powerclown

Pretty involved subjects here, interesting thread.

In my own efforts to comprehend, I'll share some of my thoughts. Im not saying I'm right or wrong, just emoting. Incidentally, I believe a lot of what Freud had to say about human behavior, in particular, that we are driven by unconscious motives. Not that we can't identify what these motives are, just that these things are what characterizes our behavior.

Ok, so you've got lots of people living together on the same piece of real estate. What to do about that? Should some of them live? How are they going to live? What are they going to wear? Will they be cold? Are they just going to scrape by on the bare minimum needed to sustain them? Will they be a little warm, barely warm, or very comfortably warm? They have to eat, too. So what do they eat? Do they feed themselves or are they fed? How do we feed all these people?

I guess what I'm saying is, how do we run a society? All these people with all these needs, what do we do with them? In this part of the world, its Democracy. We, this great mass of people living together and amongst eachother, first decide that out of this mass we need a little law and order. If we don't have law and order, we have lawlessness and disorder (this is where Freud comes in, for me anyway). Are you going to smash all your neighbors, horde all the food for yourself, enslave and rape the women you choose to, take a dump in the middle of the street like a beast (I've tried this in college once btw...)? Kill or torture those that anger you? Steal the food that your neighbor worked hard to get and feed to his family? Ok, so there's your reason for order.

Order. I think thats the long and the short of it. How to control, how to MANAGE (less sinister) a huge group of intelligent, bipedal mammals, homo sapiens.

The first thing you don't do is piss them off. You piss them off, and we've got a bloodbath. We've all seen what we are capable of doing to one another when we get pissed off. So, keep the order, keep things calm, orderly, make some rules that if they don't follow, they will somehow be punished for.

As far as what the media's role is in this, well I think it's a very, very powerful one. First of all, its mankind's most powerful bullhorn, so to speak. Its the way the message is communicated to the group. Ever see those wildlife movies where they show a large group of, say, zebras. They cover the savannah to the horizon. Here comes a lion or 10. Suddenly, one or two of the zebras spots the lion, and bolts, which triggers the rest of the group to do the same. The zebra method of mass communication. Our method of mass communication is the media.

And the media is not only concerned with promoting base survival. Once that is taken care of, it spreads out like the fingers of a river. Its like that one dude's hierarchy of needs chart. Once you can stop worrying about surviving, you have the luxury of thinking about satisfying the 'other things' that make up Freud's homo sapien. How you wanna 'be livin'. You wanna appear appealling to the opposite sex? Do you want to look fierce to the competition? Do you want comfy socks on your feet? Do you want your hair to shine? Do you want to travel to point A, way over there!!, as fast as possible? Comfortably? Stylishly? Maybe in a vehicle that would be able to crush anyone who got in the way? What are you going to eat? Hell, its being served to you, you might as well have a choice. Its not like its limited to only what you can catch yourself. So the media gives us our choices, communicates to us what is available to satisfy all our secondary needs, which are now 'wants', 'luxuries', etc..

So, in my opinion, you can call it 'media mind control', but that seems too ominous; I wouldn't give the media that much power, that much credit. As omnipresent as advertising is, its just a suggestion after all. Its like, "hey bud, i just got this thing in (whatever the advertising people are putting on tv)...you interested in it?" You can choose to ignore it. As fucking banal and useless the media can be, I try to see it as something perfectly natural, and in order with things. Naturally curious? (Freud says yes). Check out this bit of news! Check out whats happening OVER HERE!! You'll like it and come back for more, even!

Sorry so long...and again just sharing my POV. Great thread...