Mirror Mania - Part II

Game Time

Mirror Mania - Part II

Game Time

When I began teaching in The S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 2000 my course ‘load’ - traditional academic jargon - included a sophomore offering, TRF235 - Principles and Practices. Described in the current catalogue thusly:

Origins and dynamics of corporate structures, revenue models, content, distribution, and regulation in the television, radio, film, and interactive media industries.

There was an assigned curricula, which, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, I largely ignored. For instance, I skipped Marconi, while substuting macaroni. And I no doubt sang the praises of milkshakes.

It took two years of teaching before I ‘officially’ abandoned all academic rigamarole, most importantly even feigned testing and grades. Initially, while not actually adhering to the ‘rules,’ I did give a laughing nod in their direction. My students ‘knew’ they were safe and that they were learning by way of shared story, no threats nor rank pulled, and tons of fun. 

I did ‘require’ a final essay completed at home. Any length, any form. The prompt for which was: “Should the responsibility for television regulation fall under the purview of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) or the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)?

While it was a kind of whimsical (though pertinent) question then, it is a sublimely ridiculous one now.

That horse (a name for heroin - coincidence?) has long ago galloped out of the stable.

Screens Get Us High

The phenomenon of screen effects on global culture, perhaps especially in the West where screen use is ubiquitous, are profound. 

The effects, manifested in brain/perception/consciousness altering impacts that far transcend the inimically designed commercial content alone.

Television had and has the inherent capacity to induce hypnotic/hypnogogic states, making viewers extremely susceptible to a wide variety of suggestions. 

Early on in television history, as Vance Packard revealed in The Hidden Persuaders, a rabid advertising industry, sought to plumb the psyches of viewers so as to seduce them with ads. Ads that ‘scientifically’ manipulated viewers in altered states to behave in the interests of business with singular corporate motivations. The EIC and advertisers were and are hellbent on driving our attention into a consumerist ditch born of our inattention, altered minds and as Packard defined them, our ‘hidden needs.’ 

Much more in future dispatches on needs and wants, not only key to advertising effectiveness, but also vital elements in the actors craft which underpins ACTING HUMAN. 

Our attention, and how we use it, is of the essence. To nurture the quality of our attention is a prime tenet of ACTING HUMAN practice. PAY ATTENTION! 

To live life out loud, to make it “our” truly conscious experience, we must, as a first step, learn to pay attention, to enlarge awareness. 

We need to pay attention while paying attention to paying attention. As we engage in an endless loop of awareness. Keen awareness fuels life-igniting energy that propels us to live life alive.

PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT AND HOW WE PAY ATTENTION. When we pay attention with keen intention we begin to ACT HUMAN. 

We transcend reflexive and conditioned behavior by use of creativity expressed as actors craft. We live our lives alive in connection to universal energies, rather than as mechanical and easily manipulated semi-automatons. 

Play Ball

Given the above as background for the nonce, and a promise to return for a deeper dig, lets move on to news as entertainment, more particularly, new presented as sports. 

The news appears in the context of the entertainment industrial complex (EIC), which is in effect a vast complex of ads for ads. The EIC attracts us, cops our attention and sells it in packages of eyeballs watching and asses in seats. We are the product. 

It sells us to advertisers. Actually, it sells us to us by selling us with ‘new and improved’ identities replete with needs and wants that conform to economic and/or social prerogatives that play in concert with insane and inhumane corporate visions of social organization and economic interest.

“We have devalued the singular human capacity to see things whole in the totality of psychic, emotional and moral dimensions, and we have replaced this with faith in the powers of technical calculation.” ~Neil Postman

FLASHBACK TO PART I

WE IDENTIFY WITH THE MEDIATED WORLD

..what we see and how we see it makes strong and compelling impressions, influencing who we think we are and how we connect with each other, coloring events in and around every daily moment, and shaping the world in which we live.

To the great extent that media disconnects us from ourselves and each other, sows discontent, arouses heightened emotion based on imposed ’truths’ not actually experienced in life, and teaches us to keep score and predict outcomes - it does a grievous disservice to our sanity and humanity.

When we take to heart and see what is portrayed on television and in other media as an ‘official version of reality,’  without intentional and practiced awareness, we sacrifice our birthright to co-create in the Universal Theater.

AND WE’RE BACK

We have a compelling tendency to see news as a more or less “official version of realty.” It’s where we find out what’s going on in a world we can’t see directly. Our erstwhile scouts, expert observers and interpreters of events beyond our ken, report news from far flung places and in the voices of people with whom they have special connections owing to their status as media messengers held in high repute.

The players in the news game were always putting on a show. We imputed the notion of exclusive and bonafide reality to their performances. They had an intersecting array of interests, political, economic, social, and personal to advance - and there was the necessity of getting a show on the air that created a home for it all. We took it as truth expressed forthrightly. After all, it was a new and compelling technology, and we were high.

With a widely held public belief in news as fully accepted reality, Roone Arledge had a solid foundation upon which to add a sports overlay for personal glory and corporate profit. 

He amplified the visual and narrative storytelling to grab more eyeballs and asses. 

Nowadays, if you turn the sound off, can you tell the difference between a shows on ESPN and MSNBC?

Roone changed not only the storyline but also the identity story we tell ourselves. He changed our relationship to the news story. We saw the world anew and, and as always, when the world looks new it’s because we see it through new eyes.

We were bestowed new identities even before we got to the commercials. 

SPORTS SENSE

Finite Games are at the core of sports events. 

