Introduction
In this paper we hope to put together a coherent series of reflections on the phenomenon of communication and to make a modest contribution in these times of confusion and disconnection between ideas and human events at both the world and local levels. In so far as marketing and advertising have succeeded in systematically projecting lies disguised as truth into the social sphere, the sale of the truth presents itself to us with growing urgency as a challenge that we must address, especially those of us who are made uneasy by the crisis in moral values, the discredited interpretation of the reality surrounding us, and the transmission of genuine ideas and knowledge to future generations. We believe that it is important to revisit existing forms of communication in order to ensure not just the foundation, but also the substantiation of recommendations aimed at the human person, the family nucleus and the educational and cultural orders as such. The difficulties involved should not be understated : the undertaking calls for in-depth questioning and a process of learning about communication on a vast scale, together with the limitations of an effective instrumentation on the social level, which would presuppose the will to take on media that are under the firm control of the masters of politics, power and money in this country and in the world.
And yet, for those whose responsibility it is to transmit messages in the field of education – beginning in the home –, the prospects might actually look hopeful, as long as they insist, now more than ever, on a good command of communicational techniques and the presentation of content with all the tools that the field of communication puts at their disposal.
Elements and Framing
Formerly the world’s lies were made possible by the slow pace of communication and the possibility of state control. The ligature had been around for quite some time, several centuries. Certain information was carefully reserved for the select few ; the rest was whitewashed to keep people from challenging the structures of power.
Today everything is different. The communication science theorist Marshall McLuhan was clear-sighted enough to anticipate the speed of information transmitted by television, satellite, and maybe even computers, but he did not foresee the volume of this information, or the transcendence of the combinability of its components, or the concrete applications by means of satellite networks, the relentless development of the Internet and of ever-more integrated products (cell phones with still cameras, video cameras, television, recorder, Internet, etc.). McLuhan comprehended complex and prodigious developments, but he never suspected such unsettling phenomena as the State’s inability to control all the information flows streaming into and out of its territory at any given moment. As we all know, information is at our fingertips, in prodigious volumes and anywhere.
Furthermore, it had never been possible before to avail ourselves of different perspectives on a single event almost simultaneously. Inch by inch, different lenses take in each muscle and each exercise of an Olympic gymnast on the high bar from different angles. As early as the 1970’s, Baudrillard was warning us : “…no more focal point, no more center or periphery ; all that is left is the medium, nothing but flexion or circular inflexion. Violence and surveillance are over : only ‘information’, secret virulence, chain reaction, slow implosion and simulacra of spaces and perspectives where the effect of the real still comes into play” (1978 : 61-62).
Perhaps it is in this sort of ocular and auditory metastasis of the informative phenomenon that the essential nature of today’s communication lies (Mukhopadhyay, A. K., 2008 : 19-28). It is no longer possible to deceive children about how other children come into this world, because they simply see it every day on their monitor. All formats of adult communication crash headlong into adolescents and children because of the speed and volume of information that youngsters take in and exchange through media. Do we ever ask ourselves what might be happening to the representations of these young adults, adolescents and children ?
We also wonder to what extent today’s communication has shaken the very roots of human conscience at. Are we dealing with programmatic infallibility, with maximum security and deterrence, as Baudrillard himself observed some time ago (1975 : 60) ? We do not think so ; the simulacrum model has not been impermeable enough to save people like Marcial Maciel from a fiery end. Everyone has seen or heard that the trajectory of this leader and founder of one of the most influential religious orders of the 20th century was full of twists and aberrations that the media could no longer whitewash. His image, reconstructed from different angles using letters and accusations written by different religious men and women, would come to reveal the deviations of an individual who is hard to label.
Impact Zone
If the explanation is not enough, will the phenomenon then affect some other kind of psychic order ? Archetypes are not arbitrary fictions, but rather autonomous elements of the unconscious that exist before fiction ; they represent the unchangeable structure of a psychic world that, by means of determinant action on the conscience, shows the conscience what is real (Jung, 1951 : 52). As long as myths are truths that need no intellectual arguments to be perceived by themselves and the world needs heroes to believe in, should we conclude that this is the affected core ?
