(could this really be the bottom of a spaceship??)
This may seem like a convoluted idea, but press on, fellow reader; it’s focused on developing the most positive aspects of media and about public absorption of information in the present day.
A common element of popular news media today takes aim at affecting the emotional or sentimental layers of the reader. In a 1998 book by Bjorn Lomborg entitled, The Skeptical Environmentalist, this process of media attention-grabbing is critiqued at length. Primarily, Lomborg describes and demarcates a model of philosophical skepticism for the reader. A number of environmental “fallacies” are unpacked as specific efforts by interest groups to garner a higher readership. One of Lomborg’s most effectively demarcated environmental fallacies refers to the term, "threshold alarmism," and how some media writers stimulate concerns about the future without offering conclusive information for worry.
These dramatic emphases on vague, potential harms have in some cases generated a strange sort of superficial media-borne energy, where a great deal of individuals feel strongly about an issue such as climate change and can, so they do, harp on to their peers, focusing on the most alarming peripheral details in order to generate a response. This is one of the interesting processes that we are currently befallen with: a lot of critics, a lot of commentary, and constant exchanges of information and knowledge. What happens then when a potentially uncritical mind is influenced by a party that is interested only in personal profit? It is my contention that the ideological priority placed on capitalism and personal finance is why we have witnessed the kind of stagnation that has been occurring with positive environmental action, as with the conference in Copenhagen.
This just underscores the type of framework that I'm dealing with, that now, when the world demands action more than it ever has before on this issue, it’s still a mass of verbiage that the powers that be continue to hide behind. It is slightly repugnant, but ultimately it is symptomatic of our late capitalism existence and a world that remains daunting and unpredictable. Because without a communal investment in knowledge, effort, hell, in actual profit, we won't be able to evoke any serious change. But aha, my friendly feathered friend, people in our society are definitely not interested in a communal sort of profit in the way that I'm saying. Hell, even the word profit is problematic here, but I'm using it to describe a collective profit, outside of monetary wealth.
The thing about money, about capitalism, all of that, is that we are currently advanced (?) enough to live highly individualized lives, for example, the number of single men sustaining solitary lifestyles is rising, while marriage numbers have been declining. If we're stuck competing for money all the time, how are we going to do anything but continue to put up walls and divide ourselves further? Mad notes escape the dreamer. I'd better say now that I'm not moseying in some Marxist direction, I have yet another point.
The other night, somehow, my housemates and I got into a conversation while we were studying philosophy, about crop circles. I suppose it was stirred up by a science versus unexplained phenomena discussion. I’ve always had the feeling that I belong to a “Mulderien” school of thought (that is, quite open to the unknown, no matter how apparently false). This especially informed by my desire to believe things that I oughtn’t necessarily believe (at least with a scientific and objective mindset).
I do feel strongly about aliens, UFOs, flying saucers, little green men, all of that, but not so that I would do something like accept any of the 50 minute hoaky youtube video that we found to proceed our conversation. It appalled me in fact, that such a swindle had been conducted, and certifiably occurs daily, in all kinds of places. Just because of the desperate psychology rooted in searching for life out there. I mean, yeah, I usually see that the average person I discuss these matters with accepts the statement that life must occur in some otherworldly form in some lost jellycosm or other. It’s all conjecture, but based on the “size of the universe” theory (very big), it seems at least plausible to picture life in another, or multiple other, manifestations.
But mostly, it’s us. Yeah, I said it. I’ve been studying a great deal of folk literature, religious doctrine, not to mention Calvin and Hobbes, both the theologian and the kid, the philosopher and the stuffed tiger, and it is evident to me that most accounts of supernatural or at least abnormal phenomena are products of disorientation, contextual setting, or simply of imagination. It strikes me as a strange concept that immediately following World War II and an undeniably atrocious first half to the 20th century, the story of the EBE, or Extraterrestrial Biological Entity emerged from the air force base in Roswell, New Mexico. Would this be the new spiritual entity to tantalize the human mind in years to come? Yes, for some; they want to believe, they thrive on that factor of the unknown, they revel in possibility. It seemed as though a lot of the stories that make up humanity got severely tarnished, damaged, some lost forever in that war. It is my contention that UFO stories are merely an offshoot of the hopeful and complex primate intellect that humans possess. In a time denoted by literary theorists as the era of Postmodernity, itself characterized by the fragmentation of space and meaning, these stories are symptomatic of our undying urge to have real stories intact that we can share, so that things such as mystery and curiosity could strike us today.
They’re not succinctly bad stories, either. One of my favourite television shows growing up was the X-Files, because I thought that it illustrated so well one individual’s drive to find meaning and truth in places where meaning and truth had been tampered with noticeably. It realistically (well, semi-realistically) placed two FBI agents to investigate scene after scene of strange mysterious phenomena. These would range from American or European folktales to urban legends and, of course, interspersed amongst these was a plot driven by notions of UFOs and extraterrestrials. Normally, the bureaucratic hand of reason is there to stifle Mulder’s discoveries, which is fitting because most of his investigations are rooted in ideas of the fantastic.
