"Ideological Suicide"

As McLuhan echoed nearly 40 years ago, the medium is the massage. Each medium has specific qualities that make it unique and likewise give it unique powers. Think of fantasy novels. There are always certain limitations and faculties that each mythic character has. For each power there is also an "Achille's heel." The winner of the game is usually one that can exploit the weaknesses and manipulate the abilities. Think of the Lord of the Rings, for example. If you control the Ring, you control all of Middle-Earth. Who controls the majority of the media? Certainly not objective truth!

Further, where do people get their news?

What?! You don't often watch the news?!

The problem with my generation is that we have become blinded by the media that target us (specifically, TV, radio and internet). I am growing up in a culture of escapism. Look at the movies. Look at the popular TV shows. You know, it's sad when the most popular movies are also the most escapist. When I try to discuss politics with some people, they simply get turned off. It's as if they think ignoring it will make it go away. Every time I walk by the lounge, MTV or USA or some other such rubbish is on. Entertainment is my generation's drug. And the corporations are handing it out like candy... Why? If you can hide the evils of the world and even more, propogate in people a different culprit, you have succeeded in not only saving your hide, but also directing the mob to your enemy.

What about all the academics who want to destroy the logos (that is, the postmodernists)? This quasi-liberal ideology creates, in itself, a dichotomy: the presence of an intact logos... the absence of an intact logos. You could argue that it is simply "fragmenting the old paradigm," but it's either fragmented or it's not. This, as I said earlier, I consider ideological suicide. We constantly develop new and increasingly destructive technologies. Mobile phones, for example. While this might not seem like a WMD, on the contrary... it is. Text messaging propogates a culture of instant gratification. Again, like a drug. Think of the time whenever you bought a new hi-tech toy. It was great, wasn't it? You got to fiddle around and learn it in and out. But then, what happened? The novelty wore off and you were left with a piece of plastic and transistors.

That is the effect. Like a drug, you are drawn in to buy more gadgets with increasingly intricate features. Consumerism uses such media to sustain this mode of production. Like the drug dealer, who gets your currency for substances, so does the sales rep. get your currency for new technologies. Like the example of the dealer, the value of the currency at length outlasts the value of the product. Both draw you "deeper in" and require increasing sums of expenditure. The tantilizing promise of peace and equality draw the mind into postmodernity. But, as technology exploits the resources of the earth, postmodernism exploits the resources of the logos. The drug drags you in until you overdose. Postmodernism and the cultures of escapism and consumerism are paving the road to our demise with the body of our mother.

Music for the Masses

Exploiting the power of the media against the weak and feeble consuming masses, corporations, perhaps even without realizing it, are sustaining the greed of late capitalism and the threat of super-globalization. The currency of money and written language have become so privatized that we don't even carry money in our pockets anymore! Money is a network of exchange locked up for us by banks. Likewise, this exclusivism transcends money. In order to be heard, you must be published. Even having a weblog like this one is not free. You must be a tuition-paying student to own a Seton Hill weblog. Print is a privatization of language. It's much easier for one person to read a text at a time and the message is arbitrary. Imagine going to a Folk concert or jam session and trying to be the only one to hear the music.

Let's take a journey a couple thousand years back... The Greeks were evolving their philosophies. Out of the poetics came a tradition of music. Poetry wasn't what it is now. It was collective wisdom. You didn't write down poetry, that would be absurd. Then, in Plato's Republic, Socrates envisions a collective society ruled by a philosopher/philosophers. Plato, with all good intentions, sought to destroy the despotism of the state and replace it with the despotism of the philosopher. Thus, he privatized reason. Rather than elevate all people to the true nature of good, he would create a disparity in reason and have the reasonable govern the fools. Listen to the music. Wisdom is a tree that no one individual can embrace.

Today, we are trapped in a quasi-Platonic vision. Everything is becoming privatized. You don't watch TV outside, do you? Your computer doesn't project everything you see to as many people as you know, does it? Music is different. It is a collective phenomenon. The music is spread to a variety of ears from one source. But even music is becoming privatized. Portable mp3 players and iPods are quickly replacing boom boxes and, God forbid, live music. Music, like most any art is becoming a private commodity. How did people communicate in the very beginning? They talked. Now, what should be the most lasting form of instant gratification without the destructive qualities, is slowly diminishing. People sitting side-by-side on computers no longer talk, but send IMs. People pull out their cells before they go to visit someone's house. This is how the bourgeoisie can sustain their power. By extending privacy to just about everywhere except social issues, they can exercise control, perhaps even sub-consciously.

Copyrights let people claim ownership to whatever it is they discover. But, how can one own truth or discovery? Even if you could hold it in your hands, that does not give you any kind of entitlement to it. The drug of consumerism, the self-destructive ideology of postmodernism, and the pervasive privatization of goods and property all create the despotic economic rule of the few over the many. Every aspect of our lives is being controlled, whether we care to admit it or not. Pro-war propoganda, anti-socialist attitudes, greed, all these rise from every country because of this globalization of consumer capitalist ideologies. From Israel to Lebanon, from the US to Iraq, from India to Pakistan, from Japan to North Korea. Every aspect of our life is informed by the media. But, somewhere in Africa, South America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia, and yes, even in America, someone is playing some music as a prayer for peace and the restoration of community... They invite you to join them.