No More Learning

The Construction of Reality
We now return to the main problem of this treatise, to the ques- tion of the construction of the reality of the modern world and of its social system. In everyday life one normally assumes that the world is as it is, and that differences of opinion are a result of different 'subjective' perspectives, experiences, memories. 1 Mod- ern, post-theological science has reinforced this assumption and has tried to support it methodologically. Whereas the natural sci- ences of this century placed a question mark over it, the social sciences still seem to be on the lookout for 'the' reality, even when they speak of 'chaos theory' and suchlike, and to allow only for a historically, ethnically or culturally conditioned relativism. 2 For research to go on at all, some kind of 'object' has to be presumed, so the argument goes, to which the research refers; otherwise one is always talking about everything and nothing at the same time. But in order to meet this objection, is it not enough to assume that the system has a memory?
In that case, then, it cannot only be the system of science that guarantees the materialization of reality for society. Instead, we should think of the knowledge of the world that the system of the mass media produces and reproduces. The question now goes: which description of reality do the mass media generate if one has to as- sume that they are active in all three programme strands? And if one were able to reach an opinion about that, the next question would immediately present itself: which society emerges when it routinely and continuously informs itself about itself in this way?
? If we ask about commonalities in the process of selection, we initially come up against the widespread assumption of a standard 0r normative prior selection. This is where Talcott Parsons, for example, saw the condition for the possibility of actions and sys- tems of action. Of course, we should not reject this possibility out of hand, but it explains too little; it would work too coarsely, be too easily recognizable and it would soon provoke opposing cri- teria. There are other forms of selection which work in more hid- den ways and are simultaneously unavoidable. This is true of categorizations of every kind, that is, for the representation of con- crete facts in more general terms, and it is true of causal attribu- tion, that is, for the co-representation of causes and/or of effects of each phenomenon being dealt with. Just as meaning is only ever communicable in the context of generalizations which can, of course, vary between being relatively concrete and relatively general, so also causality can only be represented by singling out particular causes or particular effects. In the case of causal attributions, it is by no means only an issue of leaky assumptions in comparison with other, equally possible explanations. Instead, the selection also necessarily excludes any causes of the causes and effects of the ef- fects. 3 The perspective from which the issue is illuminated can be varied according to ideological or normative prejudices, but even with the most strenuous efforts at neutrality it is unavoidable, given conflicts of values with which we are familiar. Conflicts of opinion negotiated in the mass media therefore operate frequently with di- verse causal attributions and thereby lend themselves the appear- ance of a compact relationship to facts which can no longer be unpicked. The same is true the other way around, however (and this is perhaps the more common instance), where simplifying causal attributions generate judgements, emotions, calls, protests. Both apply to news and in-depth reports, but also to the staging of nar- ratives and to a kind of advertising which, where causality is con- cerned (if it is mentioned at all), only mentions things which speak m its favour.
Generally speaking - and this is just as true of interaction among those co-present as it is of mass media communication - we can say that the economy and speed of communication always require a reference to complexes of meaning (to 'Gestalts', as in Gestalt
? psychology) and that communication can therefore never recover the meaning which it lets receivers understand, so that it is not usually possible to work out which elements are attributable to information and which to utterance. And this ultimately means that whilst the suspicion of prejudices or manipulation is constantly re- produced, it can never really be eliminated in communication by a corresponding distinction.
Any more precise analysis and empirical research in particular will surely have to start from that part of the media which provides the most direct portrayal of reality and is indeed declared and per- ceived in this way: news and in-depth reporting. Here the selectors named above take effect, especially those which are geared towards discontinuity and conflict. If we conceive of such selectors as two- sided forms, it becomes apparent that the other side, their anto- nym, remains unilluminated. In the representation of society it is the breaks in particular which appear then - whether along the temporal axis or in the sphere of the social. Conformity and assent, repetition of the same experience over and over, and constancy of the framing context remain correspondingly underexposed. Unrest is preferred to peace for reasons to do with the media designers' professional skills. The fact that this particular axis and not some other is chosen for the self-description of society is curious, and when it is chosen, it is barely possible to opt for any side other than 'where the action is'. It is with this kind of self-observation that society stimulates itself into constant innovation. It generates 'prob- lems', which require 'solutions', which generate 'problems' which require 'solutions'. This is precisely how it also reproduces topics which the mass media can pick up on and transform into informa- tion.
