Discourse control

Last decade or so, discourse control has become so much more sophisticated, pervasive and cynical since Edward Bernays' times. The ISIS snuff videos aggressively promoted by all media outlets, the Russia-Ukraine rift with its shameless shock-propaganda on both sides, the "je suis Charlie" travesty with staged mass selfies by world's leaders... refined techniques, comprehensive scale, deviously clever use of media technology, globally orchestrated delivery.

Ten percent of the brain

Time after time again, I come across people claiming, "according to recent research" as it goes, that humans only use 10% of their brain. I guess, neurologists BELIEVE that we don't use a great part of our brain because they yet HAVE NO IDEA what it's for. When information like that percolates from the academia through the media into the public domain, it loses all academic nuances and becomes a simplistic meme people take for a gospel and repeat until the majority believes it to be true. Foucault often used to bitch about it.

Proof and evidence in science

Everything in science is about enough evidence beyond reasonable doubt, never a conclusive proof, especially so in social sciences. So everything is essentially "may" or "may not". To claim otherwise, is journalists' job.
 

"Once one says "may", all the evidence have been redacted. All the educated guesses, all the logical inferences, thrown out the window. With the empirical data, and the established theories, what can one conclude? Of course it is not impossible that the conclusions of one's analysis is incorrect, but that's an interpretation of the conclusions, which is up to the reader. Don't put words in the mouth of the reader. Especially not words of doubt, not after so many pages trying to convince the reader of the legitimacy of the conclusion of the analysis. With the empirical data, and the established theories, what can one conclude? Nothing? Ok, then put the "may" in there, so the reader knows the text was a waste of time to read..."
 

That's essentially the logic of what happens to scientific information as it passes through the media on to the layman: it ends up trivialised and truncated so that it can be presented as "scientific facts from recent research" in the latest Marie-Claire. Even Foucault bitched about that in one of his interviews. But then again, it helps "sell science" to the masses, so there you go.
 

That one can conclude nothing is a bit too dramatic. We can gather enough evidence to suggest that certain things are most likely to be true. Considering how much effort and rigour go to get to that point, and that at some point of time, it is bound to give way for better, or perhaps, entirely different results, it's decent enough. In reality, science is a lot of educated guesswork, just the way it is put together, the scientific method, makes it much more reliable than, say, gossip, but it is not inherently THE best or multi-purpose method of cognition. Trying to create a belief in the infallibility of "scientific proof" is what makes science scientism, a religion like any other. Do we really want that now?

Sheeple, get a clue!

Sick and tired of people whose only idea of the world is the latest propaganda soundbite they caught from a news presenter reading whatever shows on the autocue cooked up by some spin doctors overpaid by their corporate employers to guide the public opinion to legitimise whatever self-serving political turn the present ruling party makes to continue "dividing and ruling" their clueless electorate who keep turning to news presenters for opinions

Whatever logical reasoning is brought froward to justify social policies, the underlying divide is always the pre-conscious choice of "the deserving vs. the undeserving". It rests upon denying humanity to other humans, stereotyped as an arbitrarily chosen group.  To do that, an easily recognisable attribute (race, gender, disability, religion, sexuality, employment status) is picked to turn into catchy replicable soundbites and headlines. Although superficially "rational", such catchy slogans appeal directly to pre-rational, non-verbal affects, usually something very powerful and negative like envy, fear of the Other, anger, neurotic frustration, etc. That way, such slogans provide a channel for pent-up, unprocessed affects to surface on the verbal level accessible to the "rational" mind (aka, the secondary thinking process). The link between the slogan and the affect stays very powerful, strengthened further by media exposure and confirmation bias.

In the parlance of Russian spin doctors, such couplings are called "schizo-blocks", false dilemmas cooked up with the help of focus groups and brain-storming sessions.

The simulachra of sex: the tyranny of media images in your bedroom

 


















"Body-perfect earthlings look for other earthlings looking exactly like themselves to fornicate with media-created images in their own heads." If that does not paint a mental picture  for you, then I don't know  what will.

Now for a bit of theory.

The earthling's social persona in the symbolic order of their mind, the perception of oneself as perceived by the Other, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding: the méconnaisance of taking the Ego for one's Self, of which Lacan (1931) wrote. Amazing how many people only get the letter of the Mirror Stage, but not at all its  spirit.

