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In a new RSAnimation, psychiatrist Iain McGilchristc revises the great divided brain debate, something I discuss in my book, Mediacology. To recap, in the ’70s the idea that the left and right brain hemispheres serve different cognitive functions entered into popular culture (represented by books such as Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain). In The Global Village, Marshall McLuhan and Bruce Powers run with this concept, arguing how different kinds of media favor or bias the cognitive processing of our brains. Reading and writing are distinctly left brained, whereas nonlinear media like TV and music are favored by the right hemisphere.

Leonard Shlain presents his main thesis

Many authors posit that writing has turned us into an overly rational and patriarchal culture. In the Alphabet Versus the Goddess, neurosurgeon Leonard Shlain argues that writing mimics the same mental processes of hunting: the pen replaces the spear.

McGilchrist doesn’t contradict these arguments. Rather he points out that it’s not an either or situation. Sight and sound are processed by both sides of the brain, but what happens is that the left hemisphere handles detailed and focused thinking, whereas the right hemisphere deals with field-like vision or hearing. Consider how we differentiate between seeing and watching, and listening and hearing.

What I find intriguing about the animation (a mix of both right and left brain media), is the possibility that sustainable behavior comes from cultivating right brain thinking. This is what I argued for in my book, but this video does a much better job of articulating how that’s possible. My main point was that traditional media literacy was mainly left-brained, because it focuses on reductionist deconstruction techniques, whereas new media involve right brain skills, and therefor should be incorporated into the concept of media literacy.

He points out that the right brain’s job is to inhibit immediate responses to situations so that we can use our wit and empathy to work out solutions. It also helps map and simplify the world so that we can make better sense of it. Metaphor, implicit meaning, body language, embodied experience, and a disposition for living rather than mechanical reality characterize the right brain approach to the world.

The machine model is self consistent because it made itself so. It’s what he calls the “Berlusconi of the brain” because it controls all the “media”– the right hemisphere doesn’t have a voice. The left brain model of the world is like a hall of mirrors, a reality bubble. And this is exactly the kind of problem I see in media theory which rarely challenges the mechanical model of cognition and communication. This is also why I believe media theory has not significantly tackled ecology (not in the “systems” sense, but in the sustainability sense).

Finally, McGilchrist argues knowledge within the left hemisphere is a closed system that demands perfection. By contrast, the right hemisphere’s understanding of the world is an open system.

In the end, it’s not reason versus imagination, he says, but both working together. You can’t have one without the other. The problem with our current world system is that it’s based on a closed, machine-like model of the world built by an unbalanced, and ultimately, insane mind. To restore sanity, we need to re-balance how we perceive the world and ourselves.

UPDATE: Here’s rundown of current Internet energy usage: Internet Sucks Up 2% of Global Energy, Study Estimates

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Infographic via: Wordstream

Nice little video about Occupy Wall St.’s green power, compost and gray water systems. Could they be auditioning the new post-oil world?

UPDATE: Apparently I’m not the only writer to have this idea: Is Occupy Wall Street a model for the post-apocalyptic future of cities?

Reality media just got more real.

Through live streaming and archived video, “24 hours of reality” has launched its attack against the disinformation and muddling tactics of energy companies that’s confusing a serious discussion about climate change policy in the US. First the presentation deconstructs the “deniers” argument and counters energy company claims with science and stats. Then, drawing on the history of how the tobacco industry disrupted and confused health policy in the US, they show how energy companies have followed a parallel path through pushing bogus science and a clever framing strategy. By using the tobacco case study, The Climate Reality Project shows convincingly how these tactics are being used, giving numerous examples of politicians and pundits recycling industry tactics. The presentation points out that energy companies have deliberately framed climate change as a theory instead of fact which allows pundits to argue that human created climate change is contested science. However, with 98% of global scientists arguing that climate change is indeed human created, allowing the deniers an equal platform would be like legitimizing the Flat Earth Society’s argument that the earth is not round.

Given the rather clear evidence of a global ecological crisis, will the US media get “real”?

In recent days I’ve been floating in the warm Mediterranean waters, contemplating life as I soak in a panorama of Etna blowing off steam and the silhouetted Aeolian volcanos on the sea’s horizon. I’m feeling a bit primordial, a bit lizard-like. So though the wheels are coming of the global financial system, I’m feeling more contemplative about our time together on Earth.