We think so. It is not unreasonable to presume as much, because myths are the archetypes of a social group that point to a custom or a group of customs. Thus, if for any reason myths are pushed aside, certain customs tend to be dislodged as well. For example, the myth of the wolf-man, or the bogeyman, or Frankenstein or Dracula no longer perturb anyone’s sleep. They are myths that no longer work ; they have become caricatures. This, however, in no way means that archetypically there is no more need to find an adequate contemporary representation of what is an undeniable condition of the human psyche.
In today’s world, battles and peace treaties are news before they have been fought or ratified. Reality itself, and not just truth, could well be the first casualty of the future that is inexorably bearing down on us. The amusing side of this perspective is that an audience accustomed to resorting to simulation for many other purposes, at home, at work and at play, can learn that « seeing » or even « feeling » is not the same as believing (Toffler, 1993 : 242-245). In this way, the hypothesis of the transgression of the mythic structure, we believe, is entirely plausible.
What then would be the characterization of the contemporary archetype, in the sense of the archetype that makes up for a state of spiritual emptiness by providing content that fills in the gaps ? (Jung, 1951 : 21). We feel that the archetype that people are looking for today is very simple : the truth. It is impossible to hide the truth at the speed with which information is transmitted day in and day out. The phenomenon gives rise to endless ideas and images that make it hard to predict which one will stick, or correspond to the archetype of a given social group. It is practically a random exercise. Think of the chupacabras scare, for example, that oddly hit a nerve of the prevailing archetype in Western Mexico a few years back.
Then there is the myth of the Zapatista Sub-comandante Marcos, who at the time was probably not the deepest thinker, but certainly the most effective communicator. And not because he had taken a degree in communication, but because his way of saying and doing things somehow filled the archetypical void or responded to the social myth then in circulation (1994). It was a situation that led almost inevitably to an overall acceptance of his person and his discourse around the world. The figure of Marcos would thus come to occupy the empty niche of the Hero, i.e., the wo/man who has succeeded in her/his battle and overcome his/her historical, personal and local limitations in order to assume generic, valid and normative human forms (Campbell, 1949 : 26). We could just as easily propose the case – in a more trivial and contemporary urban setting – the figure of the soccer star as the hero of money, who can demand whatever salary he wants in exchange for his ability to instantly transmit his game on television.
Scope
What is the impact of communication on the phenomenalistic perception of the modern human being ? This is very simple : people easily see into things, their inner workings, the tricks and mechanisms that are behind appearances. In other words, they are well trained. And notice we are not even considering the rise of new drugs that have supposedly allowed many users to expand their perceptive possibilities even further without any ill effects. Thus, in a world where everyone sees himself as a lead player, the idol has lost its reserves of credibility before itself and others.
The dynamism, volume and pitch of today’s communication miracle, on the other hand, upend old traditions and customs, opening a yawning gap between generations that has an impact not only on the moral sphere, but also on the sphere of interpretations. One and the same event changes meaning, depending on the time and place : the image of a hand on the leg of a bikini-clad girl on a Pacific beach under the mid-day sun ; the image of the same hand on the same leg in a downtown restaurant at night.These do not have the same meaning or value. It is like the “natural modesty” referred to by Protagoras over two millennia ago. “If it is natural to be modest, it would have to be an innate trait.” But is it innate or is it a feeling created by society, by society’s customs ? (Gaarder, 1995 : 76). The impact, in this way, is not measurable. We are in a process of constantly changing mores, visions, and relationships at the intimate, family and social level. Myths and concepts are continually changing.
