PANOPTIC MEDIA-SCAPE
I am media and medium too. Anatoly
(Huxley on Spectacular Tyranny)
There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old. Government by clubs and firing squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment and mass deportation, is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays); it is demonstrably inefficient and, in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors, and school teachers.--- Aldous Huxley, in his 1946 revised forward to _Brave New World_
Ted, Dan, Tom or Peter, they know that they are the power.
You can see it on their faces when they appear on your screens.
The Fourth Branch of the government. Un-constitutional, though.
Well, they represent the public! If the government isn't. What do
you think they news-boys would say if someone will prove that
they are the executioners of the system of suppression. They, the
knights of free speech, crusaders of facts.... dictators?
J DAY:
-Media is a trash.
-Ok, kill the messenger.
Baudrillard: the media is anti-mediatory. Production of illusions; in USSR it was obvious. The State is so clumsy! Would you be surprised if I'll tell you that in Moscow we thought that _1984_ was written about us, the Soviets? (See _Agitation_ and read notes on Spectatular Society by Debord) Does Media celebrate itself?
Do you see the message on your screen, it's always there:
Love you neighbor... when your neighbor is you.
Newstertainment. Do you know about auditions? You were casted in! What about the new form of ownership of the humans -- the informational slavery.
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I. YOU, THE HOME-VIEWERS
Of course, they have to be served. The semi-humans who were humans only next to animals not gods. They became the main project of modernity. Exploited, since nothing else worked in forcing them to move and continue self-development, they reached the limits of productivity at age of industrialization. The
slaves have to be organized as masters in order to increase the
value of their existence. State communism in Russia, Germany,
China tried to apply the old system of forced labor -- and
failed. Capitalism, obsessed with production, had to produce a
new generation of labor -- the middle class. The rape was
replaced with seduction.
For a slave to work is unnatural. To make him work he has to
be placed within the situation of unavoidable labor. A need to
work must be substituted with a want of work. Since there is no
instinct of production in his natural (organic) body, the natural
body must be "opened" and connected into the body with the
instincts of production. Age of reason established the door
inside the body -- the mind. Even an animal connects reward and
punishment with modifications of it behavior. Rationality has to
serve the revolution in production of new man.
Marx noticed that the basic needs (for my physical survival)
have to be supplemented with social wants -- we know it as a
consumer society. To have more "things" i have to work more, that
is how our new material mythology organizes us into a modern
culture. In order for this system to work the new products must
be introduced and promoted, they have to raise to the level of
necessities. It has to be perpetual and total -- mass media does
exactly that. Our slave in middle class costumes has to be
constantly within the field of the social. His attention must be
naturally attracted to the spectacle of opportunities and
possibilities. Mass media is born out of a spectacular
audio-video medium. It's not ideas or words but objects.
Manufactured objects have no subjectivity, they all are copies,
clones, and very easy are substituted with images of itself.
Media itself has the same nature. If we could keep the subhumans
inside this manufactured universe (second nature), we could
develop new instincts and feelings.
Mass communications are about integration and control. From
knowledge we moved to information, from information to data.
Wisdom can't be adapted by masses. The sages were exception and
leaders are always a few. The master's mode of activity could be
installed from the outside as imitation. Artist because of his
sensitivity gravitates to learning and strive for understanding.
To make the conditions similar for a slave we have to organize
his living experiences. A new environment has to transform him
into a child who is constantly amused. The world has to be
ever-new, the old must be renewed every day. Technology provides
this totality of new experience. Urbanization made a first step
by removing the humanoid from isolation, positioned him within
immediate proximity of the social in direct physical, not
cultural forms. Crowd must be present even in the bedroom.
His new body is outside of him. He is at a receiving end of
communication... which is not a communication at all but call for
action. My brain signals to my body to act, this is not a
dialogue of body parts. Mass media is a one way street. All the
opinion pools exist precisely for that reason. Entertainment is
command economy, without additional mechanism we wouldn't even
know do they receive the signals or not. The best tools of
propaganda is commercial advertising. If product is sold we know
that they watch the night news. Mass media, mass production and
mass society are unseparatable. Mass man is one dimensional man
but he is more human than the "natural" man, who became a slave
with the beginning of history. We replaced the form of his
socialization by replacing his master, making the boss into an
universal being -- human kind.