At one point during Lewis Mumford‘s massive polemic against Western civilization and technology he argues that neolithic cultures–the gold standard of ecological cultural harmony–continue to exist, though in tatters. He suggested that anytime a community still practices solstice celebrations–or something like it–it means there is a shred of ancient nature worship still intact. Indeed, this seems to be the case in many Mediterranean communities, and in Latin America as well. The survival strategy of the Roman Empire to adapt and incorporate regional cultural practices (as long as they didn’t challenge their authority) into their system carried through with the Roman Catholic Church. And as Rigoberta Menchú stated in her autobiography, indigenous Guatemalans–to survive by not giving away their secrets– practice syncretism–essentially layering over Christian religious rituals their own system of beliefs. Hence, God is the sun, Mary is Mother Earth and saints represent various nature deities.

Currently I’m spending ferragosto (a summer holiday in Italy–follow the Wikipedia link for its pagan roots) in Calabria, Italy’s impoverished southwestern province. In the town of Palmi, which overlooks the northern tip of Sicily and the Aeolian Islands, there has been an ongoing festival in celebration of San Rocco, the community’s patron saint. As an outsider, these festivities are every bit as pagan as the kind you will find in Latin American towns. Every day there are dancing puppets called giganti (“giants”) that depict an ancient myth about an African Prince, Grifano (Griffin) and a Sicilian Princess, Marta. They prance about from neighborhood to neighborhood accompanied by the continuous drilling of drums and late night fireworks that echo against the mountain like bomb blasts. In the different piazzas throughout the town there are free concerts. With daily processions, the place reverberates with noise, revelry and communal spirit.

All of this is funded by the community. You do not see corporate banners sponsoring this or that event. It has the true spirit of the commons, which belays the planetary trend in which global financiers and their cronies are privatizing and taking over as much of our communal cultural space as possible. Nontheless, this is by no means a utopian environment. The mafia are the counterforce to corporatization.

However, it was during these festivities that I experienced a bit of an epiphany. I saw in action a fully realized manifestation of ecology, culture and community coming together during a musical performance by a group called the TaranProject. Taranta–derived from tarantula–is a kind of regional folk music that makes your body shake and move continuously like a spider. There are examples of it from all over southern Italy. Much of the music is sung in regional dialect and performed with locally made instruments.

The logo, lyrics, music and spirit of the group celebrates regional identity, social justice for immigrants, advocates for laborers, and sings reverently for the land. As you can see from the logo, its music unifies land and culture. Throughout the concert audience members danced in circles and song along to various folks songs with lineages that go back generations. During the concert there was a real sense of unity and cultural pride that I have rarely experienced.

It occurred to me that this kind of folk music and art is really the true counterforce to all the negativity that we are feeling about the world right now. It is tonic that strengthens the bonds between identity and culture. It is done in the spirit of independence, healing, and respect, values that are counterweights to the atrociously amoral system of economics that is pillaging the Earth and its peoples. It is my firm belief the collectives like the TaranProject are an inspiring answer to the destructive and nihilistic force being unleashed upon Europe, the US and the rest of the world right now.

For me, this is what real ecomedia is about.

It might seem like a waste of brain cells to complain about Fox News. I used to think that even though they were little better than cheese mold, a few million people watching it didn’t mean the end of the world. Yet, as the News of the World scandal has shown, Fox’s parent company, News International, is neither innocuous nor ethical in its broad influence on world politics and debates. It has a disproportionate influence on shaping the symbolic power relations of particular discourses. It’s remarkable, for example, that Obama fired Van Jones based on the lunatic rantings of Glenn Beck. Since when do insane people wield so much influence on reality?

Anyhow, this is certainly masterful propaganda. The pundits argue that schools can’t even teach kids math and reading, why in the hell should they teach about the environment using a ridiculous cartoon like Sponge Bob? (Unless, of course, Mike Huckabee does it.) What do teachers know? Perhaps Fox’s newsreaders could apply a little critical thinking to their own claims. Which science journals are they reading to make their argument? What proponents of anti-climate change scientists are a percentage of the nearly universal scientific consensus supporting the human-caused climate change thesis? Yes, some people claim the Earth is flat, but does that make discussing Earth’s shape controversial? Apparently they fail their own test: anti-science pundits should not complain about the lack of science education in schools.

