[Air-l] Re: peace

[robert m. tynes]

Re: the discussion, or lack thereof, about war

Why aren't people discussing the war in classrooms, even when framed
within an internet-usage context?

Could it be that mass media has indeed turned this war into a video game?
One in which hi-tech imagery and bravado is causing the classic mass comm
narcotization effect?

Maybe. But that can't be the whole story?

What about pain? The mere fact that it is quite painful to hear, let alone
discuss, the fact that people are killing people. That mega-ton bombs are
*pounding* a population of people.

It's hard enough to discuss gender issues in class, let alone
sexual orientation. And as for war...

It's been, what, a week since the invasion occured? When the war in
Vietnam started, were people quick to discuss it? (I'm not being
rhetorical here; I was but a wee babe then, so me memory needs a
prodding.)

What if we put a historical pause in here, before we come up with an
answer. How 'bout we apply an internet metaphor to side-step the problem.
Cogitate - packet switching.

All media messages, now, seem to travel in packets - uniform bundles that
all meet at the receiver, where, hopefully, they are reassembled and
read/decoded. As for television coverage, it is only one of many routes
that the message bundles can travel. There is also of course the internet,
word-of-mouth, art, magazines, newspapers, radio, etc...

Even though these bundles are uniform in size, they are not the same in
content. I'm not seeing the same message bundles being transported across these different media
multiple lines. Seymour Hersh is throwing out completely different
bundles, as compared to Katie Couric. And, needless to say, Arab websites show yet
another facet. You may say that, regardless of all this, most Americans
are only getting the TV war message. Well, maybe for the moment that is
true. But over time, all those other message bundles will seep out into
that population as well. To some degree, it's inevitable. And then what
happens, when all those message bundles regroup and reassemble at that
endpoint? There will be discussion.

The key is redundancy and flexibility, which is what is occuring. This was
not the case during the Vietnam war. Media channels were slim pickins.

Maybe the problem is not narcotization because of trivialization and
overload. Maybe we just haven't figured out how to decode all the bundles
as they come in.

Isn't that what teachers are for?

-robert tynes