Leviathan wrote:
> and yet, what y ou describe seems to me to be basic to the human condition.
Happiness or polling? God hell us if polling is basic to the human condition!
> the media is a cultural institution.
Errr... that's a nice sentiment, but really, isn't the media more an instrument of the political economy? Or are those 7 minute breaks between commericals actually meaningful? Even if those 7 minute breaks between commercials are meaningful, they're in full compliance with the consumer industry... m-e-d-i-a-t-i-o-n is my word of the day.
> the question is, who controls those mechanisms, why and how?
What? That's not the only question. Content. I think there should be a revised
rating system, let us call it ICTV - Warning, what you are about to watch is
dangerous to your health, and the health of those around you. Extreme caution
should be taken. This program is rated ICTV, Imperial Capitalist Television.
>
> i maintained that many of us want to create a kind of "conscious social
reproduction" in which we better understand and participate in the creation of
and control over the rules by which we live together.
Rules are made to be broken. That's why we have them. You don't need a rule for something there is already 'cultural' consensus on. I think Habermas calls this the lifeworld.
> and yet, to say that is to claim that can amount to a kind of (arguably)
tryannical, subjection of our selves and our daily practices--everything---to
scrutiny in order to ask if we assent to those rules, if they are "good", etc.
I just pointed out that polls serve as stitching points for our thought... and I see this more like a stain - something we can't get rid of - than subjecting everything always all the time to scrutiny. That's the job of science or meditation. I generally find what I'm ordered to think about rather pathetic, although constitutive of my thoughts... which explains why I have no taste.
ken