Television as a form of knowledge in the New Age
by Jon Rappoport
June 6, 2015
(To join our email list, click here.)
“The media have substituted themselves for the older world… The new media are not bridges between man and nature —they are nature… The new media are not ways of relating us to the old world; they are the real world and they reshape what remains of the old world at will… In television, images are projected at you. You are the screen. The images wrap around you. You are the vanishing point… The whole tendency of modern communication… is towards participation in a process, rather than apprehension of concepts.” (Marshall McLuhan)
The best film ever made about television’s war on the population is Paddy Chayefsky’s scorching masterpiece, Network (1976). Yet it stages only a few minutes of on-air television.
The rest of the film is dialogue and monologue about television. Thus you could say that, in this case, word defeats image.
Even when showing what happens on the TV screen, Network bursts forth with lines like these, from newsman Howard Beale, at the end of his rope, on-camera, speaking to his in-studio audience and millions of people in their homes:
“So, you listen to me. Listen to me! Television is not the truth. Television’s a god-damned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We’re in the boredom-killing business… We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We’re all you know. You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here. You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness. You maniacs. In God’s name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion.”
Beale, coming apart at the seams, is a mad prophet. And because he shines with brilliance and poetry, he can affect minds. Therefore, the television network can make use of him. It can turn him into a cartoon for the masses.
It is Beale’s language and the passion with which he delivers it that constitutes his dangerous weapon. Therefore, the Network transforms him into a cheap religious figure, whose audience slathers him with absurd adoration.
Television’s enemy is the word. Its currency is image.
Beale breaks through the image and defiles it. He cracks the egg. He stops the picture-flow. He brings back the sound and rhythm of spoken poetry. That is his true transgression against the medium that employs him.
The modern matrix has everything to do with how knowledge is acquired.
Television, in the main, does not attempt to impart knowledge. It strives to give the viewer the impression that he knows something. There is a difference.
Knowledge, once established, is external to, and independent of, the viewer. Whereas the impression of knowing is a feeling, a conviction, a belief the viewer holds, after he has watched moving images on a screen.
Images… plus, of course, in the case of the news, the narrative voice.
A basic premise of New Age thinking is: “everything is (connected to) everything.” This fits quite well with the experience of watching film or video flow.
Example: we see angry crowds on the street of a foreign city. Then young people on their cell phones sitting in an outdoor café. Then the marble lobby of a government building where men in suits are walking, standing in groups talking to each other. Then at night, rockets exploding in the sky. Then armored vehicles moving through a gate into the city. Then clouds of smoke on another street and people running, chased by police.
A flow of consecutive images. The sequence, obviously, has been assembled by a news editor, but most of the viewing audience isn’t aware of that. They’re watching the “interconnected” images and listening to a news anchor tell a story that colors (infects) every image.
Viewers thus believe they know something. Television has imparted that sensation to them. That’s what news is all about: delivering a sensation of knowing to the audience.
There is no convenient place where the ordinary viewing audience can stop the flow of images or the story being told. They are inside it. They don’t have the leverage of a crystalized idea or the power of reasoning to get out.
They are inside the story. Knowledge thus becomes story.
The viewer is transfixed by the sensation that he is “inside” watching story.
This fixation produces a short circuit in his reasoning mind (if he has one). No time to stop, no time to think; just watch the flow.
When you take this pattern out to a whole society, you are talking about a dominant method through which “knowledge” is gained.
“Did you see that fantastic video about the Iraq War? It showed that Saddam actually had bioweapons.”
“Really? How did they show that?”
“Well, I don’t exactly remember. But watch it. You’ll see.”
And that’s another feature of the modern acquisition of knowledge: amnesia about details.
The viewer can’t recall key features of what he saw. Or if he can, he can’t describe them, because he was in the flow. He was inside, busy building up his impression of knowing something.
Narrative-visual-television story strips out and discards conceptual references. And lines of reasoning? To the extent they exist, they’re wrapped around and inside the image-flow and the narration.
Ideas aren’t as interesting as images. That’s the premise.
To grasp the diminishment of language, consider the current use of the word “text.” Suddenly it’s become a verb; it means a process of sending words. It also refers to paragraphs or pages of writing, as opposed to pictures. “Text” makes “writing” seem like nothing more than one functional (and machine-like) method of delivering information.
And since bone-dry information (e.g., “genetic sequences”) these days is practically considered a synonym for life, when a writer infuses his words with passion, they automatically become a “rant.” “Rant” was formerly applied to describe what a person did when he was totally unhinged to the point of making no coherent sense.
Image, not the word, is the now preferred means of acquiring what passes for knowledge.
