Become the Media

by Bob Banner

 When I was listening to the many dramatic presentations and lectures during the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in ’99, one such mantra or chant that really took hold came from Jello Biafro when he ended his talk with “Don’t Blame the Media, Become the Media.”

It ought to be quite obvious to most people that the corporate media dominates our lives. With 6 corporations1 controlling book publishing, magazines, newspapers, radio, movies and television, we are continually being inundated by the same message:

  1. Believe in the Rulers.
  2. Don’t ask questions.
  3. Don’t pay attention to how our life style affects the third world and the environment.
  4. Keep working really hard and more hours since someone else who is a bit more aggressive can snap your job away from you.
  5. Be afraid of any enemy that the government chooses to be an enemy.
  6. Keep on believing that we live in a democracy.

Add to the list if you wish.

Another list one could create is one which describes what the mainstream rarely reports. For example, I’ve come up with the following:

  1. Industrial chemical accidents and chemical toxins causing illness.
  2. Labor/worker/union issues.
  3. Anti-globalization analyses.
  4. An urgency that empowers people to act and to become effective citizens.
  5. Inspiring solutions that gives readers energy to get up out of their slumber and to act and be of service, to be creative, joyful, alive and healthy individuated humans.
  6. An urgency that comes from realizing and viscerally feeling how unsustainable our system is... how we cannot continue with this peculiar model of “progress” (some people have the audacity to “believe” that this peculiar form of “progress” is actually “evolution”. In fact the New American Dream think tank has reported that if the world’s population tried to live like people in the U.S. we would need 3 more Earth-planets.


So, HOW does one become the media? We in the U.S. are in a unique situation where we have more “freedoms” than most people in the world yet we do not use them.

Journalists in other countries are being killed for searching out the truth while journalists here are getting paid for not telling the truth. Perhaps that is our form of freedom?

We have the right to say what we want to say. We can publish a paper, post notices on billboards, teach a class, rent a space and show films, give a presentation, show films/documentaries through public access, send letters to the editor, create websites, write articles for daily newspapers, call in to your local talk show programs, work at a radio station. But how many of us do it? The point is to stop blaming the media and start creating one.

But before people are interested in “becoming the media” they have to be a bit suspicious of what they are getting from the mainstream media. And who wants to be suspicious? Who wants to mistrust the media or the government for that matter? Doesn’t that involve fear? And who wants to live in a fear-based reality? But sometimes it takes a little dose of paranoia to get one on the road to truth and a larger dose of reality.

Do you seek to think outside of the box? If you have an inkling of suspicion or mistrust then there are many sources of information that are waiting for such eager appetites.

If you don’t wish to think outside of the box then there is complete validation for a concrete reality. There is absolutely no need for you to go anywhere; everything is satisfactory, everything is okay... normal. The media takes on a perpetual continuity machine, a grid if you will, a mind control if you will. This reminds me of a passage I read recently by the late Terence McKenna2.

Looking down on Los Angeles from an airliner, I never fail to notice that it is like looking at a printed circuit: all those curved driveways... As long as the Reader’s Digest stays subscribed to and the TV stays on, these modules are all interchangeable parts within a very large machine. This is the nightmarish reality: the creation of a public herd. The public has no history and no future, the public lives in a golden moment created by a credit system which binds them ineluctably to a web of illusions that is never critiqued.

The goal appears to be a constant state of comfort, safety and a seeming salvation that reeks of somnabulism of the soul... When that is established, firmly rooted, there is not only not an interest in looking outside of the box, there become a defensiveness to thwart any new information coming into the box... that can potentially disturb the box.

Why do we create filters that screen out what goes against our belief systems? Our reality is based on comfort and security, so we identify ourselves with these belief systems rather than seeing reality as a flowing process. What happens when our delusions become shattered? Where can we run? Where do we go for solace? Our religious authorities? Our media pundits? Our political leaders? What happens to our own sense of truth? What happens to trusting our own intuition and built-in bullshit detectors?

We have 500 channels and they are all saying the same thing. Why? What films or documentaries or novels or non-fiction pieces or songs have you encountered that are outside of the box? How did it come to you? Was it easily available? Was it force-fed? Did you have to make any effort at getting to it? Do you have friends who are interested in seeking information outside of the box? If so, count yourself blessed!

Make a list of medias that actually nourish you. If information is like food and food can be either nourishing or can make you ill, what type of information makes your soul sing, makes you feel full, nourished, in love with the world?

“The media is not just about foolish entertainment or news that keeps us more separate, afraid, and uninspired or television commercials convincing us to buy more things to be happy. The media has a purpose to awaken us, to uplift us, to aid us in feeling that we are powerful, that we can make a difference, that we can affect local politics by our words and actions, that we can create a media of our own.”3

An exercise If you are interested in pursuing this more, ask yourself some questions while you are reading a book, magazine, watching a film, listening to a musician, etc.

  1. What feeling does the particular media evoke: despair, anger, sadness, irritation, joy, confusion, eeriness....
  2. Are you drained, full of energy, inspired, disturbed, hopeful, moods of extreme nihilism...
  3. What do you want to do after?
  4. Do you wish to act, fall asleep, get involved in some service activity?
  5. Do you wish to tell people about this particular media and why? To disturb them? To get them out of their stupor or depression? To feel cool? To share from one spirit to another something that is actually nourishing?


Footnotes
  1. “The dominant six corporations that control the media (book publishing, magazines, newspapers, radio, movies and television) are: General Electric, Viacom, Disney, AOL Time Warner, Berttelsmann and Murdoch’s News Corp.” — from The Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian
  2. The passage by Terence McKenna comes from an unlikely reference, page 35 in Margot Anand’s The Art of Everyday Ecstasy.
  3. From the “Introduction” to the Media special issue of HopeDance. Go to www.hopedance.org and click “archives” for the online version.
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Bob Banner is publisher of HopeDance
Thanks goes to Janelle Younger at New Frontiers who asked me to give a talk. This paper was inspired by that talk.