Bruce G. Charlton - Addicted to Distraction: Psychological consequences of the modern Mass Media
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Addicted
to
Distraction
Psychological consequences of the modern Mass Media
Bruce G Charlton
The University of Buckingham Press
First published inGreat Britain in 2014 by
The University ofBuckingham Press
Yeomanry House
Hunter Street
Buckingham MK18 1EG
The University ofBuckingham Press
The moral right ofthe author has been asserted.
All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into aretrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the priorpermission of the publisher nor may be circulated in any form of binding orcover other than the one in which it is published and without a similarcondition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
CIP catalogue recordfor this book is available at the British Library
ISBN 9781908684417
The medium is themessage
Marshal McLuhan, 1964
Although more than 99% of what he wrote was (in my opinion)either wrong or nonsense, Marshal McLuhan (1911-1980) was nevertheless thefirst to see clearly that the key fact, the primary reality about the MassMedia is not the vast multitude of its specific contents; but rather its formas a whole, its unifying nature as a phenomenon, its underlyingoperating-principles.
McLuhan therefore defined the subject of the Mass Media,drew a line around it, made it an object for study.
This whole book can be seen as, in a sense, an unpacking andelaboration of McLuhans pregnant phrase: The medium is the message therefore it seems appropriate that it be dedicated to the memory of thatmaddeningly-inconsistent volcano of creativity.
Stimulated by the horrific revelations of the Jimmy Savileaffair at the BBC, with its implications of wholesale Establishment corruptionand a sustained Media cover-up; this book diagnoses the fundamental problem ofthe modern world as addiction to the distractions of the Mass Media.
The Media just grows and grows, and progressively takes-overcontrol of all the functionally useful social systems from politics toreligion, from education to the arts.
Yet the Mass Media is a system like no other it has nofunction of its own, so it can just keep growing. It has no positive aim forsociety, and regards all knowledge just a matter of opinion. Therefore the MassMedia subverts all that is useful, and everything that gives meaning andpurpose to life.
Since the Media works like a drug, the first step iswithdrawal, and a detox programme. Having escaped addiction, we may becomefree of the lies and lunacies of life in the Media bubble, and return to therealities of direct personal knowledge, actual experience and common sense.
I will refer to the Mass Media (capital letters) as singularwhen I mean the inter-linked communication system of all the media includingprint, broadcast and internet media considered as a whole.
For example, when saying the Mass Media has grown, Imean the system as a unified network of communications both within and betweeneach of the specific media.
And I will refer to the mass media (lower case letters) as aplural when referring to several or many different types of media as agroup of different modes of communication.
For example, when saying the mass media have grown Iwould mean that each of the specific components has grown that newspapers,radio and TV have grown in their own right, in terms of their specific internalcommunications.
So I mean the whole system if the Mass Media is written asthe singular and with capitals; versus meaning a collection of specific type ofmedium when using plural and in lower case mass media.
You are deluded
How can I convince you that you are deluded?
Well, it wont be easy because you are not alone; you a partof a folie a billion, a mass delusion, induced by the Mass Media.
You are, in fact, subject to the most pervasive andeffective propaganda in the history of humanity; a propaganda which has peoplenot noticing the evidence of their eyes and ignoring the evidence of their ownexperience.
We allow, we encourage, we demand for this to happen becausewe are inside the Mass Media and addicted to it; and although itdestroys all that makes meaning, purpose, and relationship possible; the MassMedia then takes our alienated, adrift, self-loathing and lonely selves andoffers distraction, consolation, absorption, fragments and glimmerings ofpleasure and self-forgetfulness...
And yet the Mass Media has no person in-control, no group ofpersons, not even an interest group. The destructiveness of the Mass Mediaoperates equally or more against the participants: the journalists,broadcasters, editors, hype-ers and spinners, public relation professionals andadvertisers and propagandists... All are dragged-down just like everybody elseby their own destructiveness.
Most thoughtful people would acknowledge that they may havebeen misled by the Mass Media, and some of them have the insight that the Mediahas some kind of overall tendency or trend but hardly anybody recognizes thesheer depth and inter-connected comprehensiveness of the falsehoods theythemselves live within.
Because once inside the Mass media (and almost everybody isinside it nowadays, in the West) then wherever they turn the delusions areconfirmed the only consistency available is the consistency of delusion andthe Mass Media provides the facts and the reasoning by which we talk withother people.
Step outside the Mass Media bubble and there isnt muchspace to stand; and you find you have little to say to anybody and little todo but disagree and argue with them.
Step outside the Mass Media and you become boring, annoying,crazy because we live in a world where common sense and personal experienceare regarded as having not just zero validity; but are dangerous, and evidenceof wickedness evidence of a mass killer/ vigilante mentality: because outsidethe media bubble is perceived to be the domain of wild, solitary sadists,muttering lunatics, and populist, redneck lynch mobs.
So I dont suppose I shall persuade you of the reality ofthe Mass Media, and it would do you little good if you were persuaded;indeed the only people who would benefit are religious people, and among themmostly Christians (because the Western Mass Media is built on anti-Christianfoundations).
If you do recognize the problem and come to acknowledge thatyou personally suffer the disease of Media Addiction that I describe, and thatyour mind has been subverted and hijacked then the situation is not hopeless:I have some constructive suggestions near the end of this book about how tocure yourself.
And it will need to be a self-initiated self-cure. Becauseyou wont find many people who will want to or be prepared to assist your cure;and, at least, until you are self-diagnosed and at least partly-cured andmoving in the right direction, you would not be likely to recognize real help even if or when it was offered to you.
A mass medium is any mode of communication in which there isa uni-directional amplification from one (or few) to many.
Of course there is a grey area between small scale and masscommunication perhaps a very large arena such as the Greek or (especially)Roman amphitheatres where an orator could be heard by thousands, could beregarded as a type of mass medium.
Later there were written communications, manuscripts, books;then printing and advances in transportation there are now postal systems,newspapers and magazines; electronic media such as the telegraph, telephone andtelevision; the internet with a proliferation of personal computers; and mostrecently social media whereby ever-more have a mobile phone and communicateever-more of the time with open-ended numbers of other people.
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