May the Zeitgeist Be With You

Full attribution: That title came from a friend of mine who used to use it as his signature line in emails.

In War and Peace, one of Leo Tolstoy's central ideas is that no one person is in charge of events. His position is that that battles are won not by generals, but by the lieutenants and the troops they command. Tolstoy says this is because of communication. In Tolstoy's view, Napoleon was nowhere near as powerful as the unwieldy, unpredictable force he stood behind. In Tolstoy's time, a general could lay out a brilliant strategy, but would have very limited to make changes once the battle began; the lines stretched for miles in all directions, and the chaos of armed crowds took over.

In a very real sense, Tolstoy's principle of communication no longer applies. Generals can see not only what is occurring in the theaters of war, but they can also react to changes, take advantages of openings, and control the outcomes of events with a degree of precision unimaginable even a few decades ago. The Napoleons of today have the power that their forebears lusted after, claimed to possess, but were always missing.

I've been thinking a lot about the Zeitgeist lately. It used to be a force of nature, like the weather. Ideas would pass through the collective unconscious like so many fronts and squalls. Changes would happen gradually, over a course of days, or weeks, or with the seasons. Depending on where you lived, the climate would be different. No one had any more control over it than anyone else.

Today, the Zeitgeist, a force of human nature in itself, has been harnessed for the express purposes of those with money and influence. Media empires and political movements are build around swaying public opinion on a moment's notice. Marketing shapes and reacts people's views on what is wanted and what is needed to have a full life. Blogs react to events (and one another) in real time. Watching the Iranian protests on people's cell phones, or to reading the thousands of voices commenting on this or that development in the health care reform debate it is impossible not to marvel at the speed with which ideas travel today.

It is so easy to get swept up in the 24-hour news cycle. It is so easy to be overwhelmed by endless, purposeful messaging, control of the narrative, channeling of viewpoints. It is so easy to react to the bluster at town hall meetings, or the latest jobs report, or the newest gadget. It's so easy to lose scope in a sea of infinite typewriters manned by infinite, willful monkeys who all want your things.

So many collective matters, ranging from political debate to fashion trends have have moved from an ostensibly random drift of social phenomena that was beyond comprehension, to the art and science of influencing others, controlling the microphone, shouting louder, using just the right words to evoke an emotional response. Is it socialized medicine or universal health care? Are they terrorists or freedom fighters? Does it make you beautiful, or can you live without it? They know how to issue your marching orders as never before.

Powerful groups have a control over the Zeitgeist almost as might gods over nature. On television and online, they compete with one another for our attentions in proxy wars of necessity, hurtling storms of ideas, cold fronts and warm fronts onto the land, all to elicit the desired reaction, like a bloody argument among magicians.

We are all footsoldiers now, fighting the day's ideological battles, making today's consumer choices based on the direct influences of our generals in politics and business. Cable news, the print media, advertising, and entertainment all wrestle with one another for our attentions, representing events in ways that have a proven, focus group tested track record of influencing our behaviors, stoking our hopes and fears, changing our votes, leveraging our buying power.

In the span of one day, the narrative of an event like health care reform can move from hopelessly improbable, to a clear-cut case of success. We must all take a step back from this war of attention and ask what the true sequence of events is. We must ask who is shaping a given message, and to what end. Turn off the TV and let things happen as they will. Don't let them manipulate your fears and desires. The generals are more powerful than ever. We need to take some of that control back for ourselves. We cannot and should not go back to a state nature, where events unfold without purpose, but we must find a way of controlling our own thoughts.

The 24/7 media coverage of every human detail is a war over ratings and your bank account. It is not an ideological struggle of conservative against liberal any more than it's a real war of Coke over Pepsi. Think through the issues, make your own influence. Be informed but don't be manipulated. May the Zeitgeist Be With You.