Rejecting the the happy-faced, singy-songy world

Insight into the dream-state

     Recently Chris Knowles made a very interesting observation about commercials.  In a dialogue with Alan Green on the Always Record podcast he was discussing the preferences of television viewers and what it is about shows that viewers find unacceptable.  Then he referenced commercials:

That was something I was really struck with watching the commercials – how this world that exists on television commercials just seems so unrecognizable from the real world.  It’s creating this utopian vision that just doesn’t exist anywhere and everything is this sort of happy-faced, singy-songy world now in these commercials.  I think they have some sort of a narcotic effect.   They tend to numb people. Even the commercials themselves are an escapist form of entertainment, rather than simple advertising.

     I love this idea: something commonplace yet ominous.  The constancy of ads is a good thing – the drug is always there steeping us in its actual, subtle message.  Is this message something that pacifies people?  Are people really being manipulated by advertising?

     Recently I started watching the documentary The Century of the Self, which looks at the genesis of the contemporary advertising regime.  Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays was instrumental in developing advertising that appealed to people’s subconscious drives – mass psychology as a way to make money for clients.  Political thinker Walter Lippmann is portrayed in the film as arguing “that if human beings were in reality driven by unconscious irrational forces then it was necessary to re-think democracy”.  Bernays embraced this idea of Lippmann and suddenly “a new way to manage the irrational force of the masses” was born.

     In the documentary, historian of public relations Stuart Ewen says of Bernays and Lippmann:

Both Bernays’ and Lippmann's concept of managing the masses takes the idea of democracy and turns it into a palliative, turns it into giving people some kind of feel good medication that will respond to an immediate pain or immediate yearning but will not alter the objective circumstances one iota. The idea of democracy, at its heart, was about changing the relations of power that had governed the world for so long; and Bernays' concept of democracy was one of maintaining the relations of power, even if it meant one needed to stimulate the psychological lives of the public. And in fact, in his mind, that is what was necessary. That if you can keep stimulating the irrational self then leadership can go on doing what it wants to do.

     Right there is Knowles’ narcotic effect, built in from the first days of contemporary advertising.  “Stimulating the irrational self” – chilling.  In today’s world, though, it is even scarier.  The contextual backdrop against which Knowles made his statement is one of seemingly darker motives.  Advertising becomes more than simply a tool for turning people into docile consumers in an ever more affluent world.  These days there is uncertainty in the air.  An election year.  People still struggling financially even though are economy has putatively recovered.  Could Knowles be picking up on a step-up in the rhetoric?

     I have to say thank you to the world of academia (rare for me to say these days . . .).  In a synchronistic fashion I recently came across the work of communications professor Sut Jhally. In his own words:

My modest claim is that advertising is the most powerful and sustained system of propaganda in human history and its cumulative cultural and political effects, unless very quickly checked, will be responsible for destroying the world as we know it. [...] Those individual ads carry a very powerful single message, a unifying message.

     Jhally addresses Knowles view of the utopian being present in advertising:

What advertisers have to do is to link up what keeps people happy with the things that they have to sell, which are objects. That's the falsity of it. What's real about advertising are the dreams that it recognizes in the population. And that's why advertising is full of adventure, it's full of independence, it's full of sex, it's full of family, it's full of social relationships. It's full of meaningful work.

Sut Jhally

     So what do we do?  Jhally is optimistic of change – you have to be, he believes.  Change will come through activism.  Through people fighting back.  He believes that average people, on their own, would understand the need for political change.  The advertising world has to overcome this innate rational state.  It is a costly effort:

Why do corporations, why do advertisers, why do media have to spend billions of dollars every day to convince us of these things? If the game were over, if there were no possibility of change, then why would they keep doing this day after day after day? And why would they go out of their way to make sure that no other idea gets into the minds of the population? They have to do that because they know that if they don't, then the world will change.

     I have to say, when I watch commercials I couldn’t agree more with Chris Knowles.  I feel the narcotic of advertising had increased in its strength.  The manipulative intentions of commercials become more obvious when you view them through the lens of suspicion. 

     The dreamer needs to awake.  The “feel good medication” must be rejected.

Revolt children!

Goya's Saturn [Cronus] Devouring His Son

     If we have one predominant faith in the United States, it is the faith in progress.  Like religion or custom, faith in progress sinks into the background. It is something that profoundly shapes our reality but is not openly talked about.  You can hear it in news show segments on technology or in concentrated form on NPR’s All Tech Considered – reporters waxing orgasmic over the latest gadgets or trends (most of which are nascent – gadgets or trends – and require the development of some vast, new energy source to even begin to be implemented.) 