McLuhan: “Media are means of extending and enlarging our organic sense lives into our environment… My main theme is the extension of the nervous system in the electric age.”
All our electronic devices operate as extensions of our senses. In the process, image predominates, and through feedback, the majority of those pictures are produced by media. As if knowledge were being transferred.
Retired propaganda master, Ellis Medavoy (pseudonym), once told me in an interview: “If you wanted to try a real revolution, you would produce thousands of videos consisting of written words on screens, with someone speaking those words. You would try to reinstate language as a medium. Poetry, formal arguments and debates, great speeches, dramatic readings. You would go up against image and try to relegate it to its proper place…”
These days, we are witness to an international treaty, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), being negotiated in secret, with the precise words of the treaty withheld from both legislators and the public. The TPP will create an overriding form of global governance for the US and 11 other nations.
The degree of outrage, so far, is on the order of a bonfire in a park.
If this were happening in the American colonies of the 18th century, where several hundred thousand copies of Tom Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, were distributed among a total population of only 2.5 million people, the earth would shake.
The word meant something then; thousands of pages of words, held in secret, determining the shape of the future, would have instigated a revolution.
Today, that secrecy of words causes minor flames, because generations of Americans have been suckled on images.
Howard Beale: “…we know that democracy is a dying giant, a sick, sick dying, decaying political concept, writhing in its final pain… What is finished is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it. It’s the individual that’s finished. It’s the single, solitary human being that’s finished. It’s every single one of you out there that’s finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. It’s a nation of some two hundred odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings and as replaceable as piston rods.”
Paddy Chayefsky’s words. He made his pen a sword, because he was writing a movie about television, against television. He was going up against image as the primary form of knowledge. He was the man for the job.
When a technology (television) turns into a method of perception, reality is turned inside out. People watch TV through TV eyes. They observe their blessings the way crowds suck in the tautologies of a tinpot dictator.
Mind control is no longer something merely imposed from the outside. It is a matrix of a self-feeding, self-demanding loop. Willing devotees of the image want images, food stamps of the programmed society.
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
Jon, The phrase “conspiracy theory” is used routinely and very effectively to short circuit rational discussion of evidence. The evidence shows that there ARE multiple criminal conspiracies, and at very high levels. Then there are the coverups of the conspiracies that constitute second generation conspiracies! And so it goes. But some of us understand. Don’t despair, Jon. it is not a wining strategy. Jon in Maine
This is a remarkable article by Jon.
It also reminds me of the experience that I’ve had talking with people about a number of subjects from GMOs, to the fiat money system, to the use of the threat of ‘terror’ to strip away liberty, etc., etc.
So often people have a blank look on their face & don’t respond. They don’t argue. They don’t even ask questions – ‘What evidence do you have to support what you say ?! ‘ Nothing . . . nada.
After thousands of hours in public ‘schools’ and in front of t.v. – – I wonder if people now look to some outside authority for all ‘ the right answers ‘.
(Yes, the right images.) Do they no longer have any curiosity or the capacity to question what they are told ?
People are in fear of their own minds, their own thoughts. Television or all kinds of constructed reality or pre digested information or story makes people feel safe, they are in fact love it. They adore it. When you put forwards a subject as you mentioned, they feel terrified, they feel in terror. You see mind control in action, blank eyes, as you put.
Sometimes I force this, I try to make these people crack out of it you know. And often I feel myself lucky that they didn’t really understand what I actually said and tried to burn me on a stick.
About 15 years back everyone I spoke to no longer watched their TV. Perhaps I just changed “circles”, but my own sister who had been glued to every episode (plus repeats) of “East Enders” [a British ‘soap opera’] from conception, no longer watched more than brief glimpses of occasional shows. Prior, it had been an eternal portal to a netherworld. Now it was an occasional, noisy interference.
I watch no TV, except when I go to my bowling club (where I am surrounded by screens). The game has changed since 1976. Now, illusion masters (the Illuminati) try and pre-empt social belief systems (cognitive dissonance) and the sirens promote ever more zany crusades backed by “the people”. My study area is the “paedophilia” phenomenon. Whereas the “curse” has struck all strata’s of society, promotion is limited. Micky mouse crusades, kangaroo courts, false witnesses and police committed to perjury have aided and abetted the fanfare. All this so the TV can demonise free speech and any voice that contradicts their moral judgement: Music stars (Pete Townshend, Garry Glitter, Mikhael Pletnev, Rolf Harris, Michael Jackson), various actors, artists and, most importantly, SENIOR RELIGIOUS FIGURES (including Rabbi’s) have all been scooped up by the machine and fed as sacrificial lambs to scintillate popular bloodlust whilst immortalising their control objectives.
