It's an interesting theory. You're an older fellow than myself, so you must have more experience with it. Has it always been the case with the media? I remember reading about the man who made advertising the vicious way it is today, which was in the 30s. Nephew of Sigmund Freud, the man was. Before him, ads were actually trying to show the product to be good compared to others. Ads being only one point of the media, obviously. Is it the model in which your insecurities are pushed to make you purchase stuff? Could you give examples to either of those components of the modern media? I can't seem to be able to make some up myself. So, basically, rituals make for comfort because they make us feel good about maintaining the "good behavior"? That's something I never thought of. Rituals are the circus bonus - the good circle, as opposed to the bad circle of the vicious cycle - that support themselves solely through being good enough to be repeated. How do you think the modern gigantic population density (compared to even a hundred years ago) affects us? Also, how and why are the Old Rituals better than the constant feeding of pleasure? I can see a few points on my own but would like to hear your full opinion on that.Media's entire job is to distract you from being happy and self-sufficient.
For the last 50-100 years, humans have developed a deficiency-model of need.
Confirmation that you made the right decision. Giving you perceived power over situations in which you feel powerless.
So, feeding those base human needs for rituals taps into an inner feeling of calm.
A lack of space, physically and mentally.
You're an older fellow than myself, so you must have more experience with it. Has it always been the case with the media? Honestly, it hasn't always been that way. There used to be shows - 60 Minutes, various evening news programs, Nova, most things on PBS, etc - that existed for "the public good." They were the equivalent of eating your vegetables at dinner: they were the real nutrients in the meal, but generally weren't your favorite part. Sometimes they were amazingly delicious. (Woodward and Bernstein's reporting on Watergate, etc.) But those shows are all gone now. The print media held the banner for a while, but once the Internet really got going, they had to give up and go for the advertising dollars as well. Of course, there are still a few media outlets that go for substance over style - The Economist, The Guardian, Al-Jazeera, to name a few - but if you peel back the veneer on every other media outlet in the world, you will find an advertising content delivery network. Not a news organization. Even Omidyar tried to throw money at the problem, and build a true news organization. It flourished briefly, and then got caught in the undertow and fell apart. Glenn Greenwald was the iconic "catch" for the Omidyar group, but I think that lasted about 3 months before falling apart. Look up "Confirmation Bias." This is the basis of all media today... get you to buy something, and then feed the confirmation bias. This podcast does a really good job of exposing how we self-sabotage, and think we are smarter and more un-biased than we are. I think it is a red herring. All we know is our own experiences and lifetime, and the immediate population of our building or town does not grow enough for us to actually notice it, regardless of what we think we know. There are no more boom towns that go from 1200 people to 40,000 people in a month, any more. The gold rush era is over. So population density is, from the level of our personal cognitive abilities, stagnant. KNOWING the population is growing is an intellectual fact. EXPERIENCING population growth is not something that most people can experience on a human-perceptible timeframe. So how does it affect us, vs 100 years ago? The short answer is, "it doesn't, because we weren't alive 100 years ago to know experience the significant change over that timeframe". Two things: One is how our brains are hard-wired. We evolved over eons to thrive in a social and physical environment that doesn't exist anymore. Our brain wiring is old, and the environments we live in are new. Recognizing that, and letting your brain work the way it was designed to work, can calm it down by letting it fall into the patterns and functions that it was designed for. Two, constantly feeding pleasure is identical to drug addiction. You keep pushing the button, getting the rush, push the button, get the rush, etc. But over time, the rush is deadened, and you need more of the stimulation to feel the same rush. (We all know the cycle of addiction.) So in the end, you are left with memories of brief moments of happiness, that got briefer and less happy over time. Now you are looking for a new jag, a new high, to replace the old one. (Ever wonder why AA meetings have so many smokers and so many binge coffee drinkers?) A momentary endorphin rush cannot replace deep inner calm. You can distract yourself with moments of shiny and happy, but you will come down from those, and be "down" again. But when you feed the brain's deep inner need for ritual, you tap into a base animal need - something in your basal ganglia - that creates an upwelling of good feeling from the base of your brain, rather than just slathering shiny paint on the outside. There's probably some science that addresses this in a more science-y way, but - in layman's terms - activating different parts of your brain produces different results. Ritual gets down deep in the old animal brain, while flashy shiny pictures and fast-moving objects trigger momentary endorphin rushes that quickly fade. Media's entire job is to distract you from being happy and self-sufficient.
Could you give examples to either of those components of the modern media?
How do you think the modern gigantic population density (compared to even a hundred years ago) affects us?
Also, how and why are the Old Rituals better than the constant feeding of pleasure?