Andor is so obvious about preaching on modern politics. I'm amazed when my friends gobble it up like its exactly what they hungered for, but they are old white liberals...the fantasy that they are good guys probably is exactly what they hunger for.
Once you have mechanical mass-transmission media, especially mass transmission that requires significant capital investment - is "corporate-controlled mythology" more or less inevitable?
If it isn't inevitable, what circumstances, resources, and proactices would be needed in order to avoid that?
No, corporate mythology is not metaphysically inevitable. But it becomes the default outcome once mass‑transmission media replaces local, communal storytelling. This is because religious meaning has migrated into secular institutions.
The problem isn’t the technology, it’s the absence of a counter‑liturgy.
When Christ is no longer the center, the vacuum is filled by whatever institution has the resources to offer a substitute. In our age, that institution is the State and the corporation. The mythology they produce will always be thin because they cannot offer transcendence, only consumption.
How does local, communal storytelling NOT get replaced, even in a society that still places religion at the front?
Mass-transmission stuff will be higher performance quality because of the talent basin mismatch, which leads to a compensation mismatch that locks the difference in. It's also much more convenient. I'm not seeing any religious society that has beaten MTM in straight competition.
I'm not saying that you're wrong about the vacuum created by treating secular institutions as religion. You're right, it's a font of many ills. I'm saying that I don't see a successful competition strategy for local vs. mass media. Which eventually does hand mythic power to the corpos.
"But it becomes the default outcome once mass‑transmission media replaces local, communal storytelling."
I haven't watched Andor. (I haven't watched any new Star Wars media since The Last Jedi.) But I did track some of the discussion of it on a virulently left-wing forum I still lurk on.
The impression I got was that a lot of its supposed 'brilliance' came from flattering the audience.
About four years ago, someone called this the StarWarsification of politics. I wasn't even using Andor as an example, just Lucas's own work, which, for better or worse, left a legacy. One of the problems is understanding that all rebels are inherently good and, therefore, the government they rebel against is inherently evil, which is a mistake, an especially serious mistake if you add the concept of revolution to this formula. So, every rebel is a revolutionary and, therefore, every revolutionary is good. Ignoring the fact that most of these revolutions have ended up worse than before, with all the leaders betraying each other until only one remains, who ends up not fulfilling his promises. Or how many of these revolutionaries were key figures within the system itself, so they were not exactly random individuals. It is important to note that this character is entirely leftist and should not be confused with an ordinary civil war. Revolution can be a type of civil war, but not every civil war is a revolution. Not all discontent ends with a radical change in the law; sometimes it is only necessary to return to what has always been there and simply remove what is ineffective. Needless to say, viewing the world as if it were Star Wars is an interpretation that falls short of other real conflicts, and it is clear that bringing fictional elements into the real world does not end well. In that analysis, the issue ends up being that today this is so loaded and ingrained that all spectrums want to be revolutionaries, without realizing that those who govern them know this and take advantage of it. Therefore, what is expected of a rebel is not to be anti-establishment; today, being a rebel means being as pro-establishment as possible.
Andor is so obvious about preaching on modern politics. I'm amazed when my friends gobble it up like its exactly what they hungered for, but they are old white liberals...the fantasy that they are good guys probably is exactly what they hunger for.
Here's a question:
Once you have mechanical mass-transmission media, especially mass transmission that requires significant capital investment - is "corporate-controlled mythology" more or less inevitable?
If it isn't inevitable, what circumstances, resources, and proactices would be needed in order to avoid that?
No, corporate mythology is not metaphysically inevitable. But it becomes the default outcome once mass‑transmission media replaces local, communal storytelling. This is because religious meaning has migrated into secular institutions.
The problem isn’t the technology, it’s the absence of a counter‑liturgy.
When Christ is no longer the center, the vacuum is filled by whatever institution has the resources to offer a substitute. In our age, that institution is the State and the corporation. The mythology they produce will always be thin because they cannot offer transcendence, only consumption.
How does local, communal storytelling NOT get replaced, even in a society that still places religion at the front?
Mass-transmission stuff will be higher performance quality because of the talent basin mismatch, which leads to a compensation mismatch that locks the difference in. It's also much more convenient. I'm not seeing any religious society that has beaten MTM in straight competition.
I'm not saying that you're wrong about the vacuum created by treating secular institutions as religion. You're right, it's a font of many ills. I'm saying that I don't see a successful competition strategy for local vs. mass media. Which eventually does hand mythic power to the corpos.
"But it becomes the default outcome once mass‑transmission media replaces local, communal storytelling."
I haven't watched Andor. (I haven't watched any new Star Wars media since The Last Jedi.) But I did track some of the discussion of it on a virulently left-wing forum I still lurk on.
The impression I got was that a lot of its supposed 'brilliance' came from flattering the audience.
About four years ago, someone called this the StarWarsification of politics. I wasn't even using Andor as an example, just Lucas's own work, which, for better or worse, left a legacy. One of the problems is understanding that all rebels are inherently good and, therefore, the government they rebel against is inherently evil, which is a mistake, an especially serious mistake if you add the concept of revolution to this formula. So, every rebel is a revolutionary and, therefore, every revolutionary is good. Ignoring the fact that most of these revolutions have ended up worse than before, with all the leaders betraying each other until only one remains, who ends up not fulfilling his promises. Or how many of these revolutionaries were key figures within the system itself, so they were not exactly random individuals. It is important to note that this character is entirely leftist and should not be confused with an ordinary civil war. Revolution can be a type of civil war, but not every civil war is a revolution. Not all discontent ends with a radical change in the law; sometimes it is only necessary to return to what has always been there and simply remove what is ineffective. Needless to say, viewing the world as if it were Star Wars is an interpretation that falls short of other real conflicts, and it is clear that bringing fictional elements into the real world does not end well. In that analysis, the issue ends up being that today this is so loaded and ingrained that all spectrums want to be revolutionaries, without realizing that those who govern them know this and take advantage of it. Therefore, what is expected of a rebel is not to be anti-establishment; today, being a rebel means being as pro-establishment as possible.