In the early 1960s, McLuhan wrote that the visual, individualistic print culture would soon be brought to an end by what he called “electronic interdependence”: when electronic media replace visual culture with aural/oral culture. In this new age, humankind will move from individualism and fragmentation to a collective identity, with a “tribal base.” McLuhan’s coinage for this new social organization is the global village.
Marshall McLuhan, the one person who saw us now, and this was a very long time ago.
How many times do you turn on the computer to get information, to chat with friends, to connect to the world? About half a century ago, a man figured out that each of us would be using the computer, would be communicating around the world without writing letters, and with using personal computers. He even told those at IBM such things would happen. Yep, half a century ago!
Now we can tune into disasters, humans who have become so warped they seem to be monsters and all the earthquake and hurricane information we could possibly absorb plus more.
What does this do to us? Why are some people hooked on “bad news”, like the deaths of others en mass, the murderers, the carnage of starvation? The human system NEEDS stimulation, and if the person hooked is not getting the stimulation from everyday life, they find it, search it out, and use it to get the stimulation. Weird, not really, just the need to feel something, anything.
Today there is news of a massive murder in Norway, where people on an island were shot, using the ruse of the uniform of trust, a police officer. As of now, there are tens of people dead, and the country is in shock and mourning over such a “senseless” death, but here, look at the headlines. Hundreds of headlines appear. The more shocking the headline, the faster it is found or searched for. Like the people hooked on some other substance, the news feeds the stimulation, the inner adrenaline. The medium has become the message, the message is the need for stimulation, no matter how gruesome or shocking.
Again, what does this do to us? What happens to our bodies when we read these headlines? What happens to our sense of security and safety in our daily lives? Think! Every imagined event, every massive hurricane or earthquake raises our adrenaline, raises our thoughts that “that could be me” or “that could have been my family!” and our systems go into overdrive, producing hormones, but there is NO immediate threat, NO immediate danger to us or our body. Think!
Nightmares are often dramas played out for us, to find solutions, to live through events without the immediate and real danger or damage. But, we wake UP, we look around, we reassure ourselves “Oh, that was just a dream!” Wheew! But, have you ever noticed how your body is reacting? Heart rate may be high, or very high, and breathing is rapid and shallow, much like the reaction of a REAL event.
When we constantly repeat false dramas, repeat false dangers, and put our body through stress over and over again, we are draining our system of the health, the ability to recover, the inner harmony. We often get sick.
What happens if you or I change that stimulation? Instead of using death and disaster we use our natural connections? Storms do have the necessary drama, but I would rather NOT go out the door and deliberately contend with a very nasty storm. Too much stimulation for this lazy person. I do love to be near thunder storms, wind storms, and even hail if I know I am safely tucked inside a house or building. I prefer to go for a walk, move my whole mind and body through the air, the water, the grass and hear all the birds. Not quite as dramatic, but certainly far more of my sort of stimulation.
My own personal favourites for television drama are those that involve solving problems, often nasty ones I admit, like CSI, Bones, and all those icky and dramatic forensic situations. Start the hour with a crime, go through the personalities, the failure to connect morality and any possible spiritual teachings with a very nasty crime, then move on to solve it all. The theme is hope, stubborn determination to find the answer, and above all the morality of the team or person who finally gets to the solutions. Satisfactory answers appear and the “bad guy” is put away, nice and tidy.
Life is NOT like that, we don’t get the short show to work out all our answers, and sometimes the answers will only appear after we have learned what NOT to do, rather than any startling illumination within our psyche or our dreamed adventures.
I know the difference between the images on the television screen and real life, and I know that screaming at the image on the screen will not change the plot one tiny bit. If I choose to invest my own emotions then I will jump, scream, cringe, or otherwise react, then probably laugh at myself for being “taken in”.
Animals are NOT quite as stupid as I am. They do have the ability to learn, mostly proven by all of use who have taught them to “speak”, fetch or do other tricks, and what is forgotten is that any being, including animals, need the ability to use imagination before any learning can happen at all!
Ah, here is the crux of the whole thing. Some people will stretch their imagination so far, so often into the horrendous, that they concentrate on the “dangers” of even such simple things as walking into their own homes!! Those who get hooked on the news, the death and disaster are TEACHING themselves, using imagination. “The world is NOT safe for me!” “The kids now are dangerous, I have to guard against being near them!” “The police are corrupt!” “The government has lost any semblance of real democracy or governing, except for those who pull the strings in this country!”
Short version? That person has totally lost the inner peace and sense of security they need to walk in the house, to talk to the kids next door, and to call the police when they see someone in trouble. That person is now living in a world of fear, literally, a living nightmare. Their world is now a very vulnerable, hazardous and dangerous place with nowhere to turn to “solve the problem”. A nightmare in the real world, but still just a nightmare. Think! What do most of us do when we wake up from a nightmare? Think! Better yet, USE your imagination! Learn! Come on, you can see the solution and it takes less than an hour to find it.
One elegant solution is obvious to me, turn off the damn television or, at the very least, avoid all new channels, cut the dependency! Then turn off the computer and go out, deal with the reality that maybe, just maybe, those very kids next door may just be the ones to find a good solution to a problem that has existed for years in your own neighbourhood! I go out and look around, see the trees around me, see the people who have planted flowers in their yards and listen to all the crows cawing joyously away. Such drama, but such beautiful drama of life and death when the frost and cold comes.
The medium, the internet, the television channels, the games of death and destruction, the communication by advertisements of the daily onslaught to your health, your safety, your personal well-being all use imagination within US to create falsehoods. How many times does it take before you or I learn that same nightmare of fear?
I get caught up in the drama. I fully admit that. I get emotionally involved watching dramas unfold when animals or children are either threatened or killed, I also admit that. Then, I turn off the news, shut off the computer and take a walk. I wake UP!
I do play online games, but I refuse to play those that kill or maim. Phooey! I am not going to use my imagination to get into that world of death and destruction on a personal basis. It is no mistake that people in armies use these games to create a sort of mental numbness to the killing of real people. Phooey!
We live in a reality that has become so much “unreality” that we have forgotten how to wake up, how to take that walk and how to turn off the “unreality” and it has become a reality for far too many.
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