soap and education

"Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be." Eric Hoffer

"...a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself." Medium is the Message, Wickipedia

The conceit: Weathermen scare the crap out of me. I don't mean what weathermen say scares me; that nightly wind whipping of sunami, tornado, hurricane, when the levi breaks, depletion of the ozone layer, scare-mongering twaddle that attempts to lend hyper-significance to reports of sloppy weather in Moose Jaw. Oh no. What the weather actually is has rarely concerned, much less interested me. This morning as I struggled to keep my attention on the message gurgling forth from the well lipsticked mouth of CNN's most recent climate attendant, I suddenly realized I was being swept up in a Mcluhanesque dalliance; I was finding the medium, the manner, the jaunty professionalism, the rehearsed imperfection, the dichotomous insouciance swirled among overly-earnest perturbation, impossible to listen through. I could see and hear only the performance and nothing of the message. She wrung her hands as though suffering from a great personal anxiety, promising to keep us all abreast of developments regarding that hurricane off the coast of Madagascar, despite the cost to her marriage and the well being of her children, then gave a very human smile to finally ease our tension, said "uh" a couple more times, let us know that although we should remain vigilant, keep one eye on the gales blowing round the Cape, we could relax a little, that professionals were on the job, that she would take the burden. It was an oral presentation intended to say, "I'm human, I’m organic, but I'm a well practiced pro. I'm a little distracted, I say "uh" a lot, but that's just because my mind is always where it should be ... on YOUR weather, on this most important of jobs. Yes, I smile, but that's because I can handle the pressure, handle it with a little inoffensive quip and a gentle calming demeanor. I am first and foremost a professional, baby. I'm a freakin' pro."So why should someone being so into their job give me the willies? Why should shmoozy friendliness and a humanized presentation full of rehearsed inconsistencies, inconsistencies that change the disembodied babbling head and dry cackle of electronic media into a pretense of a deeper, more imperfectly organic humanity, strike fear into the soul? The first reason I can think of is that so much time must have been spent to discover and orchestrate this professional demonstration of being human, only to tell us about precipitation.Medium is the message point one: we are profoundly preoccupied with the banal and constantly trying to pass it off as something important, something worth televising, something worth becoming a for. This is the first topic in the job description of our era: make your job look like it's worth doing. The task at hand, making widgets or what have you, is no longer on the agenda in the postmodern miasma, nor is doing anything well. It is the deliberation with which one attacks the mindless, meaningless project that makes a success of vacuity. This is from where the shiny spoon wrests opportunity, exhorts the untapped excitement hidden in the hollow. As we say in the music business, it isn't talent that makes success, it's gall. Thus we have mediocre talents like Madonna and Britney Spears defining feminine strength and skill; overweight porn star Ron Jeremy as a TV sex pundit commenting on the world wide significance of Mr. Bobbit's reattached member popping up in triple X films; the late Timothy Leary taking drugs and being enthusiastic as a professional pre-occupation. And when the audacious egomaniacs finish convincing themselves, coworkers, wives, children, friends and most importantly bosses that the drone of obsequious tasks is somehow of monumental importance, the work is still not done.Medium is the message point two: We are deeply confused and are not permitted to admit it or seek answers. Work is not a soporific, soul sucking, repetitive grovel. Work is a fun and fulfilling giggle and god help us if that's not what we make it look like. We must appear to be having fun, to not be straining. But we really haven’t the slightest idea what our job really is, and though we are practiced at looking like we know how to do it, it is all form without content. We are trapped in a postmodern feedback loop, trying in vain to show: we care but that we are casual; that we are earnest but cynical; that our ethics and our think-outside-the-box, rebel-with-a lot-of-fresh-ideas attitude doesn't care about the job; that doing something well is more important than the paycheck; that we are very much aware that money is the most important thing to the shareholders and its foremost on our minds too; that it's only our paycheck that substantiates our worth; that the job is the most important thing in the world; that the money is the most important thing in the world; that the job is where excellence will shine; that being recognized for our work isn't the most important thing in the world but why do we get so little praise from our boss; that we need to be arrogantly confident; we need to be humble; we need to be human oh so human, but oh-so-good at it. When we appear flawed that is all it should be: appearance and never the real, baffled and distraught little creature with not a single clue as to what is really going on, struggling to hold on to -isness while the bedlam of cirrostratus, altocumulus and the arbitrary dialectic of whimsical, whirling historical events once again betrays our uncertainty.Where is the weather person to say it's not in our control? We have tried to use chaos theory to predict the stock market and when exactly Christ will show up again but to no avail. We have tried to perfect being alive but we simply can not get the hang of it. Being real is not something you can actually practice. Instead we end up acting like a lying lover, all show of heartfelt affection, but making winks to the younger sister when the oblivious and trusting valentine turns her back. We are reality's whores and we take it where we can get it. We believe we have learned something when we watch a weather report because why else would it be there and why else would we have watched it. But it’s all subtext. It's like watching Hamlet to see what Claudius will do. The reality is the desperation with which we cling to the weather. Caring about weather is sophistication, the end of the ignorant hunter-gatherer, the commencement of prehistorical agriculture, the beginning of science and religion and philosophy and caring about more than having a full belly and a flacid penis.Medium is the message point three: I prefer the construct. When it comes right down to it, the truly terrifying thing is that the image that we try to pass off as being human is by all means preferable to the foul, backstabbing, delusional creature that is the hu-man. We don't want to be free to think what we will. If we were truly free we would run over babies and charge admission. As Freud notes, and as Neitszche notes, freedom involves responsibility but the act of being real is without cost. Illusions, Freud continues, commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure. It is paradoxical, I know, that we have created a pretense of reality where we allow ourselves to be hedonistic and shallow and free of responsibility and wherein we may hide from our hedonistic and shallow and irresponsible humanity. The weather lady may very well be the best that we can muster or, at the very least, the next best thing to some kind of good person. That is what not only scares, but horrifies me. These ideas that we have filled the gaping emptiness of our existence with do not fool us as much as they provide us the means to fool ourselves. And that tells me just how awful the truth must be.