The real agenda (not population control) has been an attempt to enforce rule based society mechanisms (i.e. the age of consent is 18, 21…54 because that is OUR diktat and you SLAVES will do as we dictate). Therefore a disproportionately large chunk of airtime has been devoted to “on the cusp” sexual relationships (youth/young adult sex). Because cognitive dissonance has become so enflamed, the people (including certain visitors to your website, Jon) have been rendered insane. That hyperbolic caricature has become reality even for advanced, thinking people.
Best
OT
If you’d ever been the victim of a nonce you would understand why what happened after Saville, happened. It is such a vile crime that destroys the lives of everyone involved, not just abuser/victim. And although what has happened since smacks of a media led witch hunt, paedophilia has to be rooted out in the most aggressive manner possible. Rationalising it in terms of prevalent culture at the time is like rationalising murder. It has always been wrong and will continue to be wrong for the remainder of eternity. Its not like two children of equal age engaging in congress, it is a relationship based on control to satisfy a selfish and completely wrong need or desire that the abuser feels. So while I see your point, your example doesn’t really fit the purpose.
You have the PROOF, real proof, I’m onside.
The rest is bullshit. That doesn’t work for me, even if it is true, sorry.
On the child sex thing, there needs to be a separation of what’s “oppression” and what’s NOT. At the moment, the machine is geared to shutting people up, imprisoning and even castrating voyeurs. That isn’t right. Cathy O’Brien’s revelations on Bush clan would turn the most liberal libertarian grey. There is no argument that that needs to be stopped dead. You castigate your kids for having sex makes YOU the oppressor and if that model for the “greater good” is ok, so is Monsanto’s. That doesn’t mean you don’t educate them on the issues, but there has to be a point where you say, I did everything I could but THEY made THEIR choices. That doesn’t mean you whistle at the sheriff to arrest and jail [for 20 years] the 18 year old boyfriend of your 15 year old daughter because you don’t like the fact they love one another.
I believe the reason we are so sexually f*cked up is not because of the “Bible” and other religious dogmas, but because we are repressed into sexual abstinence by our families. “Terrible teens” – there’s your answer!
Best
OT
Seems like the “French rule” works at any age after 14 years. That is, stick to someone no younger than half your age plus 7 years. So at 18, date only 16 or older. At 30, 22 or older. At 60, 37 or older. At 90, 52 or older. Seems to be a reasonable rule of thumb. The age range gets wider as you grow older because it matters less. Outside of that general age range, people are usually not on equal footing from a psychological development point of view. Biology may call outside of that range, but that’s where ethical values, hopefully, intervene. It’s not just about biology, it’s about a balance of power.
I have as neighbors a very nice old couple who watches television all day long.
That’s all they ever do. They do not have good health, they are on dozen of pills for multiple health problems. One thing they are really proud of is that they are fully informed on all subjects…lol.
I regularly give them lifts to go and do their groceries and doctor’s appointments, since they cannot drive a car anymore. They know that I do not watch television, so they want to inform me with the latest news. The things they tell me, you would not believe. They tell me that I should watch television and forget about the internet that is all about lies.
I feel so powerless in front of them. What can I do? Tell them the truth? They would die of a heart attack on the spot. So, I leave them with their illusions. That’s all they have left. They fear nothing. Doctors and governments will take good care of them.
Post Scriptum:
Oh, and I forgot the best part. Obama, is the best President that the USA ever had. Aren’t you happy to know this? Who would have thought of that?
Your best President ever…LOL.
“Doctors and government will take good care of them” – great point and that’s exactly how, unfortunately, many people lead their lives. It doesn’t seem to matter whether they’re young or old, affluent or middle-class – they all have full faith, trust, belief, etc., in the medical cartel & government.
These are people who believe every word & image of CNN, FOX, CNBC, etc., as gospel. These people seem apprehensive to ever question the “headline” story, even if their common sense or intuition suggests to do so otherwise. The next thing to happen to them is their susceptibility to the fear mongering psych-ops so prevalent with today’s “headlines” & “breaking news,” e.g., terrorism, disease outbreaks, gobal warming.
Unfortunately, they get get most their medical information from those sophisticated looking M.D.s who appear so confident & authoritative on CNN, FOX, Good Morning America and so-on. They quickly buy into the fear mongering with next “big” virus or pathogen that’s lurking around every street corner. They develop anxiety and consequently call their medical provider to ascertain what they should do or if there is any vaccine available to “save the day.”
