Mantus

This has been bothering me for a while - but I usually ignore it.

Humanity has the uncanny ability to ignore reality.

- We forget about the energy crisis and buy another SUV.
- We ignore sweatshops and buy a pair of jeans at Wal-Mart.
- Our politicians lie right to our faces (any politician) yet we still vote for them.
- We cast our vote every four years and are satisfied to live in a Democracy.

There is so much wrong with this world. There are so many imperfection that need to ironed out. Yet so many of us force these issues out of our minds. It’s not that we don’t see it; we just block it out. Now I am not a pessimist. I know there is much good in this world too. Yet the issue I am addressing here is humanity’s ability to remain passive. We have knowledge yet we don’t act upon that knowledge.

I speak from personal experience. I play video games, I read books, I party and I generally live without reacting to life, I just follow the script inside my mind.

What I fear most is that not only am I choosing to ignore the bad things about life, but that I am choosing to ignore all of life. I wrapped myself in this cocoon of comfort. Without influence form the outside world I am left with just myself. No wonder I feel like I am alone sometimes. My mind has adjusted to tuning out the world.

How do you people feel about this phenomenon?

CoachAlan

For me it's an issue of choosing my battles. Sure, it bothers me that there are starving children in Africa. It bothers me that houses in East St. Louis have lead paint that is poisining the children. The list goes on and on.

But there are so many things out there I can't control or FEEL I can't control that I have to draw the line somewhere. For each person, that line is at a different place. I shower on the lowest water pressure I can stand, always turn off the tap while I'm washing my hands, and wholeheartedly encourage xeriscape because I live in the desert and am concerned about water shortage.

I also bought a car two days ago and fuel economy was a major factor in my decision.

But again, I have to choose my battles. I smoke cigars even though I know they're bad for me and the smoke bothers others.

Simply put, we'd all go insane within about five minutes if we worried about all the things that need worrying about.

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Halx

This is simple, yet complicated.

Do you think ANYONE gives a shit that BMW, Volkswagen and Mercedes Benz were all part of the Nazi war machine? Hell no. Sure, there are a few purists out there that refuse to buy from tainted brands, but more times than not, it's just never given any weight.

Mass Media Mind Control is the answer, I think. I've learned a lot about it in the last few years. It makes people stop at the convenience store instead of waiting for the weekly farmer's market. It makes people weigh saving money and looking popular over buying quality. It's turned us into a docile, instruction-following herd of sheep.

Here's one that should make ARTelevision grin: Fear raises anxiety levels in humans and makes them act on simplicity and impulse. The media uses fear to induce these kinds of reactions all the time. First is the fear of inadequacy - "You're not popular until you have a pair of these jeans." Second is the fear of missing the boat - "For a limited time only, get 30% off!" Third is the fear of going broke - "Buy from us and you'll have money left over!"

Politicians use fear to sell their campaigns. We're also taught that we live in a great country and are all great individuals. Why would we ever kneel down and consider kids working in sweat shops in Latin American?

You're not a bad person for ignoring this. You're just another person.

You always have the option, though, of doing something about it.

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ARTelevision

Halx. You are correct, sir.

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roachboy

i do not think that the category "mass media mind control" explains much.

at the most elementary level, your ability to function coherently--to move through a given visual field and arrange what you see in ways that enable you to form causal explanations for your movements and to maintain the idea that you are coherent--in other words to not freak out at the complexity of visual information that bombards you as you walk through any given physical space--is contingent on your ability to limit information.
same goes for what you hear. your peceptual apparatus is as much about limitation as it is about reception of input.
the point is that human beings seem finely tuned data limitation machines.
that there is a social dimension to the perceptual apparatus that accounts for limitation is obvious, but at the same time formalizing what that dimension might be is a problem (because it is difficult to formalize the mechanism itself--in psychoanalysis, it is named as a type of repression--but like most psychanalytic categoreis, this is metaphorical)

