![[tmbchr]™](/journal/popocculture-blog-logo.jpg){kind=logo}
No More Media
No More Voices In Your Head
I have been thinking a lot about this lately, but Alistair said it before I had a chance to: “imagine what your life would be like if, all of a sudden, you didn’t have mass media any longer.”
Please explain in the comments below how your and all of our lives would be different if we no longer had any mass media. Be as detailed as possible. Thanks! Interesting to see what everyone’s thoughts will be on this topic…
Articles With Similar Themes:
- Media Literacy and Theology
- Media something something, hoo-ha
- Media Literacy Educational Benchmarks
- Better Than My Neighbors
- Ash…
- Prev: The Holly & The Ivy
- Next: Guiltier And Guiltier
August 28th, 2006 at 9:52 am
If the mass media is radio, TV and newspapers, good riddance!
I’m going a little further than this and imagining that I cannot afford petrol any more or don’t have access to transportation. It’s a strange thing, but I realise that in spirit that is the way I live already. Whilst very interested in what’s happening in the world, and in practice dependent on importations, I’ve made a commitment to what’s local, and have renounced most travel, because it would take several lifetimes to explore the place i live in.
If catastrophe cut us off from the rest of the world, I would drink local beer instead of wine. Potatoes and wheat and barley grow locally and oilseed rape which provides oil. We can grow hops and lettuce and turnips and tomatoes and we have cattle and sheep. We would not starve but land would be more important.
The only thing I would miss from the media is the international news, but it would be relief not to know that. I’d learn it from the grapevine eventually, as they did in the old days. I subscribe to DVDs of old non-Hollywood movies, but that is a recent habit and I’d happily go back to books, and acquire them from the Cottage Bookshop in Penn, rather than the bookshop in town which always seems to address itself to the semiliterate without any knowledge of the past.
If the Internet is part of the mass media, I would miss that most of all as it connects me to extraordinary people across the globe. But if push came to shove, I would change my antisocial habits and find people of similar depth and breadth of perception in the next flat (apartment) or certainly on the same street or in the pub across the road.
August 28th, 2006 at 10:28 am
…….i want to get in on this consideration,what do you mean by mass media..?
August 28th, 2006 at 10:28 am
…….i want to get in on this consideration,what do you mean by mass media..?
August 28th, 2006 at 11:03 am
well, the media has allowed us to communicate at greater and greater distances with speed and accuracy. 2000 years ago runners had to deliver messages and paul revere had to ride a horse through the night. now we have cell phones and computers, so physical seperation isn`t the traumatic process it once was.
if all of the communication media disappeared overnight we would be forced to draw closer to our associates once again.
mcluhan`s definition of media is that which contains and delivers something else. this can be paint, or a car, or a human, or a radio…………or pretty much anything else that fits the definition.
mass media is a media the delivers content to the masses. t.v. newspapers, etc.
August 28th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
Hmm, I wouldn’t miss much in the way of television or radio.. mass produced shows and music never appealed to me to begin with. I’d still go through a bit of withdrawal, feeling cut off from the world - especially if we’re talking the absence of the internet as well.
Over time, though, I can see the benefits. Having to interact with other people in a more personal space - no more online anonomity, no more catch-all supermusic or supershows to distract us from local talent and actual cultured entertainment. No more taking news from the trough of mass media… Ideas would proliferate the old fashioned way, ensuring they’d be much more genuine to your locale.
Personally, I think it’d be great. I’ve lost a lot of my ability to concentrate over the years, with all this media creeping in at the edges of my world. It makes creative thought all but impossible and it really bothers me sometimes. But hey, If mass media were to disappear it would force a freedom on people that they may not have known about in the first place. So while some of us breathe a sigh of relief, others would be panicking in the streets. Imagine the chaos!
August 28th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
Just go camping, and forget to take your cel phone with you (or turn it off, if you can’t afford to leave it behind). It may not be complete, but it will help you imagine life without mass media.
My former co-worker went camping for the first time in his life last week! He said he felt all the stress of modern life melt away in a finger snap.
August 28th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
I wouldn’t be amused with out mass media after a boring day of work. I would fully realize how ugly the city I live in is.
I would have to probably follow Henry David Thoreau’s spirit and live in a small cottage- simplify and live in the woods somewhere in New England, probably Vermont. I would get a job as a baker at a small country store and ride my bike to work. I would devote most of my free time playing in nature, chopping wood and drawing surrealistic monster cartoons or possibly make Halloween decorations.
If the internet was part of the mass media I would deeply miss Pop Occulture, Daily Kos, Fantastic Planet, wikipedia, and enemies.com — and if mass produced music was mass media I would miss listening to the Flaming Lips and the Violent Femmes.
August 28th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
It’s cute to suggest going back to books in the absence of mass media. What is a printing press? Mass media includes Sumerian clay tablets, cave paintings, and sermons from the mount. The purpose of mass media is simple: that the many share the perspective of the one, and thus act as one. This is the origin of top-down control, the social ligand, the ego. (I oversimplify, of course; when many can broadcast there are competing narratives (tower of babel?), but each narrative examined in isolation has the same purpose.)