This one-sidedness can be compensated for by the mass media themselves, by way of preference for moral judgements. In the United States context, the result of this tele-socialization has been charac- terized as 'moral intelligence'. This includes the call to defend oneself against circumstances, to stand firm in the face of difficul- ties and if need be to break rules. 4 But ultimately it has to be clear who are the goodies and who are the baddies. Whatever is not shown to advantage as reality is offered up as morality, it is de- manded. Accordingly, consensus is better than dissent, conflicts
? should be capable of being resolved (since it is, after all, only a question of values), and the reference to reality, oriented princi- pally towards quantities (where possible more, and not less, of the aood), should be neutralized by the 'question of meaning'. It then looks as though it were the very essence of morality to opt for peace, for balance, for solidarity, for meaning. However, seen from a historical and empirical perspective, this is by no means the case. There are no reasons whatever intrinsic to morality why struggles against enemies, in-group and out-group distinctions, dissent should not also be morally rewarded in relation to other kinds of atti- tudes. 5 Here too the mass media seem to determine the way in which the world is read, and to assign moral perspectives to this descrip- tion. The emphasis, marked by tones of regretful loss, on consen- sus, solidarity, values, the search for meaning, does not appear until the second half of the nineteenth century, in a time of the mass press and the full inclusion of the underclasses in literacy, as a kind of pasteurization of the totality of society - or of what it is thought to be.
One might suppose that this overpowering insistence on moral- ity is connected with the coding information/non-information or with the one-sided presentation of forms whose other side, although presupposed, is not represented along with it - in other words, with the concealment of unobtrusive normality, with the paradox of the other, included in meaning but included as being excluded. In normal everyday interaction, after all, morality is not needed anyway; it is always a symptom of the occurrence of pathologies. Instead of orienting itself towards givens, communication chooses the form of morality as something which is simultaneously both fact and not-fact, as something which has constantly to be subject to reminder, as something that is lacking and can therefore be as- signed neither to the inside nor to the outside. Once the transition, the diversion towards morality, is achieved, it carries on as if of its own accord, as if on castors, sometimes too quickly. Morality, then, serves as a kind of supplement to selectivity, offered by way of compensation, as Odo Marquard describes it, that is, 'instead'. 6
This might explain that morality and even its reflexive form, ethics, makes an aged, furrowed impression nowadays and is clearly in- terested only in pathological cases. Isolated cases thus mount up
? under catchwords such as 'corruption', and we can only confirm what Jean Paul suspected long ago: 'Angels may still fall and the devils multiply. '7 Morality needs the obviously scandalous in order to have occasion to rejuvenate itself ; it needs the mass media and, specifically, television.
Even if this is a balance which equalizes out within itself, it is based on a highly selective schema. Reality is described - quite pos- sibly in the mode of researched truth - in a way that is felt to be in need of being balanced. The continual reproduction of the 'is' is set against how things 'actually ought to be'. Party opposition, which is provided for institutionally and enables the political system to substitute government for opposition, is represented so strongly in the daily news that the continuous values of the domain for which politics is responsible come across as deficient and have to be sub- ject to reminder. The 'political class' (as is dismissively said of late) fails in the face of the great tasks of the age. The hunt for more money, better career values, greater reputation, higher ratings, bet- ter-quality training courses appears to be so dominant that, as in evolution, the recessive factor 'meaning of life' has to be brought back into play via morality. But deficits in reality, even if they are imaginary ones, cannot be balanced out in the normative. If a topic is treated in moral terms, the impression is given that the topic requires it because real reality is different.
The description of society that happens via news and in-depth reporting, though, is not the only one to take effect. Both advertis- ing and entertainment contribute as well, mediated as they are by individual attitudes and degrees of willingness to communicate, in other words in a very indirect way. Advertising inevitably scatters its communication over so many objects and so many receivers that each has the impression that there is something better and more beautiful than they can achieve for themselves. The limits to what can be achieved are no longer experienced as divinely ordained tri- als and tribulations, and neither are they regulated by rigid class barriers that set a framework restricting with whom and in what respect one can meaningfully compare oneself. The religious and stratificatory regulation of conflicts of imitation in Girard's sense no longer apply. 8 Instead, limitations are experienced as the result of a lack of purchasing power. This might initially be an impres-
? sion which irritates individual systems of consciousness and is proc- essed within these systems of consciousness in highly diverse ways depending upon the system concerned. But since what is involved
r e massive and standardized influences, one can assume that the conditions of plausibility of social communication are also influ- enced in this way. As it is, in order to be able to enter into commu- nication, individuals have to assume that there are similarities of experience between them and others in spite of their systems of consciousness operating in fully individualized, idiosyncratic ways. The global dissolution of agrarian-artisan family economies and the increased dependency on money for the satisfaction of every need offers an experiential background which readily takes up the range of presentations offered by the media. Society then appears to be an order in which money is available in vast quantities - but no one has enough of it. What could be more obvious than to infer unjust distribution? 9 And then explanations are demanded along with proposals as to how it could all be changed.