second, i think that the degree to which people see themselves as powerless is a function of a series of specific spatial and political transformations--a list, short maybe to the point of incoherence, could include:
the reorganization of capitalism on an explicitly global basis, which tends to render the notion of nation useless
(the first making capitalism something that seems transcendent rather than a particular economic system with a particular ideology--the second being a way of thinking about the series of effects of the transnationalization of capitalism on lots of people to the extent that this geographic change requires an explanation--i think much of what is going on culturally around us now is a function of dissonance created by a realization that nation is being rendered obsolete by economic activity and a political/cultural climate that is incapable of even saying that this is the case, not to mention adapting to it--the rise of the far right [bushworld being a symptom] is understandable as a reaction against this process, a form of collective denial)

for working people, another element could well be the collapse of the types of organizations that wage-laborers had developed across the conflicts of the mid19th-mid 20th centuries (unions etc.) which symbolically functions as demonstration of the powerlessness of the public....

the effects of a geography-based campaign againsts the public that spins out of the suburban model--the elimination of public spaces, the atomization that follows from a car culture and tract houses and so on.

----the list can go on----any one of these transformations is enough to engender fear and/or to require explanation---it would be at this point that you might loop into things a shift in the general relation of public to mass media....

but i do not think that you cant just cut to the media because in a sense it prompts you to overstate the power of it, to act as if there are no other types of (more fundamental) explanations and to reduce the range of political action to cultivating a snippy relationship to your television.

in other words, i think that trying to explain why people do not think in broader terms about their world by referencing "mass media mind control" is the mirror of the problem you are trying to talk about because for example it reduces your effective range of political action to the distance that separates you from your tv set. it also implies that you can transform yourself and your world by turning off your tv.

i did an experiment: i stopped watching tv 4 years ago. following a similar kind of logic, i expected capitalism to tremble and revolution to follow.
yet here we are.

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ARTelevision

Well, roachboy, fascinating in this thread to hear your analysis of the consciously-crafted attention-grabbing headline "Mass Media Mind Control" and the various arguments that support it. I'd been anticipating your response in the thread of that title.

In any event, when I posed what is essentially your position here in the "Authoritarianism" thread, you indicated it was counterproductive to place the problem within the human perceptual/conceptual apparatus. Now you're doing exactly that.

I think, therefore, that we have effectively delineated the issue as the relationship between the poles of the human perceptual/conceptual apparatus and the mediated forms of same that we use as channels of communication. In short, rather than refuting anything, we have staked out the territory for further exploration.

Thanks!

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roachboy

art--well good.

just to be clear, what i was trying to say above is that the question of data limitation at the perceptual level is quite complex analytically--i wanted to indicate where i think the central complexity lay--which is in generating even a descriptive account of the mechanism that limits. repression is a problematic term, because it would be positioned in a strange space as both part of the functioning of consciousness and outside it, as a defense mechanism.

in the mass media thread, things unfolded as though the problem was solved in advance---but things are not so simple, i think.

the other part of the post is more critical, frankly--there is a basic disagreement that i would be pleased to talk about concerning the explanatory and political power of reverting to denunciation of the media to think about what is happening around us now.

i thought about posting to the thread on media, but i figured that my viewpoint was not symmetrical enough with the consensus on the thread to warrant posting there. maybe i was wrong in that?

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it make you sick.

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ARTelevision

roachboy, first, your responses are more than welcome in the "Mass Media Mind Control" thread. If there's a consensus there I would prefer it be exploded. We're too far from comprehension of this crucial issue to have arrived at anything like a valid consensus.

Yes, I acknowledge the disagreement and will work toward resolving or, at least, illuminating it.

You're correct in observing that my stance on this is politically positioned. This is for journalistic reasons. Where vast and all-encompassing issues are involved, I find it more effective to ring a big bell - no matter how cracked it is - than simply attempting to make error-free typing sounds.

