How society tames our desire to know?

With fast development of media technology, this is never the time of panel scarcity, and we have stepped into an era of overloaded information. Therefore it seems to be accepted as reality that audiences are acquiring more freedom to choose/decide what they need/want even make media products themselves. That is superficially right while the hidden agenda set by others never disappear. That is to say, what people interest in is not always out of self willingness, but instead, is being influenced or set up by others. Then whats the operational mechanism supporting the hidden tame process of society? Of course Media is not the only way for people to get to know the world, however, this has become an indispensible choice. Beginning with media is easier for us get to know the whole topic: how society tames our desire to know? I come up with 3 aspects in answering this question. First, Society tames our desire to know by utilizing a psychological mechanism-Spiral of Silence. When talking about pop culture, there is often a premise that the so-called pop should be something accepted by most of people. Thus, whether or not being included in the scope of pop can lead to a group clarification. This may result in the phenomenon that when confronting with choice between pop and alternatives, people tend to choose the former one so as to gaining a valid position in the pop camp, or called majority. This can be sometimes defined as peer pressure which leads us being obedient to mainstream. There is a mass Communication theory called the spiral of silence which is quite similar with the phenomenon I mentioned above. Spiral of silence theory describes the process by which one opinion becomes dominant as those who perceive their opinion to be in the minority do not speak up because they fear isolation from society. It is more understandable when we using spiral of silence theory to explain the phenomenon in the functional perspective. In a classic functional model, tension comes out as the cause for adjustment-structured activity, so as to get homeostasis. When our opinion is not the same with the dominant/majority, fear of being excluded is aroused which is the TENSION breaking our HOMEOSTASIS situation. Thus we have to take actions (STRUCTURED ACTIVITY), such as agreeing with dominant opinion and keeping silence instead of raising our own opinions, to become unified with the mainstream for the purpose of being involved and removing fears (back to HOMEOSTATIS). Take a simple and normal example. Everyone is getting a smart phone nowadays. During waiting or transportation time, people do nothing but playing with their smart phones. It has become part of modern culture and those with traditional phones tend to be defined as out-of-date ones. Since smart phones related topics are ubiquitous and not being a user or owner of smart phones means you are not included/welcomed
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in such discussion during which process, you are exiled and your fear of being isolated is definitely coming true. Consequently, people are inclined to buy a smart phone to catch the popularity and be involved in the pop cultural discourse. In this case, we can easily find out how society/pop tendency influence our purchasing behavior and consumption choices. When considering this in the scope of intercultural communication, there is a related concept-uncertainty avoidance culture. To a large extent, mass culture is taming our taste and leads to a tendency of pursing uniformity, hence result in less cultural variety. This is definitely true. Albeit disappointing, we are living with more consonance. When taking a first look at it, we may feel weird, especially in todays modern society-since more and more information sources are submerging us, why do we face a narrowing of opinion rather than more variety? However, it is not hard to explain. Information channels increase with accompanying of ownership decrease. It seems like a zero sum nature, referring to a dynamic equilibrium. Regardless of deep, critical-oriented, capital conspiracy-related reasons of such ownership concentration, what matters here is how it helps explaining the mechanism of taming our desire to know. Actually, there is a similar logic in social media. Every day, we log on our social media accounts whenever we got a moment to look at our phones. Social media-based social network has become popular and does make sense in real world. It is like a huge tank containing millions of participants who are normal individuals just like us. It is impressed to be a door towards a wider world which is marked with sharing and communicating. However, social media play an important role in promoting conformity to peer values rather than pluralism. The following aspects may outline social medias significance in achieving consensus rather than encouraging diversity. Social media (eg. microblog, facebook, twitter, renren.com etc.) is, first of all, a group; second, an expression platform. Thus there exists a climate of opinion which follows the spiral of silence mechanism. When users are allowed to share likes&dislikes, they are more cautious than we imagine since they feel pressure of against prevailing opinion. Therefore, when giving a holistic thinking, social media illustrates nothing but an inherent drive for conformity. Beside, when taking a close look at the hottest topics or recommended topics on the social media with most popular issues in society, we will never find a divergent relationship between them. Most of time, they are quite similar, both in content construction and presenting form. Such burning to touch issues usually show up intensively and disappear quickly, like most news events appear on mass media. This conveys an implication that social media is not that different with mass media. Whether an opinion is truly a majority one is irrelevant, because all that matters is its appearance or perception which are much easier to be controlled since minority can appear to be supported by majority. In the hidden agenda setting process, unnecessary content branches are largely cut down. Social media is designed to be a platform for fragmental expression, in other words, an ideal place for giving attitude, consent or disagree. So a potential for making binary opposition is deeply rooted in the discourse mechanism of social media. For example, the controversy between HANHAN and FANGZHOUZI which aroused great debate in social media. But to the end, what being tracked are hardly more than supporting HAN or FANG. It appears to be a negative correlation-the more clamorous an
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environment is, the less possibilities are there for pluralistic opinions. The logic is just like ownership concentration mentioned before, more media channels are owned by less entities, leading to narrowing of opinion which, put in a wider scope, less cultural variety. Second, society tames our desire to know by establishing disciplines and reinforcing authorities.