The new forms of slavery are possible because of the new
technologies. The hardware of techno-culture is less complicated
than the software, the ideology. The car was domesticated much
faster than horse. Since our inventions our coming from within
the social, every new invention is expression of our hidden
intentions. Hardware could be seen as a production of our dreams.
Construction of the God's body appeared in extremely short time.
In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies -- the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions. --Aldous Huxley, 1958
We call it "entertainment"...
.... Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the enroachments of those who would manipulate and control it. (A.H. 1958)
Do you really think that "movies" are not the apparatus of
control, discipline and power? You don't the blue police uniform
on your celebrities, you don't know that they are your prison
guards. You like them, you make them rich. Oh, the sweet slavery!
In their propaganda today's dictators rely for the most part on repetition, suppression and rationalization --
the repetition of catch-words which they wish to be accepted as true, the suppression of facts which they wish to be ignored, the arousal and rationalization of passions which may be used in the interests of the Party or the State. As the art and science of
manipulation come to be better understood, the dictators of the future will doubtless learn to combine these techniques with the non-stop distractions which, in the West, are now threatening to drown in a sea of irrelevance the rational propaganda essential to the
maintenance of individual liberty and the survival of democratic institutions. -- Aldous Huxley, 1958
That's the ticket! Non-stop distractions! What do you think
"relaxation" is about? Rest from concentration.
Here is another top secret:
...[such propagandists] accomplish their greatest
triumphs, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more
effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent denunciations, the most compelling of logical rebuttals. -- Aldous Huxley[1]
(see file "Press" -- where? )
The economic censorship (West). Why do you think the
totalitarian Russia had to have a monopoly on everything. That
was their way of solving the problem of ownership. They resolved
the economic issue and dealt with pure politics. That's what they thought....
There is more of the deep structure in our "mindless" fun. 24/7/365 flood of news -- of course, every second of my life is new and must be "news"....
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II. NOISE AS MESSAGE
The twentieth century is, among other things, the Age of Noise. Physical noise, mental noise and noise of desire -- we hold history's record for all of them. And no wonder; for all the resources of our almost miraculous technology have been thrown into the current assault against silence. That most popular and influential of all recent inventions, the radio is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes. And this din goes far deeper, of course, than the eardrums. It penetrates the mind, filling it with a babel of distractions, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but usually create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas. And where, as in most countries, the broadcasting stations support themselves by selling time to advertisers, the noise is carried from the ear, through the realms of phantasy, knowledge and feeling to the ego's core of wish and desire. Spoken or printed, broadcast over the ether or on wood-pulp, all advertising copy has but one purpose -- to prevent the will from ever achieving silence. Desirelessness is the condition of deliverance and illumination. The condition of an expanding and technologically progressive system of mass production is universal craving. Advertising is the organized effort to extend and intensify the workings of that force, which (as all the saints and teachers of all the higher religions have always taught) is the principal cause of suffering and wrong-doing and the greatest obstacle between the human soul and its Divine Ground. --Aldous Huxley (1946)
Desiring machines, have you heard about them?
III. [title ]
Belles Letters for PANOPTIC-WEB
The KGB's method of misinformation and American Culture of
Deception. Illusion of knowledge gives a sense of power, which is
only an appearance of power.
"Vain repetition" -- Jesus on advertising.
Why?
Self-transcendence, we don't ask it during sermons, we
institute it through tv screens. Whatever little identity he had
it must be removed. Your social security number is enough.
Body is a part of my soul, not the reverse (see Body in
Res). Oh, the danger! You still have it. It still rules.
Gender disappears in the first face (Internet). When we will
destroy gender, we will enter New Jerusalem.
Why to distract them who are easily destructed? To keep them
as children. Grand Inquisitor smiles.
(written at the same time as SELF-SCAPE)
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