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roachboy

art--some of the questions we are addressing through all this get really close to thing is work on in my "professional" guise--the closer it gets, the more cautious i get with words, etc. (obviously i am not consistent in this, as posting to a board sometimes generate dynamics of their own...) so you'll probably find my post getting longer and narrower as we approach these areas.


seperate note: in general, the way social sctors connect together phenomena--how the construct a sense for themselves of the world they move through--is a function of political argument/narrative more than it is of experience in any direct sense. this is because the sense of the world through which you move operates as a framing device that enables you to situate aspects of your experience in your immediate environment. "the world" tends to be an abstraction, to a significant extent--"experience-distant" as someone said....

if people ignore significant aspects of "reality" it is usually a function of the political position the occupy--if you disagree with the exclusions, the way to go at it is to work toward developing counter-narratives and making them known. praxis....is....good

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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powerclown

Depends on how you look at it. There's a lot right with it, too.
This is different. If you are feeling this depressed you have 2 choices as far as I can see.
1) Do something yourself to get out of your rut.*
2) Go to a doctor and have him do something to help you out of your rut.
(This is assuming friends/family are not much help either.)

*Since I don't know you personally I don't have any suggestions as to what type of things you are interested in that would inspire you. But good luck.

Mantus

Thank you for the replies.

After reading your responses it seem that there are three criteria that need to be met in order to make a choice that has a poor impact on others or oneself:

- We feel powerless.
- We are presented with choice.
- We feel competitive/threatened.

So even though we are aware that the environment is being polluted to death we feel that as individuals our choices don’t matter. After all we are just one of 300,000,000 people in this country.

Next we are told that SUV’s are the best cars to have. We are told that if you own an SUV your social rank will soar.

Next our own competitive instincts are activated. Men wont get laid and women will look like they are housewives with poor husbands if they don’t drive an SUV.

So the decision is made. We buy an SUV because the planet is going to hell anyways therefore we might as well get the best car advertised so we will be above all the other shmoes.


I think the key issue is the idea of feeling powerless. I mentioned that this same method of thought could also have an effect on suppressing the positive atributes of the world. For example accomplishments don’t hold any value if one feels insignificant. How does one become inspired if one doesn’t have any impact on this world? Most importantly if one’s actions are insignificant then the world might as well not exist. The only thing that feels important is the self because we know that we can impact ourselves. So one becomes withdrawn from the world.

Thoughts?

[edited to remove the triple use of the word "effect" in a sentence ]

ARTelevision

Even more, one becomes self-destructive, sociopathological, destructive toward others, disrespectful of common property and society.

The key is the negative self-image promoted, nurtured, and sustained by messages in which the viewer is programmed to believe that without an endless succession of products one does not measure up. This is buttressed by the idolatry of celebrity which ensures that only a scant percentage of the population are seen as able to afford and live the correct lifestyle.

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bermuDa

almost all advertising feeds on the so-called seven deadly sins in one form or another. it's a regrettably effective form of persuasion.

as a salesman, I'm encouraged on a daily basis to use fear as a tool "for our customer's benefit"

as for ignoring the state of the world and the role certain companies played in its development, it's not always a conscious decision.

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WildZero

I think that it would make life impractical if I was always painfully aware of all the sad and fucked up things that go on around me. I agree that people who oppose what a company does should not support them by doing business with them, but I'm happy to ignore a certain amount of suffering in general so I can keep getting up every morning and doing what I have to do instead of being too depressed to get out of bed because some people don't make as much as others, or too guilty to eat because part of the world is starving.

I help out when I can, but some things will need to be ignored if I'm going to make rent and put food on the table. If I can't help myself, I certainly can't help others.

So my take is: ignore as much as you need to. If it's in your heart to make a positive difference in someone else's life, you'll do it.

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Mantus

WildZero,

I am not so much talking about going out of one's way to help others. That's a different matter all together. What I am talking about is knowingly hurting others and self. There is a difference between knowingly hurting others and looking out for oneself.

WildZero

Mantus...I see what you're saying, but I still kind of see hurting people through action and seeing them hurt because of inaction as linked on some level. Taking an action that hurts someone and seeing someone be hurt because of your own inaction have similar consequences. Inaction leading to harm is what came to mind when I read your post. I do see your point though.

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wilbjammin

It seems to me that there is an inherent problem with large populations in this topic. What does personal accountability mean when you are 1/300,000,000th of the population of your nation, or worse when looking at the entire world?

The radical alienation of the individual that has been developing since the industrial revolution began is a major factor (I'm not just speaking from a Marxist perspective - Marxism also supports viewing individuals abstractly as laborers). We are told to be afraid of everything, and that we're the safest we have ever been all of the time, and that we aren't safe, and that we're the strongest we've ever been, etc.

