War and Culture

The mass media continue discovering ways to distract the public from the core issues America faces. I use the neutral term “public” rather than “citizens” though we are citizens still, partly. What else could we be, subjects? Well, bad laws, capricious, post-modern application of laws, and, for decades Television has been directed toward reducing reason and, thus a sense of justice, of right and wrong; reducing too the ability to think or act with the result that most of us, to varying degrees, have been reduced to a glop one might term, “the masses.” Experimental psychology and the entire Pavlovian project, from advertising and ‘news’ to the classroom intertwine with this development but that’s another essay.

To television we can add computers and the various screen-experiences they provide from blogs to “games,” the worlds of X-Box and Play station. This is the world of see, push, point and click, of sense-and-respond, an animal world; or perhaps it’s a war zone in which emotions and hormones go wild. Do more people use the internet to study, learn history and write analytically or to “surf” for imagery, for various kinds of pornography, including simple voyeurism, if this kind of morbidity is ever “simple.” (more…)