Re: news media and social soma

["James R. Olson, jr." <jhavok@xxxxxxxx>]

At 03:23 PM 3/2/97 -0500, G. Nowelle wrote:

>The soma argument is an important twist on the whole
>issue under discussion.  *The people want their soma.*
>That's the first point.  The second is, *when they get
>their soma desire for anything else disappears.*  It
>is therefor wrong to think of a latent demand when in
>fact the question is much more subtle, etc.

This view shares a lot with the Situationist theory of Spectacle, and the
propaganda technique of flooding.

If all available attention is used up by irrelevancies, then the relevant
facts will be lost.

Situationists deal with Spectacle by culture jamming, where humour is used
to display the lie, and anti-Spectacle, in which loud noise and bright
lights are used to maintain the attention of the anesthesized long enough
to insert ideas.

My personal view is that we have democracy of the concerned, and this is as
it should be, since I certainly don't want things being run by the
unconcerned.  But it is necessary to fight the flooding and spectacle, and
the only way I can think of is by constant injection of unhappy facts into
any forum that you find.  Facts have a power to deflate faulty analysis,
but they must fight the constant repetiton of Big Lies and the lazy
acceptance of spoonfed analysis.

Being concerned about the unconcerned is exhausting.  The key is to educate
the concerned and and activate the cynically impotent.  The Grandfather
Project is a good move in this direction.