I really love how you weave exposition, content, personal history, and historical facts within your essays. What a rich canvas! Looking forward to part 3!
Mary, I read this the day it was posted and meant to reply, but I guess I got distracted. This is one excellent piece of expository writing, if I can call it that, only you make it so much more interesting with all your clever and entertaining digressions. However, I was disgusted to read all you had to share with us. It was enough to piss off the Pope (maybe, who knows), the way we have all been colonized as you say, into "human buyers first, human beings last". Yup, you got that right! Thank you for all your hard work and your outstanding research. I look forward to the next installment, in some masochistic kind of way. LOL.
The introduction of TV and of course, commercials is a very big piece of the full mind-control, slave-system we currently reside in. An infiltration and a colonization, and brought to you by happy faces (and voices) steering you confidently in the direction of being a self-conscious consumer. So, so effective.
The nature piece - learning to distrust it - is so key. (If you distrust nature, you distrust yourself.)
Which reminds, I recently went off trail during a hike which ended up being a 2.5 hours, of what should have been a 45 minute hike. I was a little frustrated with myself at times and even thought at one point - I should have brought my phone. (Which was idiotic, because I would eventually find my way back, and I could hardly describe to anyone I called, where to find me.)
When I've relayed this story - lightly, laughing at myself - everyone pretty much responds the same way: A scolding that I should not have gone off trail and should have taken a phone.
I get their point of course and I'm not advocating for getting lost int the woods. What I am saying is the underlying assumption that choosing to wander, and even getting lost, is automatically a bad thing, is nonsense. It turned out to be a good experience and I was fully fine. That outcome was far more likely than a tragic one. The avoidance of taking risks now because of the possibly of a bad outcome has gotten fully out of control. It's part of the control mechanism of course.
As if safety should now be accepted as our number one concern.
We've lost balance, accepted assumptions that are untrue, and sadly, rarely question them.
Kudos on you for doing that - peeling back those 'givens'.
Screens in general now are the entrance into the matrix. Proceed with caution.
You are articulating, beautifully, what I’ve been feeling about capitalism since I was fifteen. While my cohorts marched out of high school enthusiastically into their respective jobs careers and lives, I hung back - ironically fused as I was to the TV and movie world much more than any of them - and it wasn’t until I was 31 that I found, rather unsteadily, a footing in education teaching Media Studies and Theatre Arts: classes where I could fight the good fight against everything your wonderful essay is describing. And I did. I had a successful career introducing students to unavailable in their other classes. It’s capitalism. It’s always been capitalism as long as I’ve been alive. I’m in it, caught inside it, a part of it and reluctant to leave it for fear of being left behind or irrelevant. What a totally amazing contradiction being alive is. Boy you’re helping me see so many things much more clearly. Thank you Mary.
a fine foller'up to Part 1 an' I'm quite impressed with Mister Gerrymander (!) It's all true! (also a movie title by the sadly banned Orson Welles who knew a thing 'r two 'bout "truth"--also the man 'at made F is for Fake, ha!...) Anywayz, I loved this 'un:
" smartphones are television’s subdivided, scattering spawn"
Worse (an far less cute) than Tribbles, they sure 'r TROUBLE an' it's like demon spawn if ya ask me--if teevee was weaponized (it wuz!) an' become even worse than a simple "idiot box," the phones are yer own personal brain-fryin' microwave oven, ready ta (bloc) chain' ya to yer masters / cbd-seize, all've it... with BIG MONEY behind it all... SmartPhones are both a cult an' a virus (if any thar wuz!)
I still like them old landlines where if ya couldn't see yer friend, ya chatted with 'em tummy on the carpet--no advertisin' an' (I think!) nobuddy listen'in -in !
An' I also enjoyed the controllers bein' compared ta engorged (blood engorged mind ya...) ticks! Cuz they also (like Lyme ticks) infuse some numbing stuff into them they bite so they / victims don't know they got bit! (Havin' Lyme myself, by golly this I know!) Then them ticks go 'bout their bizness (as ticks do--) poisonin' every organ, every nook n' cranny an' weakenin' folks "stealth-like." Ya know they / Lyme ticks were bioweapons released from Plum Island by accident--oopsie!--an' the rest is his'tory. They were intended fer our "enemies" (but given we city-zens are the enemy now, the got their mark anyway!) So...great analogy! (blood suckers all've 'em)
They "think of everything!" -- egads... (that sounds like Erma Bombeck, no?)
