil production investment and infrastructure maintenance.
As Buffet says the cure for low prices is low prices, we will no doubt hit a supply
wall very soon, if the econonmy picks up – hard to imagine with the amount of debt we have.
He also suggests that the newspapers, TV and blogs (excluding this blog of course*)
are sources of unknowledge. He avoids them. Better to have an ‘unread’ section in
your personal library. He describes himself as a flaneur, and suggests
that we all should avoid/be wary of experts, financial advisors, economists, predictions and other narrative fallacies.
*What is unique about this blog, is the diversity of opinion (I try),
and Guys falilibilty, (I agree with about 90% of what he says
the bicycle flaneur
April 20th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Dear Guy –
There is a pretty good essay today on ecological ignorance as it relates to economics at the following link:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/20-6
I like the points about collapse and regeneration and the example of fire. Natural wildfires are part of healthy ecosystems and healthy ecosystems have different burn regimes that are appropriate to their structures and components. Our man-made systems, such as national and international economies are structured to artificially succeed despite overgrowth, decadence, and lack of fitness, such as recent bailouts of failed securities and investment institutions have displayed.
Government interventions, such as effective anti-trust regulations should be the equivalent of pruning or controlled burns that remove excess or unfit components and allow healthy regeneration to take place.
Nothing should be too big to fail. If it is too big to fail, it is too big, period. That includes empires and it surely includes investment banks.
And some really smart fellow pointed out that nature bats last.
April 20th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
How is television different than any other medium of communication? Before television there were movies. I am imprudent for believing Bogart was beginning a beautiful relationship. But then there was radio. Damn Orson Welles for portraying the end of the world. Perhaps we should go one step previous with newspapers? The founding fathers put out what we would consider advertisements in newspapers to get Americans to read the federalist papers, which advocated for the ratification of the new constitution. Those foolish 18th century “sheeple” Americans lured into ratifying the constitution by the media elite. I can think of one good book that is followed, to various degrees, by a billion or more people. I’ll refrain from breaking the 3rd commandment, there could be small children reading. I suggest we damn the screwdriver for not being a hammer, and the hammer for not being a tree.
April 20th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Chris — Well, for one thing, your brain waves actually change when you watch the opiate of the masses, which is quite unlike what happens when you read a brochure: “If you experience “mind fog” after watching television, you are not alone. Studies have shown that watching television induces low alpha waves in the human brain. Alpha waves are brainwaves between 8 to 12 HZ. and are commonly associated with relaxed meditative states as well as brain states associated with suggestibility.”
April 20th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
also, there is this noton of the ‘toxicity of knowledge’
and the error of specificity.
quote from Bageant
‘corporate media have replaced nearly all other previous forms of accumulated knowledge.
Especially the ancient forms, such as contemplation of the natural world, study and care of the soul. And I do not mean soul in the religious sense either. I mean the deeper self, the one you go to sleep with every night.’ nice!
April 21st, 2009 at 9:41 am
I am contemplating my navel at the present time.
April 21st, 2009 at 9:43 am
Looks like Frank needs an account at twitter
April 21st, 2009 at 11:40 am
It also appears that the Internet is better for your brain than books: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/16/internet_stimulates_brain_more_than_books_study/
Which makes sense because after a long day of reading my brain gets fogged up (maybe I’m the only one).
And shouldn’t we all meditate every once in a while? My point is not that television or any other tool is bad or good, its a tool and wields judgement after it is used. Machetes are great in the garden, terrible when used by angry mobs.
Imagine how terrible our best sellers would be if a few large companies owned most of the publishing sphere.
Or how crappy food would be if a few companies produced most of the food the average american eats.
Bageant’s point can be summed up with the phrase know thy self, or at least attempt to. But many people don’t care who they are or are perfectly happy being tuned in to pop culture, I’m saying its not that much different from being tuned into alt culture.