Entertainment via the mass media might also be expected to af- fect in this indirect manner what is constructed as reality. Over a long period of time, at any rate during the seventeenth and eight- eenth centuries, the reading of novels was treated as a distraction, a diversion, and its only danger was considered to be that it made one unfit for an active life. 10 The prototype was Don Quixote, and, time and again, women at risk from reading novels. 11 It was al- ready a common topos in critiques of novelistic reading matter that the division of real reality and fictional reality was not being main- tained; but precisely this point was reflected again within the novel and was set up in contrast to an authentic relation to the world, as if it were not precisely thus that one ran the risk of advising the reader by means of such reading matter that he or she should en- deavour to be authentic. 12
These problems have become more acute with film and televi- sion, and even the diagnostic novel (unlike the experiments of the avant garde) seems to be aimed at suggesting to the reader that certain experiences are his own. Whoever gives himself over to this is then able to communicate as if he knew this himself. The differ- ence of the inside and outside of fiction, the difference of a narra- tive or a film story on the one hand and an author, machinery of
? publication and receivers on the other, is undermined by a constant crossing of the boundary. The one side is copied over into the other, out of which opportunities for communication are won whose ba- sis is the artificiality of the experiences common to both. Complex entanglements of real reality and fictional reality occur,13 which are, however, reflected as entertainment, experienced as an episode and remain without consequence. The more 'that which is per- ceived', say, television, plays a role in this, the more communica- tion is based on implicit knowledge which cannot even be communicated. Whereas the Enlightenment assumed that commonality consists in a communicable interest based on reason, and whereas transcendental theory even implied that self-reference could be extrapolated as a general a priori of subjectivity,14 com- munication today seems to be borne by a visual knowledge no longer capable of being controlled subjectively, whose commonality owes itself to the mass media and is carried along by their fashions. It can more or less become a programming consideration on the part of the entertainment industry to win and keep the (short) attention span of participants by offering them references back to their own life, or, one might say, 'yes, that's exactly it' experiences. The at- tempt to approach the individuality of individuals' own conscious- ness will then be made by way of programme diversification.
The fact that mass media produce those three programme strands of news/in-depth reporting, advertising and entertainment simulta- neously with very different kinds of reality construction makes it difficult to recognize any overall effect and to trace it back to the system of the mass media. Perhaps the most important common trait running through them is that, in the process of producing in- formation, the mass media simultaneously set up a horizon of self- generated uncertainty which has to be serviced with ever more information. Mass media increase society's capacity for irritation and thus also its ability to produce information. 15 Or, to be more precise: they increase the complexity of contexts of meaning in which society exposes itself to irritation through self-produced differences. The capacity for irritation, it will be remembered, is generated by horizons of expectation which may provide expectations of nor- mality but which in isolated cases can be shattered by coincidences, incidents, accidents; or by spots of indeterminacy,1' which are re-
? produced as being constantly in need of completion. What is hap- pening in each case is autopoiesis - the reproduction of communi- cation from outcomes of communication.
For this (as for any) autopoiesis there is neither a goal nor a natural end. Rather, informative communications are autopoietic elements which serve the reproduction of just such elements. With each operation, discontinuity, surprise, pleasant or unpleasant dis- appointment is reproduced. And the structures which are repro- duced in this process and which tie it to what is known and capable of repetition (otherwise information could not be recognized as difference) simultaneously serve its reproduction and are adapted for it in the meanings they hold. Thus time becomes the dominat- ing dimension of meaning, and in this dimension the distinction of future and past becomes that distinction which defines time, start- ing with the before/after distinction. The connection between past and future is now nothing but an artificially arranged chronometry - and nothing more than would be necessary or impossible in terms of its natural essence. The present - the differential of the two tem- poral horizons which itself is neither future nor past - becomes the place where information solidifies and decisions have to be made. But the present is in itself only this point of change or only the position of the observer distinguishing future and past. It does not occur within time. One might suppose that it takes the paradox of a time which is no time from what was thought of before moder- nity as eternity, as the omnipresence of the God who observes all times at the same time. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that this modalization of time has a retroactive effect on communi- cation itself, above all in the dual form of fears and expectations.
We can take it that whatever people know about society and therefore about the world - and especially whatever can be com- municated with some prospect of being understood - comes about in this way. But thematically this does not say very much - apart perhaps from the fact that every statement draws the suspicion upon itself of wanting to say too much. It would not be enough to speak of a universal suspicion of ideology here,17 as even every scientifi- cally supported assertion is subject to the same suspicion as soon as it projects itself as an ontological assertion. But perhaps one can say that the mode of second-order observation has generally set-
? tied into place. Everything that is uttered is deciphered in terms of the one who utters it. News and in-depth reporting is likely to en- courage suspicions of underlying motives (which rarely take on any definite form), while entertainment encourages self-observation in the second-order mode, observation of one's own observing. Both the world and individuality are still perceived even then as a con- crete whole consisting of common characteristics; but always in such a way that one has mentally to include an observer w h o says that this is the way it is.
What is at issue here is no longer the old ontological duality of appearance and reality, which was thought of in principle as being ontologically separable or which as religion made reference to the hidden God. Rather, what is at issue is an understanding of reality which takes reality to be a two-sided form of the 'what' and the 'how' - of the 'what is being observed' and the 'how it is being observed'. And this corresponds precisely to the observation of communication with regard to a difference of information and ut- terance. Only when one takes this difference as a basis can one un- derstand anything - and "understand" is used here in the sense of endless possibilities for further exploration on the side of informa- tion or on the side of schemata (frames) and the utterer's motives.