Case in point: While watching my local news telecast (I only do this occasionally to get a few laughs), the overly made-up news anchor had a guest M.D. to speak about the current “so-called” MERS “crisis” in South Korea. While the sophisticated, stern looking M.D. was talking, images of South Koreans in masks walking around in Seoul was flashed throughout the screen. The news anchor then asked, “how bad could this be if the virus makes it’s way to America?” The stern M.D. responded, “this would be very serious if it made it’s way to us…people should be very concerned if this happens.” The camera then zooms in on the anchor, who appears bright-eyed and shocked, as she states, “oh my gosh!….let’s hope that doesn’t happen.”
I rest my case….
lol
“We have to create culture, don’t j TV, don’t read magazines, don’t even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you’re worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you’re giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told ‘no’, we’re unimportant, we’re peripheral. ‘Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.’ And then you’re a player, you don’t want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”
– Terrence McKenna
Yes, very interesting post, right down the middle again Jon.
I envy you ability to be oh so precise with your well-chosen words. All those twenty-five cent words packed into it. (Your post) You seem to know words like a painter would know tint and shade. It is always a pleasure to read them.
Speaking of reading, I do a lot of it and I was reading a piece today that fell in line with what you have masterly carved and scripted out in both the Network pieces.
My own train of thought lately.
Especially having you stimulate thinking towards the great McLuhan and my understanding of his inspiration; Terrence McKenna.
Howard “we’re sick and tire and we are not going to take anymore'” Beale, what a fascinating character, a reluctant messiah for the modern age. Having sold his very soul, and now looks for redemption, and wishes to gain it back please.
An interesting antithesis to my explorations of the tale of Caitlyn Jenner aka Bruce Jenner.
Jenner seems to be part of a greater scripted agenda to confuse, confine and separate those segments of society that are balancing on the edge of real and, well… ‘really real. And the outright cognitive dissonance which is driving anyone who attempts to have an individual and free thought about WTF this is totally mad.
But we must address these little in insanities.
Bruce/Caitlyn being no longer part of the Kardassians, having divorced Kim and being cut free from the REALITY television universe. And I suspect Kardassian money.
He (Caitlyn) finds a way back to what he considers to be his fame. His purpose in life, his…real self.
It is easy to assume we will get a new round of reality TV, “whats Caitlyn doing…eh”.
It has been reported that she/he/it has spent $70,000 in plastic surgery… and they never use plastic, I mean, why can’t they make them look like they are plastic?
“Holly came from Miami F.L.A.
Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side,
Said, hey honey, take a walk on the wild side.” – Lou Reed
He is now a transgender and has press releases in every major rag mag, hollywood talk show, internet, twitter, a 20/20 interview with Diane Sawyer, a font cover of Vanity fair, US magazine and the cluster **** goes on and on and on. Stoke that publicity fire.
Seems the prez is proud of Caity. Expressing…
“The president does believe that Caitlyn Jenner has shown tremendous courage, as she has undergone this transition in a very public way,” said press secretary Josh Earnest. “And that’s worthy of our respect.” USA Today
And so it seems that he’s are she’s, and she’s are he’s. And everything else is an it.
And young men are feminizing and young women are masculinizing.
And Obama has purposely confused LGBT rights for a twisted tale of how someone who is famous for being famously fucked up, and transgendered himself to get back into the lime light at any cost…I wonder if he still has a one eyed worm.
And the matrix sees another chance to screw young minds. And confuse and script distraction from the real, real. Confusing gender, confusing identity. Sexualizing the very young. Illusions.
“President Obama has weighed in on Caitlyn Jenner’s new journey, by heaping praise on her.
The Prez just tweeted, “It takes courage to share your story,” adding, “Your story matters in the fight for LGBT rights.”- TMZ
I find it criminal that Cait is going to receive a Arthur Ashe Courage award during the 2015 ESPY Awards.
Courage…wow, how low we have fallen.
Maybe Caitsy could wear her Olympic gold medal to the ESPY’s, to remind everybody how far.
The reality assigned to us piss-ants is loosely based on ethos (ethics/credibility), pathos (emotion/empathy) and logos (logic/reason). The other reality, used by the troll-gods to manipulate and control the piss-ants, is based on the illusionary materialistic dialectical concept of thesis (problem) vs anti-thesis (reaction) = synthesis (solution).
On all levels, the reality of the troll-gods is essentially inaccessible to the piss-ants. We piss-ants play by the rules we were conditioned to adhere to, but the troll-gods who control and police the game rely on a playbook that is the inverse of ours,… ‘Curiouser and curiouser!’, cried Alice!
