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| Wednesday, 9 June 2004 |
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You are being lied to by K.S. Sivakumaran You are being lied to is a catchy title to an interesting collection of essays by prominent intellectuals all over the world, edited by Russ Kick. It is The Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes and Cultural Myths claim the publishers - The Disinformation Company Ltd of New York. Since its first publication in 2001, the anthology has seen more than eight printings. The editor of this 400 page compendium writes for the Village Voice and is an author of a few publications. Among the contributors is Noam Chomsky who writes on news as propaganda and media as big business. One may accept the views or findings of the respective writers or dismiss them according to his or her convictions. I found sheer intellectual pleasure reading about some revelations in this book of contemporary media functioning in the western world. For instance, Howard Bloom on liars in the media and Riane Eisler on the realities of human nature is fascinating reading. The publishers proclaim that "An unprecedented group of researchers - investigative reporters, political dissidents, academics, media watchdogs, scientist - philosophers, social critics and rogue scholars - paint a picture of a world where crucial stories are ignored or actively suppressed and the official version of events has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. A world where real dangers are downplayed and nonexistent dangers are trumpeted. In short, a world where you are being lied to." News media The penetrating essays are conveniently classified under the following heads: The News media and Other Manipulators, Politicks, Official versions, The Social fabrication, Condemned to Repeat It, Tripping, Holt Rolling, Blinded by Science and The Big Picture. The book includes: Appendix A, appendix B, Contributors and Interviewees and Article Histories. The first essay sets the tuning in of our minds before we plunge into a different realm which we are not used to. The article is by Howard Bloom, among other credentials, he is said to be the founder of the International Paleopsychology. I wish to include the three quotations, the writer himself has used: Don DeLillo - "Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what others see, the thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception." The other quotation is by the one of the pioneer short story writers of the world, the Frenchman, Guy de Maupssant - "We are accustomed to use our eyes only with the memory of what other people before us have thought about the object we are looking at." The third quote is from Lily Tomlin, who says "After all, what is reality anyway? Nothin' but a collective hunch". Among the beautiful statements Harold Bloom makes at least two sounded very deep to me as valid observations of the humankind. The statements are: "Every word we use carries within it the experience of generation after generation of men, women, families, tribes, and actions, often including their insights, value judgements, ignorance, and spiritual beliefs." 'Social experience literally shapes critical details of brain psychology, sculpting an infant's brain to fit the culture into which the child is born. "Bloom's essay is captioned. Reality is a Shared Hallucination" Noam Chomsky is too well known an intellectual to be introduced here. He is writing about 'What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream' and goes straight into the subject with this opening: "Part of the reason I write about the media is that I am interested in the whole intellectual culture, and part of it that is easiest to study is the media." This essay is really from a talk he gave at Z Media Institute in 1997. In his essay, 'The Puppets of Pandemonium', Howard Bloom (again) mentions that Arthur Schlesinger, Jr once said that "Karl Marx" held that history is shaped by control of the means of production. In our times history is shaped by control of the means of communication.' Earl Lee writing on school textbooks says that "As with history, the study of literature often, descends into a trivial pursuit of facts and data, things easily measured in multiple-guess questions." Although this pattern is true in American High Schools assignments, I welcome this method for the simple reason that before they go to college or university education to engage in deeper analysis, the students must be first equipped with basic information. This is because most students don't read at all, leave alone read deeply. Literate Even in Sri Lanka, (where the children are more literate, but handicapped with basic universal knowledge) we should have multiple choice short assignments of the basic information at the end of each lesson so that the students get a ground work assimilation. One of the most interesting articles is by Douglas Rushkoff. Writing on "The Information Arms race ", he equates the Cyberspace viewer to "an armchair postmodernist deconstructing images as he sees fit". He also adds that "Only by killing its communicative function could the web's developers turn the Internet into a shopping mall." An advisor to the UN Commission on World Culture and a professor of media culture at NY University's Interactive telecommunications Program, Douglas Ruskoff says that "I believe that when a group or individual has monopoly over the technology of communication - be it language, television, or the Internet - then he or they can maintain an unfair advantage in promoting a particular world view." How true it is. Similarly, another observation I absorb is from Richard Brodie who says: "The seeker of truth must sit awake in a lonely tower, prepared to