Of course, all this is not to maintain that every participant in mass media communication reflects that he is experiencing thus. But neither is it a matter of a reserve for the 'educated classes'. Every empirical study will establish that there are different degrees to which this ambiguity of knowledge is processed, and the most easily accessible irritation may assume the form of mistrust. What- ever the psyche makes of this form of irritation is its own business; and an additional part of the picture is that there is no prescribed rule for this which would not immediately invite the same mistrust. Under these circumstances, it is only the conditions of communica- tion that can have a restricting effect. Only a little of what goes on in the consciousness can irritate communication. This will deter- mine the forms of intimacy which are still possible - that feeling of having been left all alone under precisely those conditions which make the opposite a possibility. But this too is reflected a thousand times over in the mass media,18 and thus itself becomes a knowl- edge which we owe to reading and to film.
? The reality of the mass media is the reality of second-order ob- servation. It replaces knowledge prescriptions which have been pro- vided in other social formations by excellent positions of observation: by sages, priests, the nobility, the city, by religion or bv politically and ethically distinguished ways of life. The differ- ence is so stark that one can speak neither of decline nor of progress. Here too the only mode of reflection remains that of second-order observation, that is, the observation that a society which leaves its self-observation to the function system of the mass media enters into precisely this way of observing in the mode of observation of observers.
The result of this analysis can be summed up under the term culture. Since its emergence at the end of the eighteenth century, this term has brought together reflexive and comparative compo- nents. In every last detail, culture knows and says of itself that it is culture. It fashions its own historically or nationally comparative distinctions - first with gestures of superiority for one's own cul- ture in comparison with others, and nowadays with more of an open, casual admission that cultures are many and varied. Even i f - and especially if - this variety exists, one might as well stick with one's own. The fashionable option of cultural diversity legitimates both a conservative basic attitude towards one's own culture and a merely touristic relationship to the others.
Culture in exactly this sense, culture in the sense of the reshaping of everything and anything into a sign of culture, is at once product and alibi of the mass media. Although one usually finds the oppos- ing theory, that the mass media and, in association with it, tourism ruin authentic culture, this is merely an inversion of reality, a mere protective assertion or perhaps a rhetoric which encourages one to search (in vain) for authentic experiences and which complements mass media information by means of tourism, museum visits, for- eign dance groups and suchlike. These kinds of 'supplements' in turn, however, only lead one into culturally aware, that is, staged worlds. 19 The marking of the difference between what one knows from the mass media and what one has really seen (and photo- graphed) right there on the spot, that is, of the difference between tele-tourism and real tourism, is itself a product of the mass media, through which they make themselves invisible as the ground of
? culture. The strange expression 'sightseeing' was introduced at the same time as photography and the rotary press. Without reproduc- tions there would be no originals, without mass media culture would not be recognizable as culture. And the fact that this reflexive cul- ture, this culture which knows itself as culture, produces its coun- ter-conceptuality of 'authenticity', 'actual-ness', 'spontaneity' etc. , just serves to confirm that what is involved here is a universal phe- nomenon which includes self-reference.
Let it be added at this point that this is not the same as asserting that culture has become a commodity in the form of signs. Such theories confuse system references. It goes without saying that peo- ple have to pay for newspapers and cinema visits, for tourism and sightseeing;20 but in this respect this operational domain remains a market, a part of the economic system. As such it is distinguished from other markets, other services, other products. Particular ex- periences and communications only become culture by being of- fered as signs of culture, and it is this that goes back to the institutionalization of second-order observation in the system of the mass media.
The mass media, with their continuous production of construc- tions of reality, undermine the understanding of freedom that is still prevalent. Freedom is still understood as the absence of coer- cion, as in natural law. Both liberal and socialist ideologies have used this concept of freedom and have quarrelled only over the sources of coercion - the state under the rule of law or capitalist society. The social 'innocence' of the mass media, their harmless- ness, is based on the fact that they coerce no one. This is true of all their programme strands, and especially so of advertising. In fact, however, freedom is based on the cognitive conditions of observa- tion and description of alternatives with an open, decidable, and therefore unknown future. Openness for other possibilities is con- structed into the way of the world which actually is determined (meaning simply: it is the way it is). Psychic and social systems empower themselves to choose. But this presupposes a recursively stabilized network of redundancies, that is, memory. We know that people can only fly in aircraft and not, for example, on magic car- pets. So the constructions of reality offered by the mass media have far-reaching effects on what can be observed as freedom in society,
? and in particular also on the question of how opportunities for personally attributable action are distributed in society. If we still define freedom as the absence of coercion, this function of the mass media to constitute freedom remains latent, or at least it is not discussed. One can only suppose that the mass media lead to an overestimation of others' freedom, whereas each individual is only too aware of the cognitive barriers to the amount of freedom he or she has. And this disbalancing of the attribution of freedom may have far more consequences in a society which at all levels has vastly expanded the scope for making decisions and has generated corre- sponding uncertainties, than the question of who definitively is be- ing forced to engage or not to engage in a particular action.
