WORLD WITHOUT WORDS

Back during my heady college days I researched and wrote a paper that had to do with the effects of television on our concept of time.

I know... a bit presumptuous, but I did impress my teachers and was actually introduced to the late Prof. Neil Postman at NYU, one of the great scholars in what was then (and maybe still) called "Media Ecology," or the effects of different communications technologies on our psyche and society.

The late Prof. Neil Postman, former head
of the Media Ecology Dept. at NYU

The recurrent theme I found during that research was that the loss of vocabulary had the effect of reducing memory.  We can only remember that which we can put a name to, evidently. I know we can recall smells, images, and bring to mind certain sensations but, evidently, we always end up cataloging that memory with words.

The other effect of vocabulary/word loss was that our temporal horizon tended to shrink as a result. In other, ejem, words, if we couldn't remember how past actions affected our present, neither could we see how present actions seeded our future. Those of us raised by a TV set are bound to live in the NOW...

¡Que shit, se fue la luz!

Unfortunately it isn't a Zen-like experience of being aware of our existence second by second, but rather a limbo-like sensation of not knowing (or caring) about what will happen five or ten years from now.

That explained a lot to me, and worried me... No long-term planning of any sort, and, even more drastic, a sense of disconnection with our past and anxiety about not being able to forge our own destiny.

And this was back in 1984, when I retook George Orwell's message about creating "Newspeak," a brand new dictionary that virtually eliminated negative words so people were unable to resist their government's control.

Mr. George Orwell

Orwell wasn't subtle, he created a nightmarish vision of oppressive mind control, constant surveillance, and phony wars... Eh, mind you, he wrote this in the 50's. It was meant as a critique of the Soviet Union.  How naive! That kind of oppression doesn't last, it is easier to rebel (as history has shown) against blatant forms of government control than to fight against symbolic, mental captivity.

Who the hell would gather in a large group
to watch an asshole on a huge screen?

Orwell hit it on the head with our loss of vocabulary, just compare newspapers and other periodicals from the 50's to the rags published now, but
his dark vision was, I think off the mark compared to Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." To wit:


"Two thousand pharmacologists and bio-chemists were subsidized. Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug. Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant. All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects. Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology. Stability was practically assured." - ALDOUS HUXLEY ( Brave New World )

Aldous Huxley
"Oh shit, I forgot to take  my Soma"

We've become comfortably sedated into accepting government control. By government I mean the corporate moguls that really run (ruin) our lives.  If we feel anxious and concerned about our lack of power to do anything about this, we watch a movie, get drunk, download porn, or go to the doctor for a pill.

Hell, I've taken so much shit in my
lifetime, why not pop one of these?

All the while communicating in ever shorter phrases and incomprehensible code that don't require us to think much, let alone remember anything. We are in the age of communications. Yet we hardly communicate at all.

CNN Headline news has become a celebrity gossip channel. The news is filtered and watered down to keep us scared, obedient and uninformed. Our sons and daughters hardly communicate anything more than what is absolutely necessary to get on with their video games or go to movies with hardly any dialog.

The ubiquitous computers we hold in our hands have done what Television only hinted at - they have replaced thinking with spectating and processing information. Human contact has been reduced to electronic, superficial interactions. And reading... well, if you've gotten this far in the crap I'm spewing, I'm impressed, because for the most part if anyone sees so many paragraphs, they will run to the next website for videos or pics. When was the last time you entered a bookstore? Not even textbooks are being published anymore.

Is this bad? Isn't the future about evolving into different forms of communication? Isn't the Web creating a Global Village far more expansive and immediate than McLuhan envisioned? Are we really more connected to other human beings today than in the past?

I don't know...

Maybe you can enlighten me, if you can come up with the right words.

- Roscoe Biscayne