Disciplines are ubiquitous, powerful, long-lasting and most of time, conventional. In other word, disciplines are against freedom, variety, creation, change and normally independence. According to Michel Foucault, discourse is power which through voice being heard, disciplines those voiceless. The voice being heard comes from authority, or called established authority, either supported by mass media or more powerful authorities such as the state apparatus, national ideology and so on. There are disciplines everywhere in our daily life. Rules, laws, regulations even common sense can be part of it, holding a similar attitude of discouraging behaviors crossing boundaries and shares the same function in maintaining the existed power relationship. Foucault used to describe modern society as a typical panopticon (first put up by Jeremy Bentham) which is an effective-operated organization with efficient managerial construction. Panopticon is an institutional building and is vividly explained to be an annular structure with a watch tower in the center. It allows a watchman to observe all inmates of an institution without being able to tell whether or not they are being watched. Modern society tame peoples desire through many disciplinary settings a large part of which are called ideological state apparatus, including education, religion, law, family consciousness, politics, media, culture etc. By giving affirmative opinion of existed power relationship, such as acceptance of hierarchy, they reinforce disciplinary mechanism and consolidate authority. Along history, many things with disciplinary feature are kept through being defined as convention, rituals or initiation rites and turns out to be collectively shared such as national spirit, moral and ethics etc. Such things are very powerful sources in taming our value & moral system with few chronologic or geographic restrictions. Moreover, such important regulations are normally utilized by ruling class to reinforce their authorities by establishing taboos. According to Totem and Taboo (Freud), taboos have strong social and cultural function of promoting social solidarity. If someone violated taboo without being punished, the others would get into panic and finally held together to ensure punishment execution. Such solidarity originates from inherent fear of contagion-it can never stop once taboo is sacrificed for once. This finally becomes foundation of punishment system. Taboo sounds like something old and superstitious, however, modern society never lack it either. For example, forbidden knowledge connected with body & sex which is defined as carnal knowledge has never been included in mainstream discourse & education system. Additionally, homosexual marriage, although gaining more respect & freedom, is still not accepted as legal in most parts of the world.

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All in all, in terms of taming our desire to know, the basic logic existing in disciplines is giving consent to power inequality--political, economic, cultural, military etc. According to Orientalism wrote by Edward Said, Europe finds out that they have the power of encompassing Orient and orientalizing the Orient (Orientalism). In the conceptual scope of Orientalism, there exists a premise of unequal power relationship-the Orient exists based on the interpretation and imagination of the West. It is the Westners knowledge about the Orient that constructs the real Orient. Obviously, a premise here is that the west is superior to the east which has long been accepted by large group of people, even in the academic sphere. Third, society tames our desire to know by distraction

People can easily be distracted by something quite superficial, such as entertainment, gossips, vociferous public opinion environment etc. We are living in an era of fragmental expression, which leads to a lack of independent, deep thoughts. Instead, what fills up is more like an attitude-giving culture or called side-choosing culture. Social medias prosperity, to some extent, makes a contribution of it. We are living in an era caring too much about numbers. People are judged by the rules of who acquiring more click rates, who making more money, who getting more votes regardless of whether the voter behind the number is one with independent thoughts or not. We are living in an era filled with ubiquitous entertainment. Neil Postman, through his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, tries to tell people that entertaining has become a cultural spirit which transforms public discourse into an entertaining format. Politics, religion, education, sports and business are all willing to be subordinate to entertainment. In this book, Postman explodes that what matters most is not truth being concealed, but truth being ignored in daily trivialism. Living in the world with overloaded information, people tends to be attracted by those most superficial ones which, in most scenes, turn out as entertainment. Gradually, we will forget what we concern about most with infinite, boring, trivial things submerging us. In this way, society can easily manipulate/control our desire, merely providing the most vulgar products. In brief, overflow of entertainment results in one dimension man, but not exactly the same with Herbert Marcuse explained. The original implication of one dimension man may refer to those lacking criticizing spirit towards society and simply identifying reality caused by developed capitalism. However, there may be no totalitarianism society suppressing different opinions/voices or peoples negation/critique towards status quo. What is more pathetic is that peoples attention are attracted by those superficial, vulgar, trifling cultures they choose/enjoy, leaving no more attention for other dimensions which were thought to be suppressed by authority. Hence, entertainment wins, without violence and there seems no need to puncture because thats what people choose. We are all easily to be attracted by something sweet, but unlikely to realize if its just the sugar coat, until one day, being destroyed by what we scramble for.

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Holding a critical perspective, media transmitting dominant values, people being manipulated, public opinion creating mass compliance, and entertaining is definitely thought to be perfect sugar coat of harsh ideological indoctrination. Fragmental expression and number-caring are just micro indicators of huge systematic illness and structured problem existing in our daily life.

Actually the 3 aspects can interact with each other. Amusing flow brings forced exposure of vulgar culture and leads an entertaining environment. Under the surrounding pressure and combined influence of spiral of silence mechanism, people tends to pursue uniformity which results in one dimension man, defined with less cultural variety. On the surface, people are seeking resonance (based on the globalization discourse I guess), while in the deep, they choose the easiest way to be involved-giving tacit & less thoughtful consent to status quo maintained/dominated/decided by current power relationship. Trifles are killing too much time of modern people. We are too busy everyday thinking about such superficial things which seem to be important to our daily life because they are what others busy with, that we have no time to think about validity of so-called homeostasis (eg. current power relationship), as well as possibilities of any systematic changes to the status quo which seem too far away from us because they are not included in peoples agenda system who living around us. Consequently, we are totally tamed, from what we know to our desire to know.

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