We need not so much a system, as a series or a web of mature, functional and
nurturing relationships across families, communities and societies. Instead what we have is bullying and entertainment.
Entertainment.
Entertainment! It's ONLY entertainment!
How often have I heard this term applied to mainstream 'moving images, noise and verbiage' offered up for the fatigued consumer to relax to, to enjoy, to be 'moved' by thrilling images, to be enthralled by amazing CGI effects!
Apocalypse Now! "It's ONLY entertainment!"
Avatar! "It's ONLY entertainment!"
The Lord of The Rings! "It's ONLY entertainment!"
And even then some people will read more into these media than the authors intended. I know this from my own song-writing, and am often amazed at what audience members will read into or take out of a song, how rich that content is that I did not intend.
Apocalypse Now! "It exposes the brutality of war!"
Avatar! "It's a parable for our times!"
The Lord of The Rings! "It's about the power of the little guy!"
No, it's not. Just about that. That's the seduction, the nectar. And the point of the flower is the pollen......
Yes, what you know as entertainment has elements of that ... enjoyment... in it, though that is not the point of it all - it has to make some profit, that's a given, so it has to entertain to do that and yet it also has a function within the Power system we are living in. And that function is the point of it all...
If you read what is offered as mainstream popular entertainment the way I do (and I agree that we all have different ways to read the media and narratives we consume) they are a subtle way of saying Violence for Good is OK and the System we live is as good as it gets, barring incremental cosmetic improvements.
Take a GOOD look at That all too common sequence of boy meets girl in the midst of some violent narrative of good vs evil, with a love scene in the middle of the extreme violence... a psychopathic switch on/off, a sweet turn-on that actually is also a turn-on for GOOD violence.. it's as nasty as it is obvious to me, and of course when this is pointed out most people do get it, though in my experience most also reject it to the extent they wish to hang on to their hit, their entertainment - what they don't get is the way in which the unobserved visceral cascades of hormones are conditioning the consumer into the psychopathic socially and Institutionally approved stand point.
And that conditioning is the KEY message, because it also underpins the States monopoly on organised violence, because the State is always benign. Or so we are told to believe, even if the evidence is patchy. God is good. Onward Christian Soldiers! etc etc etc...
For me, simply being, simply breathing and sensing my own body is pure entertainment.
Taking a dump and feeling the fullness of how my body works, that's entertaining. Watching a genuinely proficient musician/dancer/skate boarder - that's entertainment. Working my garden is very much entertaining. Seeing my children make mistakes and grow, that's entertaining.
Playing music and watching a good musician, that's entertainment...
I also understand that adage, "different strokes for different folks", and cannot deny that some people are entertained by what is offered up as mainstream consumer entertainment.
However, whilst watching movies such as THE HUNGER GAMES and LORD OF THE RINGS and JAMES BOND and BATMAN and THE MATRIX etc and observing how the body reacts to the sequential violence in these movies, I have noticed the hormone cascades, the muscular tensions, the non-thought patterns alongside the obvious and subliminal messages. These are quite different in tone and character to the cascades I experience when I am truly entertained.
I do not call this latter experience 'entertainment'....
It's
entrainment rather than entertainment.
The primary narrative within mainstream movies, fiction and News Media is towards a socialised normalisation by vicarious exposure, through the use of a powerful experiential medium, to the prevailing adverse pathological psychology of force and power.
It's required for that subtle indoctrination into the various falsified justifications for POWER over others to be used AGAINST others for 'good'. It's a sop for unresolved rage and anger that so many people grow up with a result of being bullied at School, in Churches, Synagogues and Mosques, at University and at Work. It's a dead end that leads nowhere nurturing.
So yes, if we want and deserve a world where violence is accepted as long as it is for the 'good', where slapping and spanking children is a parents 'right', where the death penalty is a States 'right', where poverty is considered a problem of the 'poor' rather than a logical outcome of the hoarding of resources, where the sequestering of wealth is considered a 'good thing' for the Economy, let's call the subtle conditionings of Institutional Power Society entertainment.
Noam Chomksy, in an interview with Shira Hadad in 2005
points out that a similar dynamic applies to elections in the USA, the UK and in practically ALL States that hold elections.
"Because elections are carefully contrived so that they are like selling toothpaste. In fact, they’re run by the same people who sell toothpaste.
I mean when you turn on an ad on television, you don’t expect to get any information. You expect deception. That’s the point.
Only economists talk about markets. Business can’t tolerate markets. They don’t want markets in which informed consumers make rational choices.
What they want is deluded consumers who will make irrational choices. That’s what hundreds of billions of dollars in advertising are spent on. You don’t get any information about the product.
But what happens when the same industry sells candidates?
Exactly the same thing. I mean, about 10 percent of the crop of voters knew what the stand of the candidates was on issues.
What they knew is the delusionary imagery that was created.
So Bush is created to be an ordinary guy with his sleeves rolled up and you could have a drink with him in a bar.
My guess is he’s taught to make those mispronunciations and grammatical errors; I doubt that he talked like that at Yale.
He’s probably taught that way so that ‘them liberal intellectuals’ would make fun of him and then they can say, oh yeah, he’s an ordinary guy just like you, going off to his ranch. That makes him about as realistic as the next ad you could see on television for a lifestyle report."
The narrative exists to sell an image, and becoming acculturated to that image is essential in maintaining one's compliance with the System of Power and it's directions and instructions.
It's also true that as this becomes clear to more and more people that less and less people vote, not out of apathy.... not voting is a form of direct action, of civil disobedience as people refuse to participate in the charade. Not voting exposes the charade, and that is why Power hates the non-voter.
Imagine if no-one voted bar the membership of the parties?
And with every 'spring', every televised 'revolution', every mass movement outside the given political show, we see too that the pattern of the insertion of professional violence has become a standard counter revolutionary tactic of destabilisation. Once the violence starts, the discussions cease and we all have to run for cover.
Snipers paid to murder protesters and police in the Ukraine.
Mujahadeen funded by USA and Saudi regime, in Afghanistan in the 80s. The
insertion of the IRA into the Civil Rights portest movement in Northern Ireland,in spite of being rejected by Civil Rights Movement leaderships. Agent Provocateurs and
undercover policemen and women inserted into grass roots Climate Change protest groups.
Anyone who has genuine grounds for protest and a well qualified argument to support it, is seen as a direct threat to Power, and must be undermined. Even if the aims of the protest would bring benefits to Society as a whole it mus be undermined; we are allowed to protest, and we are actively barred from changing the status quo.
Which is basically immature, dysfunctional and nasty, nasty behaviour. Dishonesty with petty cash is immature. Fleecing expenses is immature. It's amoral to be an adult and to refuse maturity.
Like I wrote above :
"We need not so much a system, as a series or a web of mature, functional and
nurturing relationships across families, communities and societies. Instead what we have is bullying and entertainment."
Kindest regards