Last but surely not least--I totally understand yer epiphany! Now, I'm a fan of VO werk an' there used ta be lots've it that DID NOT "sell stuff" (yay!) But why that moment fer ya? As ya say, why that day, out of all the others?
Wull, I think it's sung quite succinctly in A Chorus Line; because you felt NOTHING... NOTHING. We perform to FEEL, to empathize, to impart feelin' an' frankly ersatz feelin' for just a...product? That = nothin'! I'm sure Mary, had it been a good role (an' off-screen monologue in a play) or an audio readin' of some tee-riffic novel, now that would'a been SOMTHIN' you wouldn't a walked away from. But sellin' crud that folks don't need? That = nothing (and mebbe ya realized it in that one moment!) Now thar, ya could'a sung that "the whole thing wuz absurd," an' mebbe...mebbe yer teacher would've understood.
Now, all that said, not all "sellin' " is bad by any means--but heck, sell yer own stuff or somethin' you can stand behind, fer sure! (Get yer red hot organic heirloom plantin' seeds y'all!) Do it at the green market! That's the thing that gits in my craw--teevee ain't the only forum fer sellin' but they created their own monopoly--the ol' marketplace used ta be a public forum, a place to barter, chat, buy n' sell, enjoy a lil' fresh air, sounds, smells sights--it wuz a social sphere if ever there wuz one, now shamefully co-opted in the slick world of digi-Tall advertisin'. (Who will BUY this wonderful mornin'...?--now that wuz a marketplace!)
Okey doke, gotta skeedaddle but when things simmer down here'bouts (we still got rats an' now our septic's failin'--eeks!), then mebbe we can some've us chatty gals combine forces (we'll rope in Tonika too!) an' do some GOOD VO projects?! Mebbe readin' some werks from banned truth tellers 'er performin' stuff from unsung comic heros? I dunno but it sure beats what goes fer teevee today AND them demon phone spawn! I'll look out fer Part 3! again' a great read!
This is great Mary. In an increasingly 'politically correct' world which wants 'to do the right thing', we really have to start getting real about what that means.
Good on you for the stand you made regarding advertising. I have often though, you know, today we find it morally unacceptable to be racist, to drink and drive, etc, but damaging the world and society because you 'have to' to make a living is not yet frowned on very much. Perhaps it will be in time. Always led by people setting examples, of course! ;-)
Mander is great. I read his 'In Absence of the Sacred' more than thirty years ago. I never read his 'Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television', though I was aware of it. These things are so powerful when they come from an 'insider'.
I heard him speak in the UK in the early 90's too. Very charismatic.
Actually I'd got rid of my television already. In 1990 I spent nearly a year travelling in Asia. Most of the time I was in places where there was no television, no fridges, limited access to telephones, sometimes (parts of Nepal) no electricity at all. The absence of television especially gradually dawned on me as wonderful, and refreshing. I have never owned one since. Though I have now gradually been drawn back into watching movies on the computer - and watching a lot of 'alternative news' sources on the web, which is one of the greatest (not the only) boons of the internet.
Re T.V., I don't even really buy the 'it is also good for education' argument. I think the education that would take place in its absence would be far superior.
Oh wow, ownership of the media is such a huge issue. Gonna do a piece on it sometime - already did the research and it's eye-opening to say the least. Did you know (just as a fr'instance) that every big media company in the USA except one shares a board director with a pharmacuetical company? How's that for a conflict of interests? And on the subject of 'pharma', (you've got me started now!).... I was never really 'anti-vax'. Before I went off around Asia, I had about 5, and thought nothing of it. I was suspicious early of C*v** vxx. I was interested in the more general arguments of RFK etc. And I also thought well, polio vaccines were a great success, can't argue with that....