? The Reality of Construction
Every constructivist theory of cognition will find itself facing the objection that it does not do justice to reality, and this one is no different. In the traditional schema of human capacities, knowl- edge was distinguished from will, and only the will was acknowl- edged to have freedom of self-determination (capriciousness). Knowledge, on the other hand, was held to be subject to the resist- ance of reality and could not simply proceed in an arbitrary way without thereby failing to fulfil its function. However, this division of labour is already flawed inasmuch as from an empirical point of view there is no such thing as arbitrariness, and even self-determi- nation (autonomy) is only possible in a system which distinguishes itself from the environment and, whilst not being determined by its environment, is certainly irritated by it. But then the question as to how we are to understand the resistance with which reality con- fronts both knowledge and wanting only becomes more urgent. And if we wanted to relinquish the concept of resistance as an indi- cator of reality, we would have to do without the concept of reality or, breaking with tradition, develop a totally different concept of reality.
But that is not necessary. Hegel himself dealt with this problem in his Phenomenology of Spirit, in the chapter entitled 'Sense-Cer- tainty',1 but at that point he still thought the problem could be solved by the ultra-potency of the mind. All that has remained of this is the deferability (differance) of every distinction and with it the capacity of every construction to be deconstructed. At the same
? time, however, linguistics for its part offers an adequate adapta- tion of the concept of reality which, mutatis mutandis, we can adopt for a theory of social communication and therefore also for a theory of the mass media. Put briefly, it goes like this: resistance to lan- guage can only be put up by language itself and as a consequence, in so far as language is the point at issue, language itself generates its indicators of reality. 2 This is none other than what we have al- ready formulated using the concept of 'Eigenvalues'. The same would be true for the degree of alertness in conscious thought or tor the brain's neurophysiological mode of operation. All opera- tionally closed systems have to generate their indicators of reality at the level of their own operations; they have no other alternative. Resistance can then crop up internally as a problem of consistency, which is interpreted as memory, for example, even though it al- ways only manifests in the moment and has to be newly actualized time and again.
The more presuppositions upon which the operational closure of a system is based (that is, the more improbable from an evolu- tionary perspective), the more demanding and specific its tests of reality will turn out to be. This applies spectacularly to modern science. And it applies equally to the system of the mass media. We have already identified the mechanism used here. It consists in opin- ions about circumstances and events themselves being treated as events. This is how the system allows new blood to flow in; this it does in a way that is in precise correspondence with the system's code and its mode of operation. In this way the system itself is able to generate resistance to its own habits. It can produce 'changes in values', it can give preference to minority opinions that push them- selves to the fore, perhaps especially because they appear as spec- tacular, full of conflict, deviant, and therefore trigger the 'spiral of silence' identified by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. 3 So there are very many different individual possibilities, but they all basically lead to the media generating resistance to themselves.
A further possibility for testing the mass media's construction of reality lies in empirical social research. In contrast to what is widely assumed, the point of this kind of research lies less in the core do- main of scientific research, that is, in the verification and falsifica- tion of theories,4 and more in obtaining data as documentation for
? decisions in politics and the economy, or perhaps in correcting stereo- types which have developed and become established through the mass media's news and reporting - for instance, about the demotivation and 'drop-out' trend among youth at the end of the 1960s, or about the extent of discontent among the population living in the states of the former East Germany.
The intention of making visible long-term changes (or even just fluctuations) which escape the attention of the mass media should also be acknowl- edged in this context. Special credit is due here to the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research; one gathers that no German university wanted to take on the burden of continuing this research. But even if one takes account of the independence of this research with due respect, it can only have an effect if the mass media take up its findings. Ultimately, then, it is the self-correction of an op- erationally closed system that is at issue in this instance as well.
Here too, being awarded the 'reality' seal of quality can only happen in a system which first generates inconsistencies in order then to construct whatever is to be taken as reality. This can be corroborated by biological epistemology, semiotics, linguistics and even sociology - and all these are empirical sciences (not arts! ). However, at the same time, this radical constructivism does not go very far, being limited by the realization that, at the level of first- order observation, illusion and reality and therefore also real real- ity and imaginary reality cannot be distinguished from one another. (Logicians would probably have to say: at this level, the systems do not have sufficient logical values at their disposal. ) Although it is possible to see through this illusion and represent it, it cannot be removed in a way that would mean it no longer occurred. And even second-order observation has to attribute reality to the ob- server whom it is observing. It can select him, but not invent him. This is simply because every observation has to work with the dis- tinction of self-reference and other-reference and must fill the func- tional position that is other-reference with some kind of content. To put it differently: it must use this distinction as its blind spot, for it cannot see (observe, describe) the fact that this distinction owes its existence to the paradox of re-entry.
