Tag Archives: media

Are you prepared to deal with non-humanity?

Interesting how the media changes the world, the perception of the world. Just recently, until the nineties, the media (movies, really) was all about defending the Earth against an invasion by some other “thing”, be that Terminator, Aliens, or Martians Attack. Humanity all stood as one and some heroes emerged from within to fight the enemy and defend the humankind from extermination. People showed bravery and heroic abandon in this fight, demonstrating how much they value the Life over their own life.

Since the nineties, we see more and more of the other kind – the humanity is fighting against some enemy that is either external to it or grows from within. The people are weak though and cannot fight the enemy on their own. Now, there is always some external power, be it the Mutants, the Autobots or the Fantastic Four that save the day while humans scream and cower in terror. The heroes are always non-human in some way.

What does it teach us?

  1. We are weak and in the future war we cannot resist the might of the invaders,
  2. So all the humans can and should be prepared to do is cower in a remote corner and weep and that’s okay, because
  3. There is some other form of life that will save us.

Lesson: be prepared to discover the monsters in your midst compared to whom you are nothing but do not get too aggravated because some of them are actually going to protect you from harm out of purely altruistic motives. Great state of mind, eh?… -->

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Media is quick to jump into Cold War

Here I am, peacefully reading this article in BusinessWeek about the recent shooting at Charlie Hebdo in Paris where criminals shot several people to death. The article is interesting as it talks about the origins of violence towards those who dare to create dissenting satire and evoke laughter at the corruption of powerful and sacred.

Suddenly, halfway through the article it turns into an unfounded rhetoric about the “iron fist of Putin” in Russia and false interpretations of the quasi-political dissent in Soviet Union in the last century. What gives?

BusinessWeek is hardly an independent magazine but it was not yellow press either, as far as I remember. Amazing to see how quickly most media joined the Cold War on Russia with all the anti-Russian hysteria building up now. I cannot name any mainstream Western or U.S. magazines or newspapers that would write anything close to the truth about Russia anymore.… -->

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