Cargo Cult MediaThe Geopollitics of the New Media

is an Oxymoron

Anton Gumenskiy

MGIMO University

November 3, 2014

Myth is Reality

Myth is not a fake, not a story, not a fiction, an anecdote, a saga, neither a fairytale

Myth is the most intence, vivid, authentic reality

Mircea Eliade, Aleksey Losev, Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung

Geopolitics is a Myth

Elements

• Archetypes• Land and Sea• Us and Others• Home, Borders• Enemies, Friends• Dawn of the World• End of Times

• Rituals

Functions

• Awakening• Soteriological• Guiding• Cognitive• Integrative• Extending• Re-creating

Simple and Epic

• Nations, civilizations, continents, oceans• Times, eras, ages, centuries, cycles• Reasonable, rational actor• No coincidences, only causes and

consequences• Language of Play, 'Big Game', 'Great

Chessboard', etc.• Everyone playing God• Geopolitical hyperreality is better than the

'real reality'

Answers to All Questions

• Myth is real because of its results• Self-evident, self-sufficient• Most natural way of dealing with the

reality• Geopolitics stretches from Land and Sea

to the Space, Information, Cognition• Universally applicable and explaining• Only Religion and Conspiracy Theory

match

Cargo Cult Media

• South Pacific, Melanesia, Vanuatu, Tanna• WW2, John Frum Cult, 'Kastom'• Air plane warshipping, mimicking,

glossolalia• Arthur Clarke's Law: 'Any developed

technology indistinguishable from magic'• Cargo Cult is the way a myth becomes

acquainted with alien technologies and adapts to changes

Re-creation of the World

• The new media do not change the myth of geopolitics

• The myth of geopolitics re-creates itself with the new media

• 'Divide et Impera' with new means• A shift to another conceptual paradigm is

only possible as an independent and unconditioned choice of free will

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