The frame of reference for the building and maintenance of that social persona, both symbolic and material, is taken from the social environment: parents, family, peers, and, to an ever-increasing extent, the media. The dynamic here is two-fold. Firstly, the earthling learns of the available/possible choices for assembling its identity, consisting of multiple extensions on top of the Ego. Secondly, s/he looks into the society as if into a mirror, picking on and learning from the reactions/feedback towards his or her social persona. 

The physical re-enactment of mental pictures, often media-created, then becomes a major life pursuit. Mutual masturbation into each other, aroused subliminally by those mental pictures is the sex simulacra (Baudrillard 1981) that, unbeknownst to most earthlings, is supplanting human sexual interaction with its glossy vapidity.

* The present analysis is a result of a long-term multi-site fieldwork project undertaken by the author.

Related sources: Lacan's sexuation formulae. 

Photo by Mehmet Turgut

Simulacra sex

Recently, earthlings have been living under the tyranny of images imposed on them through various media outlets, which shape their expectations of life. When it comes to sex, for example, they keep looking for an exact match of such an image in their brain: the right abs, the right breasts, etc. When they've found a match, they then proceed to fucking that image in the brain, masturbating into or with the help of the other person. Enacting the right sequence of image-induced actions, as Baudrillard's attributes of visible  happiness, is supposed to achieve the prescribed jouissance, and, perhaps, it does. However, to someone outside that tyranny of images, it simply comes across mechanistic and, well, masturbatory.

Breaking news

"BREAKING NEWS!" 

It's not "breaking". It's a sensationalist factoid pandering to the emotional voyeurism of the bored masses.

No link to stop smut from spreading.

Emotional pornography: talent shows and the division of labour

The division of labour, a revolutionary labour management solution, pioneered in early manufactures of the Cordovan Caliphate and later on in the Northern Italian city-states, has freed us from having to single-handedly in order . It has provided us with a constantly expanding range of ever-more affordable commodities, which have, no doubt, have our lives more comfortable.

On the other hand, it has made the work lives of most of us a bit of a senseless drudgery, whereby we are divorced from the purpose, or the final product of what we do Monday to Friday. With at least one third of our waking hours spent so, our life routine is boring and predictable. We have traded our lifetime on this planet for creature comforts and a promise of stability. 

However, humans cannot sustain on material welfare alone. Emotional consumption is at least just as important as consumption of market commodities. In fact, the two are two sides of the same medal: e.g., in retail therapy we seek an emotional high, the purchase itself being merely instrumental.

This is where very cunningly barges in the entertainment industry. Talent shows like X-Factor and [Fill In The Country] Has Talent shrewdly extract genuine emotions from starry-eyed hopefuls to peddle close-up images of ecstatic or devastated contestants and awed audiences alike to the jaded masses glued to their plasma screens. As shielded from this kind of psychological pollution as my largely media-free life is, I briefly found myself gawking at one after another YouTube clip of talent show stories, devouring the cleverly packaged emotional trips with an addictive gusto.

Scientist's analytic streak however quickly kicked, and I started pondering over possible repercussions of what this industry of emotional pornography does to earthlings. 

Firstly, this vicarious enjoyment of someone's cynically hijacked and broadcast emotions provides a powerful emotional kick to those whose lives are largely void of that. In some ways, it is not unsimilar to the common-and-garden masturbation to porn videos, except here one is exempt from any kind of effort to obtain gratification: it is delivered ready-made, pre-chewed and pre-digested, straight to your senses by a devilishly professional TV production team.

Secondly, it upholds an illusion of meritocracy, of a society with a speed lift of social mobility for the gifted. Never mind that most winners fizzle out into oblivion a few months after the show, abandoned to their own devices to deal with the aftermath of falling down from so high.

Thirdly, it also contributes to a culture of instant gratification, an illusion that success can be achieved if you only hit the right button at the right time, no effort required on your side. A generation of youngsters is tricked into believing that having a great voice or good looks will automatically promote you to the highest rungs of showbiz. The fact that such big-time entertainers as Beyonce and Brittney Spears have effectively had no childhood having to work non-stop to achieve their present position is conveniently glossed over, while the superficial trimmings of success - fancy clothes, shiny cars and glamorous lifestyles - enjoy a disproportionate, voyeristic coverage.

The neurotic conflict between the simulacra of the media-manufactured delusional desire and the reality of structural violence and social immobility is what one of the major drives of the 2011 urban riots in the UK. Simon Cowell and the Co. are most certainly among the actual culprits.