Mastication and Deglutition
Now there is a title that should grab your attention!
Before you think I am making reference to some crude behavior, here is an explanation: it means chewing and swallowing.
Lately I have been revisiting the notion that Americans are largely duped by mass media, namely television. In the book “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman, the idea is conveyed that anything on television, even the evening news, should be treated as fiction and ultimately junk entertainment. It was then that I developed the idea that if I was going to watch anything on TV, I wanted it to be something truly senseless…something that is just obviously junk entertainment and doesn’t pawn itself off as trying to be important or even serious. Since developing this notion, I have largely forgotten about it; coming back to the idea that television can be “informing”. Well, that may or may not be true, but the bottom line as I see it is that we as Americans are largely duped by what we see in mass print and visual media, regardless of content.
So how does one keep from being indoctrinated by mass media? The only thing I can think of is stop paying attention to it. It is a challenge to be sure, but I’m trying to discipline myself to quit chewing and swallowing what is fed to me in news and television entertainment. Quit eating that stuff; it’ll kill you. You are what you eat. Garbage in, garbage out. You become what you behold.
And yes, that even includes the printed word so books and reading are not necessarily the answer. I think what is essential here has more to do with what you are taking in and where you are taking it in from. Consider the source; you can’t just buy into whatever you see on TV or read in the news, be it in print or online. You have to do the work to scrutinize and take into consideration how they know this is true and why you should believe it. Marketing, spin, and propaganda are largely how information is disseminated these days and none of these methods is effective at conveying truth. Yet we eat it up on a daily basis as we absorb philosophies, worldviews, and mindsets from television programming and we are taught to think that news is important even though it is mostly made up of things that don’t affect us happening in areas nowhere near us. I wonder what it would do to our family time if we spent less time caring about world events and TV sitcoms and more time caring about our family and relationships.
It’s hard to do though and I can’t fault anyone for finding it too difficult to maintain consistently. I believe this stuff emphatically but I can’t even do it consistently. We live in a media saturated culture and we are bombarded on all sides; often times force-fed false ideas and misinformation as if it were truth. And much of it we fall for because it sounds believable or looks flashy. The reality is, however, that an elite group of people skilled in the dark arts of PR and marketing are orchestrating mass opinion and we can either choose to go along with the lemmings, or shut it out. Difficult though it may be, I’m opting for the latter. All information is not good information after all and I think we do well to consider what knowledge we are hoping to get from news, media, and television. What are we after from these things and are we really improving ourselves by getting it?
So chew on that for a while.
Then, chew on this article. I think I may be checking out one or two of the books referenced here to follow up on this information. This may not be the best article ever written on the subject and a few assertions are hinted at even by this guy, but the crux of what he is saying is well worth considering.
Grace and peace.