Several decades ago, Toffler described the future of communication with an image of docile displacement toward total demassification, a movement that would come about accompanied by a greater acceleration of real time (1993 : 242). Does this sound compelling ? We believe it will give rise to an enormous explosion of human behavior that might very well bring about the end of the system as we know it. And we ask ourselves : how much time will pass before the computer pushes to unimagined extremes the modifications in the use of language triggered by communication media such as cell phones, e-mails, Facebook, Twitter, on-line forums, etc. These are systems that are available 24 hours a day and that put millions of people in instantaneous contact. How much time will pass before the computer itself forces people to work at home, making the physical spaces of offices, schools, stores, etc., that we know today completely superfluous ? Are we ready for the onset of these changes ? To what degree ? Transportation, for example, is evolving. We can see it in the design of all the cars that circulate before our eyes. We are convinced that all of these manifestations will continue to influence individual and social behavior in the most varied way, and some of these objects will make others obsolete. This is where the phenomenon of communication is taking us.
Something very similar is happening to our conception of the world and its development. For example, Baudrillard points out that the concept of modernity itself is today being unmasked on a global scale as a technique and model for domination. The modernity that used to be seen as Western Europe’s signal adventure has been reduced to an enormous farce that is being repeated on a planetary scale, in every place where Western religious, technical, economic and political values are exported. This “carnivalization” goes through all the historical stages from evangelization and colonization to de-colonization and globalization. The hardest thing to see is that this hegemony, this worldwide influence whose models –not just technical and military but also cultural and ideological— seem compelling to the point of indomitability, is accompanied by an extraordinary reversion by which this power is slowly undermined, devoured, “cannibalized” by the very people being “carnivalized” (2009 : 43).
It is this Janus-faced carnival-cannibal monster that we see everywhere, transmitted worldwide by the media, in the exporting of our moral values (human rights, democracy), our principles of economic rationality, of growth, of prowess and spectacle. They are adopted everywhere with greater or lesser enthusiasm, but with complete ambiguity, by all the “underdeveloped” peoples who managed to evade the good word of universal values, and thus are targets of missionary zeal, of forced conversion to modernity. They ae not so much exploited and oppressed as exhibited and transfigured into a caricature of Westerners, like those apes dressed as admirals that used to populate circus sideshows (Ibid. : 45-46).
Paths
And in the face of all this, will it be enough to make a critique that clarifies all manner of phantasmagorias, as a journalist like Monsiváis once suggested ? Should we envisage the creation of a new national dictionary of basic definitions that mixes a sense of humor and collective goals, possible objectivity and the disappearance of false respect ? (Monsiváis 1996 : 34) Or can we trust that over time, people will become more and more accustomed to complex means of communication and at the same time more solitary and averse to actual human contact, and perhaps more skeptical of information itself ? (Toffler, 1993 : 245)
There is, however, concrete evidence of worrisome changes in behavior, for example, the so-called ‘condominium communication’ effect, in which people do not talk to each other. In an automatic, unthinking operation, the other is simply erased from the field of consciousness as if she did not exist ; she is dismissed from consideration, she becomes Nobody (as the Mexican thinker Paz observed, 1950). This phenomenon has taken on new intensity in the last few decades, and has spread to neighborhoods, subdivisions, bedroom communities and horizontal condominiums in cities large, medium and small.
Another example could be seen as a sort of incipient return to savagery in the fashion and social tastes of young people in the late 1990’s and the first decade of the 21st century, such as the use of scruffy beards, disheveled clothes and dark colors ; earrings and other assorted piercings in the eyelids, nose and tongue ; tattoos on arms, legs and buttocks ; penis detachment and the use of rings on genitals ; as well as many other kinds of an almost ascetic vandalism and drug consumption. These manifestations seem to exhibit a nostalgia for a more primitive and less complex explanation of human life. Their elements are taken from a world model that yearns for a smaller and more accessible scope, like in ancient times, with fewer elements, close to nature and the normal functioning of the senses.
