Mysteries of the Midway

We all underestimate the confusion brought on to us by the variety of truth claims and "information" that we swim in perhaps because we getting used a certain amount of inner confusion. We like to say we live in the information age but we really live in propaganda age. I've been reading Jacques Ellul's Propaganda which was published in the U.S. in 1965 but must have been written several years earlier. Ellul showed that propaganda is not very effective if it is occasional it is effective when it works all the time and he shows that modern societies are really propaganda societies.

Some quotes:

"... a modern state even if it be liberal, democratic, and humanist, finds itself objectively and sociologically in a situation in which is must use propaganda as a means of governing. It cannot do otherwise."

"The secret of propaganda success or failure is this: Has it or has it not satisfied the unconscious need of the individual whom it is addressed?"

There are two issues here: 1) the modern state cannot survive without propaganda, or to put it another way, useful lies and deceptions intended to manipulate the public towards state control; and 2) individuals have inner needs that must be addressed by any society--in the past these needs were fulfilled through time-honored and effective (because they came about through evolution) means, i.e., spiritual, religious, mythical, and magical--since modern society depends on disrupting the natural and organic ways of life that on the surface may appear very limiting (generally what the traditional ways of life lack in "excitement" they make up in breadth of experience)--these needs must be met somehow and propaganda is the way. Ellul is very insistent that propaganda is a two-way street. A good illustration of this is in public and media reaction to 9-11 and the so called "War on Terror". Suddenly reasoned consideration of the facts even reason itself was jettisoned in favor of a fervor of hate mixed with fear mixed with patriotism, not just because so many members of the media were elated at being let out of their cages to express their longing for deeper connections and thereby serve the oligarchy with unthinking fervor but the masses of ordinary people wanted to kill, destroy, feel the power of being part of a massive powerful force that would rid the world of Evil itself. Well, if people had really sat down and analyzed the situation they would have rejected such notions even if they accepted the common run of facts as to what occurred on 9/11.