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Ritual and Meaning in a Cyberworld
So you walk into a restaurant and there it is on the wall. In an attempt to avoid it, you turn toward another wall. There it is again, a device similar to what you have been looking at this morning. Your connection to the world is inevitable; whether you want it or not, it is there. It is not Big Brother, you surmise, because, as you tell yourself, “it does not control me.” A woman in a lavender-and-white-flower blouse catches your attention. “There she is again. I just saw her this morning. It’s Kelly.” The people you love the most are on the air. Let’s face it, you have a choice: either look at the screen or look at the screen. Eyes are trained to follow the pixels.
People like Kelly are so much a part of our lives that they certainly go by their first names. She is more than an acquaintance, and she is with you every morning of the week. We understand who we are in relationship to whom and what we see on the screen. “Sitting in the corner of the restaurant is not enough, if I even wanted to escape her, which I don’t want to do.”
There is a process that has proven over many centuries to dissolve the self. It is known as ritual. Just as individuals are divested of social imprints and reinvested with new meanings through ritual, they too are divested of psychological character and the soul is reinvented in the ritual space. Interestingly enough, a connection emerges between media usage and ritual. Looking at how
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ritual affects us helps us recognize how meaning is constructed and
personhood is instantiated. Ritual has determined the life of many
peoples, and media have a similar effect. Today media devices fulfill
for us the role that ritual has for many thousands of years. There
are various philosophical, psychological, psychosocial, and ethical
implications in the way individuals interact with media devices,
even as they unwittingly participate. The deepest part of our being is
touched by ritual; our souls are caught in that space where meaning
is made. Meaning is made in and through media, just as it is in ritual.
Ritual serves as the source of meaning-making, helps us understand
our world, and has served to order our world despite all
its complexities. The deepest part of ourselves is touched by ritual,
which gives us significance. The term ritual may carry, for many,
connotations of archaic religious life and ways of coping with the
world. These mechanisms of coping may seem out of step with
modern ways of approaching life. Nonetheless, little does anyone
realize that media are doing the same thing in modern and
postmodern times. Social changes are reined in by meaning, and
meaning is constructed by ritual. No matter how much a person
envisions themselves as an independent individual, their meaning
is constructed socially. Just as Westerners conceive of the East to be
“oriental,” likewise we perceive ourselves as not in need of ritual. It
should come as no surprise that we abhor being told that meaning
is constructed outside of ourselves, by powers larger than ourselves,
through cultural changes. Each person likes to believe, in a free society,
that “I make my own meaning.” Social scientists and theorists
have noted the phenomenon of social meaning construction. Lives
are directed by representations and media, as Stuart Hall has suggested.
I suggest something else is going on between ourselves and
media which has less to do with content (like representation) and
more to do with process.
However, before venturing into how media in today’s world
shape our souls, a closer look at media is warranted. Earlier forms
of media include theatrical performance, dance, songs, and storytelling.
The underpinning of these was ritual: acts of meaningmaking
within the context of a community. Ritual had carried the
meaning of life, with all of its complexity, throughout the lives of
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communities. The content of what persons know by way of communicating meaning through ritual is years of wisdom and knowledge about embodied life. Many civilizations have developed and passed, and they have made their imprint on the story of this world. It seems fusion (as I call the process of ritualizing, which comes with our experiences of media) is quickly replacing the usual nature by which persons store information. There is a newer organizing principle. It seems as though bytes and flashes of information on screens are stored in digital spaces within the mind. Through fusion, the person practices the media moment, just as one might practice a ritual. That there is a place where meaning is constructed is evidenced by how persons engage with an other outside themselves. That other is the media device, which brings the person pleasure at the cost of their individuality. Media devices create a comfortable life for us; they give us the ability to accomplish tasks that used to be time-consuming and difficult.
Ritual forms and mores have been shaped by audiovisual media for decades now. The phenomena of globalization, and the digital collections of memories, are now the common means of experiencing life. Hence, these epiphenomena of the process between the subject and media now carry the memes of the newest global civilization. Globalization, which has grown as fast as the internet, has pressured us with the illusion of many more choices in terms of self-definition. Thus, globalization has put our allegiance in the hands of those who create the ideal self through media. Through this creating process, meaning is constructed.
Emile Durkheim explained that representations are powerful and work within meaning-making. Meaning is visceral and affective, touching the heart and developing deep within us. Myth is part of the role of media, one myth upstaging the next as time passes. Only obscenity is what becomes great in our day. It is almost always short-lived, and then it is lost in obscurity. This is an estimation of how media work in our present world, or rather, as our present world. Mores have been shaped by media of all sorts. In this work, I will explain there is a process, which is as powerful as the ritual of ancient times. This process infuses persons with meaning that has the ability to disturb, subvert, and construct
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images and actions which have demonstrable effects on the very
nature of our being. From temple to reality television, the masses
have collected an ethos from the experiences and images that have
been presented to them.
