Notes from the Revolution

Hello, my name is Tom, and I am a mediated person. And if you can finish at least some of the phrases and slogans above, then so are you.

What does it mean to be “mediated”? Well, it's complicated, but on a basic level it means that almost everything you think, and everything you do, is to some degree filtered through a lifetime of sounds and images from TV, music, radio, books, magazines, movies, the internet, news media, and pop culture at large. This inescapable screen of “representation” makes us feel as though everything in life has already been done before, in one medium or another (frequently in some B-movie you saw on cable once). And according to cultural critic and university professor Thomas de Zengotita, this morass of multimedia conditioning has turned all of us (to varying degrees) into “method actors”: hyper-self-conscious performers who enact the drama of our daily lives within the ever-shifting hall of mirrors that is our own narcissism. Of course, the process of mediation has really been happening forever—at least since human beings first represented their activities through primitive finger-paintings on the walls of caves—but these days, the force of mediation is bathing each of us in what de Zengotita calls a “psychic sauna” of self-selected, self-defining sensory stimulation like never before (e.g., the “iPod craze”).

This evening, Thomas de Zengotita paid a visit to the EnlightenNext center in Lenox, MA, to speak about mediation (and its consequent narcissism) as part of our Voices from the Edge speakers series. On tour for his groundbreaking book Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live In It, Prof. de Zengotita spoke to a crowd of almost

"It's as if all of nature, all of
history is there—striking poses
—for you."

200 in our public venue, the Foxhollow Forum—including Andrew Cohen and many of us from EnlightenNext, as well as members of the local western Massachusetts community. He was provocative, congenial, and hilarious, keeping us simultaneously entertained and informed like the best teachers always do.

Our interest in his work began two years ago, when Andrew Cohen and two other WIE editors interviewed him one evening at a restaurant in New York City. This was after they'd read his essay “Common Ground: Finding Our Way Back to the Enlightenment” in the January 2003 edition of Harper's Magazine, which struck them with its progressive and completely original take on the limitations of postmodern thinking. And this, of course, was right up Andrew's alley, as one who is committed to constantly shaking up fixed ideas and challenging the stagnancy of the postmodern condition. De Zengotita's insights into the postmodern face of narcissism were of particular interest to Andrew, since narcissism—or egoic self-concern—is, and always has been, the one and only obstacle to enlightened consciousness. And today, since we've pretty much milked narcissism for all it's worth, it is also the biggest impediment to our continued evolution.

In fact, Thomas de Zengotita's analysis of our current climate of hyper-individualism—as evidenced by “Common Ground” and his other essays—masterfully conveys just how and why many of us in the Western world find ourselves adrift in a moral, philosophical, and spiritual desert, and why we desperately need to find some way to transcend it. Isolated in a psychological bubble sustained by multifarious imagery and soundbites—endless representations of reality (e.g., “Reality TV”)—the typical postmodern self leads a detached, abstracted life. In this hazy state of mediated mentality, many of the traditional distinctions between good and evil, truth and falsehood, authenticity and pretense, depth and surface tend to blur into an out-of-focus array of vaguely equal “options” like so many neon advertisements in Times Square. And it is precisely this strange state of affairs—a sociocultural condition of materialism and superficiality, called “flatland” by philosopher Ken Wilber—that Andrew and the rest of us at EnlightenNext are striving to help humanity move beyond.

A few months after she and I both joined the staff of WIE, my fellow associate editor Maura O'Connor—who was already a de Zengotita fan—had the opportunity to speak with him about our generation's peculiar cultural conditioning for a piece she was writing called “The Vanguard Generation.” Having continued her friendship with him in meetings, interviews, and even a posh Fifth Avenue book-release party, Maura leapt at the chance to introduce him at this evening's public event. The following is from a transcript of her introduction, which succinctly captures the essence of the narcissistic condition that de Zengotita's work is all about:

As for de Zengotita's new book, Mediated, it's probably best described as a contemporary fusion of Marshall McLuhan's classic text, Understanding Media (1964), and Christopher Lasch's penetrating cultural critique, The Culture of Narcissism (1979). Examining the postmodern condition through the lens of media theory, Mediated seems to have hit the nail on the head of our contemporary self-reflexive ego like nothing else, as de Zengotita's talk tonight made very clear. Taking the audience on a fascinating tour through the book as well as the history of mediation—from cave art, to papyrus, to Gutenberg, to Sony—de Zengotita explained how the invention of new forms of media has always led to quantum leaps in the evolution of human consciousness. And with his hilarious wit and professorial ease, he also showed, in vivid and implicating examples, just why the evolution of consciousness, in today's climate of excessive media saturation, seems to have become rather stuck on itself . . .

To listen to the full audio of Thomas de Zengotita's talk,
visit WIE Unbound.

To hear Maura O'Connor's first interview with him, click here.

De Zengotita's work has been featured in two articles in What Is Enlightenment? magazine:

She'll Kill Bill While You Chill

When Andrew Cohen asked Thomas de Zengotita if he'd be willing to review Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill movies for Issue 26 of WIE, de Zengotita delivered a brilliantly written critique of the unique amoral numbness that Tarantino's work engenders in its viewers. Titled “She'll Kill Bill While You Chill,” this article highlights how Tarantino's fine mastery of the art of mediation succeeds in making his viewers laugh at things that, frankly, shouldn't be funny. De Zengotita writes:

Awakening to the Blob

Looking into her own experience of growing up in the context of postmodern narcissism, WIE associate editor Maura R. O'Connor reviews Thomas de Zengotita's Mediated and then calls the author on the phone to ask why, after painting such a depressing portrait of contemporary culture, he didn't at least suggest the possibility of us being able to do something about it.