I had some very interesting lectures today and I thought I’d share some of it with anyone thats reading (I aspire to draw double figures one day).
The man who has been the focus of my ‘Analytical Perspectives’ class is one Theodore Adorno. A man who was part of the Frankfurt School of philosophy and we focused on his essay ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment As Mass Deception’. Check him out.
One quote really struck me.
“Something is provided for all so that none may escape”
You can see the correlation in all consumer products we buy.
For example newpapers…
For certain people you have the the express/the star magazines that appeal to people who prefer gossip over actual (dry) news – served with a healthy dose of porn….
You then get your daily mail and the like – a paper which is essentially a right-wing rant from start to finish. They disguise the alarmist writing style and emphasis on scandal (in common with the aforementioned publications) with a political slant which makes it appear more ‘high-brow’.
Next are papers like the The Times or The Telegraph – now these start to report important news items in detail. As a result they are more boring to read (doh). However due to the fact they are in fact owned by powerful companies with more than a say in political dealings, they do tend to have a distinct slant…
Finally you have The Guardian and The Independent – Which are owned by private trusts and in the end answer to us and advertisers. I personally quite like The Independent. But then all this is opinion and there is no right or wrong. So no matter who we are there is a newspaper that appeals to our values, and how else do we get the news? watch it on the BBC? funded by us via the government, it’s all the same principle but we need to know what’s going on somehow right?
So it would appear I have made a choice. I like the Independent, because I like to think I’m clever. However Adorno believed that I have actually not made much of a choice. That all these outlets are still there to deceive us from real issues. He specifically mentioned music and film industries and major culprits in this idea to disguise deception as knowledge or ‘culture’. Arguing that they ‘dumb us down’ (by us – I am merely saying the non-ruling class). So according to Adorno the half a million or so people who make the world go round attempt to control us completely using false media and the culture industry. I don’t question the newspaper, I read it and take what it says as fact. However I actually have no way of knowing this. But everyone picks their paper, reads it, usually believes it, and even if we have our doubts we still do nothing about it.
However every so often something unusual happens. We get a glimpse of this ruling class world. This George Osborne thing on the news lately is much more interesting than it appears at first. He is accused of trying to get money (a donation for the conservative party) from a rich Russian on a French Wine Baron’s rather large yacht. Which is completely and utterly illegal. Now the interesting part is how all this came out. Also at this little soiree was Jon Mendelsohn. Now Osborne decided to reveal that at this yacht club meeting Mendelsohn (who had been only recently reinstated to the Labour party) had some choice words to say about their guide and leader Gordon ‘Bailout’ Brown. Now why were Mendelsohn, a rich Russian, a French wine Baron and George Osborne all together anyway? I haven’t a clue. But the point is they probably didn’t want us to know… but George broke the deal. He decided to score points for his party by dragging the newly appointed Mendelsohn through some stormy waters.
Enter Mr. Rothschild, French wine maestro. Now it was his yacht, it was a private meeting, Osborne disregarded this confidentiality for his own gain. So he wrote a letter to The Times directly disclosing everything that happened at that meeting! Hence where this business of donations sprang from. So by breaking the secrecy Osborne has put his career in mortal danger. My lecturer was keen to relate this to Adorno’s view of the world (which I by no means agree with) that what we saw was a little chink in the ruling class cloak of secrecy in which the dark machinations that the world is built on lie. To be honest I just find the secrecy of it all so fascinating, and this is just one meeting we’ve heard about, how many others must there have been? It was only because someone broke the deal that we heard about this one. Im not someone who seriously believes in conspiracy theories – I merely think they talk about hypothetical naughty things to do with money and the like. Not plotting anti-flag terrorist attacks or hiding UFOs etc…
The point is we don’t have a clue though, really!
This all ties back into this theory of the culture industry and in fact nearly everything around serving as distractions so we don’t pay attention to things like this as much as we perhaps should?
We can go back to my original quote and show how it could be argued that there is a hierarchy of products to cater for the masses and shown with the paper example. This is called pseudo-individualism and essentially means that an illusion of choice is created but really we are still just being standardised.
This goes on within individual corporations as well.
Note the example of McDonalds and say… Pret A Manger.
Both are fast food, however they cater to distinctly different markets…
However even though we think we are choosing… the choice is not as big a deal as we’d like to think.
Because little did I know (and I’m guessing quite a few others don’t either) McDonalds actually owns about a 30% stake in Pret A Manger. So whatever we do – the choice is essentially the same. Clever play my McDonalds considering the number of ‘moral’ people who refuse to eat with Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar because they believe they’re killing the rainforest yet will then chow down on a Pret A Manger BLT… The things is it’s not their fault. They were attempting to assert the only individual power any of us really have (as consumers) however the wool is pulled over our eyes. The more I thought about this, the more I thought about how little we all think about our purchases and what we’re actually purchasing?
Interesting no?… no? …oh ok fair enough…
I probably haven’t made much sense – and I don’t really believe in the extremity of Adorno’s views – but I think it’s fair to say the general public is deceived on a daily basis by very powerful people with interests that are less than humanitarian.
I’m gonna post again tomorrow with some stuff for my Business & Personal Management work.
Night night
Stephen
A
