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The Shape of Global Peace: Chapter Two – Dyad Emergence
Featured image is the cover of Noam Chomsky’s book.
The book is a distillation of the movie describing the defining characteristic of our time – the deliberate concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a select few. In both the book and movie Chomsky unpacks the principles and policies designed to favor the plutonomy at the expense of the precariat (we working stiffs).
Emergence of the Dyad
- On November 2, 1920, station KDKA made the nation’s first commercial broadcast.
- On September 11, 1928, “The Queen’s Messenger,” a one-act play broadcast as the world’s first live drama on television.
Then the light bulb went on:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.”
Bernays, Edward L., and Mark Crispin Miller. Propaganda. Ig publishing, 1928.
The Dyad Control Opportunity
“The idea is to try and control everyone, to turn the whole society into the perfect system. The perfect system would be a society based on a dyad— a pair. The pair is you and your television set, or maybe now you and your iPhone and the Internet, and that presents you with what the proper life would be— what kinds of gadgets you should have, what you should do for your health. Then you spend your time and effort gaining those things that you don’t need or don’t want— maybe you’ll throw them away— but that’s the measure of a decent life.”
Smartphone 2017: State-of-the-Art Dyad
- 4.4% of Global GDP is building, maintaining and delivering the smartphone dyad.
* Compare to 4.6% Global GDP on public education. - Global mobile revenue reached $1.05 trillion in 2016.
- Two thirds of the world’s population now has a mobile subscription.
- 4.8 billion current unique subscribers globally.
- 3.6 billion use mobile messaging daily.
Perfection of Control by Stoking Consumption
- Professionalization of desire-stoking: The US advertising industry accounted for 19% of US GDP and 17% of all labor income in 2014.
- Automation of desire-stoking: Machine-learning market value projected to reach $1.2 trillion by 2020.
- Perfection is leaving the rest of us:
Gluttony Tipping Point: Choose Your Future
- Anger/disgust motivates destructive forces – “Down with Wall Street”
Been there done that doesn’t work! - Hope/Inspiration motivates constructive forces – “Peace – even for Wall Street”
Let’s try the Terma Moonshot!
Go backward to Chapter One – Control Systems
Go to Prologue Table of Contents
Go forward to Chapter Three – Balance Is Circular