Whereas subject-based epistemologies had already spoken of an inaccessible outside world but had foundered on the problem of
? the plurality of subjects, operational constructivism is based on the recursivity of its own systemic operations and, linked to this, on the system's memory which constantly applies tests of consistency to all the system's operations as they occur (without relating any of these to a 'subject', an author, an I). If you have guests and you give them wine, you will not suddenly be struck by the notion that the glasses are unrecognizable things in themselves and might only ex- ist as a subjective synthesis. Rather, you will think: if there are guests and if there is wine, then there must also be glasses. Or if vou receive a phone call and the person on the other end of the satellite turns nasty, you're not going to say to him: what do you want, anyway, you're only a construct of this telephone conversa- tion! You will not say this, because it can be assumed that the com- munication itself is carrying out tests of consistency and that it can be predicted how the communication will react to such unusual contributions.
The weak spot along the continuum of perception that is the world is, of course, thought, just as theory is the weak spot along the continuum of communication that is the world. For, at the level of thought and of theory formation, tests of consistency can lead to opposing outcomes. Both neurophysiology and language research force one to accept operationally closed systems, that is, opera- tional constructivism. But then one also has to see that perceptions and communications are dependent upon externalities and do not therefore include information which denies the existence of an out- side world. Individual participants' own autopoietic self-reproduc- tion in terms of life and consciousness is by no means called into doubt. On the contrary, it only becomes conceivable as the envir- onment of the autopoietic social system in its autonomy. The 'I' as the central phantom of recursivity of experience and action still lives from the body as the ground of all perception; but it finds itself additionally enriched and confused by what it knows through the mass media.
All this is also true of the reality of the mass media. Here too it is operationally not possible - and this can be known - to include the selectivity of published information in the recursivity of social com- munication. We react much as did Horatio, whom we have already quoted: 'So have I heard, and do in part believe it. '5 We might well
? doubt one or two details and each might find opportunities to enter into communication with particular opinions. But communication in the social system cannot exclude the framework of tests of con- sistency, recursivity. If it did, it would lose almost all daily neces- sary meaning.
The controversy surrounding constructivist theories of cognition becomes much less clear-cut when the complexity of the issues is elucidated and a plurality of distinctions is attached to it accord- ingly. Sociology and social theory in particular thus gain the ad- vantage of no longer having to rely upon the dogma of classical epistemologies. Instead they are able to seek out the ways and means in which reality is constructed and used as an experience of resist- ance in every place where autopoietic, operationally closed systems come into being. And the same goes for the domain of the mass media.
Perhaps the most important outcome of these considerations is that the mass media may generate reality, but a reality not subject to consensus. They leave the illusion of a cognitively accessible re- ality untouched. 'Radical constructivism' is indeed correct with its theory that no cognitive system, whether it operates as conscious- ness or as a system of communication, can reach its environment operationally. For its own observations it must keep to the distinc- tions it has itself made and thus to the distinction of self-reference and other-reference; and this is not only true for the system of the mass media itself, but also for all psychic and social systems that are irritated by it. But at the same time, it is also true that no cogni- tive system can do without assumptions about reality. For, if all cognition were held to be cognition's own construction and were traced to the way in which the distinction of self-reference and other- reference was handled, this distinction itself would appear para- doxical and would collapse. Other-reference would be merely a variant of self-reference. The idea of reality secures the autopoiesis of cognitive operations by its own ambivalence. It could either be an illusion or the 'reality principle' as psychiatry has it. 6 Either way, what remains important is that in its cognitive operations the sys- tem is forced, not all the time but only in certain instances, to dis- tinguish between the environment as it really is and the environment as it (the system) sees it.