So, to add to Mantus's list, I'd like to consider adding something about the inability to make sense of a large, abstract world leading to intellectual and emotional disengagement.

I think it is perfectly reasonable for someone to live with the knowledge that their actions and inactions after the world in negative ways without it creating a profound sense of guilt and powerlessness. Instead, we can feel compassion, frustration, and have a strong desire to not let the situation get the best of us. The first step is a combination of developing the tools to being analytical while education one's self about the issues. The second step is educating others, and other conscious choices related to what is perceived as a problem.

I would also like to point out that we can recognize that the structure of society is limiting in our ability to do away with all of these negative things we deal with. So we can't fix everything at once... that's understandable, Rome wasn't built in a day. However, we can attempt to take steps towards fixing as much as we possibly can while still having a meaningful personal life. If I find that I need to purchase something at Wal-mart and I know that it is a terrible company that is wrecking havoc world-wide, I will not pretend that I don't know that or don't care. Like the way Native Americans from this part of the country pay tribute to the death of the fish that they had to kill to feed them, I will pay homage in my conscious mind to the sacrifices made to allow me to get whatever I need.

I understand that we live in a post-modern era of individualistic fatalism, it is easy to fall into. It can be combatted by removing the abstraction caused in looking at things from a macro-level and bringing back the issues to the individuals. Again, this is directly related to education and teaching the skills to view issues, and to encourage localism in this sense.

I find it troubling that so many are falling into this category of blind ignorance. It is partially a choice, but I think it is often dictated more by a lack of skill-training to help people understand and cope with these issues.

The lack of community is another problem. I think instead of having real interdependent community structures to help people feel included in something, our society has turned community structures into places to display personal status and vie for position on the hierarchy. Perhaps it has always been this way to some degree, but I think it is becoming increasingly difficult to find any sense of connection with others. The list of people that I feel I really connect with are very limited, and that isn't a coincidence.

Anyway, this is a rambling post, and I have too many ideas about this and not enough structure in my thoughts to lay things out very linearly. I'll stop here, and hopefully there will be some response.

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QuasiMojo

yes

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Johnny Rotten

I feel that this kind of discussion is difficult to plumb because it requires, in my mind, an experimental group and a control group. We have nothing to compare the human condition to and must struggle to define it through inference and collation of anecdotes, leading to the slippery slope of statistics, a field in which every survey system has a significant flaw. I think modern civilization is, taken as a whole, selfish and cynical. The farther away something is, the harder it is to care.

Compounding the problem of compassion and morals is the daily drugdery of of work, commuting, bills, property maintenance, and everything else that drains our time and money without adding something substantial to our lives. Compounding that problem is the mountain of cheap trinkets we collect in our need to lessen the impact of the grind. DVDs, videogames, clothes, gadgets, toys, et cetera.

We're taught to buy our way through it and to donate our way out of guilt. We're taught that there isn't time or purpose for introspection, meditation, contemplation. And, eventually, the task of taking a step back becomes very difficult because of the psychological detritus that's already accumulated. It's so much easier to take a drug, whether it's in the form of a culturally insulting TV show like 5th Wheel or World's Greatest Police Chases, or actual medication (not that drug therapy isn't useful--I'm talking about impulsive, head-in-the-sand doping).

I can't really judge those who shop at Wal-Mart and gravitate to Starbucks. Someday, I'll have a wife and kids and a mortgage and car payments and the whole shebang and might find myself walking down that same path of megacorporate iniquity. I hope not.

But the fact is, we're all pretty much married to our checkbook. You take a look at average debt versus investment return, and it's atrocious. Credit cards hit you for around 10% APR to start with, but your bank account is bringing you 0.25%. Annually. Only the ruling elite have enough starting capital to invest an amount that outpaces their debts. Everyone else is faking it. Everyone else is living hand to mouth or only a step or two above that.

In order for me to live in my semblance of comfort, I had to establish a position of having no college loans, credit card debt, car payments, mortgage, child support, IRS payments, medical bills, legal bills, etc. I know people who are making more money than me but can barely get by because of all the debt.