You surely recall James Carse. He discerns that there are two kinds of games, infinite and finite. 

Finite games can occur within infinite games; infinite games cannot occur within finite games.

Infinite games are flexible and ever changing, there are no hard and fast rules. Finite games play within boundaries. Infinite games play with boundaries, they encourage change and improvisation. 

Infinite games are defined by cooperation and continuation. Finite games play to a conclusion in time with winners and losers based on predetermined and immutable rules.

When we see events in the ‘real’ world portrayed on a news show with a sports orientation, we come to see our lives - given that ‘the medium is the message’ - as contained by boundaries and predetermined rules that play out in clock time, yielding winners and losers.

This narrative is consistent with our preconceived cognitive commitments (Karen Langer in Mindfulness); beliefs we’ve been conditioned to accept in school and that accord with dominant social constructions. The finite sports narrative does not challenge the ‘common sense’ of how life works. 

“Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.” ~Thomas Carlyle

SET RULES

As the unknown gives rise to fear, makes us uncomfortable, and heightens our insecurity, we take comfort in known rules, they are absolute and, therefore, place a false though convincing emphasis on security, permanence, and safety. So, we find the sports narrative far more attractive than living in a world of mystery and surprise.

The rub is that only with a practiced and welcome response to surprise and insecurity can we live life alive. The only security possible is a trusting embrace of insecurity, a bountiful mystery with generous sprouts of creative opportunity.

"Don't be worried about insecurity. Death will make everything secure. While alive, enjoy insecurity." ~Confucius

TIME AND COURAGE

A sports orientation to life tends to solidify time. When examined closely, with true curiosity and care, we see clearly that time is a construction of convenience. 

We’ve used and been used by clock time as a means of uniform coordination. It is not a natural phenomena, although it originated in the organic relationship of the sun to the earth. With passing time we’ve commodified time.

The most telling example is in transportation history. Powerful railroad companies in the 1880s needed to collapse thousands of time zones in the US and Canada in a manageable way so as to clean up a costly scheduling mess. They invented and imposed a four time zone system that very closely resembles what exists today.

Call a friend in a different time zone. Listen to a television show together. The folly of clock time will reveal itself in stark relief. Try it, you’ll like it.

While the illusion of fixed time may comfort some of us, it is antithetical to life lived alive. HUMAN ACTORS thrive on rhythm and courage.

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.  ~Raymond Lindquist

“Humans feel time. Clocks tell time. One from the heart and the other heartless.”  ~Dubin

WINNERS AND LOSERS

A sports orientation to life foments a world view in which competition has greater value than cooperation. Granted, in team sports there is some value in playing together, one team plays together in opposition to another team. The goal in all sports is for someone or a team to win while some other one or another team loses.

Without putting too fine a point on it, we can conceive of competition as a form of cooperation. When finite players play within an infinite context for instance. However, that is not the overriding purpose of a tennis match or football game.

When emphasis on competition in news is commonplace, we are more likely to see flesh and blood humans in critical circumstances as in opposition, making wellbeing and peace subject to competition instead of cooperation and adaptation. 

This vision justifies insanity and inhumanity. 

There are no doubt difficult and complex matters that we must take account of in a modern and far less than utopian world. Nevertheless, a competitive spirit, with winner and loser outcomes, does nothing to foster sanity and humanity.

The war metaphor amplified in sports/news coverage and the bastardization of courage is pernicious. 

“Creativity takes courage.” ~Henri Matisse

“What can we do in our lives, through the decisions we make, the choices we make to tip the scales in the world away from fear and toward love.”

~Vivek Murthy, M.D.

IT’S A RACE

In a certain sense all competitive sports implies a race. Speed counts in every sport. So does measurement. How far? How fast?

As news presents with a sports orientation there’s an underlying and exaggerated sense of hurry. A false urgency that crushes all impulses to curiosity.

News programs are timed. They’re built of blocks or segments. How often do we see an anchor, up against a ‘commercial break,’ urge a fast response. “We have twenty seconds.” Guests who get booked regularly know how to do “twenty seconds.” 

Measurements of all kinds - best, most important, critical to outcome (speculations), and the like are predominant features in news coverage.

This echoes grades and highlights a limited sense of achievement. It overestimates individual value in our culture. It undervalues interdependence.

It separates us from ourselves and each other. 

The news presents a pervasive picture of a hurried world where individuals are vying for winning spots.

Anchors are ranked. We know which time slots have greatest value. We know how much money the most vaunted anchors (like athletes) are paid. 

The implicit values are sick. They do not inform us in any way that remotely contributes to our individual or social wellbeing and growth. 

Media are disoriented by corporate motives. They lead us to feel lost and fearful only to meet their own profit driven ends.

The hyped style within which impressions of vital information distributed with the intention of allowing us involvement in the unfolding of essential and existential matters in world news, in the absence of which we cannot possibly be fully alive in the world. A scam.

“It seems to me the great American danger we're all in is that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it." ~Mike Nichols

SLOW DOWN TO ACT HUMAN

Set aside the RAT RACE to WIN. It in no way enhances our creativity, or our capacity for empathy, compassion, kindness, gratitude, or love. 

"It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way."

~Rollo May

Slow down to make room for heart felt curiosity. Have the courage of to live. Living any life takes courage.

When we listen in a whole way, using all our senses simultaneously with a keenly focused intention to absorb raw experience, especially of each other, prior to language, category, or concept, we truly ACT HUMAN. 

Until next time..

Lights Up!