? And what would be the exceptions? It seems to be the case that here in modern society, which secures its knowledge of the world through mass media, a change has come about. According to the classical model of the rationality of truth with its logical and onto- logical premises, it was only a question of ensuring that errors were avoided. The reasons for error played either no role at all or only a secondary one, namely, only when one wanted to avoid repeating the same error. It was assumed in principle that the error could be corrected at the point where it occurred, and the method recom- mended for this was specifically intended to neutralize the influ- ence of individual characteristics of systems seeking cognition. Provision for correcting errors was built into communication. For the modern world after Descartes and after Freud, this is no longer enough. The cognitive system that we now call 'subject' might infer self-confirmation from every cognition (be it true or untrue), be- cause in the end this is how it confirms its autopoiesis. But it is just this which no longer leads directly to confirmation of the reality value of the knowledge. Self-correcting mechanisms are comple- mented by self-accusing mechanisms. This happens with concepts such as 'projection' or with the highly fragile distinction of normal and pathological. Expanding the suspicion of motives in this way tendentially leads to a self-psychiatrization of communication. As has long been recognized, this includes the communication of psy- chiatrists or other therapists who are at risk of succumbing to their professional deformation. The distinction of normal and patho- logical does not say clearly where the boundaries are to be drawn. The fragility of this distinction, its capacity to be transferred into ever new terrains of suspicion, exactly reflects the functionally nec- essary ambivalence of the understanding of reality. Psychiatry it- self cannot do without a reality somehow guaranteed by the world; otherwise it would have to cease its own activity. In other words, it cannot really accept that it is simply pursuing its own projections with the assumption of pathologies. At the very least it will have to accept that there are more and less painful pathologies. 7
The distinction of a world not subject to consensus, one that can be touched on individually, could be a third solution to this prob- lem, and it seems that this is precisely the solution offered and dis- seminated by the mass media. One must simply be able to accept
? one's own way of looking at reality - and be able to distinguish. One must just beware of believing that it is generally valid, that it is reality per se. One must be in a position to adjust one's own contri- butions to communication according to this difference. One must be able to think or communicate with others on two levels at the same time (and by 'one' here, we mean, as always, both psychic and social systems). 8 Communication individualized in this way is neither obliged to represent itself as error or as pathological, nor compelled to dispense completely with a reference to reality which still hangs in the balance. It can quite harmlessly communicate it- self as well and leave it to further communication whether it will attend more to the motives for the utterance or to the topics.
If this is an accurate diagnosis, it becomes clear why fundamentalisms of every kind develop under these conditions of communication. One can step up and say: this is my world, this is what we think is right. The resistance encountered in the process of doing this is, if anything, a motive for intensification; it can have a radicalizing effect without necessarily leading to doubts about re- ality. 9 And unlike in the older model of 'enthusiasm',10 one does not need to rely on divine inspiration nor to give oneself over to the opposite assertion that this is an illusion. It is sufficient to weld together one's own view of reality with one's own identity and to assert it as a projection. Because reality is no longer subject to con- sensus anyway.
? The Function of the Mass Media
If, from this analysis, one wants to derive something about the so- cial function of the mass media, one must first return to a basic distinction, namely the distinction of operation and observation. Operation is the factual happening of events whose reproduction carries out the autopoiesis of the system, that is, the reproduction of the difference of system and environment. Observations use dis- tinctions to describe something (and nothing else). Observing is, of course, also an operation (otherwise it would not exist), but a highly complex operation which separates off what it is observing from what it is not observing with the aid of a distinction; and what it is not observing is always also the operation of observing itself. The operation of observing is in this sense its own blind spot, which is what enables something in particular to be distinguished and de- scribed in the first place. 1
We need the distinction of operation and observation in order to be able to examine in social theory an insight which is becoming widespread in biological evolutionary theory. This is the realiza- tion that the adaptation of living beings to their environment can- not be traced to cognitive capacities and achievements, but rather that life and adequate adaptation to it must always already be se- cured if a system which can develop cognitive capabilities is to exist. 2 Of course, in the first instance, this is no argument for the same being the case with social systems. But when one gets the problems clear in one's own mind, one soon realizes that if it were to be expected that a system ought to adapt to the environment via
? cognition alone, this would lead to every system demanding more of itself than it could possibly achieve operationally. This is neces- sarily the case if only because given the complexity of the environ- ment, the system does not have the 'requisitive variety' (Ashby). And even the concept of observation is meant to register that the world can never be observed, let alone understood, because every observation generates with an 'unwritten cross' an 'unmarked space' which it does not observe. 3 It is hard to see how systems of con- sciousness or communication-based social systems might break free from this disparity of system and environment. The question can only be what share an environment-related cognition has in the evolutionary opportunities of particular kinds of systems. But what must first be ensured is that the environment tolerates the autopoiesis of the system. In the case of the social system society, then, it must first be ensured that communication connects onto communication and that not every transition from one communication to another would have to keep a check on the entirety of environmental con- ditions necessary for this, that is, would have to communicate, amongst other things, about whether the participants are still alive. Under these conditions, therefore, cognition is primarily deployed in such a way that it is oriented to the inside. The first thing to be sure of is that one communication fits onto another. 4 What is im- portant, then, is adequate behaviour - and not, for example, whether there is enough air to carry a sound from one organism to another. If, unexpectedly, conditions are no longer given, this will be regis- tered as a disturbance and ways out will be sought (again by means of communication).
This leads to the fundamental question of how communication must be, in order that it can not only reproduce itself but also take on cognitive functions and separate reproductive or informational components. The answer is that communication only comes about at all by being able to distinguish utterance and information in its self-observation (in understanding). Without this distinction, com- munication would collapse, and participants would have to rely on perceiving something which they would only be able to describe as behaviour. 5 The difference of utterance and information corresponds precisely with the requirement of not making the progress of com- munication to communication dependent upon information being
? complete and relevant. And only because this primary, constitutive difference exists can communication code itself in a binary form (for example, with regard to acceptable/not acceptable, relevant/ not relevant) and in this way feel its way around the environment with a distinction for which there is no correlate whatever in the environment itself. Without this distinction, which has been en- tered into its own operation, the system would not be capable of constituting any recognizable identities or developing any memory. Nor could it evolve, or build up its own complexity, or test the possibilities for structuration positively/negatively and thus meet the minimum condition for the continuation of its own autopoiesis. 6 Society as we know it would be impossible.
