An Awakening To The Power Of The Media From The Novel "The Association"

 

In 2014, I wrote a fictional account of someone awakening from the existing paradigm to become aware of the narratives that shape our lives. As a paradigm dies, the institutions that have best served the paradigm will continue to pump out narratives that no longer fit the current reality. I will try to deal with crises with tools that serve the outmoded paradigm and thus will only make the situation work. This then, in fiction, is a telling of one who is waking up to the power the media has to shape our consciousness. The Restaurant in question is, as you might have guessed, a Buffalo Wild Wings.

They were led through the noise of the crowd and a competing amount of televisions by a bubbly blond waitress. Everywhere, television screens stood as distractions to the patrons.

Dave and Johnny were seated at a table, rows of televisions on all sides of them. Johnny was talking, but Dave couldn’t help being distracted by the various action taking place on the many screens. There were three screens directly above him, another four neatly arranged one tier below. Televisions were on both sides of him, hanging at the periphery of his sight. One was showing sports highlights, another showing some college football game, still another a lacrosse game. One of the screens was asking trivia questions, but the wait between questions—stuffed with advertising—caused him to shift his gaze towards more kinetic offerings. Even the commercials distracted his attention, were designed to grab at his attention, he couldn’t help thinking. No, not grab his attention. That was not what they were designed to do. They were meant to grab his eye, to funnel their messages not to his attention but to somewhere beneath his attention to poke at his subconscious motivators.

He watched a commercial with two men sitting in a library, one of them eating a cookie. With no sound, Dave had to guess the message. One man soon becomes upset and dumps over the table. Soon, a woman comes up from behind him and smashes a chair over the back of his head. Another man then pushes over a bookshelf in anger, knocking over other bookshelves like dominoes. In mere seconds, the library is on fire as everyone and everything in it is being thrown or smashed. At the end of the commercial, an Oreo cookie is shown, along with directions on where to vote. Apparently, the argument that has destroyed an entire library was about a cookie. Dave could only imagine what kind of message he was supposed to have received from such a commercial.

Dave tore his attention away from the screens, looked at the people around him. They were for the better part ignoring those they sat with, as Dave felt himself doing with Johnny. As they watched the screens, the wait staff walked around doling out smaller, hand-held screens for the patrons to use in order to interact with the bigger screens mounted on the walls. Thus, Dave couldn’t help noticing, the people’s attention was further divided by having even more competing screens.

What interaction that took place at the tables was merely commentary of what was taking place on the screens. It was as though all of the information was sent funneling through screens until it was digested by the patrons. Like pigs at a trough, thought Dave, not knowing what it was they were consuming, nor caring why it was they were being fed. He found Johnny’s voice to be just one of many sources of information competing for his attention. Text scrolled across the televisions in front of him in layers, too quickly for him to process. And all the while the screens at the periphery of his sight were pumping out vast amounts of information and images, feeding his brain whether he wished them to or not.

It was not that they were drowning out what it was that Johnny was trying to convey to him, not even that they left no room in his mind for thoughts and ideas of his own. No, he felt that somehow, amidst the constant barrage of useless and ephemeral information, there was some sinister virus that was travelling along with it, the screens above him like UFOs beaming rays into his head, planting their seeds deeply into his subconscious like spidery aliens.

He tried to relax his mind, allow the messages to come without trying to process them. He thought that by silencing his own thoughts he would be able to witness in a tranquil manner the effects the messages were having upon his mind. He felt the placid aspect of his consciousness receiving the flow, being played upon by the constant influx like an instrument that has wind blown through it. He observed the images that stimulated his passive mind, felt the effect they had on it. He contemplated each message that seemed to excite his psyche, wondered what the intent of it was and who or what it was that sent it.

He found his mind working on an elevated level, even as he realized it was not capable of any kind of useful action at the moment. He was witnessing the working of his mind that was always occurring but of which he was seldom aware. A vast amount of thought was occurring beyond what he was ordinarily aware of, was always occurring. It was both fascinating and frightening. He was so much more than he gave himself credit for, and yet so little of what made him who he was ever was truly decided by his conscious self.

He found himself beginning to rebel against the information being thrust at him from so many different angles. They all wanted his attention, all wanted a piece of his consciousness, to take from him what was rightfully his. No, they didn’t want to take what was his, they wanted to take him, to own his mind, to replace his thoughts with their own. Some alien thing wished to replace his internal consciousness with some overlord kind of mind. And there was too much of it he was being bombarded by to fight back. Fleeing was the only option, and he found himself exiting the building in a less than polite manner, bumping into a crowd of young men as he went.

He did not stop until he was beyond the sound of the external speakers, back at the van. He soon noticed Johnny walking towards him, a look of concern on his face.

“What’s the matter, Dave?”

Dave looked into the tattooed face of Johnny, and he wondered if he had had anything to do with what had happened. “Did you do that to me? Was that you playing with my head? Is this some sort of display Doug had you put on for me?”

“Naw. You’re just beginning to see a little more clearly, that’s all. You’ll get used to it. It effects us all a little differently, we all come to it in our own way.”

“I don’t want to get used to this. I don’t want my consciousness changed.”

“Just think of it like you’re developing a new sense. Like smell. Some things stink, but you’re glad you have the ability to smell, nevertheless.”

“But…it was like there was something in the randomness, something I couldn’t quite understand but knew was there. Like there was something living amidst the thousands of messages the televisions were sending.”

“All human thought has a life of its own. That’s the problem. We don’t know a tenth of what’s going on in our minds, but they’re always working. When the conscious mind does not jibe with the subconscious, we waste our human powers, they get siphoned away and coalesce into something else, something not really living but alive, if you get me. That’s sort of what ghosts are on an individual level, a creation of energy made by emotion that could not be reconciled with thought. But when the power of the conscious mind is able to come together with the power of the sub-conscious, when they jibe, that’s what you’re starting to experience now. That’s you beginning to connect with your human powers. In observing what is out of joint, you are given the knowledge and ability to set it right. It’s just…well, it’s hard. It’s a long journey. And just like every other aspect of life, you never really arrive.”