That's a long way of saying that it's difficult to live nobly when so many of us can barely keep our heads above water--when the overwhelming majority of us are locked into living as consumers, instead of creators, in a world where the sources of entertainment and baubles merge into an increasingly monolithic and impenetrable wall of insidious, invasive and inescapable marketing. We as individuals are outsmarted at every turn by highly-paid experts trained specifically to convince us that we should by Product X, for whatever reason, as soon as possible. We're also conditioned to believe in credit and loans as the functional equivalent of actual money. And we're trained to measure ourselves by the baubles that surround us.

Edit: typo

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wilbjammin

Yes, the economic reality contributes to ignorance, helplessness, and homelessness.

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Seer666

We ignore to survive. There are things that effect you, things taht don't, things you can change, and things you can't. Notice the things that effect you, change the things you can, andlet the rest go untill they fall into one of the other two. There has always been murder, rape, slavery, sweat shops, ect. None of these things are new. When the people that they efect have had enough, they will take a stand and change it, or die trying. Untill such time as that, it is not, at risk of sound harsh, my problem. I work in the area I can, and the rest I leave to other poeple. If the situatin comes around that I can help someone, then I will do what I can, but untill then, I have to much in my life to try and fix to go out of my way to try and fight hopeless battles and fix the lives of people I don't know or care about. It shows you are a good person that you are conserned about these issuses, but let's be honest here. If we all just fixed ourselves, then we wouldn't HAVE to worry about fixing the world.

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Cynthetiq

this isn't just about tangible goods but also about people's behavior. Sometimes behavior is not forgiveable...but yet it seems that we like to give everyone second chances. I still don't understand how someone can be banned from Baseball for life, several times in one lifetime.

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fatdaddy411

Yo. I'm 16, I'm a senior in high school. I don't ignore these things. This shit disgusts me, but what can I do about it? I could go puke in the crapper just thinking about it, but does this solve anything for us? You come to the simple conclusion that the world is a severely messed up place, where injustice, violence and ignorance abound. At this point in time, I can't do much to change things, but I hope to in the future, and with or without me I have hope for the world on a whole. For society on a whole, I see a trend towards less toleration of violence towards one another. Look at western Europe. Power struggles and open warfare between nations for hundreds of years, but the eventual outcome has been stable democracy. The job of the United States and all developed nations is to expediate this process in the rest of the world, through any and all moral and practical means availible. Just how I see it.

Seer666

You seem to be assuming that democracy is wanted or needed everywhere. Don't get me wonrg, I think it is a great system, but it might not be the best for everyone. I truely believe that our form of goverment will not work in the middle east, for instance. Unless something huge chances over there, they will always have more of a theocracy then anything else. It is just what they feel is best for them. WHy should we force our veiws on them?

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Bad spellers of the world untie!!!

I am the one you warned me of

I seem to have misplaced the bullet with your name on it, but I have a whole box addressed to occupant.

xepherys

I can see this from all of the angles mentioned, for the most part. One human can only do the good that they have control over. To worry outside of your own domain is to allow yourself to lose your sanity.

Do you live in a desert? Is water a problem? Conserve water!

Do you live in LA? Is pollution a problem? Buy hybrid vehicles!

Do you live in Detroit? Is crime a problem? Volunteer for neighborhood watches!

Do you live in Iraq? Is genocide a problem? Pray to your god as hard as you can!

The last was not a joke. This world has over 6 billion people living on it from an assortment of races, climes and cultures. What concerns some does not concern others. If you worry about everyone's problems it becomes futile. Yet again I have to agree with CoachAlan. Choose your battles. Do as much good as YOU can personally do. Volunteer at a soup kitchen, donate blood, conserve energy/water/et cetera. Be a good person and hope the next person down the chain returns in in kind to someone else. But for your own good, don't carry the burden of the world's problems as your own!

BoomTruck

I believe that pretty much nailed it...

