Riots are not new. All through the nineteenth century there were riots and, in the UK, these culminated in an emphasis on moral guidance in schools, state support for religious institutions that instilled a moral order and widespread social reforms. By 1955 society in Britain was well mannered, incredibly orderly (only about 250 murders a year) and comfortable. It was STRUCTURED.
The following graph shows the crime rate for the UK Courtesy Civitas:
In the nineteen sixties the young British rebelled against this structured society of the fifties. Although the rebellion was rooted in the World Wars the Media became its battleground. The Media such as TV, radio, and records were becoming ubiquitous and these served the appetites of this baby boomer generation. There was an outbreak of creativity by the young British in the Media that took the world by storm and even the nationalistic Americans are having difficulty re-writing the nineteen sixties as a purely American phenomenon (although, being the custodians of the global Media they will succeed eventually).
The fashionable approach to the media in the sixties was Marxist (sometimes called structuralist). Although the Marxist media were called "structuralist" they were not in favour of structure, their aim was to create revolutionary tension in society by favouring anarchy. This anarchist tendency gained a life of its own and gave rise to post-structuralism, also known as post-modernism, from the eighties onwards. Post-structuralism is the Media Philosophy of most modern journalists and authors. It is an insidious philosophy that, unlike previous philosophies such as Marxism, refuses to even admit its own existence in its works. This secrecy means that few people are aware that political philosophy has shifted from the battle between Marxism and Capitalism to a struggle between post-modernism and any structure, whether liberal or authoritarian. McManus describes poststructuralism in Note 1 below.
Notice that post-structuralism is a destructive philosophy at its core. Newspapers like The Sun are liberated by post-modern post-structuralism to seamlessly blur the lives of the stars in TV soaps into the star's own lives, comedians are licensed to regard the existing social order as something to be dismantled for amusement, documentaries extrapolate from single cases that make compulsive viewing to global conclusions. The key feature of post-structuralism is that the story is king. Stories are not regarded as bearing any relation to a structured reality. A few authors, journalists and critics are actually daft enough to think that there is no structured reality but most are just so amoral that they do not care.
This would all be amusing and even entertaining except that politicians depend upon the Media. It is this connection that brings post-structuralism into disastrous contact with reality. As an example, if a newspaper finds a story about how a single family had its life "destroyed" by a statistical fluke in a medical operation it makes a marvellous story and the journalists, being licensed by post-structuralism to ignore statistical truths, portray the tale as a fantasy of heroism against a malign bureaucracy. The politicians then vie with each other to portray themselves as saviours in the story. The population are "informed" by the media so a statistical fluke rapidly becomes a political platform for change in the real world. The politicians convert fantasy into disastrous decisions and governance becomes random.
What has happened? Journalists, artists, authors and entertainers write articles that undermine the current order because this is held to be entertaining and amusing. Politicians react to these tales to appear holy to get votes. What a mess.
How can we implement a STRUCTURED response to the ills of English society when journalists are so irresponsible that they will just use any structure as a "faceless", "monolithic" evil that heroes can oppose? The current generation of journalists and their like did not create the rebellion of the sixties but now they are idolising and perpetuating anarchy. To mend society the first step must be to teach the philosophy of the media in schools, even in primary schools. The population must understand clearly that modern media, whether, TV, internet or newspapers are "infotainment", not truth, not even vaguely the truth. Newspapers, TV, current affairs shows, documentaries stc. now make their money from stories, modern fairy tales, they do not want rigorous scientific and statistical analysis of each of these stories because isolated truths and pure invention are far more entertaining. The only answer to an irresponsible Media is to train the population from an early age to treat it with extreme caution.
The media will not help in this change because the fundamental rule of post-structuralism/post-modernism is that you do not talk about post-structuralism. If people understand what these selfish journalists are doing the game will be over, Media Club will be finished. The media will not even admit that advertising changes people's behaviour, even though they promise that it does to all the advertisers(!), so they are scarcely going to admit that what they call analysis is simply entertainment. It is a fundamental responsibility of governments to insist that children are taught about the media as the source of entertaining stories, not of dispassionate information. The success of such a campaign could be gauged by whether, when The Sun runs a headline during some future election, such as "Prime Minister Jones is a f**kwit!", it has no effect on voting patterns.