Without mass media “I” wouldn’t exist, and we (the unconscious) would be free. But…
We are not physical beings. We are being physical. We are immersed in the physical realm, the prototypical mass medium. Who is the author of the content? Ultimately it is we, because the egotistical demiurge is an emergent phenomenon (created from the bottom-up) arising from the totality of our interactions. Adam, Adam, procreate!
The PKD quote from the “Guiltier” post is relevant:
In “The Occult Origins of Science” Tim wrote:
Read that PKD quote again.
Game on.
No more media? Life would be but a dream.
August 28th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
Straight answer: I would make more friends in meatspace. We would be dangerous.
August 28th, 2006 at 11:08 pm
I think that life would be less fulfilling. It’d be harder to find like minds to communicate on the level we pefer. I’d hate to be put in a situation where the most meaning conversation of the day would be about plumbing or the flavor difference of yellow vs white onions.
I think the mass media is controled by an elite few who have an agenda to dumb down the population and sell us things we dont need. Thats a given. I could go without the television but the internet would be a hard thing to let go of. I’ve learned so much from wasting my time surfing the net. My freinds online are more suitable for me than my neighbors. I dont see this as a problem but I can see how others would judge this. Perhaps if we didnt have the internet or tv ect…. we’d all be discussing onions and perhaps we’d actually be interested in that subject.
Or maybe we’d all get together and dicsuss are disatisfaction with the income tax and the IRS (or some other issue)and plot a revolution. It seemed to be more popular (revolution) in the later part of the 1700’s. Perhaps because people were bored. Probably because they were more informed of/on the actions of their unappointed overlords. When you dont have (as big of a) media, your less misinformed.
I still woukld rather have the media. I think it helps the process of evolution. But what if you evolve beyond the level of the people around you. You have to spend the whole day speaking of onions and pretending to be interested. Where do you find people who spend their time learning about the philosophies of people like….
Bill Hicks
PKD
Carl Jung
Talbot
icke
ect…..
PS
Why are none of these people woman. Anyone know of any women for me to look up??
August 29th, 2006 at 1:37 am
I’ve had the opportunity recently to compare the parts of the mass media version of events with my own personal observations as recorded here and here and here. This is a digression of course from the theme here, because it was the mass media which inspired my observations in the first place.
In the particular instance, the alleged plot to blow up planes over the Atlantic with bombs which looked like drinks had been doubted by many across the world, as if it were the fiendish conspiracy of certain governments to divert us from other news.
What I’ve seen is that the plot is beleived in very seriously for I have visited the site where hundreds of police are digging a wood for evidence. Also I have seen that the place where alleged terrorists come from is one of the most peaceful harmonious towns you could hope to live in, at least in England.
August 29th, 2006 at 3:47 am
But what if we took what we know of the media now and forthwith swore it off?
No more posting. No more checking. No more feeds. No more “what’s the temperature”. Etc.
Take it like you know it to be now. Now make all your media feeds go away. What would you do then?
Personally, I know I could do it, but I don’t know what would become of me (would I be able to “keep up”?). But I am leaning in the direction of doing it ala’ James’ caveat about camping. I couldn’t agree more. The mind-space transformation of being in the “unreachable” woods is both sudden and complete — summing up to downright glorious.
August 29th, 2006 at 4:01 am
Furthermore. What about life lived in full cognizance of the power of the Internet, but lived without and in a certain way beyond its use? Not to link-whore here, but it reminds me of this post I speculated on here at my own site.
August 29th, 2006 at 8:27 am
meatspace?…………………………..that`s what it feels like sometimes. we have been made to feel increasingly anxious about this space filled with meat. media allows for all the babel without the touch.
shame that.
August 29th, 2006 at 9:53 am
More in tune with nature -
Suffering the backlash of decreased jobs due to the decrease in demand for consumer goods -
Starving somewhere because I would be unemployed, homeless, and basically in a very desolate world aka post apocalyptic pain -
Possibly have closer better relationships -
I think most people need the malaise of mass media. I honestly shudder at the thought of metropolis’s unleashing it’s sick, stupid, poor, and dangerous on the world without the thin soma that is mass media.
I personally think the strong should inherit the freedom of their own freedom.
August 29th, 2006 at 10:23 am
I often do the camping that James suggests, as many days as possible, and live in a town with only 1300 people in it. 20 minutes to the nearest town to shop for groceries and 3 hours away (north or south) for a city experience (for shopping again usually - important items like underwear, because we only have a KMart). I’m tuned into the world thru the media - tv and internet - and spend a lot of time online because it is our most fabulous communication tool. Used to teach at our local community colleges, but quit recently to work fulltime with my partner on his business - almost all of which takes place online since I built his website.
Maggie says:
Yes - and therefore, not a waste.