Ritual within cultic life has a body inscribed with markings
that have far-reaching implications for the follower’s eternal destiny.
In its traditional sense, ritual has the power to determine what
the participant believes about the existence of a world beyond. This
type of meaning construction is what persons have always lusted
to participate in: to be in process with the transpersonal. Persons
that exist within these rituals learn there is something meaningful
outside, but inclusive of, the body. The meaning-making process
lies in, ahead of, and beyond our present reality. Ritual is conjoined
with media in the postmodern world in such a way as to fuse a
person or population to a meaning-making apparatus known as the
screen. No matter the size of the screen, the world hangs in the balance
of this process called fusion.
Fusion is the singular event process whereby a person loses
their identity in media; this entrapment is a violation of one’s will
and personal efficacy. Fusion happens very early in the life of the
individual as they are exposed to media. It is a reality that one is
born into media, and remains immersed in it most of the hours in
the day and night. Fusion is inescapable for the person who lives
in the postmodern world. Psychological territories are impacted by
both process and content between the body and media. In fusion,
the process of media is more influential than content, when one
pursues the investigation of media and representations of the body.
Meaning-making is a commercial activity about something
that is deeper within, involving every aspect of our lives. Indeed,
the person is robbed of metaphysical meanings and made subject
to violation by media. The soul is emptied of its traditional meaning
and given a meaning that befits the nature of our digital world.
A close look at media demonstrates where the body is designed.
The reaction between the corporeal body’s territory and that of the
imposing unnatural body of media causes a disarray of the person’s
conceptualization of the body. The investigation of the process of
fusion, and the overwriting of the body through media rituals, are
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what I intend to examine in this book. In this pursuit it will become apparent media are replacing ritual in the battle for the physical and psychological territories of the person. The fusion process involves a symbolic process that becomes increasingly vast with each passing day, gaining influence over the person more strongly than ever. The insurmountable influx of body representations from media is often too much for the person to digest.
The philosophical psychoanalytic position of Jacques Lacan on the subject of experience as it resides within conscious and unconscious space is of considerable relevance to the understanding of how the individual person experiences ritual and media. The fusion process, or media enmeshment of the person, is best understood through the Lacanian lens. The individual demonstrates weakness, or alienation, through the subject, and becomes vulnerable to inescapable engagement with media. Because there is no escape from this process between media and the subject, which is more than just the constant presence of media, the subject becomes dissolved in media and the media process. The dissolving subject is linked to media ritual and the loss of the ability to experience real ritual life. The thread that runs through Lacan’s theory is that the subject is split between the conscious and unconscious worlds within the person. This split leads to the alienation which then opens the way for media to infiltrate and violate the boundaries of the person.
The subjective experience of a person is that which exists as a psychologically oriented phenomenon or a philosophical entity which is susceptible to being violated by something which is external to the subject. Media have the power to overwhelm the subject and envelop it in media’s ways and states of being. One is compelled to relax and enjoy, or join and utilize media to reach certain attainable emotional and cognitive states. That which is actually happening is a seduction by media to draw in the subject coercively into relationship with media’s content and process. The violation happens through a subtle hidden process. The entangling effect of media in relation to the subject is tantamount to abuse of the person’s efficacy. The person finds themselves in a situation where there is a fixed power relationship. One does not get a say in their experience, but experiences the illusion of choice and is therefore
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manipulated by media. This entrapment of the individual is like
reaching the point of loss of control in an intense ritual. The subject
is fascinated and seduced by the flash and frenzy of stimuli that
media produce. Extra pixelation and brush-ups invite the person
into media, and enticing scenarios engage the subject at its weakest
point: the level of alienation it experiences.
Because the subject is split and therefore susceptible to endorsement
of unwanted content and process, media bombardment
cannot be resisted. There is a sort of violation of the subject that
overpowers and is the very fusion one cannot resist. The person is
like a fish in water, unable to see what is happening or understand
they are constantly embedded in media. Thinking, as an experience
of television and internet, has continuously exposed the person to
the same content with the same messages. Persons have succeeded
in pushing aside the imagination in favor of manipulation.
Jacques Lacan once stated the unconscious is structured like a
language; in the twenty-first century, the structure has been reduced
to visual and auditory processes. Bodily experience is set aside by
the influence of media. The structure of the conscious and unconscious
is becoming like a screen with multiple visual and auditory
interventions by media to force one to alter their consciousness
in favor of the imagery and energy of the process of fusion. Slavoj
Žižek discusses “symbolic fictions” in relationship to media and
the concept of self-identity, questioning the presence of an agenda
within media that causes persons to define themselves in a certain
manner. The problem is, agenda aside, persons do reflect on selfdefinition
and identity in relation to their involvement in media.