The collusion of the media moguls with post-modern journalists and authors means that the Fourth Estate is now an enemy of society. It has its own agendas, such as globalization, which are not in the interests of the nation but fit the combined interests of the creative staff and of the corporate media bosses and those who advertise in the media.
The Age of the Mediacracy can be terminated and society can be both liberal and structured so that people feel they belong and behave with responsibility to their fellow citizens. Fundamental to this change is an attack on Media philosophy, post-modernism must be beaten before civilisation can be restored.
Footnote
BTW, it is particularly interesting to compare British TV soaps with those from other countries. Other countries usually design their entertainment to have a moral, for instance US soaps end up with the plot demonstrating that loving each other is best or honesty is the best policy etc. British soaps are post-structuralist, they have no moral. The writers, producers and actors in foreign soaps would be ashamed to be associated with the plots of East Enders or Skins. Their British counterparts are post-modernists and feel no shame. They really don't care about their fellows, they are happy to communicate to the audience that life in Britain can be endless jealousy, greed, corruption etc., the story is king, the hell with what this teaches the daft and impressionable.
Note 1:
"POSTSTRUCTURALISM: a reaction against structuralists' claims to "scientific objectivity" and "universality." Most contemporary schools of literary criticism are thoroughly poststructuralist or at least share some of the poststructuralist assumptions:
1. Antifoundationalist: seeks to challenge or destabilize Western logocentrism (idea that some ultimate signifier, which exists outside the play of language, centers or acts as a foundation for all thought, language, experience--e.g., God, the Idea, the Self, etc.)
2. Foregrounds theory: feels compelled to explain theory of signification, the general conditions that determine meaning
3. Decenters the human subject: downplays or denies that human beings have a coherent identity with individual motivation, initiative, and purpose; instead, individuals inhabit various "subject positions" constructed by discourse. In literature, this decenters the author and authorial intention and emphasizes the reader (but a reader that is constructed by the text)
4. Foregrounds discourse and the constructedness of all knowledge and behavior"Barbara McManus
Other articles:
Postmodernism-poststructuralism-postmarxism
The London Riots - What the hell did you expect?
On being English
The rise in crime since 1955
See:
Introduction to Modern Literary Theory, Dr. Kristi Siegel
"Postmodernist poems have moved on from their Modernist forebears. They are wholly immersed in language, and make no reference to a world beyond.". POSTSTRUCTURALIST APPROACHES
The following graph shows the crime rate for the UK Courtesy Civitas:
In the nineteen sixties the young British rebelled against this structured society of the fifties. Although the rebellion was rooted in the World Wars the Media became its battleground. The Media such as TV, radio, and records were becoming ubiquitous and these served the appetites of this baby boomer generation. There was an outbreak of creativity by the young British in the Media that took the world by storm and even the nationalistic Americans are having difficulty re-writing the nineteen sixties as a purely American phenomenon (although, being the custodians of the global Media they will succeed eventually).
The fashionable approach to the media in the sixties was Marxist (sometimes called structuralist). Although the Marxist media were called "structuralist" they were not in favour of structure, their aim was to create revolutionary tension in society by favouring anarchy. This anarchist tendency gained a life of its own and gave rise to post-structuralism, also known as post-modernism, from the eighties onwards. Post-structuralism is the Media Philosophy of most modern journalists and authors. It is an insidious philosophy that, unlike previous philosophies such as Marxism, refuses to even admit its own existence in its works. This secrecy means that few people are aware that political philosophy has shifted from the battle between Marxism and Capitalism to a struggle between post-modernism and any structure, whether liberal or authoritarian. McManus describes poststructuralism in Note 1 below.
Notice that post-structuralism is a destructive philosophy at its core. Newspapers like The Sun are liberated by post-modern post-structuralism to seamlessly blur the lives of the stars in TV soaps into the star's own lives, comedians are licensed to regard the existing social order as something to be dismantled for amusement, documentaries extrapolate from single cases that make compulsive viewing to global conclusions. The key feature of post-structuralism is that the story is king. Stories are not regarded as bearing any relation to a structured reality. A few authors, journalists and critics are actually daft enough to think that there is no structured reality but most are just so amoral that they do not care.
