Programmable Thinking and Responding to the Media

Posted on March 13, 2008
Filed Under Fake Culture, Movies, TV and Media |

The media plays a funny game, they are purveyors of cultural ideology - and form one of the most addictive substances on the planet. The vast majority of people have a strictly regimented diet of news, which is usually taken in multiple forms. As with most drug-dependencies the users are aggressively unwilling to face their addiction. I really don’t think this is an overstatement of any sort.

I swore off perhaps 99% of my media addiction around 3 years ago. I cut off the broadcast TV into the house, we stopped buying news papers - eventually I even stopped checking news sites. Now, such is the saturation of media - that I still manage to hear much of the current events. You can’t walk into a store without noticing the headlines on the shelves. Conversations, radios and TV’s are overheard…and most events pour over into all areas of the Internet. If all that fails, then news events crop up in chats sooner or later. What I have found during these three years is that it is pretty hard to be ignorant of what is occurring in the world.

On the other hand there is something else that I have noticed, and I find this extremely interesting. Those who consume inordinate amounts of media are just as insensate to the real-world as those who consume inordinate amounts of drugs. These types are few and far between it is true - but they serve as an illustration of how far the mind can be manipulated.

I have found since my reduced media intake, that I have become less volatile to ‘controversial’ news stories. Over here in the UK immigration is a very big deal at the moment, and every few days such a news story will have numbers of people foaming at the mouth. Meanwhile a heated political story will turn people to arguing with each other. Yet withdraw yourself from the media-drug and suddenly you see that the media demands a vast emotional investment into their story driven version of reality. Once you unplug from their reality - the world takes on a different texture.

The danger with the media-drug is that it is sense distorting. It removes you from your immediate environment and concerns and places you elsewhere, in someone else’s life and someone else’s perspective. The media-drug subdues your own perspective and replaces it with another one. Let’s be clear here - when I talk about perspective, I am not talking about ‘opinion’ - I am pointing to something a little deeper. Our perspective is what reports physical reality to us; it keeps us in contact with our immediate environment. The media-drug implements itself in between our mind and our senses, we become concerned with what is going on ‘over there in another perspective’ and forget where we are.

It is true that such mind bending distortions are yet another symptom of drug usage.

Many may find this assessment pretty hard to swallow - and that is fine, it is after all based upon my own perspective. The fact it is a perspective founded upon a long-time non usage of the media-drug is perhaps neither here nor there.

In a culture where ‘drugs’ are seen as an enemy of the people (much less the state), I have found this an extremely provocative observational experience…

Comments

2 Responses to “Programmable Thinking and Responding to the Media”

john on March 13th, 2008 5:41 pm

Great post.

I got rid of my TV a couple of weeks ago, didn’t even watch it any more. the thing that strikes me most when visiting my friends that watch a lot of TV or have the TV on in the background is how disturbing commercials are to me now. How could I ever have sat through that shit once?

Mindboggling!

Now if I only could spend more time from the computer, damn this thing has magnetic attraction.

/john
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Marcus on March 15th, 2008 11:17 am

I’m totally with you regarding commercials! They are so far ‘out there’ and away from reality - that it is shocking to consider how many people sit in front of them unblinking, absorbing it all without any real thought!

The truth is, that the longer we submerge ourselves in that stuff, the less we consciously feel its affects on us.

One other thing I find so disturbing on TV is the pace at which the images change from one thing to another…along with the constant graphical and audio distraction on programs like the News.

Crazy stuff indeed!
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