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Zdragva

Yes lots of problems indeed. What the average guy can do to change the world isnt what the world needs, by saving water u save water, period. We live in a democracy, but the poeple of the World, the average Joe who slogs his guts out his entire life gets to choose every so often between a couple of guys who will control the Nation for a while, thats not democracy. People today live in a world that for the most part they dont like, yet being Human we try our hardest to fit in (most of us), So we become that which we despise just to give ourselves a sense of worth, of value and it cant work. The media is a problem, yes, but what man made thing isnt these days? The media basiclly have the job of relaying information to the buplic, yet we hear the tasty gossip the scandals the twists added and words manipulated by the broadcaster, because it is the job of the media to SELL a PRODUCT at the end of the day. Pollution can be tamed, water can be manipulated food can be grown, we have many solutions to immediat problems, but the decay of the species is rife, we might have advanced tech but we certainly have poor morals and even if it was no better in the past thats no excuse, we have systems of government that are centuries old, even in the USA and although we believe we have a say we do not. It could be that as little as 1% of the population actually have the plans or ideas to improve the world atm, i dunno, if they do they wont get into government because its not ur ideas but how much ur liked that counts. We are in a lot of trouble with our systems because we know they arnt good, maybe even wrong but what can we do? I fully believe we need to forget national bounderies in this age as it is little more than a cause of segregation of denying others things because of where they were born and it does cause conflict. In the 21st century we need an idea of making things better as a life goal not to earn enough cash to live a comfortable life, we need social ideas to be widely known, we need each individual to realise that hey, life is good for some but the way we live cant continue for the good and we need to rethink things a bit. we could use a worldwide organisation of resources for a start that makes sense to all except the richest who would suffer. A world government is an idea to be laughed at, and wrecked instantly yet its what we need. Mankind needs to have control of itself and its planet. you have to admit that even the most powrful ppl alive have little control over the major things in our lives. the western ideas of self rule cant change very much as things stand, there cant be any better way for USA or UK to live than by a democratic capatalist way because we need to keep making money and have the choice over who leads us so they cant abuse us, but thats all demoicaracy offers, a chance to reomve those that fail, it wont improve us because our current systems have probably already reached there max efficxiency. I believe we need to remove countries and control the planet under a united human flag, remove money as it only highlights someone elses power or social status or ability to porvide more than another, money in a sence is an abuse of some of our basic human rights (for some ppl). we must wake up and realise that with money and countries there will be those who have, those who want and those who cant get, and thats what we need to address first so we can stop major attempts at species suicide in the future. the key thing to remeber tho is that no matter what we do we will always be up against nature, thats who we must be watching carefully and controlling these days. all it would take is some minor natural disaster we know happens all the time in our universe and our little species is gone, forever. If we cant force change by using nature as the lever then we will die, either by our own hand or by natures hand. if a guy runs across the road with his eyes shut and lives does this mean he will live a 2nd time?

roboshark

I don't think it's a such a big "phenomenon". It's nothing new. Basically, this is what people are.

Some people don't know about sweatshops. Ignorance is bliss. Some people don't think it's their fault that the environment is so polluted. Afterall, we can't all ride a horse to work. If I want to travel to Seattle to participate in an anti-globalization protest, I take a commercial airliner from Europe. Sure as fuck not gonna row a boat all the way across. Nike sweatshops are bad? Those kids in Pakistan or whatever bring in badly needed cash everyday to help clothe and feed their families. Who's right and who's wrong?

I say, it's all just convenience. I'm not saying this is bad or good. It just is. This is who we are. People just don't want to help other people if it's too much hassle. Sure, if you're hungry I'll buy you a meal. Once. Maybe twice. After that, it's your problem, bud. Oh, what? You have three starving children? Well, get a job...or something.

We are conceited. Perhaps one day, we'll all pay the price for that.

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irateplatypus

i think the idea of "mass media mind control" or advertising persuasions is just a big copout. it's so much easier to think that the problem is "outside" of us... that if only they'd stop brainwashing us then we'd do something. doubtful.

the fact is, the worldwide problems listed are a result of individual selfishness and vanity. a child is starving in africa because I chose to buy a 5th TV for my house instead of supporting mission work. the smog in the air is a result of my vehicle. an 8 year old work's her childhood away for slave wages so I can look down my nose at people who can't afford the jeans i'm wearing.

the media may direct and accelerate my selfishness... but the burden still belongs to me.

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~ Winston Churchill