However... in 2018, an East European scholar called Mateja Cernic published 'Ideological Constructs of Vaccination'. It is a tremendous piece of work. I want to see it on every school curriculum. At a purely objective level, and using official government stats from both side of the Atlantic, Cernic demonstrates that whatever the value and effectiveness of polio vaccines might have been, the fact is that injury and death from the disease fell by around 90% BEFORE the vaccines were developed. On both sides of the Atlantic. Ditto measles, tetanus and others. A collaboration between media and pharma, to distort our perceptions, has been spinning a lie for 100 years. That's why the lies have become so 'irresistible' - ground in over at least four generations. I read all the stuff about 'germ theory vs terrian theory' too. Very, very interesting, but I don't take an absolute position on it - a lot of complext science. So I'm not 'dissing' all vaccines. Nor defending them. But it is objectively clear, that irrespective of whether vaccines are generally good or generally bad, there has been a lot of systematic lying about their 'success stories' for a very long time.
Well, I digress rather, but it seemed a relevant opportunity to raise awareness of Cernic's amazing book. Pretty much apolitical - just some complilations of graphs and facts from official sources which raises some VERY big question marks. Hope I haven't digressed too far but, you know, all on the theme of media control of perceptions.
Thanks for another engaging piece on a super-important topic!
So many gems in this article, Mary, such as, "The purveyors of television want us to believe that it is a tool for greatness: it educates, entertains, broadens our horizons, bridges distance. Sometimes it does those things, but that’s not its true purpose. Its true purpose is to sell. Period." Thanks for sharing your personal journey within the advertising industry. It is interesting to see how the new forms of media serve to reinforce or shift the delivery of narratives. Information which can be easily "pre-packed" and delivered through the medium of television can now, through the medium of on-line interviews and live-streaming, reach and influence people in new ways. What RFK, Jr. and Joe Rogan's conversation broadcast to the world feels like a new horizon. John Rappaport wrote a piece weeks ago encouraging the presidential candidates to promote their messages by using live-streaming to tell the American people clearly and continually what they stand for and what they value. Mary, encouraging us all to be discerning consumers of advertisements and marketing campaigns is important. Thank you for these series of articles which do so.
I really love how you weave exposition, content, personal history, and historical facts within your essays. What a rich canvas! Looking forward to part 3!
Mary, I read this the day it was posted and meant to reply, but I guess I got distracted. This is one excellent piece of expository writing, if I can call it that, only you make it so much more interesting with all your clever and entertaining digressions. However, I was disgusted to read all you had to share with us. It was enough to piss off the Pope (maybe, who knows), the way we have all been colonized as you say, into "human buyers first, human beings last". Yup, you got that right! Thank you for all your hard work and your outstanding research. I look forward to the next installment, in some masochistic kind of way. LOL.
xox
This is excellent, Mary.
The introduction of TV and of course, commercials is a very big piece of the full mind-control, slave-system we currently reside in. An infiltration and a colonization, and brought to you by happy faces (and voices) steering you confidently in the direction of being a self-conscious consumer. So, so effective.
The nature piece - learning to distrust it - is so key. (If you distrust nature, you distrust yourself.)
Which reminds, I recently went off trail during a hike which ended up being a 2.5 hours, of what should have been a 45 minute hike. I was a little frustrated with myself at times and even thought at one point - I should have brought my phone. (Which was idiotic, because I would eventually find my way back, and I could hardly describe to anyone I called, where to find me.)
When I've relayed this story - lightly, laughing at myself - everyone pretty much responds the same way: A scolding that I should not have gone off trail and should have taken a phone.
I get their point of course and I'm not advocating for getting lost int the woods. What I am saying is the underlying assumption that choosing to wander, and even getting lost, is automatically a bad thing, is nonsense. It turned out to be a good experience and I was fully fine. That outcome was far more likely than a tragic one. The avoidance of taking risks now because of the possibly of a bad outcome has gotten fully out of control. It's part of the control mechanism of course.
As if safety should now be accepted as our number one concern.
We've lost balance, accepted assumptions that are untrue, and sadly, rarely question them.
Kudos on you for doing that - peeling back those 'givens'.
Screens in general now are the entrance into the matrix. Proceed with caution.
Thanks, Mary. Really enjoyed this installment.
