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I really like this quote from philosopher Jacques Ellul. I am not a complete fan of Ellul, but he provoked me to think on more than one occasion. I have had a professor, Harold O.J. Brown speak highly of him, especially in regard to his understanding of our technological society:
“It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment. Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society.”
The thing that grabs me about this quote is upon reading it and grasping it, the first thing we do is say how the royal “WE” are not suceptible to being propaganized by the mass media. Seeing the discussions that happen on here about TV announcers, Applebee’s commmercials, political opinions and our urge to be wise-fools with our certainty about our political opinions reminds just how much of a hold the mass media culture has on us, especially with its near constant push to influence us.
That is a shame in many ways, not the least of which is that with the prescense of so much communication technology, like message boards, there is an absence of real communication, thought and wisdom that exchanged. That is a shame.
I am convinced that the emergence to what I call “technologism”, really a belief system that advancing uses of technology will solve inherent, internal problems is a form of the ancient (ca. early Roman Empire) mystery religion of gnosticism. That is that all we lack for escape and relief of present day problems is some sort of secret knowledge that can move us beyond our problems. I guess this has cropped up through the years via the various utopian systems after the mid-1700’s. They all tend, as theologian/philosopher Francis Schaeffer would say, to cut off the “upper story” from our existence, that is the outside, open universe that as Schaeffer taught was best expressed in a Trinitarian God. I think that propaganda through the ease of mass communication devices, even solitary devices like iPods, can be abused for the individual to force him to deal with an envrionment which he is ill-equipped to handle or discern.
Walter Borneman’s 1812, The War that Forged a Nation, is a narrative popular history with a thesis designed to get the reader to understand the significance of perhaps the United States’ least understood war. Not much is known of this 1812-1815 war in popular memory, which is a shame. The American national anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner, was written after the seige of Baltimore, the capital city was burned by an invading army, the US Navy acheived some of its greatest acheivements this side of Midway and the nation had its last real fight with a European power until World War I (considering the Spainish American War of 1896 was more of a rout), and it was the last time until Pearl Harbor in 1941 that America was attacked on its own soil by a foreign power.
Borneman’s principle goal, to inform and entertain the general American public on why the War of 1812 is significant is done with his thesis: that the war forced the United States to a greater sense of national unity than it had yet acheived at its ending than in 1811, when President James Madison was a weak executive and the nation was 18 states that coalesced into three or four distinct regions.
Borneman illustrates his thesis by how he starts his narrative, 10 years before the conflict, when former Vice President Aaron Burr was tried for a conspiracy to wrest much of the western United States away from the Federal government. His point being that America was so fractured by internal desires for power that even a high member of government, from the most conservative of families was willing to give up on the idea of the American republic. In the midst of Burr’s scheming, the British government was continuing its long-standing policy of impressment of sailors, that is taking any British subject, found anywhere, including in American ports, and forcing them into Naval service, the refusal to surrender forts on the northwest Great Lakes frontier that had been promised at the end of the War for Independence and various trade embargos.
None of these actions by the British government, in of themselves, were enough to push the United States towards a war that hardly anyone wanted. It was not unusual at all for Western governments to engage in small, limited naval wars, such as America’s quasi-war with France during the last years of the 1700’s. These small “wars” really amounted to nothing more than duels at water with oak and cannon and a few hundred crew.
The War of 1812 was in fact, two wars, fought over four different theatres of operation by an American military that was completely ill-prepared for battle in terms of supplies, personel and a distinct chain of command system.