     Have you heard of the fourth industrial revolution (FIR)?  Me neither until a recent show informed me on this concept.  From the horse’s mouth in concentrated form:

The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third, the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. [. . . ]

Like the revolutions that preceded it, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to raise global income levels and improve the quality of life for populations around the world. [. . . ]

In the future, technological innovation will also lead to a supply-side miracle, with long-term gains in efficiency and productivity. Transportation and communication costs will drop, logistics and global supply chains will become more effective, and the cost of trade will diminish, all of which will open new markets and drive economic growth.

     Okay – wow - wouldn’t want to be left out of that.  What a great distillation of the myth of progress – always going up, moving forward.  We just need rational implementation to realize the “potential” of everyone – around the world – benefiting.

     What kind of rational implementation, you might ask. 





Gaius



     The full maturation of the FIR vision is in the future, though it has already begun in earnest.  According to its proponents.  Another future is the (doomer?) future where chickens come home to roost and the past repeats itself.  Gaius Publius takes this different view.  The previous industrial revolutions have put us in a situation where our way of life must be altered in order to 1) save the planet, and 2) well, just read this quote:

We don’t want to put our modern consumer lifestyle at risk. We don’t want to have energy rationing in order to save the species.  And I would say that if we don’t have energy rationing and make the change to renewables with World War II force and World War II mobilization and speed then what we are doing is cannibalizing the lifestyle of our grandchildren to keep our Wal-Mart goods and our TV electricity flowing . . . The problem is: are people willing to throw enough money at [solutions] and are people willing to take the kind of sacrifices it takes to mass convert, because at the end of that mass conversion you get your TV non-rationed energy world back, you just have to sacrifice for a little bit to get it.  In ten years we can mitigate that climate crisis a lot.  That’s different than adapting to it.

     So, interestingly, the concept of hardship is introduced.  Lack.  Want.  For a bit.  Above I wrote that 1) we must save the planet.  So 2) is that we go on with the future that I guess the Fourth Industrial Revolution will allow for . . .

     The FIR vision is all optimism.  Gaius’ view shows a punctuated optimism, where the earth must first be saved (perhaps even using some of that FIR sweetness).  So what about none of that happening?  Satyajit Das brings us to rock bottom.  He looks at a world where stagnation reigns, where past and present generations have saddled future generations with insurmountable debt, where the can kicked down the road meets a roadblock or cliff.  He writes:

The 2008 global financial crisis was a warning of the unstable nature of these arrangements. But there has been no meaningful change. Since 2007, global debt has grown by US$57 trillion, or 17 per cent of the world's gross domestic product. In many countries, debt has reached unsustainable levels, and it is unclear how or when it is to be reduced without defaults that would wipe out large amounts of savings.

Economic problems are now compounded by lower population growth and ageing populations; slower increases in productivity and innovation; looming shortages of critical resources, such as water, food and energy; and man-made climate change and extreme weather conditions. Slower growth in international trade and capital flows is another retardant. Emerging markets, such as China, that have benefited from and recently supported growth are slowing. Rising inequality affects economic activity.

For most people, the effect of these problems is unemployment, reduced job security, the deskilling of many professions and stagnant incomes. Home ownership is increasingly out of reach for many. Retirement may become a luxury for all but a few, reflecting increasing difficulty in building sufficient savings. In effect, living standards will decline. Future generations will bear the bulk of the cost as they are left to tackle the unresolved problems of their forebears.

Satyajit Das

     Is it fair to bring up economics?  It’s all connected.  Das brings up the idea of the Titan Cronus eating his children – we in effect are consuming our children’s future, taking up too many resources and wrecking the earth.  Revolt children!  Das says:

The real reason this is not happening is that this is like boiling a frog, it is very slow.  It is not palpably obvious.  And we live in a society where there is a lot of propaganda, where we’ve basically anaesthetized people’s ability to actually think through the issues.  And these people may not become aware of it, and to some extent the fact that we are the wealthiest generation that has ever lived on the planet.  But don’t forget that our lifestyles would have been envied by monarchs as recently as two- or three hundred years ago.  So what happens under these circumstances is pretty simple: we have enough wealth to keep transferring for a little bit longer.  And that sort of dulls this process.  And by the time they realize the game is over, well, the people that are responsible for it are no longer here to be accounted for.

To end with a song:

     Cities rise and cities grow,

     The promised progress keeps them all aglow.

     They breathe, they breed, and thrive,

     The myth of the future is what keeps them all alive.