You are articulating, beautifully, what I’ve been feeling about capitalism since I was fifteen. While my cohorts marched out of high school enthusiastically into their respective jobs careers and lives, I hung back - ironically fused as I was to the TV and movie world much more than any of them - and it wasn’t until I was 31 that I found, rather unsteadily, a footing in education teaching Media Studies and Theatre Arts: classes where I could fight the good fight against everything your wonderful essay is describing. And I did. I had a successful career introducing students to unavailable in their other classes. It’s capitalism. It’s always been capitalism as long as I’ve been alive. I’m in it, caught inside it, a part of it and reluctant to leave it for fear of being left behind or irrelevant. What a totally amazing contradiction being alive is. Boy you’re helping me see so many things much more clearly. Thank you Mary.
a fine foller'up to Part 1 an' I'm quite impressed with Mister Gerrymander (!) It's all true! (also a movie title by the sadly banned Orson Welles who knew a thing 'r two 'bout "truth"--also the man 'at made F is for Fake, ha!...) Anywayz, I loved this 'un:
" smartphones are television’s subdivided, scattering spawn"
Worse (an far less cute) than Tribbles, they sure 'r TROUBLE an' it's like demon spawn if ya ask me--if teevee was weaponized (it wuz!) an' become even worse than a simple "idiot box," the phones are yer own personal brain-fryin' microwave oven, ready ta (bloc) chain' ya to yer masters / cbd-seize, all've it... with BIG MONEY behind it all... SmartPhones are both a cult an' a virus (if any thar wuz!)
I still like them old landlines where if ya couldn't see yer friend, ya chatted with 'em tummy on the carpet--no advertisin' an' (I think!) nobuddy listen'in -in !
An' I also enjoyed the controllers bein' compared ta engorged (blood engorged mind ya...) ticks! Cuz they also (like Lyme ticks) infuse some numbing stuff into them they bite so they / victims don't know they got bit! (Havin' Lyme myself, by golly this I know!) Then them ticks go 'bout their bizness (as ticks do--) poisonin' every organ, every nook n' cranny an' weakenin' folks "stealth-like." Ya know they / Lyme ticks were bioweapons released from Plum Island by accident--oopsie!--an' the rest is his'tory. They were intended fer our "enemies" (but given we city-zens are the enemy now, the got their mark anyway!) So...great analogy! (blood suckers all've 'em)
Er, yes there is a bagel guillotine--it may be evil too--AND they carry it at "Walmart" (also not a nice joint...) https://www.walmart.com/ip/The-Original-Bagel-Guillotine-Universal-Slicer-Home-Stainless-Steel-Bagel-Slicer-Bread-Cutters-Toast-Kitchen-Slicing-Tool/367456254
They "think of everything!" -- egads... (that sounds like Erma Bombeck, no?)
Last but surely not least--I totally understand yer epiphany! Now, I'm a fan of VO werk an' there used ta be lots've it that DID NOT "sell stuff" (yay!) But why that moment fer ya? As ya say, why that day, out of all the others?
Wull, I think it's sung quite succinctly in A Chorus Line; because you felt NOTHING... NOTHING. We perform to FEEL, to empathize, to impart feelin' an' frankly ersatz feelin' for just a...product? That = nothin'! I'm sure Mary, had it been a good role (an' off-screen monologue in a play) or an audio readin' of some tee-riffic novel, now that would'a been SOMTHIN' you wouldn't a walked away from. But sellin' crud that folks don't need? That = nothing (and mebbe ya realized it in that one moment!) Now thar, ya could'a sung that "the whole thing wuz absurd," an' mebbe...mebbe yer teacher would've understood.
Now, all that said, not all "sellin' " is bad by any means--but heck, sell yer own stuff or somethin' you can stand behind, fer sure! (Get yer red hot organic heirloom plantin' seeds y'all!) Do it at the green market! That's the thing that gits in my craw--teevee ain't the only forum fer sellin' but they created their own monopoly--the ol' marketplace used ta be a public forum, a place to barter, chat, buy n' sell, enjoy a lil' fresh air, sounds, smells sights--it wuz a social sphere if ever there wuz one, now shamefully co-opted in the slick world of digi-Tall advertisin'. (Who will BUY this wonderful mornin'...?--now that wuz a marketplace!)