question everything and anything that comes his or her way, or risk succumbing to the soporific comfort of the common wisdom." Brodie is the author of many books including Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme. The presenter of Channel 4 Television's (UK) Disinfo Nation series, Richard Metzger has some interesting comments. Some samples: "I have Met God and He lives in Brooklyn or how the arch-skeptic, Dr. Lord of Disinformation becomes convinced, and tries to convince you the reader, that Howard Bloom is next in a lineage of seminal thinkers that includes Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Freud, and Buckminster Fuller and how he is going to change the way we see ourselves and everything around us." Read this: "War, death, hatred, violence, and even racism are necessary underpinnings of the genetic plan - integral components of creation and of life itself." Our own Ananda Coomaraswamy's announcement to the west that "For every psychological term in English there are four in Greek and forty in Sanskrit" is remembered by Peter Russell in his article "A Sentient Universe". In this article, the writer describes the process of the evolution of consciousness in such terms: "Consciousness does not arise from some particular arrangement of nerve cells or processes of going on between them, or from any other physical features; it is always present." This is the Hindu view as well. The writer also says that "what emerged over the course of evolution was not the faculty of consciousness, but various qualities and dimensions of conscious experience - the contents of consciousness." This book, I am sure would interest any reader, whether he or she is in the media or not, particularly those deeply interested in seeing things beyond their own perimeters and their own boxes. Ken Russel's Lady Chatterly One of the remarkable British film and theatre directors and actors is Ken Russel as most of us familiar with the artistic world would know. Similarly students of literature would know the importance of the British writer and poet of the last century, D.H. Lawrence. Critics do not rate Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover as his greatest novel as they would rate his Sons and Lovers or Women in Love or Kangaroo. But Chatterly gained notoriety partly due to the publicity it received on account of censorship problems, and partly due to its sympathetic handling of a delicate situation in the relationship of two lovers - the husband wife, and another set of lovers in a carnal level. But it is also a subtle portrayal of class distinctions and bourgeois values on the one hand and crude basic instincts in communion with nature. And in that sense Lady Chatterly's Lover was also an important work in the context of a society that prevailed when Lawrence wrote that novel. Ken Russel adapted Women in Love into the celluloid and it was a notable film. He also filmed Lady Chatterly's Lover to be serialized on the BBC TV channel. This production by London Films/Global Arts Production featured Sean Penn as the manly, rustic, sensual lover of the wife (Judy Richardson) of a paralysed husband (James Wilby). Lawrence's novel was adapted as a 4 - episode mini drama for Channel 4 of the British Broadcasting Corperation in 1992. It is now available on 2 VHS format running to 205 minutes. I remember seeing another Lady Chaterly film two decades ago. That was sensationalized version. But Ken Russell's film is no doubt an artistic interpretation with enjoyable nuances. Demography in miniature If the total world population is reduced to mere 1,000 people, the statistics that would reveal would be unbelievable. This is what an agency comprehended: Asians - 584, Africans - 124, Eastern and Western Europeans - 95, Latin Americans - 84, Russians - 55, North Americans - 52, Australians - 4, New Zealand - 2. In terms of religion, the Christians - 328, Islamites - 177, Non-Religionists - 169, Hindus - 132, Other Religionists 86, Buddhists -62, Atheists - 45, Jews - 3. Gender - wise: Females 520, Males - 480. Those who have enough to eat - 500, those who do not have enough to eat - 500. Those who cannot read - 720, those who can read - 180. Those who don't own a computer - 900, those who own a computer - 10. Believe it or not. Take it or Leave it Nellai Nadesan End of May saw the killing of Nellai Nadesan, who in the 1970s wrote fiction and poetry and was interested in literature and the arts. He was a lanky spirited young man who later turned out to be a political commentator in the Thamil press and electronic media. He was a senior executive in the department of statistics stationed in Mattakalappu Nadesan hailed from Nelliady in the northern part of the country. His wife Gowri, happens to be a niece of mine. This saddens me. My heartfelt sympathy to her and their children. Nadesan wrote his political reports and commentaries under the name G. Nadesan. One may not necessarily agree with some of his interpretations in reporting and commenting of happenings in the Thamil speaking areas, but his method of analysis was worthy of observation. He had a mathematical mind. On death Let me conclude this week's column with some memorable quotes on Death itself: The good Lord never gives you more than you can handle. Unless you die of something. (A cartoon caption) The best way to get praise is to die (Italian proverb) A murderer is one who is presumed to be innocent until proven insane (unknown) Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. (Bertrand Russell) The graveyards are full of indispensable men (Charles de Gaulle) There are more dead people than living, and their numbers are increasing (Eugene Ionesco) Contact: mailto: [email protected] **** Back **** |
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