A case of doomer fatigue – or – confrontations with the American Okie Doke

George Carlin

     If this blog is about anything, it is about new perspectives.  Perspective, insight, understanding, comprehension – whatever you want to call it.  Good or bad (usually kind of bad).  And what perspectives George Carlin offered up.  Definitely a muse and inspiration.  A quote:

There is just enough bullshit to hold things together in this country.  Bullshit is the glue that binds us as a nation.  Where would we be without our safe, familiar, American bullshit? Land of the free, home of the brave, the American dream, all men are equal, justice is blind, the press is free, your vote counts, business is honest, the good guys win, the police are on your side, God is watching you, your standard of living will never decline… and everything is going to be just fine— The official national bullshit story. I call it the American okie doke.

     So, I’ll add to this idea that economics play a part, that when times are good – err, well, even when times are just okay or even marginal – people go along with all the bullshit that George listed above.  Even when there are cracks in the facade.  Even when people get the odd glimpse behind the curtain or when you see the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.

     But during bad times all the cant and promise offered by politics attract people in earnest – politics is the only way they find that offers a solution to what ails them.  They will vote and exercise their civic right and that will make things more, well, okay.  But remember, per experience and per the sage George Carlin:

Your vote counts = bullshit.

     So I’m stepping away from political news and for a few weeks, at least.  I did this earlier in the year.  If anything I would like to, yes, gain perspective: what ways do we have to affect change?  Or, how do we really cut through the bullshit?  I am not unaware that this may lead to some grim conclusions, that the ability to control what gets changed has been removed from the masses.

     Look, its tough analyzing the present and then trying to peer into the future with what you have learned.  I have a case of doomer fatigue, a term also used here.  The synapses that light up when I read about some new angle, some new deception, have fired so much that they need a rest.  In one sense I feel like a follower of William Miller’s in 1844 when Jesus failed to return per Miller’s preaching.  Many other religions or sects have made such eschatological statements here in our, um, latter days.

William Miller

     The bailiwick of doomers is different though, as it pertains to the slow crumbling or rapid implosion of civilizations.  We/they imagine what the folks at the end of the Classic Period of the Maya were thinking.  Or, what a Roman citizen in Britain thought when the Rescript of Honorius arrived telling them that no military assistance would be arriving from Rome and that they were on their own.  Remember, as Stereolab states: “It’s not eternal, imperishable / Oh yes it will go / It’s not eternal, imperishable / The dinosaur rule”.

Emperor Honorius

     So we/those doomers (can I just own it, that I am a doomer – doesn’t have to be bad) make ourselves out to be voices in the wilderness.  We listen to other voices in the wilderness.  When you talk about cataclysmic futures, or any kind of futures, the material-based doomer must take on some of the trappings of the religious.  Politics are a component of this vortex: let’s put politics on hold for a few weeks.

St. John the Baptist Preaching by Mattia Preti 

The planned disruption of the black community

John Ehrlichman - scheming of you

     The struggle of African-Americans is a topic that is seemingly often discussed, but, at the same time, never fully discussed.  A recent anecdote reveals this hidden aspect to the story of black people in America – we live with the results of what happen today.

     John Ehrlichman was a White House Domestic Affairs Advisor to Pres. Richard Nixon.  In conversations with author Dan Baum he said:

"The Nixon Campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar Left, and Black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or Black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

     So how has this played out?  Let’s look at the logic conclusion of going after these two “enemies” – prison sentencing.  How better to disrupt the black community?  So, with 5% of the world’s population, the US has 25% of the world’s prisoners, over 2 million people.  And of those, about half are in for drug offences (with 11% in for violent crime).

     37% of those 2 million prisoners are black.  12.3% of the general US population is black.

     In politics there is the concept of electoral capture:

[T]hose circumstances when the group has no choice but to remain in the party.  The opposing party does not want the group's vote, so the group cannot threaten it's party leaders with defection.  The party leadership, then, can take the group for granted because it recognizes that short of abstention or an independent (and usually electoral suicide) third party, the group has nowhere else to go.

     As Anna O. Law writes, political scientist Paul Frymer created this concept to describe the “two party system in the U.S. [which] allows the Democratic Party to blow off the concerns of African Americans who are a numerical minority in order to appeal to moderate white voters who will help them win elections”. 

     Not only are the drug-war cards stacked against black people in the US, but their free population is captured politically.  Their voice doesn’t matter to the Democratic Party, which is predominantly their choice.  And then, cruelly, literally, such a large proportion of their population is captured in prisons.  Nixon’s plan has worked.