If you want to get a real handle on how the world works and how we all get manipulated, let's go hog wild and tap something once uttered by the worst of the worst: Adolf Hitler.
Hitler once said that the average man only wanted bread and circuses. (Hitler actually got the phrase from an Ancient Roman poem. But the fact that he used it adds emphasis.)
This is the ultimate elitist statement. What Hitler was saying was "Fill their bellies and give them amusing nonsense and they'll shut up and keep out of our way while we get down to the serious shit of holding power, exploiting them and doing as we please."
Okay, I'm not about to compare anyone to Hitler. What I will do is say that, in terms of manipulating people, many latter-day elites do use the bread-and-circuses strategy.
Think about it.
Political speeches, advertising, news reports, PR stunts, pressures to conform or be cool... they all have subsistence and/or entertainment at their core. Appeal to the masses sense of need for food and other "basics" such as trendy clothes (often in excess), then smother that with the cream of lowest-common-denominator entertainment to keep them occupied and out of the way.
Or as Bill Hicks put it in one of his skits: "Go back to bed America, your government is in control. Here, watch American Gladiators. Here's 56 channels of it. Sit on your couch and get fat and stupid. Your government is in control. And you are free to do as we tell you. You are free to do as we tell you." [paraphrase from memory] Watch the 35-second clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR3KwODDzeY
Hicks was never one to mince words but he got it right. I mean, look how dramatically television has changed over the decades. Ads have gone from someone holding up a box of soap powder and talking over a jingle in the 1950s and 1960s, to the most crazed Madison Avenue brainshit you can imagine. It's no secret that advertising today is developed by advertising vampires AND psychologists. What's up with that?
And that includes child psychologists because McDonald's, Coke, Phillip Morris (though they've been reeled in in recent years after hard work by activists!), and all the other squillionaire bottom feeders want to develop "consumers for life." Does this scare anybody else out there? Hey, they're messing with our kids!
And the average kid sees -- wait for it -- about 20,000 30-second commercials every year. (I'm pretty sure I've actually seen higher figures.) That's a lot of brainwashing and junk info being stuffed into our children's heads. Hours and hours of it. Type the words "number commercials children" into Google and be prepared to have your brain trickle out your ears.
This must surely have implications for cognition, memory, fatigue, attention span, personal world view, and more. Plus, the nature of the commercials nowadays -- e.g. a ton of ads for junk food -- are affecting other lifestyle choices. And physical health. (Googling this will probably give you heart failure. The health risks of reading my blog!)
Then we could talk about the shows on TV that dumb us down and rope us in with their reliance on excess and indulgence, simplistic non-messages, and their ability to titillate our voyeuristic urges. With some exceptions, major-rating TV shows these days appeal to our worst instincts. We want to see how so-and-so will backstab her roommate on Reality Show X or who's doing who when we tune into the latest Hollywood tabloid show etc etc. Nudity, violence, vicious gossip, wallowing in the trivial and inane... the list goes on. Gone are the days when you didn't even hear a minor cuss word before 10pm on TV. This is all blazing from the screen while the kids are still up.
I covered a lot of this stuff on TV in my previous blog entry "THE IDIOT CULTURE." Take a look at it.
But it's bread and circuses all the way. And it's messing up our thinking, stealing our time, dimming our creativity, dulling our objectivity and ability to critique, making it tougher to parent, and much more.
I don't even have TV. (I own a television but it isn't plugged into the outlet that pumps in the TV stations.) I haven't had TV for five years. And I don't miss it one bit. I enjoy quality movies on DVD and docos on DVD. That's about it apart from some occasional viewing at my fiancee's place.
But lest I be accused of sounding "holier than thou" let me add a rider: We all have our guilty pleasures. Yep, me too. Fine. The trick, I believe, is in whether the guilty pleasure is in control of us or if we are in control of the guilty pleasure. If you don't watch more than a "bit" of junk TV, hey, cool. And if you are aware of what it is that you're looking at, hey, double cool.
But if you find yourself immersed in this stuff to any degree, I'd encourage you to stop yourself and think about it. Believe me, I know what it's like: I used to veg out and watch one episode of "Cops" after another. Not good. (I was indeed a bad boy, bad boy... Actually, I think I was waiting for the episode where the handcuffed black man in the back of the patrol car would shout out: "Hey man, how come this car smells like crack smoke?!")
If you can say, "Hey, I don't care if I miss that show I like tonight because I want to read a book/play with my kid/CONVERSE with my kid/go out/exercise/etc." then that's a good sign. But if you feel an uncontrollable twitch coming on, call me immediately.
I hope this is making sense because I believe it with all my heart and it is important. Vitally important.
I first studied mass communication in 1987. There was one professor who tried to teach us about manipulative subtexts in various film forms (including TV) and I thought he was some kind of commie nut job (yep, I was very sucked in in those days). Now I know he was right. Since then I've read the literature, studied the trends, listened to child psychologists ON FILM admit to what they're doing, noticed how TV shows and commercials are actually constructed differently than in bygone decades so as to keep snapping your attention to FULL ON, and so on. I know more about this stuff than I really want to; but I felt I needed to.
My own son is limited in his "screen time." Very limited but not unreasonably limited. He is almost 8. "Screen time" is TV, computer, and video games. And, to her credit, his mother also carefully polices the content of what he looks at and plays.
And he's happy because the limits feel natural to him. And he also rides his bike, draws, studies hip hop dancing, belongs to a children's theater group, visits museums, loves reptiles and marine life, plays with friends, and amazes his Dad with things and words he knows. I have never known him to be bored. He exercises (various functions of) his brain, his body and his emotional intelligence.
Basically, he's enjoying a similar, balanced lifestyle to the one that was commonplace for my generation. These days, sadly, it takes work and monitoring to get it.
Now let me back up again: I'm not trying to say my kid is better than anyone else's. Kids are vessels of potential and I don't regard any one as better than another: be it my son or anybody else. But he is an example that I can cite accurately because, obviously, I know him intimately. And he is being kept from the "bread and circuses" syndrome. Is he perfect? No. Will he have problems? Yes. Will he go through phases? Yes. But he is getting a full set of tools to deal with life and the curveballs it will undoubtedly throw at him. (Before you envy me too much think about this: I'm a bloke who has always struggled to fill the big shoes of my Dad, and now I find myself humbled by my own son. Oh dear.)
This whole "KNOWLEDGE AND EFFORT" blog entry feels like tough love as I write it. But I do not mean it as arrogance or superiority. It comes from my conscience. I have loved kids all my life. I care about them. All kids. And I care about you, their parents, too.
Trust me, it takes real love and caring to tell you the crap you maybe don't want to hear. Of course, if you feel you are on a pretty good track already, then I'm going to tell you that it's up to you to help spread the word. The Idiot Culture must not steal our focus. The bread and circuses are not all there is. We are highly intelligent beings. Let's not allow that unique faculty to atrophy in a quasi (or actual) evolutionary way.
More tomorrow night.
Take care and keep smiling,
Adrian Zupp
IF YOU FOUND THIS BLOG POST INTERESTING you might like to take a look at KNOWLEDGE AND EFFORT: THE WORLD'S TWO BEST FRIEND'S -- PART 1 and PART 3.
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