I originally experienced the Network film in the theater when it was released. After the powerful Howard Beale on-camera rant segment, I found it to be strongly associated with the ethos, pathos, logos reality rant of the Christos persona when he confronted the materialistic dialectical banker/priests in the temple.
It may be said that truth / liberation resides not far beyond the tentacles of our conditioning.
I want to share something different with you all If I may.
I was 15 around 2001, there was no HD or these fancy lcd led’s yet. My personal entertainment was listening to music, digging intelligent poetry inside music or outside music, beautiful vibes and sharing what I found. Hip-Hop in early 90’s, was a testament to later generations. I found out all the greatest jazz records thru listening hip hop. How?
I was listening a song and getting my mind blown, asking myself ‘what is this sample? who made that music?’ and finding out lets say, some 3 seconds from piano of Billy Evans, slowed down, looped into this hip hop song.
Most of the time these were just instrumental, because the aim of music is to make you think up your OWN words, tell your own story, see your own reactions..and If it had lyrics, the lyrics were not about cars, booty, money and all that. Lyrics were creative, everybody knew at that time hip hop is a word play. It was the art of painting images to mind with words and unleash creative imagination through the sound. So these people, who had their imaginations fired up, lets say did the paintings of what they want to create on subway walls called graffiti back in those days.
They, the controllers saw this amazing art of individuals expressing themselves and what we see today is a giant billion dollar industry called music industry and sure the copyright limitations followed to make sure some people can not sample music that easy which lead today’s totally computerized, inorganic form of sound which I can’t call music.
I will leave you an example of what kind of creativity going on those days, just a small example so you can get the idea.
https://youtu.be/3-iRAQWvem8
These Aussie DJ’s called the avalanches shopped for cheapest records they can find all around the stores, lots of forgotten artists which their records buried inside basement of a record shop possibly for eternity. They created this album from 4500+ little samples, nobody playing any instrument here, It’s all sampled from records, some B movies and I say again, 4500 different samples are used throughout the album. This is brilliant art, collage of sounds building layer upon layer upon layer and It’s all about the atmosphere.
And then of course, big corporations did what ever they can to suppress this album. All kinds of copyright claims, forcing artist to remove some of the sound material saying ‘you can’t use that 1 second of sample, that is ours’ etc..Lawsuits..they did whatever they can so this album and the idea behind this album can never reach to people and other artists creating music.
A little story I wanted to share, hope It made sense. Thanks for reading.
Thanks for sharing this.
jon, I had completely forgotten about this movie. I have only been reading your blog for about a year, but I think this was a very good article. What has bothered me lately is this, how do we even know what they “put on” the tv, about the middle east is even close to a accurate? . The alternative blogs pick up incidents about the volatile, never ending horror show in the middle east, now it is a nuke in yeman etc…can we be sure anything is correct? since deception with fear appears to be the agenda, how is the world can we know anything is correct reporting concerning the “escalate to war” news…this thought has been with me for a time now…
“Doctors and government will take good care of them” – great point and that’s exactly how, unfortunately, many people lead their lives. It doesn’t seem to matter whether they’re young or old, affluent or middle-class – they all have full faith, trust, belief, etc., in the medical cartel & government.
These are people who believe every word & image of CNN, FOX, CNBC, etc., as gospel. These people seem apprehensive to ever question the “headline” story, even if their common sense or intuition suggests to do so otherwise. The next thing to happen to them is their susceptibility to the fear mongering psych-ops so prevalent with today’s “headlines” & “breaking news,” e.g., terrorism, disease outbreaks, gobal warming.
Unfortunately, they get get most their medical information from those sophisticated looking M.D.s who appear so confident & authoritative on CNN, FOX, Good Morning America and so-on. They quickly buy into the fear mongering with next “big” virus or pathogen that’s lurking around every street corner. They develop anxiety and consequently call their medical provider to ascertain what they should do or if there is any vaccine available to “save the day.”
Case in point: While watching my local news telecast (I only do this occasionally to get a few laughs), the overly made-up news anchor had a guest M.D. to speak about the current “so-called” MERS “crisis” in South Korea. While the sophisticated, stern looking M.D. was talking, images of South Koreans in masks walking around in Seoul was flashed throughout the screen. The news anchor then asked, “how bad could this be if the virus makes it’s way to America?” The stern M.D. responded, “this would be very serious if it made it’s way to us…people should be very concerned if this happens.” The camera then zooms in on the anchor, who appears bright-eyed and shocked, as she states, “oh my gosh!….let’s hope that doesn’t happen.”
I rest my case….
Perhaps readers would be interested in this little science presentation by James Holmes in 2006.
The media’srabbit hole is much deeper than you tthink…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5oVUqFF_mU