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Constructing

Media & society governance

Mohammed Ali FarahTranslated by: Marwa Samy

REALITY

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Subjects:IntroductionChapter1: Section1:

→ Le Bon & the theory of crowd manipulation. → Society & reality. → Why Le Bon? → Why crowd psychology? → Crowd according to Le Bon.

1- The form of the crowd. 2- The crowd’s characteristics. 3- Crowd instigation.

→ Le Bon & politics.

Section2:

→ Crowd psychology from theory to practice. → Hitler, Le Bon & organizing the Nazi society. → Goebbels minister of propaganda. → Hitler in father image. → Edward Bernays & the other side of Nazism. → Freud... LE Bon... crowd. → Bernays & the essentiality of manipulating the public. → Walter Lippmann & the World Outside and the Pictures in Our heads. → Constructing reality. → Democracy as a theatrical play “Chomsky”. → Anna Freud & society worship.

Section 3:

→ Frankfurt school & the criticism of reality. → Frankfurt school / critical theory. → The most prominent intellectual attributes of Frankfurt school. → The most important concepts of the critical theory.

Constructing reality:Media & society governance

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→ Commodity fetishism. → Reification. → Alienation. → One dimensional man. → From controlling society to controlling the individual. → And leading the masses continue.

Section 4:

→ The society of the spectacle (Guy Debord). → The society of the spectacle & consumption. → The society of the spectacle & reality. → Ultra reality Jean Baudrillard. → The golf war didn’t take place. → Confirming reality with imagination. → The crisis & reality game. → Edward Said; covering Islam.

Chapter 2: Section1:

→ Media & the forms of societies (McLuhan’s theory). → Media, mass communication & the forms of societies. → The development in media & mass communication. → The collapse of reality (virtual society). → What is virtual society? → The characteristics of the virtual society. → The motivations for attending virtual society. → Replacing the real with the virtual. → Blurring the line between the reality & the virtual. → The virtual source of information (Google). → The virtual world.

Section 2:

→ The means & tools to govern & control. → The permanent guest (the TV). → Advertisement. → Subliminal messages. → The body image. → The contempt of women & masculine dominance. → Symbolic violence (Pierre Bourdieu). → Who owns information & knowledge? → Conclusion.

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IntroductionBefore I begin to indicate the object of this research, I would like to start by mentioning Plato’s famous allegory in the republic: the cave of Plato - it has been cut out based on its fame-

What occurred to merelating to this allegory:

Not everything we know would be the truth, in other words not every reality is by default an objective truth, as the truth here means the thing confirmed with certainty, or what has been set for originally. As for reality it means: “the human knowledge of the status of the things surrounding him which affect & form his thoughts & beliefs”.

Mankind will remain captive to the mean by which they recognize what surround them, as the things displayed on the wall in reality in front of the prisoners weren’t sufficient evidence for the truth. And may be that is what prompted Wittgenstein to reach the conclusion that we can’t recognize the world except through our own stock of words, this stock we own is the world as we knew it.

I think that contemplating Plato’s allegory make us real-ize that the individual in our society bears a striking resem-blance to the cave inhabitants, he can’t see or hear but what the system presents to him – I mean by the system here the body of components known as institutions where every component relates to the others & form a collective body be-tween them known as the modern state – & by which there is no way to acquire knowledge except through her, either by the educational institutions or by media (visual, audio or readable medium) set by the system.

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What I am trying to reachthrough this search:

That the state performs the same job that the cave do; it wraps a ring of knowledge restrain around the nicks of the individuals of society by the means of school so that they can’t turn to the truth, then media institutions that projects the shadow of the truth, so that the people can’t help believing what they know, & that is the reality that have been constructed which they think of as the truth.

The shadows that have been projected to the cave inhabitants resembles by far the terms used by politicians & statesmen, for example: democracy could be a shadow with a statues, so democracy in the shade could be the end of history & the deliverance from dictatorship, while in truth it is but another shape of dictatorship by the rule of minority via the means of monopolizing power & enforcing laws that works for the group who role through election.

It could be wrong what I am trying to prove, but we must go through stage two of the allegory “the un-shackling”, in this instant we must let go of what we knew & perceived, & criticize it, sifting it to preserve what is right & eliminate what is wrong. For there is a lot of things that the human doesn’t know & is not aware of his ignorance. An example for what the individual is oblivious to is the irrationality that colors society’s rationality, for example naming a war a process of peace, such as the massacres Israel commit against the Palestinians, we have communities call it peace talks. Communities which make its civilization by destroying nature, & where building a civilization only means erecting enormous concrete prisons AKA cities!

A community that called enslavement a job, where men work collectively for a favored few who consist 17% of population, this 17% owns 80% of the world’s wealth, leaving the crumps for the rest of the 83%, that ex-plains nicely why the rich is getting richer & the poor is getting poorer.

In this instant I would like to quote Descartes: “I have accepted many false opinions as true, & that what I have concluded from such badly assured premises couldn’t but be highly doubtful & uncertain, I will therefore make a serious unimpeded effort to destroy generally all my former opinions”.

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This study doesn’t claim an ability to urge anyone to destroy his opinions, but it will remove some of the ambiguity surrounding one of the most important pillars of the state: the media institution, & shed a light on the connection between the media & the rest of the system’s components.

I would have liked to have the ability to destroy & deconstruct so that I can build & reconstruct, as we can say that destroy & deconstruct is not only important to the construction process but also because in the area which to be built upon there is a wealth of unsound structure of thoughts & information that has to be deconstructed.

Meanwhile the last phase of the cave seems dangerous as it appears that every time the human tries to correct a concept his mission becomes difficult resulting in an outcome of either disbelief & ridicule or outright murder.

And that is what Orwell has warned us against, that: “The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it”.

& what Voltaire said: “removing the restrains forced on the people is difficult especially if they belief in its necessity”.