Fake Plastic Lies: Uprooting Ourselves from Media Manipulation
‘Plato’s Allegory of the Cave’ Jan Saenredam (according to Cornelis van Haarlem), 1604 - Albertina, Vienna
“Outwardly, one of the most noticeable features of the way we fear in the present days is the tendency grossly to inflate the threats we face and transform relatively normal risks into potential catastrophe.”
For the last two years, our minds have been fed a lot of tall tales via mainstream media. The narrative waxes, wanes, wobbles and at times, seems to be on life support and yet the pundits keep on their performance each and every night on the news while print media continue to spew out the latest sensationalist story or 'fear porn'. In this episode, Dolli and I discuss our feelings about media, whether it is right to trust it after so much deceit, gaslighting and fear mongering. What are your thoughts, dear listener? Have you had enough? Are you ready to free yourself and put down roots in a new kind of world where communication is kind and information is not meant to shock or disturb us?
“For levelling really to come about a phantom must first be provided, its spirit, a monstrous abstraction, an all-encompassing something that is nothing, a mirage - this phantom is the public. Only a passionless but reflective age can spin this phantom out, with the help of the press when the press itself becomes an abstraction.”
Portrait of Kierkegaard, 1902, Luplau Janssen - The Museum of National History, Denmark (Hillerød Museum)
To be able to see every side of every question;
To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;
To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,
To use great feelings and passions of the human family
For base designs, for cunning ends,
To wear a mask like the Greek actors—
Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle,
Bawling through the megaphone of big type:
“This is I, the giant.”
Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,
Poisoned with the anonymous words
Of your clandestine soul.
To scratch dirt over scandal for money,
And exhume it to the winds for revenge,
Or to sell papers,
Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be,
To win at any cost, save your own life.
To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization,
As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track
And derails the express train.
To be an editor, as I was.
Then to lie here close by the river over the place
Where the sewage flows from the village,
And the empty cans and garbage are dumped,
And abortions are hidden.
- Edgar Lee Masters, ‘Editor Whedon’ from Spoon River Anthology