and toys, iPods, iPads, Xboxes and PlayStations, where "information
becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than
a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," but this
could easily describe nearly all of our media, with Obama, like the
rest of our ruling class, a prime beneficiary. As our entire society
unravels and the Gulf of Mexico becomes a dead sea, what do you find on
television but singing and dancing contests, huge people losing weight,
pregnant teens and endless sports? That is, the usual stuff, all noise
and no consequences.
The age of mass media coincides, roughly,
with the oil era. Before the 20th century, there were no radios,
televisions, movies or recorded music, only newspapers. Oil provided the
perfect fuel for the combustion engine. With it, cars and airplanes
became possible, shortening distance and making the local less relevant
or even real, the same effects achieved by the mass media.
When I
went from Philadelphia to Hanoi in 1995, I was definitely there and not
here, since there were no internet cafà ©s to keep me in both places. I
could not email or check how the Phillies were doing. When I went to
Iceland in 2007, each second I spent online distracted me from the
magnificence of that country. It's true that all media displace us, even
a book, but at least with reading, the imagination is activated and one
has control over the pacing, that is, one can slow down, pause and
reflect. Not so with television.
Microsoft asked, "Where do you
want to go today?" How about nowhere. I just want to be here. Now. Do
you know where you are? Eating dinner, the married couple slouch on a
couch, their eyes fixated on the garrulous screen. They chat only during
commercials, thanks to the mute button. "How was your day, hon?" In
separate rooms, the kids are transfixed by their own screens.
mass media is as pervasive or intrusive as the American one. Now that
we've stopped making stuff, more or less, we're still super prolific at
selling our own image. (That and 155 billion dollars' worth of weapons
of mass destruction annually, 41% of global sales worldwide.) When I
was in Vietnam from 1999 to 2001, I had the hardest time convincing
friends that, no, Americans don't spend the bulk of their time lounging
by the pool, dancing, rapping and tossing money into the air. To quote
Harold Pinter, "As a salesman [America] is out on its own and its most
saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner."
This hypnosis
works even on Americans, who should know better. But we don't live here
so much as inside media. The average American watches four hours of
television a day, listens to constant music, and there's also the
internet with its Facebook, texting, twitter and email, etc, to distract
him. Two or more of these activities are often indulged in
simultaneously. In a third of American households, the television is
never turned off.
For many of us, our first impulse upon
entering a new space, be it country, city or room, is to escape it. I
must get online. Staring at a computer, a person can flit from NBA
playoffs to Katherine Heigl, to a napping and slumping Ken Griffey Jr.,
to porn, to the boxscore of a game he doesn't give a damn about, to
Gisele Bundchen, to Elena Kagan. Gulf oil spill? What Gulf oil spill?
but by stuffing lard, blood, scrapple, gristle, chicken mess, acorn,
corn syrup, sawdust, meat and whatever else into an unending sausage,
nothing could be isolated long enough for anything to matter, not even
the tortured death of a nation or a planet. Everything has become a blip
in a gush of tedious entertainment, even Abu Ghraib and Goldman Sachs
outrages. Of course, in this diseased system, fluff weighs more, since
it benefits the Washington and Wall Street criminals to have us fixated
on Simon Cowell, Rihanna or some dancing parrot.
Our basic
social needs, to mingle, see each other face to face and chatter, have
been supplanted by the virtual, with chatrooms and forums replacing
taverns and squares. In your typical bar nowadays, the patrons must
shout in brief spurts, since the music is too loud for a sustained
conversation. Eyes are most often glued to a bright TV. So much for the
drinking hole as a social space, and music as occasional and
celebratory.
Simply put, our culture is hostile to thinking and
talking. About the only American environment where discussions are
encouraged, or just made possible, is the university, but these are
conducted mostly by people without dirt under their fingernails, hence
the gross disconnect between the academy and the rest of us.
In
Italy, there's a quaint custom known as the passegiatta. For a couple
hours before dinner, people actually hang out or walk around their local
square. This bonding and soothing practice embraces even foreigners.
This is not possible here because we don't have the proper spaces. Our
few squares are landscaped, with paths dictating traffic, unlike an open
piazza that encourages congregrating and loitering, that allows free
movement and wide vistas. In most American localities, there are no
squares at all, only shopping mall food courts.
Our typical
mall is surrounded by an oil spill. Here and there, a half-assed berm.
Once you've gone through the hassle of driving there, then looping back
and forth to seize a parking space, you might as well spend a few hours
inside the air conditioning and fork over a Ben Franklin or two. It's
designed for that. At a square, however, you can buy nada and not feel
like you've wasted your time. With home shopping, even this degraded
mingling inside mall can be dispended with altogether.
Cocooned
in a virtual universe, many of us can no longer see or care that our
real world is being destroyed. In March of 2010, a Korean couple was
charged with starving their 3-month-old baby to death, even as they
spent twelve hours a day at an internet cafà ©, raising a virtual one,
Anima. Like them, we've been seduced into nurturing a ghost while our
souls die.