Whether one dabbles in self-defining within social media spaces or
identifies with and models themselves after a television personality,
the action of media plays into one’s performance of self in the world
as they know it. The world as it is known is, in fact, media itself.
There is a collective, which is the subject-media process, and
it proffers the many persons affected by fusion into one body. This
collective happens when media take over the bodily experience of
all persons. This is termed “the body of media.” All persons could
be considered one in that media make meaning that is consistent
and equivalent for all, and create a common worldview for all to
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share. The body of media is the conglomerate of subjects that are enveloped by fusion. The subject-media process is the force of the media process delivered to the masses.
The subject-media process happens on a large scale, whereby the masses are subject to a process that engulfs them in a worldview and narrative that is media-driven, often providing the same narrative for everyone; this is where the body of media comes into play. The body of media is the collective experience of the masses that indicates the enumeration of data that each is exposed to. The body of media has a particular focus on the lived body of the individual: the trend of media and society’s representation and expectation of what the body norm is at that particular time in history, which is defined by media as well. History in media representation is always revisionist in the sense that it is evolving within the understanding of each person. It is probable that history is media, because of the all-consuming nature and data representation of media’s history at any given time or moment. The history of the body in media has changed over time.
Paul Watzlawick discusses how media have changed as they have shifted away from literature. Watzlawick explains there was a “time when naïve storytelling, when the construction of well-made plays, when trust in the instrument of language altogether had become problematic.”1 Watzlawick also spoke of how “trust in the old forms (of communicating meaning), trust in the relationship with the public had vanished . . . loss of confidence on the part of the artist, and (there was) the advent of the new media film and television.”2 There was suddenly an invasion of stimuli as no one had seen before. This invasion was the accomplice of the subject-media process; static media was left in the wake of technology.
Once one is doused in media, as though the masses are not already like fish in water, then the question becomes: Is there a control factor or a Big Brother? There is no concrete measureable data that proves such a theory, but media are fashionable, inviting, valued ways to go about decision-making in life. The seeming multiplicity
1. Watzlawick, Invented Reality, 166.
2. Watzlawick, Invented Reality, 166.
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of choices and options determine, in large part, our culture and its
multiculturalism. Although there seem to be many choices, there
is the fusion effect of the univocal; persons do not have as much
choice as it would seem.
There is the limitation of the univocal because it offers no
choice. Though it would seem media offer many choices, there is
the univocity of media experience. The subject is challenged by
the explicit use and unambiguous nature of what one understands,
which is flatness. Fusion offers no choice disguised as choice. Media
are supra-existent, beyond simple or complex understandings
of existence; media exist prior to thinking in any category. One is
born into media, just as Lacan would say one is born into language.
Instead of ritual, which is largely influential in a deterministic way,
media have taken on the role of being deterministic, while pretending
to offer choice.
Fusion is a tailored experience for the individual, just as the
subject-media process is for the masses, whereby the person becomes
lost in media and loses their identity in the process. The
subject-media process can explain why so many are fused to the
screen and experience one and the same illusion of reality, which
leads well into explaining fusion as the individual loss of ritual and
self. Since fusion is a process between media and subject, often
it will stand alone as an individual demarcation between the real
world and the virtual world. The demarcation, however, becomes
less clear as the person enters fusion. The line between the subject
and media becomes increasingly thin as the fusion process envelops
the subject and the person becomes the process itself. There comes
a point of blurring and then disappearance of any delineation between
person and media. The process of fusion replaces the need
for ritual life in the postmodern world. The screen takes the place
of the person’s need for ritual and meaning-making, drying up the
need for the personal experience of relationship and communion
with other people.
This work will primarily focus on subject and experience, fusion,
subject-media process, identity, relationship, gaming/virtual
reality, and other matters directly related to media representations.
This work always takes seriously the manner in which media violate
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them the subjective experience of those exposed to them. Through this work, one will come to understand how persons born in the postmodern era, and even before, are swimming in media; the conscious and the unconscious are structured as media are structured. It is a post-truth world, and at this time in history, media are creating the very nature of experience that was once occupied by ritual. Media have replaced the meaning-making nature of life, especially as it has been in previous times expounded by ritual. The person no longer transcends, becomes authentic, or self-actualizes in relation to reality, because media is reality. Media control experience, violate, and manipulate with their narrative in such a way as to pain the individual psychically and physically. Media have taken on the role of ritual and invaded the life and worldview of the masses.