The axiological dilemma that the new archetypical core seems to pose might result, as Valery said, from finding in ourselves a capacity for modification that is almost as varied as our surroundings (Valery, 1989 : 398). This is analogous to following a sophist recipe. Communication today offers a thousand facets of the truth. Which should we choose ? This, we believe, is the dilemma –the quid of the matter. As we are told in the Vedas : “Truth is one and the wise speak of it with many names.” The sophists had much time at their disposal to choose after careful consideration. Today, unfortunately, information and the fine threads of decision call for an almost instantaneous response. This is what seems to put all sophisms in check ; paradoxes break down all the time.
As Baudrillard puts it, this is what is flaunted by a culture overrun by media that offer itself for consumption : it ends up devouring itself (the current face of this phenomenon is the mass consumption of as many goods as possible). This farce dovetails with another dimension highlighted by Walter Benjamin, where humanity manages to turn its worst alienation into aesthetic enjoyment and spectacle.
This is the grand collective show in which the West dresses itself up using not only the spoils of other cultures –in museums, fashion and art–, but also its own. And art fulfills its function by turning a double somersault : Picasso incorporated “primitive” art into his drawings and paintings, and now the African artist copies Picasso within the framework of a universal aesthetics. If it turns out that all the groups decked out with the trappings of Western civilization and with all the techniques taken from other cultures are at the same time its living parody, if they are making a mockery of this civilization, it is because this civilization is a joke, even if we cannot see it. The scam of universal values is exposed in its spreading around the world. While there certainly was an original, historical and Western manifestation of modernity, we have long since exhausted its consequences, and it has taken us around a fatal, farcical turn. But the logic of modernity demanded that we impose it upon the whole world, that the fate of the West be that of the race of Cain, and that nothing escape its inexorable homogenization, this mystification of the species (Beaudrillard, 2009 : 4647).
Outcome
If we wish to turn our gaze to the past to find solutions in ancient models, we would do well to begin our search by recognizing that the undertaking cannot be based on the same codes. The Word in those times enjoyed a different stature and recognition. The Word then could explain simple truths, as it was the pre-eminent creative act. Thus, Man named things and these things simply existed.
Our odyssey would commence with the use and abuse of categories until it came to the Cage of Faraday in which we are now immersed. A journey of immense deformations that drags us along to the world of dissonances in which we find ourselves trapped today. Saturation of information that keeps us from being free to re-encounter the capacity, the language, the power to pronounce our own idea, and set it down permanently by the very act of pronouncing it, which in the final analysis is what has kept the divine position from finding its place in today’s materialized world (Baudrillard, 2009).
This is the paradox of universal values. Hence all the social movements in non-Western society, all of this caricature of power and counterpower and all of the aftermath of a Western bourgeoisie that, in its “historical” coherence, would practically take on the value of an original occurrence. Finally, modern Western culture would never have had to emerge from its order, where it constituted a sort of singularity. But it could not do it ; it could not escape this violent extrapolation, because it already bore within itself its own negation, and at the same time its universal affirmation. The undertow of this immense movement is taking place in the form of an accelerating decomposition of the universal. And globalization is no more than the theater of this decomposition, of this farce following history (Baudrillard, 2009 : 48–49).
As Paul Valery put it, “I see that our senses gain for us only a minimum of indications that transpose, for our sensitivity, an infinitely small portion of the variety and probable variations of a ‘world’ that is neither conceivable nor imaginable by us” (Valery, 1989 : 397). How long will it take the future to displace everyone’s customs ? My custom ?
Campbell said that a primary function of mythology and ritual has always been to supply the symbols that propel the human spirit forward, in order to counteract those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it to the past. We cling to images that were never properly banished from our childhood, and thus we are reluctant to go through the necessary stages of our adult life (Campbell, 1949 : 18).
How much time will pass before computers become even less expensive and are acquired on a massive scale in countries like ours ? How long before the communication media achieve total integration ? How long before new applications are discovered and marketed ?
This will impose a different way of life, another way of seeing and doing things, of thinking, feeling, communicating and interconnecting these things, which will alter the customs we have today. And this is but a small part of the whole, which is all things.
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* Crédit photo : Relativity de M.C. Escher
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