And, hey - on women being absent. Women have been pretty absent here at Pop Occulture, too. Though Tim, I give you a really big thanks - I’ve been reading your blog every day for quite a while.
I’ve wanted to plug Doris Lessing’s Canopus in Argos: Archives series here - 5 sci-fi novels from a Sufi perspective that are truly a gift to us - and I do believe she belongs in your list Maggie. Has anyone here read these? Along with Emma Jung,
( wife of Carl for over 50 years) who wrote
“Animus and Anima” - a great explanation for women about the animus. And Marie-Louise Von Franz expands the Jung + alchemical stuff well for women too. And men - another important point for another time. Many more - maybe I’ll drop over to your place, Maggie…
So, I’m living that life that many dream of - it is wonderful to be surrounded by beauty that stretches on and on and on… AND I miss people, and would flip out if the media were destroyed.
August 29th, 2006 at 10:38 am
maggie said:
That way, four days walk, there is an island in the river. Apparently a bunch of witches live there. My cousin, you know Buttfeather? Yeah, he met them when he was up that way looking for those onions you like. He came home filled with joy and stories. I mean, you could just talk to him but he’s got, y’know, a penis and all, so you might want to head up the river instead and have a little adventure. Oh, and be a dear and bring back some onions.
??? It’s your list.
You, baby.
You can do it too. Those dudes weren’t superheroes. The saddest thing about mass media dependence is that addicts become unable to have a thought without it. Meanwhile in philosopher heaven:
Carl Jung: Hey Bill, I got that hash you wanted.
Bill Hicks: Sweet. Hey I gotta ask you something. Have you heard of any good new thinkers? Cos y’know, I might reincarnate and check em out, see wassup.
Carl: Nah man, turns out that you was it. Nobody can be as funny and insightful as you were. They all just gave up trying. So it’s pretty dull down there.
Bill: But they still take drugs right? Why aren’t they thinking up new shit?
Carl: Well Bill, they’re waiting for you to come back and drop some new material.
Bill: They’re fucking what?
Carl: Yeah I know. First Jesus. Now you. They’re waiting for Morpheus too.
Morpheus: Oh no, don’t look at me. I’ve had it with those twits. “Save me! Save me!” Fuck all that.
Bill: Fuckers couldn’t open they own eyes with two hands and a screwdriver. Alright fuck it I’m goin back, but I ain’t tellin no damn jokes. Bring me my reptilian suit. Phil, you comin?
PKD: dfiguyiu5488rVe09 d8ttseiurhp9ihtp3A25 qojtrgkjnblgoi3w4pL9yt8 qn3wrokjnIflkjg blhSoiresh
Bill: I know. But still, fuck em. Later, fellas.
Morpheus: Bring back some chicks.
Carl: And some onions.
Bill: What kind?
Morpheus: Black, baby.
Carl: White ones. I’m making a salad.
August 30th, 2006 at 6:43 am
I know you think you’re clever unthinkable. And I agree with you. I even laughed.
But I am sick to death of cynicism as it applies to thinkers who came before us.
What would the unfathomably unthinkable line be in your satire were you one of the luminaries you depict in your off-the-cuff sketch?
Mine would be about you: “Exactly, now STFU for a sec.”
Maybe that’s why I am sick to death. It’s hard to make a dying man laugh. Except I did manage a chuckle, like I said. So maybe I’m not dying.
Your quotes of PKD were spot on btw. What do you suppose this line meant?
I know you were only channeling the residual radiation from VALIS and transcribing it here. But at least tell us what it felt like to do it.
August 30th, 2006 at 10:33 am
It temporarily relieved my boredom. Clever or not, I am but a junky like the rest of you, over-stimulated, but never enough. I just keep pushing these buttons until I feel something. Should I turn away from the screen, I can still feel it, but now unmediated. Listen! We are all around us. And horribly free.
But here I am my own slave, enchanted by this virtual novelty and bound to the notion that someone other than I resides beyond the veil. Such is life.
Cynicism? Not toward thinkers, but towards the notion that one is blind unless standing on the shoulders of giants. There is nothing that can be thought that can’t be thought by you. Every man and woman is a luminary.
Nothing is unthinkable.
I’m glad you laughed, but you are surely dying, like the rest of us, letter by pointless letter. That’s not a bad thing, just kinda silly. In a world without mass media I wouldn’t have to tell you this. You would already know.
(PKD said: No matter what you do or say, they just won’t get it, and you’ll only end up hurting their feelings.)
August 31st, 2006 at 10:23 am
alistair…….thanks for spelling it out for me……i had the mccluhan stuff in my head,and the whole idea became too huge………if their were no mass media,i wouldn’t be concerned with storms and wars and horror in faraway places…….but even so,most people would feel the energy of what was occuring,maybe it’s better to know why we’re feeling a certain way,like if a large number of people just perished in a mass firebombing,would we feel it on some level,whether or not we have read about it ,or seen the televised version…….?