This would all be amusing and even entertaining except that politicians depend upon the Media. It is this connection that brings post-structuralism into disastrous contact with reality. As an example, if a newspaper finds a story about how a single family had its life "destroyed" by a statistical fluke in a medical operation it makes a marvellous story and the journalists, being licensed by post-structuralism to ignore statistical truths, portray the tale as a fantasy of heroism against a malign bureaucracy. The politicians then vie with each other to portray themselves as saviours in the story. The population are "informed" by the media so a statistical fluke rapidly becomes a political platform for change in the real world. The politicians convert fantasy into disastrous decisions and governance becomes random.
What has happened? Journalists, artists, authors and entertainers write articles that undermine the current order because this is held to be entertaining and amusing. Politicians react to these tales to appear holy to get votes. What a mess.
How can we implement a STRUCTURED response to the ills of English society when journalists are so irresponsible that they will just use any structure as a "faceless", "monolithic" evil that heroes can oppose? The current generation of journalists and their like did not create the rebellion of the sixties but now they are idolising and perpetuating anarchy. To mend society the first step must be to teach the philosophy of the media in schools, even in primary schools. The population must understand clearly that modern media, whether, TV, internet or newspapers are "infotainment", not truth, not even vaguely the truth. Newspapers, TV, current affairs shows, documentaries stc. now make their money from stories, modern fairy tales, they do not want rigorous scientific and statistical analysis of each of these stories because isolated truths and pure invention are far more entertaining. The only answer to an irresponsible Media is to train the population from an early age to treat it with extreme caution.
The media will not help in this change because the fundamental rule of post-structuralism/post-modernism is that you do not talk about post-structuralism. If people understand what these selfish journalists are doing the game will be over, Media Club will be finished. The media will not even admit that advertising changes people's behaviour, even though they promise that it does to all the advertisers(!), so they are scarcely going to admit that what they call analysis is simply entertainment. It is a fundamental responsibility of governments to insist that children are taught about the media as the source of entertaining stories, not of dispassionate information. The success of such a campaign could be gauged by whether, when The Sun runs a headline during some future election, such as "Prime Minister Jones is a f**kwit!", it has no effect on voting patterns.
The collusion of the media moguls with post-modern journalists and authors means that the Fourth Estate is now an enemy of society. It has its own agendas, such as globalization, which are not in the interests of the nation but fit the combined interests of the creative staff and of the corporate media bosses and those who advertise in the media.
The Age of the Mediacracy can be terminated and society can be both liberal and structured so that people feel they belong and behave with responsibility to their fellow citizens. Fundamental to this change is an attack on Media philosophy, post-modernism must be beaten before civilisation can be restored.
Footnote
BTW, it is particularly interesting to compare British TV soaps with those from other countries. Other countries usually design their entertainment to have a moral, for instance US soaps end up with the plot demonstrating that loving each other is best or honesty is the best policy etc. British soaps are post-structuralist, they have no moral. The writers, producers and actors in foreign soaps would be ashamed to be associated with the plots of East Enders or Skins. Their British counterparts are post-modernists and feel no shame. They really don't care about their fellows, they are happy to communicate to the audience that life in Britain can be endless jealousy, greed, corruption etc., the story is king, the hell with what this teaches the daft and impressionable.
Note 1:
"POSTSTRUCTURALISM: a reaction against structuralists' claims to "scientific objectivity" and "universality." Most contemporary schools of literary criticism are thoroughly poststructuralist or at least share some of the poststructuralist assumptions:
1. Antifoundationalist: seeks to challenge or destabilize Western logocentrism (idea that some ultimate signifier, which exists outside the play of language, centers or acts as a foundation for all thought, language, experience--e.g., God, the Idea, the Self, etc.)
2. Foregrounds theory: feels compelled to explain theory of signification, the general conditions that determine meaning
3. Decenters the human subject: downplays or denies that human beings have a coherent identity with individual motivation, initiative, and purpose; instead, individuals inhabit various "subject positions" constructed by discourse. In literature, this decenters the author and authorial intention and emphasizes the reader (but a reader that is constructed by the text)
4. Foregrounds discourse and the constructedness of all knowledge and behavior"Barbara McManus
Other articles:
Postmodernism-poststructuralism-postmarxism
The London Riots - What the hell did you expect?
On being English
The rise in crime since 1955
See:
Introduction to Modern Literary Theory, Dr. Kristi Siegel
"Postmodernist poems have moved on from their Modernist forebears. They are wholly immersed in language, and make no reference to a world beyond.". POSTSTRUCTURALIST APPROACHES
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