I love these stories, I like that we’re still telling them, I like that aliens can stir one or two people up, make them say, “What if?” as they go about their day-to-day life here on greenest earth. But, if we are to reify noted ills to our society that have been caused by industry and capitalism on steroids, we must do so with conscious, critical attention.
This is a very convoluted idea for a paper, I apologize… but as you could probably tell I feel super strongly about it. My main objection with the film, “New Swirled Order” it was called, was that it didn’t provide disclaimers as to the nature of the investigations (done in a very low budget Mulder/Scully sort of way by the brilliant BLTResearch team, cited from BLTResearch.com). The whole way through, I wasn’t sure who in the film was faking it or who believed it. I wouldn’t waste my time watching it if I were you, but it is mildly entertaining, to be sure. And implausible, did I mention that? Highly implausible. I just have a problem with the profiting individuals, the ones making the crop circles, the ones in charge of distributing that crappy video, because they were attempting to be edgy, suspenseful, and worst of all, authentic.
In a world on the brink of, what is it now? Tomorrow? I guess that’s all we’re on the brink of for now, but after that, I’ve got a feeling we’re in for more of the same. More tomorrows that is. And masses of useless media like New Swirled Order, while itself not being very influential, desires to influence others into tomorrow. It wants to affect a sort of consideration in its viewers that is coupled by awe, excitement, intrigue, even hope. It won’t with most, I think. And gee, am I glad to have seen it for free on youtube. I can’t honestly picture one person interested in owning that atrocious film, unless it was some bizarre, disclaimer-less artistic expression. I am sure (and we know that I can only feel sure because of subjectivity laws and all that, but seriously, I feel that I know that I’m sure, to be sure) that the film is exactly what it looks like: a creative money-grabbing scheme, predicated on the false and synthetic hope offered up by numerous trippy images. This desire to influence one’s hopeful conscience for a private profit like that is unethical.
It’s a ridiculous example, but I love it because for me it really intersects a number of very thought-provoking issues. On one hand we have the human intellect, conjuring collective records of what an extraterrestrial entity might look like. On the other we have constant production: texts, newspapers, films, journals. It is considered good to print intrigue because such generates interest and thus an increased readership. The type of alarmism stirred up in the media these days is often a direct result of myopically pessimistic broadcasts, just the type that Bjorn Lomborg warns us of in The Skeptical Environmentalist.
Well, I’ve already mentioned in my borderline communist beeline earlier that the greatest hindrance to change in this world is money. The main vice that it brings with it is the myth of security. Essentially, if I have the same money as everyone else, it becomes reasonably comforting to merely focus on accumulation of more, and leave everyone else up to themselves. Isn’t that what’s been happening for a while now anyway?
Who knows. Who knows what’ll happen. All I’m saying is, that if we’re grappling in one mind with the environmental situation, trying to utilize good information as well as make positive critical decisions about future options, we can’t afford to allow BLT Research and their crop circles to influence us at all (although they are but one meager example of junk science).
I am firm in the opinion that it is an unethical practice to play on someone’s beliefs, particularly for profit. Being a bit of a UFO nut myself, I took specific pains to see the notion of extraterrestrial life get bandied around with the so-called crop circles and the so-called crop circle experts. It seemed like a large waste of time, faking all of that evidence. What a waste of time and effort and resources! For what? To turn one or two heads I suppose. But this century has given me whiplash. And in every single direction, you can find good information, but you can also find heaps and heaps and heaps of bad information.
My New Swirled Order example is itself perhaps a bit useless, other than the fact that it speaks to the psychology behind UFO sightings, which I am very much interested in. Other than that, I think it’s a great example of people’s desire for profit by coercion (emboldened because that key phrase is the one thing we should always be conscious of as critical citizens). We are already drowning in a sea of poor environmental rhetoric, punctuated with sayings like, “Now its time to go big or go home with sustainability.” (to which I respond, “Pardon moi? Where did you hear that statement, a Redskins game? Go big or go home? Aren’t we already too big? Where is home?!”)
Don’t get me wrong, the “idea” of sustainability brings me great cheer. It’s kind of like the idea of hope. It exists, cos I just said it. Hope. Hope, hope, hope, hope, hope, ok I’ll just have to remember the word for later. All I know is that it’s really easy to sound good talking about this stuff. It seems almost, what do you call it? Noble. But the more we talk, letting tomorrows become yesterdays, beating around the bush, the closer we come to the uncharted alarmist threshold of change, and some action will happen. And we need all noggins on deck!
