The job of television is to deliver you to industry.
You are the product, industry the consumer.
The well-maintained illusion
Is that the opposite is true —
But though you can do without It,
It can’t do without you.
The job of television is to deliver you to leadership
That delivers you to industry.
The well-maintained illusion
Is that the final choice is yours —
In fact, that you’re given any choice at all.
Coke or Pepsi?
Deliver your eyes to the screen,
Deliver yourself to the ads.
Bypass the ads
And they will find you.
The ads are the content, the content the ads:
Something to keep you interested in the exchange
But ignorant of the deal.
Television exists in the public interest
But you are not the public.
Among many, many thoughts, on a fine spring day, about where we now find ourselves as a nation and why.
I loved this. Thanks.
Sweet! & right on target . . .
You are the product, industry the consumer.
That is an absolutely brilliant insight! If the goods produced by industry were essential, this would not be true. But, since they are forever convincing us to buy stuff we don’t really need, they are indeed the consumers of our wages, our energies and our very spirits.
On the other hand, this relationship between buyers and sellers is more like an Ouraborus, the cosmic creature that consumes it’s own tail. Without industry producing frivolous goods, there would be far fewer jobs… fewer wages to buy those goods… on back to hunting, gathering and tilling the soil to survive.
So who is the consuming head and who is the consumed tail? Let’s not forget that industry is not merely an abstract construct; it’s composed of people who are also consumed/consuming.
Absolutely true — the fact that the consumer’s an integral part of industry is precisely what keeps it afloat.
Not that we’re producing all that much of what we consume here in the US any more; nor are we benefitting, as a whole, by industry’s reinvestment (offshoring, anyone?). Globalization assures that the entire system is increasingly skewed away from the type of symbiotic benefit you describe, for US workers — & we’re still indebting ourselves to the consumption of crap that’s meant to fall apart/become obsolete in a few years, while what we can provide each other of real use, on a community level, receives relatively little systemic support.
It’s a wonderful life, no?
Give me hunting, gathering & tilling. At least I’ll know what’s in my food!
😉
Yes! The engineering of this sort of reversed perception and the inverted sense of cause and effect that it engenders is a fundamental weapon in the arsenal of swindlers and con-men that’s as old as humankind itself.
It’s actually an extension of the “blame the victim” sort of fractured rationale that is such an essential component in the ideological defensiveness of authoritarians and ambitious and greedy corporate CEOs everywhere.