by infomatique

The End of the World as we Knew It

If hindsight is twenty-twenty, I wonder how future generations will judge this period in our country’s history. Will we mysteriously disappear into the pages of history like the Egyptians? Will we implode like the Romans? Or will we be remembered by Reality TV re-runs? Despite the manner in which future generations remember us, there are already some frightening characteristics that signal the end of society as we know it. One of which is that of group think, a term coined by psychologist Irving Janis (1972), which refers to the faulty decision making in a group. Much of the “consensus” in our country comes as the product of such faulty reasoning and as we will discover in this essay the affects of group think on the American people possess some frighteningly damaging consequences.

            Perhaps the most transparent effects of group think on the American public have manifested themselves within its entertainment. For more than seven decades, Television has shaped and cultivated the minds of our country. To say the least, the TV has become as imperative as the family pet. This is no exaggeration of any kind. According to the A.C. Nielsen Company, “the average American watches 4 hours of TV a day, 28 hours a week, 2 months of non-stop TV and over a 65 year life span, 9 of those years are spent in front of the tube.” With a form of entertainment with such a lure, the programmers and advertisers and social engineers have used TV as a medium to promote group think especially in modern day society.

            Even the structure of the perception of authority within the home has subtly been transformed through the suggestive consensus of TV. Its not that hard to believe. Take for instance the role of Dad dating back to the 1950′s until now. On one hand, we have Ward Cleaver, a socially responsible and sober father figure from the 1950′s sitcom Leave it to Beaver and on the other we have Peter Griffin from Family Guy, a drunken, babbling moron who’s a poor peer and parent to his children and a fourth child to his nearly perfect wife, Lois Griffin. Although these are merely fictional characters, art tends to imitate life as more and more families begin to mirror the dysfunction perpetuated by television.

            Entertainment initially was genre based in the early 1950′s and 60′s. There was a market for certain sectors of the public and entertainment was created for these narrowly established pieces of the ratings pie. That is until the need for more cohesion and greed prevailed over reason as more and more of the programming became the product of focus groups and studies designed to accumulate more watchers. The result of this carefully accommodating process was popular culture, or what we today call “pop.” This genre of music, television programming, speech, and culture is an all encompassing consensus on what is and will be acceptable within the American society. Popular culture is the ultimate group think and it has driven American culture for the last forty years without any brakes and very little oversight.

            The creation of MTV or Music television in the late 70′s became a consorted effort to not only reach out but grab hold of the teenage market of viewers. It revolutionized the viewing market with its innovative fusion of music and TV and later programming. In 1992 MTV produced the first show of its kind, a Reality TV show entitled, Real World. This program chronicled the lives of 15 strangers between the ages of 18-28 who were chosen to live in a house together in a metropolitan city for a season. The show was a hit and it is still the longest running reality TV show to this day at 18years. Not only was it a success but it began the succession of hundreds of other, “reality” series which ultimately have contributed to the decay in American society and culture. Popular culture reached its zenith during the next twenty years as content was thrown out in place of a watered down and morally irresponsibly compromise of both music and television programs. What followed were dozens of reality TV series from, the 21st century hit Survivor to Project Runway, American Idol, Jack Ass and the list of artificial shows continue. Now even the most miniscule act or monotonous life could be cheaply filmed and redistributed through a series of quick shots and edits right into the living room of any household in the US. The sheer curiosity of idiocy alone would be enough to impair an individual as they stopped to see what was on the tube. In the words of Howard Beale, a character from the 1976 film entitled, Network, [We deal in *illusions*, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds... We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even *think* like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing.]

TV has impaired the logic of thought and the line between reality and entertainment have been blurred just a bit more.

And who benefits from the groupthink perpetuated by American entertainment?

Not only has our society’s entertainment been infiltrated by the absence of individual thought, but so has its media. Mass media sources have adopted the same diluted formula as the entertainment industry in fact if viewers would looker closer, they would find that nearly every major media network reports the same generic topics covered in the daily run down with a slight variation in presentation and posturing.

What’s more frightening is that for a majority of Americans no longer obtain their information from local print media and those who do are all reaching out the same barrel, 40% of which obtain their news from the radio, 42% from the newspaper, 29% from online news, 2 % literary magazines and 2% from political magazines according to the Pew Research Center (2004).  And perhaps that wouldn’t be a dilemma if there were more opinions made available. The desperate need for consensus and to belong to a “right side” of the argument has polarized most of the public and rendered the rest without an opinion or a side to belong to.

 A shining moment for this sort of groupthink took place in 2001 during the 9-11 attacks on New York City. During what had been classified as a heightened period of security following the bombing of the Twin Towers, many Americans stayed glued to their CNN, Fox and other local Networks for media coverage of the rescue efforts of this disaster and when the feelings of despair subsided, the media fed the public fear. And simultaneously the mass of people began to succumb to the disinformation that was being perpetuated so loosely by the networks. The public was primed for whatever their government had to offer and not since the 1940′s and 50′s had the American public been this compliant with the demands of their government. In 2003 the US declared war on Iraq, a country who even to this day has not been successfully connected to the bombings in New York on September 11th, and the over 50% of the people polled agreed. By making thorough use of the intellectually docile public and the use of “polls,” the Bush Administration was able to create a war where there really wasn’t a justification for one.

In Noam Chomsky’s Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, he criticizes the use of media in a democratic society

[What is at issue is not the honesty of the opinions expressed or the integrity of

those who seek the facts but rather the choice of topics and highlighting of issues,

range of opinion permitted expression, and unquestioned premises that guide

reporting and commentary, and the general framework imposed for the

presentation of a certain view of the world.] 1989   

Groupthink creates few alternatives, where there may be many, it fails to examine all sides of the argument and it doesn’t require critical thinking. It is the march of folly and the path paved by lemmings.

            What groupthink has created in the American society is a polarized world in which those who possess the mental facilities to reason and rationalize don’t and the loudest voice is the one we adhere to. Political correctness is not about what’s right but rather how it is said and how close to the middle of the road those words lie. Issues which have perplexed our forefathers such racism, stratification and economics have been reduced to media games such as the popular early 21st century show Crossfire. Men and women no longer identify themselves based on their right to speak freely but rather reduce themselves to the will of demagogues from either the “liberal” or “conservative” parties. Perhaps the time for prophets and soothsayers has passed but I picture George Orwell and Aldous Huxley somewhere laughing at how their art was manifested into what we call reality. The entertainment we create for ourselves has conquered our voices and hollowed out the values that once were American life.

            So I beg the questions, “How will we be remembered by future generations?” If we insist on conforming to the lowest common denominator, perhaps Reality TV reruns may be the appropriate memorial… lets take a poll and see.