How Can One Resist the Media?

The time has come for a comprehensive cultural war - against the media (and no, not because of Bibi). The phenomenon of current affairs in our time exceeds the dimensions of yet another false consciousness among many and has reached the proportions of a hostile takeover of culture and human consciousness - and they must rise early to slay it before it destroys them (with deep thoughts about Bibi). Only a combination of "The Solid" and the ultra-Orthodox society will allow a stance of indifference to material and ephemeral life - the world of media - and engagement with the spirit and eternal life - the world of culture. The Middle Ages as an alternative to the Frankfurt School

A battle cry in the war for consciousness: Cultural innovation against cultural news and news culture (Source)

The time has come to conduct within culture a discussion that cannot take place in the media, and indeed will never take place in it - and that is the discussion about the media itself. Contrary to the common presentation (in the media!), the media is not a channel of cultural expression, and there is no symbiotic relationship or cooperation between them. On the contrary. In the current state of affairs, it can no longer be ignored that the media has become the greatest enemy of culture - literally destroying it in practice. Therefore, culture must either accept its decline - or fight back. And so culture today is tasked with the mighty (cultural!) mission of being the great enemy of the media - the resistance movement against it.

By its very nature, the media pretends to be culture - to be of importance - when it sells shallowness, and therefore it is the natural enemy of depth, as it steals the consciousness of the people and addicts the human mind. By virtue of being an attention machine, there is nothing the media won't do for attention. Pornography and propaganda are the media incarnate, not extreme cases, and therefore there is no contradiction between them, as we see today. Bad taste, kitsch, and cheap manipulation - these are the internal grammar of current affairs. Therefore, one must not argue with it in its language, in its medium, and on its field - but only in the internal mediums of culture: the creation of literature, art, cinema, research, and the journal. The battlefield with the media cannot be the media itself but the mass media itself: the internet. Culture competes with the media and the consciousness it creates on Facebook, for example. And this is a daily trench warfare. Every post about Bibi (for or against) or about the current affair promoted by the media (against or for) - is a loss.

The media falsely presents itself as the basis of democracy (a narrative that gives it legitimacy!), but in practice steals democracy from the in-depth discussion that takes place (and should take place!) in culture, and replaces it with reckless discussion - and it is the main responsible party for the collapse of democracy. The media led to fascism, and today leads to populism, and it is the most dangerous demon of our time: it is the greatest danger to world peace, to the human spirit, and to human culture. The media is violent, divisive, and corrupting, and it turns people hollow, stupid, and shallow. It's time to treat news sites as porn sites. It should be a shame to read news, talk about it, and think according to it. One who demonstrates proficiency in the heroes of current gossip is like one who is proficient in the names of porn stars.

The media that deals with culture has corrupted culture itself, and culture must not cooperate with it. The media is the number 1 importer of hollow American trends (which we heard about in the media!) into culture, and it floods the market with cheap and low-quality cultural imitations - what is called (in the media, of course) "popular culture". The media is responsible for the decline in value and level in our local culture - and for its loss of self-confidence, and worse - for the loss of cultural values from the local elite. It is also to blame for the degeneration and collapse of that elite (yes, I'm looking at you - "Haaretz"). The damage Benny Ziffer has done to Israeli literature is orders of magnitude greater than any damage any Minister (or Ministress) of Culture could do.

There is no point in engaging in "improving the media", because this is a structural and essential (and economic!) matter of mass media - massiveness. Therefore, the Marxist principle of the profit line is the first touchstone that will distinguish between media and culture: any project done from a commercial motive, and whose purpose is economic (or other non-cultural purpose), its means are manipulations for that purpose. Only a non-profit project, whose entire purpose is cultural, and which operates within and for culture - only it can be an alternative to the media. Culture for its own sake.

The biggest trouble with capitalism is precisely that it succeeds, too much, and therefore its material success is accompanied by cognitive takeover. That is, the spiritual and cultural price of capitalism is unbearable. But contrary to the insights of the Frankfurt School, the conclusion is not that capitalism should be abandoned. Just as the corruption of democracy by culture - does not conclude that democracy should be abandoned. On the contrary, capitalism and democracy are enabling institutions, thanks to the material prosperity and freedom they create, one can create, learn and research without profit motives and for the long term. At the societal level, they created a society of abundance that has never existed in history, and at the individual level, every person can free themselves from the race if they only develop a consciousness similar to that of "The Solid" or the ultra-Orthodox consciousness - and permission is granted.

The problem with capitalism and democracy is precisely the media, namely their total takeover of public and private consciousness, through politics, current affairs, and consumer society. As basic institutions they work well - but the media turns democracy and capitalism into totalitarian institutions: that control culture, thinking, and the soul. What is this similar to? The achievements of modern medicine. These unprecedented achievements allow for deep cultural life, and without physical health, consciousness could not engage in the spiritual world for a moment in comfort. And the media is equivalent to someone who occupies a person day and night with their bodily life - in neurotic anxieties about cancer and diseases, in obsessive physical and sexual activity, in consciousness that revolves around intensive monitoring of their nutrition and bowel activity - and thus wastes and reverses the liberating achievements of medicine. The body (quite healthy!) becomes from a means to an end - and takes over thought and soul, at a level that was not part of a person's consciousness even during the plague epidemics in the Middle Ages. Thus, the media as a contagious disease becomes the black death of consciousness - a global spiritual epidemic. Trump and Bibi are viruses.

The solution is of course the medieval solution: to return to a sharp value division between the inferior and physical realm and the higher and spiritual realm, and not to allow the physical and lower part of the state and society (democracy, capitalism) to enslave the higher part (culture) to it. Politics is a dirty, shameful, ugly, and petty thing, and it is indeed so, and so are the people engaged in it - and only the media has turned them into cultural heroes. It is the media that has empowered a (!) trivial politician like Bibi and turned him into the rock of our existence and the center of being - precisely because of his sensitivity to everything said in the "media" (which flatters and pays off for it very much, economically as well). In a hundred years, only in nursing homes will there be people who remember who Bibi is - and even there probably not so much. But the obsessive preoccupation with Bibi comes at the expense of much more important pursuits - both in the world of action and in the world of spirit - which only they will be remembered for generations, hence the enormous damage that the disproportionate preoccupation with Bibi causes to everyone addicted to him and to the media pumping him. Like a virus that takes over a supercomputer to run foolish Bitcoin mining - so the media wastes the Jewish mind. No material investment in education will help when the media dictates the social ethos and crowns its heroes created in its image (the celebs, the politicians) - and the result is sub-culture. The collapse of education is a cultural problem - not a financial one.

The lower layers of existence are vital (is there anyone who doesn't go to the bathroom?) - but their takeover of the higher layers is the disaster of our time. Culture has powerful weapons to fight the media: its intellectual ridicule, comic mockery, moral denunciation, and humiliation of those engaged and preoccupied with it. No less important is the fortification of an ideology that gives the media its true importance: the bowel activity of society, or at most the pancreas, when today it pretends to replace the brain (no wonder society behaves as hollow-brained?). Culture has fought in the past against many powerful monsters of their time (the church, monarchy, sexuality itself, idolatry, and more), but could overcome them in the culture war: because this war is conducted on its own field. As long as it fights on the opponent's field - the field of the media - it will be defeated bitterly, and will remain a defeated culture as it is today.