You Tread On My Dreams

Mass media hands us our predigested dreams late at night as we seek diversion from the busy day. Our dreams infuse our ideals and modern ideals are thus flavored with mechanics and commerce.

The ancient storytellers of tribal campfires had human, intimate feedback from the groups before them. Their dreams involved nature, needs, and emotions—but always upon a backdrop of an assumed supernatural underpinning.

Mass media truncates our dreams’ humanity to consumerism and subsumes the supernatural into a mere genre. We cannot use our most powerful systems of communication for true discourse because a flood of commercial uses blocks these systems.

So we have a force that both perverts our dreams and blocks any rebuttal. Mass media has somehow taken control of humanity without any person or group of people in charge.

Paradoxically, this same situation allows a small group of businesspeople to gain control of nearly all access to mass media. Their potential to influence humanity is mitigated by the effect of mass media on themselves—and their family, friends and associates. They may warp the output, but they are no less in the thrall of the medium itself.

In this regard, the Internet is a lifesaver. Steps should be taken to prevent it from going the way of radio and TV. It will be difficult enough to shed our silver-screened stupor and begin to relate, as people, on the web without encroachment by commerce.