It
doesn’t cease to baffle me that whenever I turn on the news it does
not seem to matter at all which channel I choose – they all seem to
agree on what is relevant in this world.
We
all love freedom, we are told – and often by politicians who are
forced to live a tightly regulated life with no freedom at all. Fact
is however that we abhor freedom, that we prefer to have none of it.
Isn’t
freedom supposed to create variety? So how come it creates so much
uniformity? ‘Cause we’re afraid of freedom – for what
humans, above all, want is security, says Dostojevskij’s Great
Inquisitor.
Moreover,
we human beings want to belong. Which is why the American media stood
by their government when it decided to invade Iraq. Meanwhile, The
New York Times (its opinion-page, however, opposed the invasion)
regrets publicly that it agreed with the Bush administration “that
Saddam Hussein was concealing a large weapons program that could pose
a threat to the United States or its allies” (which, as we all know
by now, could hardly have been more wrong), and it also regrets that
it “didn't do more to challenge the president's assumptions.”
So
how come it didn’t? “At the time, we believed that Saddam Hussein
was hiding large quantities of chemical and biological weapons
because we assumed that he would have behaved differently if he
wasn't. If there were no weapons, we thought, Iraq would surely have
cooperated fully with weapons inspectors to avoid the pain of years
under an international embargo and, in the end, a war that it
was certain to loose. That was a reasonable theory, one almost
universally accepted in Washington and widely credited by diplomats
all around the world. But it was only a theory.”
The
mass media do not only serve, they also represent, and are part of,
the masses – and these masses are characterised by group
thinking.
Contrary
to what editors usually claim, they are not after the exclusive story
that nobody else has, they are after the story that their rival
paper has. As James Fenton in “The Fall of Saigon” reported:
“In those initial days it was possible to travel outside the city,
since no formal orders had been given. Indeed it was possible to
do most things you fancied. But once the restrictions were published
restricting us to Saigon, life became very dull indeed. The novelty
of the street scenes had worn off, and most journalists left at the
first opportunity. I, however, had been asked by the Washington Post
to maintain its presence in Vietnam until a replacement could be
brought in. I allowed the journalists’ plane to leave without me,
then cabled Washington stating my terms, which were based on the fact
that I was the only stringer left working for an American paper.
The Post, on receipt of my terms, sacked me. I had thought I had an
exclusive story. What I learned was: never get yourself into an
exclusive position. If the New York Times had had a man in Saigon,
the Post would have taken my terms. Because they were no rivals,
and precious few Americans, I had what amounted to an exclusive
non-story.”
*
The
Western world is generally characterised as individualistic – but
is it? Take the United States, for example (no America-bashing
intended), that many (especially Americans) consider the most
individualistic culture on earth: While that might well be so, the
fact that the same country is also the birth place of mass-products,
and the place where all men (sic) were created equal, seems to
indicate that there is, besides the individualism, at the same time
quite a strong notion of playing down individual differences (‘we
all can be president and we all buy the same products’).
Moreover, that Americans, wherever they go, appear to be easily
identified as Americans seems to be more an expression of uniformity
than of a distint Individualsim (Americans probably don’t
perceive themselves that way though).
In
other words, we’re much more conformist than we think we are. Take
whatever problem, wherever in the world, the modern day solution is
always: we need better communication, we have to better explain what
we do. This, of course, is not communication, this is propaganda yet
it appears that we’re all so thoroughly brainwashed that we do not
seem to be able to see that. Or maybe we just don’t care.
“The
first principle is not to fool yourself, and you are the easiest
person to fool”, I remember the Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Richard Feinman being quoted when asked what the most important
thing in doing scientific research was. Since most of us don’t do
scientific research, we needn’t pay attention, right?
*
In
his novel Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, Robert M.
Pirsig makes the point that we are susceptible to believe just about
anything:
“The
law of gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton. No other
conclusion makes sense. “And what that means, “ I say before he
can interrupt, “and what that means is that the law of gravity
exists nowhere except in people’s heads! It’s a ghost! We are all
of us very arrogant and conceited about running down other people’s
ghosts but just as ignorant and barbaric and superstitious about our
own.” “Why does everybody believe in the law of gravity then?
“Mass hypnosis. In a very orthodox form known as ‘education’”
"You mean the teacher is hypnotizing the kids into believing the
law of gravity?” “Sure.” “That’s absurd.” “You’ve
heard of the importance of eye contact in the classroom? Every
educationist emphasizes it. No educationist explains it.”
Mass
hypnosis then. Not as absurd as one might think. Consider de
Tocqueville who in the first half of the nineteenth century wrote:
“For 50 years, it has been repeated to the inhabitants of the
United States that they form the only religious, enlightened and free
people. They see that up to now, democratic institutions have
prospered among them; they therefore have an immense opinion of
themselves, and they are not far from believing that they form a
species apart in the human race.”
So
if we were to believe that mass hypnosis does indeed produce the
dominant perception of the world, does that mean that we are
condemned to subscribe to the currently dominant mass ideology of the
cultural hemisphere that we populate? It is likely, yet not all do.
Consider
Art Spiegelman, for example, who is, according to The Independent
“one of the world's most revered graphic artists. Yet when he
turned his hand to the burning issues of our day, the US media didn't
want to know.” Why? This is how Hannah Cleaver reported it: “He
began to make notes for a post-September 11 cartoon strip, finally
producing sketches in May 2002.You would have expected the US media
to sit up and take notice; instead, it slumped in its comfortable
chair and closed its eyes. Yes, Spiegelman is a Pulitzer-prizewinning
cartoonist; yes, he has a particular genius for describing the human
price of fanaticism. Rarely have commentator and theme been so
perfectly matched. But in the new „with-us-or-against-us“ climate
of aggressive US patriotism, his habit of expressing uncomfortable
truths was becoming awkward. Once, The New Yorker had been
happy to stand shoulder to shoulder with Spiegelman in the face of
controversy (notably in the case of his notorious 1993 cover
depicting an orthodox Jew passionately kissing a black woman); now he
found himself being urged to tone down his work. „I found that I
was fighting for every picture, and that was really exhausting.“ He
realised that his new cartoon stood no chance of being published
there; and, by extension, that he was probably working in the wrong
place. (Spiegelman finally resigned this February, after 10 years,
saying that The New Yorker was „marching to the same beat
asThe New York Times and all the other great American media
that don't criticise the government for fear that the administration
will take revenge by blocking their access to sources and
information.“) … While he will make his own pilgrimage to Ground
Zero, Spiegelman will not take part in any ceremonies. „There is
nothing like commemorating an event to make people forget it.
Commemorations seem to be part of a revisionist memory process. Our
heroic mayor; our heroic president...“ He has banned himself from
watching television - it makes him too angry.”
----
Cleaver,
Hannah 2003: ‘Art Spiegelman: Voice in the wilderness’ in The
Independent, September 11.
Fenton,
James 1998: ‘The Fall of Saigon’ in Jack, Ian (ed): The Granta
Book of Reportage, Granta Books, London.
Pirsig,
Robert M. 1974. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, Bodley
Head, London.
