2002-01-11 unknown @ work
overwhelmed by media soup

I wonder if the diversification of media hasn't hurt America as a culture.

As I sit here, listening to old radio shows ("Dimension X," "X Minus One," "Suspense," "Escape"), hearing the commercials from a bygone era, I imagine a time of simplicity: technology progressing at a considerably slower pace, relative order to life, and a wonder about the changes in the world... moreover, I imagine a trust in government, something that pretty much faded away with the assassination of JFK, Vietnam, Nixon, and all that followed.

In thinking about our last forty years of presidents, I see echoes of the Roman imperial dynasty, how each successive emperor was either more a madman or more a fool...sometimes both.

At the same time, entertainment has become so diverse that it's hard to imagine how a child forms preferences in this age of hysterical media diversity. Television with three hundred channels, the Internet, video stores full of thousands of films, toys that can be programmed and make-it-yourself snacks. I almost wish I had kids so I could watch them evolve, even help them sort through the chaos that this world is.

I'm realizing the point of my thesis, of Dreamstate Radio Theater: I wanted to touch that time; not that I had anything so new to contribute to the world of radio theater, but that it had something to contribute to me, something that Michael Pollan makes note of in The Botany of Desire when he speaks about marijuana�s effects...wonder. The same reason that the brain contains compounds comparable to THC naturally � a chemical that causes the brain to forget, to filter out sensory data to keep it absorbable � is the same I think people need help in looking at media, that our "preferences" lead to a standardization of what we take in, and we value the experiences less. The brain filters input to keep us sane, but I feel there's a cost to that in a person's emotional life, a cost of wonder, of excitement. If the capacity for wonder is hindered (and I'm realizing that I wrote about this in high school), then there's no capacity for fresh perspective on well-examined subjects, or even nigh-examined ones.

So where is the media-THC for people? Is it parenting? Is it criticism (which is terminally tainted by other people's "preferences")? Is it Hakim Bey's Poetic Terrorism? Does it exist? How does one open minds?