John Whitehead's Commentary
Numbed and Smiling into the Media Age
Do you ever wonder why you can't seem to remember what happened last week--much less last month? As the great French writer Jacques Ellul once observed, it is as if modern man is one without a memory.
Much of this is due to the continual bombardment of our minds with media images and information--whether it be the war in Iraq, the latest murder or sex scandal concerning a celebrity or an episode of "Survivor" or "American Idol." It doesn't really matter, for it all seems to blend into one great glut of nothingness.
The American mind, simply put, has become numb to reality. Speaking of the carnage in Iraq, for example, a CNN reporter recently voiced the concern that "events such as these, like the story of Iraq itself, are fading in prominence in the American consciousness." One New York Times reporter referred to it as a "phenomenon of a kind of numbness, the numbing quality of a car bomb going off every day, the numbing quality of the statistics of American casualties there."
And who knows what the toll on us will be from the continual exposure to the pornographic poses of American troops as they torture Iraqi prisoners? The country was supposedly outraged by Janet Jackson's exposed breast, but like peeping Toms and voyeurs, we watch as CNN shows us the sado-masochism of our troops.
It is little wonder that our minds are paralyzed by the constant media onslaught. Just think about some of the horrific images thrown at us in the last several years:
•Terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., and the planes crashing into the Twin Towers and Pentagon
•Anthrax scares and continued terrorist alerts of varying stark colors
•Attacks on Afghanistan and the hunt for al-Qaida
•Space shuttle Columbia disaster
•"Shock and awe" invasion of Iraq
•Car bombs that destroyed Iraqi hotels and embassies
•Torture of American civilian contractors in Fallujah, etc.
•Serial investigations of alleged misdeeds of the Bush Administration
Amid all this, we escape into trivia--soap operas, sit-coms, reality TV, online communities, spiritual retreats and "legal" drugs such as Viagra, Prozac and Ritalin. In other words, we swim in a vast sea of meaninglessness and a haze of sex and stimulants. "Our minds," as Thomas de Zengotita writes in Harper's magazine, "are the product of total immersion in a daily experience saturated with fabrications to a degree unprecedented in human history."
We live in the instant. There is no past or future, only a continually moving present of glut. And all things have become entertainment. This includes war, politics and even so-called news. Even torture becomes part of the entertainment syndrome and seems unreal.
Our government leaders understand this. They know quite well that our minds are so overloaded that, if the time lapse is long enough, the President, for example, can survive almost any scandal.
Too often, the media and terrorists work together in assaulting our psyche. "It has been said that journalists are terrorists' best friends," writes terrorist expert Walter Laqueur, "because they are willing to give terrorist operations maximum exposure." Indeed, "the terrorists need the media, and the media find in terrorism all the ingredients of an exciting story." Modern terrorism, as Laqueur recognizes, could not exist with any magnitude if the media, bent on sensationalism, did not publicize the terrorists' every move.
Life, in media terms, is perpetual motion. Everything is seen in transition. The coverage of the beheading of Nicholas Berg is followed by the news anchor smiling and saying, "moving on," and then going to a story on Rosie O'Donnell's latest flap followed by the weather followed by a commercial about a diet pill. Moving on with a smile. Maybe that is the one reality left to us.
The direction of the future seems to be moving toward what Aldous Huxley described in his classic novel Brave New World. "What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate," writes author Neil Postman. "In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk: culture-death is a clear possibility."
Indeed, Huxley was trying to tell us that what afflicted people in the media age was not that they were laughing instead of thinking. Instead, they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking. Nevertheless, numbed into oblivion, they kept smiling.
Much of this is due to the continual bombardment of our minds with media images and information--whether it be the war in Iraq, the latest murder or sex scandal concerning a celebrity or an episode of "Survivor" or "American Idol." It doesn't really matter, for it all seems to blend into one great glut of nothingness.
The American mind, simply put, has become numb to reality. Speaking of the carnage in Iraq, for example, a CNN reporter recently voiced the concern that "events such as these, like the story of Iraq itself, are fading in prominence in the American consciousness." One New York Times reporter referred to it as a "phenomenon of a kind of numbness, the numbing quality of a car bomb going off every day, the numbing quality of the statistics of American casualties there."
And who knows what the toll on us will be from the continual exposure to the pornographic poses of American troops as they torture Iraqi prisoners? The country was supposedly outraged by Janet Jackson's exposed breast, but like peeping Toms and voyeurs, we watch as CNN shows us the sado-masochism of our troops.
It is little wonder that our minds are paralyzed by the constant media onslaught. Just think about some of the horrific images thrown at us in the last several years:
•Terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., and the planes crashing into the Twin Towers and Pentagon
•Anthrax scares and continued terrorist alerts of varying stark colors
•Attacks on Afghanistan and the hunt for al-Qaida
•Space shuttle Columbia disaster
•"Shock and awe" invasion of Iraq
•Car bombs that destroyed Iraqi hotels and embassies
•Torture of American civilian contractors in Fallujah, etc.
•Serial investigations of alleged misdeeds of the Bush Administration
Amid all this, we escape into trivia--soap operas, sit-coms, reality TV, online communities, spiritual retreats and "legal" drugs such as Viagra, Prozac and Ritalin. In other words, we swim in a vast sea of meaninglessness and a haze of sex and stimulants. "Our minds," as Thomas de Zengotita writes in Harper's magazine, "are the product of total immersion in a daily experience saturated with fabrications to a degree unprecedented in human history."
We live in the instant. There is no past or future, only a continually moving present of glut. And all things have become entertainment. This includes war, politics and even so-called news. Even torture becomes part of the entertainment syndrome and seems unreal.
Our government leaders understand this. They know quite well that our minds are so overloaded that, if the time lapse is long enough, the President, for example, can survive almost any scandal.
Too often, the media and terrorists work together in assaulting our psyche. "It has been said that journalists are terrorists' best friends," writes terrorist expert Walter Laqueur, "because they are willing to give terrorist operations maximum exposure." Indeed, "the terrorists need the media, and the media find in terrorism all the ingredients of an exciting story." Modern terrorism, as Laqueur recognizes, could not exist with any magnitude if the media, bent on sensationalism, did not publicize the terrorists' every move.
Life, in media terms, is perpetual motion. Everything is seen in transition. The coverage of the beheading of Nicholas Berg is followed by the news anchor smiling and saying, "moving on," and then going to a story on Rosie O'Donnell's latest flap followed by the weather followed by a commercial about a diet pill. Moving on with a smile. Maybe that is the one reality left to us.
The direction of the future seems to be moving toward what Aldous Huxley described in his classic novel Brave New World. "What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate," writes author Neil Postman. "In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk: culture-death is a clear possibility."
Indeed, Huxley was trying to tell us that what afflicted people in the media age was not that they were laughing instead of thinking. Instead, they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking. Nevertheless, numbed into oblivion, they kept smiling.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
Publication Guidelines / Reprint Permission
John W. Whitehead’s weekly commentaries are available for publication to newspapers and web publications at no charge. Please contact staff@rutherford.org to obtain reprint permission.
