MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA

MEDIA AND MARKETING GAMES OF THE OLIGARCHS
Our time clearly gives priority to the image over the thing, the copy
over the original, the notion over reality, the illusion over being.
(Ludwig Feuerbach)
The philosophical “forecasts” of Berkeley and Feuerbach for the
ontology/ anthropology of modern times were perhaps most fulilled
particularly in the ield of global media. After World War II - especially
during the Cold War and the ierce political and ideological propaganda
and antipropaganda – the media in countries of the “real socialism” were
the main speakers at the “oficial truth”. However, on the other side, in
the “liberal” and “democratic” world, in a sophisticated and camoulaged
way, the media invaded all pores of Western culture, especially art.
The media have lost their original “innocence”, their “aura”, 8 their
uniqueness and the ontological objectiveness. They created a new,
media civilization, with new antinomies on the relation: man → world
→ holy man, whose horizon is reduced on a unilateral, one-way and
one-dimensional existential line: world → man. 9 In the world of a proit
dictate of the technological compulsion the man is seemingly free in his
choice of personal life solution. In the spirit of Schopenhauer, the world
is my/our image, not something objective. But the relentless dialectic of
the subject-object relation “outside” dictates my opinion, emotions and
actions. “Personality” becomes a media product of my own non-freedom,
and my life reality is a reproduction of my reproduction. “The Self “is
a inished product of the totality of the reproductive cycle of the social
ontology of the proit political economy. 10
Speaking of ruling over totality, history has shown that we are one step
away from totalitarianism. Abandoning authenticity, lacking critical
distance, losing the sense and expediency and their perverting into
“phantoms and matrices” of the modern world (Anders), is that the media
makes them accomplices in the creation of all forms of totalitarianism
in the 20th and 21th century. 11 Today, it is quite clear: the media and
totalitarianism are “twin towers”.
8 BENJAMIN, W.: Umetnost u doba svoje tehničke reprodukcije. In BENJAMIN,
W.: Eseji. Beograd : Nolit, 1974.
9 Compare: ANDERS, G.: Svet kao fantom i matrica: Filozofska
razmatranja o radiju i televiziji. Novi Sad : Prometej, 1996;
MARCUSE, H.: Čovjek jedne dimenzije. Sarajevo : Veselin Masleša, 1968.
10 MARX, K.: Капиталот. Tом 1. Скопје : Мисла, 1975.
11 ARENDT, H.: Изворите на тоталитаризмот. Скопје : Култура, 1990.
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