Okey doke, gotta skeedaddle but when things simmer down here'bouts (we still got rats an' now our septic's failin'--eeks!), then mebbe we can some've us chatty gals combine forces (we'll rope in Tonika too!) an' do some GOOD VO projects?! Mebbe readin' some werks from banned truth tellers 'er performin' stuff from unsung comic heros? I dunno but it sure beats what goes fer teevee today AND them demon phone spawn! I'll look out fer Part 3! again' a great read!
As always, love your writing and research, Mary! Thank you for who you are!
This is great Mary. In an increasingly 'politically correct' world which wants 'to do the right thing', we really have to start getting real about what that means.
Good on you for the stand you made regarding advertising. I have often though, you know, today we find it morally unacceptable to be racist, to drink and drive, etc, but damaging the world and society because you 'have to' to make a living is not yet frowned on very much. Perhaps it will be in time. Always led by people setting examples, of course! ;-)
Mander is great. I read his 'In Absence of the Sacred' more than thirty years ago. I never read his 'Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television', though I was aware of it. These things are so powerful when they come from an 'insider'.
I heard him speak in the UK in the early 90's too. Very charismatic.
Actually I'd got rid of my television already. In 1990 I spent nearly a year travelling in Asia. Most of the time I was in places where there was no television, no fridges, limited access to telephones, sometimes (parts of Nepal) no electricity at all. The absence of television especially gradually dawned on me as wonderful, and refreshing. I have never owned one since. Though I have now gradually been drawn back into watching movies on the computer - and watching a lot of 'alternative news' sources on the web, which is one of the greatest (not the only) boons of the internet.
Re T.V., I don't even really buy the 'it is also good for education' argument. I think the education that would take place in its absence would be far superior.
Oh wow, ownership of the media is such a huge issue. Gonna do a piece on it sometime - already did the research and it's eye-opening to say the least. Did you know (just as a fr'instance) that every big media company in the USA except one shares a board director with a pharmacuetical company? How's that for a conflict of interests? And on the subject of 'pharma', (you've got me started now!).... I was never really 'anti-vax'. Before I went off around Asia, I had about 5, and thought nothing of it. I was suspicious early of C*v** vxx. I was interested in the more general arguments of RFK etc. And I also thought well, polio vaccines were a great success, can't argue with that....
However... in 2018, an East European scholar called Mateja Cernic published 'Ideological Constructs of Vaccination'. It is a tremendous piece of work. I want to see it on every school curriculum. At a purely objective level, and using official government stats from both side of the Atlantic, Cernic demonstrates that whatever the value and effectiveness of polio vaccines might have been, the fact is that injury and death from the disease fell by around 90% BEFORE the vaccines were developed. On both sides of the Atlantic. Ditto measles, tetanus and others. A collaboration between media and pharma, to distort our perceptions, has been spinning a lie for 100 years. That's why the lies have become so 'irresistible' - ground in over at least four generations. I read all the stuff about 'germ theory vs terrian theory' too. Very, very interesting, but I don't take an absolute position on it - a lot of complext science. So I'm not 'dissing' all vaccines. Nor defending them. But it is objectively clear, that irrespective of whether vaccines are generally good or generally bad, there has been a lot of systematic lying about their 'success stories' for a very long time.
Well, I digress rather, but it seemed a relevant opportunity to raise awareness of Cernic's amazing book. Pretty much apolitical - just some complilations of graphs and facts from official sources which raises some VERY big question marks. Hope I haven't digressed too far but, you know, all on the theme of media control of perceptions.
Thanks for another engaging piece on a super-important topic!
So many gems in this article, Mary, such as, "The purveyors of television want us to believe that it is a tool for greatness: it educates, entertains, broadens our horizons, bridges distance. Sometimes it does those things, but that’s not its true purpose. Its true purpose is to sell. Period." Thanks for sharing your personal journey within the advertising industry. It is interesting to see how the new forms of media serve to reinforce or shift the delivery of narratives. Information which can be easily "pre-packed" and delivered through the medium of television can now, through the medium of on-line interviews and live-streaming, reach and influence people in new ways. What RFK, Jr. and Joe Rogan's conversation broadcast to the world feels like a new horizon. John Rappaport wrote a piece weeks ago encouraging the presidential candidates to promote their messages by using live-streaming to tell the American people clearly and continually what they stand for and what they value. Mary, encouraging us all to be discerning consumers of advertisements and marketing campaigns is important. Thank you for these series of articles which do so.