But, they doth complaineth too much. Education policies like No Child Left Behind have largely produced the ignorance and lack of critical thinking Fox so cherishes. They act like abusive patriarchs, treating teachers like scum of the earth, meanwhile making sure they don’t have the tools to do their job well.

Murdoch has certainly muddied the climate change debate. For example, he made his company “carbon neutral,” seemingly contradicting the anti-climate change rhetoric of his minions. It took me a while to figure out why, until it dawned on me that there was a shrewd strategy afoot. First, is the carbon neutrality claim really verifiable? According to whom? Given the parent corporation’s ethical standards and normal use of doublespeak, I find any claim of verifiability dubious (kind of like S & P giving Goldman Sachs AAA credit rating at the peak of the derivatives bubble). Secondly, how are they defining carbon neutrality? The meaning of the term is not objective. Just because there is a pledge to plant trees doesn’t mean that the real carbon footprint is offset. Moreover, getting electricity from a wind farm does not compensate for the ecological “mindprint” of Fox’s magical thinking. Likely this is actually a model of the kind of climate remediation that will be pushed by Fox (when they have no choice but to actually acknowledge that something has to be done). They will point to themselves and say that we can do it without government regulation. We can make any claim we want and it’s acceptable because we say it is so.

Yeah, just like the claim that they are “fair and balanced.”

You see, these are very tricky people. Shape-shifters, if you will. Pay close attention because they are modeling the reality of fascism that they claim to rail against. In this sense, they offer us an excellent case study for how this works. The trick is to defuse their influence, which is tough. I don’t have all the answers, but maybe the case to revoke their broadcast license based on ethical and legal violations could ultimately do them in. This seems like a vague and distant future, but then again, the swift collapse of News of the World was as sudden as the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The above viral videos were made to promote the latest entry into the Planet of the Apes franchise, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Historically the series is fundamentally a critique of human arrogance and anthropocentrism, and the trailer for this latest film seems to confirm this tradition, adding to the mix corporate maleficence as a source for our downfall.

So why, then, did the marketing geniuses at Fox come up with this horrendously racist ad campaign? The answer is quite simple: a lack of diverse perspectives and cultural sensitivity is still a core characteristic of the monied media monopolies. If there were actually African creatives as part of the brainstorming process, the repeated trope of out-of-control, psycho militants in the heart of Dark Africa would stop circulating through the mediasphere. As Roger Silverstone writes, media is a space of appearances. It gives voice to some perspectives, and leaves out others. It is rather shameful that smart, creative and intelligent Africans are not part of the design teams that craft media–not just for domestic consumption in the US–but for international markets. These kinds of images perpetuate imperial stereotypes that ultimately serve the domination of the global economy by white financiers.

Ken finds some hard truths about Barbie from Greenpeace on Vimeo.

(I’m a little behind with this one–it has been sitting in my draft pile for a month. Better late than never!)

Well,it’s about time Ken took a stand against Barbie’s deforesting ways. This, at least, is Greenpeace’s humorous approach to pressuring Mattel to stop their partnership with Asia Pulp and Paper. Not that we need another reason to be pissed at Barbie for being a shopaholic, but at least this time we can do something more than just whine about it.

A powerful example of combining the printed word with audiovisuals. Here Bill McKibben’s Washington Post op-ed, “A link between climate change and Joplin tornadoes? Never!,” is narrated and enhanced by plomodmedia. This has the right balance of research and emotional appeal to help get the message across.

I’m not going to suggest this is the future of journalism, but this recent “explainer” project, “My Water’s On Fire Tonight,” combines the best of worlds: investigative journalism, oral cultural expression and visual storytelling. It represents a good example of media jujitsu that can simplify complex issues for our intellectually challenged world. Typically well-financed energy companies deploy their black magic media spin and PR to divide and conquer the American public sphere. So while extreme weather rips through the United States, people experience cognitive dissonance as if there is no connection between drought, fire, tornados and crazy temperature fluctuations with our energy consumption. We have to do a better job of “social marketing,” by doing an end-around the normal machinations of thought control. I hope explainers represent the best uses of new media to counter traditional forms of mental inoculation. (Check out the “explainer awards” for more examples.)