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I've recently finished the first draft of a mini-book on the modern mass media - a subject which I have been blogging about for a while. It'll emerge, in due course, from the University of Buckingham Press who also published Thought Prison and Not Even Trying.
As usual, I go further than anybody else in stating my case - and will presumably end-up by alienating all moderate and sensible people!
The world view depicted is one in which the mass media (regarded as a system) has become the centre of Leftism (hence the centre of anti-Christianity); and therefore the main headquarters of Satan in the world today.
The book depicts a world not of media 'bias', but a world where both the form and content of the mass media combine first to erode, then to make almost impossible, The Good.
This is NOT a matter of who is holding the megaphone - which is the current semi-correct/ mostly-wrong secular Right explanation - instead the mass media is the megaphone, but nobody else is holding it.
Rather the megaphone is holding everything else - who are trapped by their addiction to what the mass media provides - the mass media is now primary reality in the secular West.
Thus it is not the usage of a 'neutral' mass media which is evil, but the existence, the actuality of the mass media which is itself intrinsically evil - the displacement of real reality by mass media representations is in itself the insanity and wickedness of the politically correct Left.
So self-cure of media addiction becomes the first and essential step in soul-saving; and autonomy from the mass media, indispensable to a true religious revival.
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6 comments:
Media has been manipulated. Yet this effected *restraint* of the media, not control.
@Crosbie - What do you mean? I can't make any sense of your comment.
Don't you find this a bit of a Chinese finger trap Bruce?
Do you disengage with the mass media, which is I think what you are encouraging so as not to be feeding it, or do you continuously find yourself drawn back into it, and feeding the thing you criticize?
This is not solely directed to you, as to disengage with it, also requires engagement with something which is not merely the bread and circuses of mass-media junk-food.
People today seem to suffer from a dearth of meaning, and actively disengage from participation in the social world of flesh and blood people. We gain the simulcra in the virtual world, but not the substance, and in confusing the two become more isolated and lonely than before.
Still, the virtual world offers some forms of interaction that were impossible in the past, but it consumes too much of what should be time spent with others, doing real things that contribute to our individual and social well-being.
@NF - I don't understand; unless you are saying that a blog is part of the mass media, which is true.
I am saying that it is as insidious as eating a food which only creates an illusion of satiety while really only increasing your hunger for that same food.
How many hours do I spend on the net reading and responding to things that I encounter. Does it satisfy, or will I come to need an adult diaper as much as any slot machine junkie?
The antidote is real involvement with real people. Try internet withdrawal for 10 days, and see if you're not suffering from serious withdrawal symptoms.
One media to rule them all,
One search engine to find them,
One addiction to bring them all,
And in the web to bind them.
It is easy to get drawn in, and our real world relationships and involvements begin to atrophy because there are only so many hours in the day. (I think I will have to make a point of web fasting from time to time, and spending the time in fellowship with family and friends.)
As an independent filmmaker (thus part of the mass media by definition) I look forward to reading the book. I'm skeptical that the megaphone by itself is inherently evil (rather than the content and amount of consumption). But I'm open to be corrected...even though it would certainly signify a need to change careers! It's possible that I'm making Boromir's argument -- "let us use the ring against them!"
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