For the same reasons, no great expectations can be placed on the understanding of communication. Expectations can certainly be raised forcibly, but they then require special differentiated dis- courses. Normally, ambivalences and misunderstandings are borne along as well, as long as they do not block communication; indeed, understanding is practically always a misunderstanding without an understanding of the mis.
It is a big jump from these general systems-theoretical and social- theoretical considerations to the mass media of modern society. The function of the mass media lies after all that in the directing of self-observation of the social system7 - by which we do not mean one specific object amongst others, but a way of splitting the world into system (that is, society) and environment. What is involved is a universal, not an object-specific observation. We have already spoken, in another context,8 of the function of the system's memory which provides a background reality for all further communica- tions, which in turn is constantly reimpregnated by the mass me- dia. What is also involved is an observation which itself generates the conditions of its own possibility and in this sense occurs autopoietically. For the uncertainty as well as the distinctions used for observation are products of the system and are not simply pre- given attributes of the world or ontologically or transcendentally provable decomponates ('categories') of the unity of the world. This means also that the impetus for further communication is repro- duced within the system itself and cannot be explained anthropo- logically, as a drive for knowledge, for example.
? Therefore, one cannot comprehend the 'reality of the mass me- dia' if one sees its task in providing relevant information about the world and measuring its failure, its distortion of reality, its ma- nipulation of opinion against this - as if it could be otherwise. The mass media realize in society precisely that dual structure of repro- duction and information, of continuation of an always already adapted autopoiesis and cognitive willingness to be irritated. Their preference for information, which loses its surprise value through publication, that is, is constantly transformed into non-informa- tion, makes it clear that the function of the mass media consists in the constant generation and processing of irritation - and neither in increasing knowledge nor in socializing or educating people in conformity to norms. The descriptions of the world and of society to which modern society orients itself within and outside the sys- tem of its mass media arise as a factual effect of this circular perma- nent activity of generating and interpreting irritation through information tied to a particular moment (that is, as a difference which makes a difference).
Of course, it should not be implied that irritation happens only in the system of the mass media and not, for example, in marriages, in school lessons or in other interactions; just as power is present not only in the political system, standardizations not only in the law, truth not only in science. Irritability is the most general struc- tural characteristic of autopoietic systems, which in modern de- scription occupies that place once accorded to nature and to the essence of things defined as nature. 9 Irritability arises from the sys- tem having a memory that is actively involved in all operations and therefore being able to experience and balance out inconsistencies - which means nothing other than being able to generate reality. This points to a recursive constitutive context of memory, irritabil- ity, information processing, reality construction and memory. The differentiation of a function system specialized in this serves to improve and simultaneously normalize a means of communication likewise specialized in this. Only from the mass media do we ex- pect this special performance every day, and only thus is it possible to arrange modern society in its execution of communication in an endogenously restless way like a brain and thereby prevent it hav- ing too strong a link to established structures.
? In contrast to the function system of the mass media, science can be specialized in cognitive gains, that is, in social learning proc- esses, whilst the system of law takes on the ordering of expectation which is normative, held onto in spite of the facts and to this extent unwilling to learn. However, the cognitive/normative division be- tween science and law can never divide up among itself and thereby cover the entire orientational requirement of social communica- tion. Under normal circumstances social communication is oriented towards neither science nor the law. But neither can it be left in modern global society to the merely local everyday knowledge that is only found in the nearest vicinity. Accordingly, it seems to be the function of the mass media to remedy this neither cognitively nor normatively specified requirement. The mass media guarantee all function systems a present which is accepted throughout society and is familiar to individuals, and which they can take as given when it is a matter of selecting a system-specific past and establish- ing decisions about future expectations important to the system. Other systems, depending on their own requirements, can then adapt themselves to the past reference of their anticipation; for example, the economy can adapt itself to new circumstances in companies or in the market, and on this basis establish their own connections between their past and their future.
It was Parsons who saw that the particular contribution of the mass media to the 'interchanges' of modern society lies in the in- crease in levels of freedom of communication - analogous to the function of money in the economy. 10 This diagnosis can be broad- ened if one additionally takes into consideration the increase in society's capacity for irritation and the recursive interweaving of mass media communication with everyday communication in the interactions and organizations of society. On the one hand, the mass media draw communication in, on the other, they stimulate ongoing communication. 11 So they continuously apply new com- munication to the results of previous communication. In this sense they are responsible for the production of modern society's 'Eigenvalues' - those relatively stable orientations in the cognitive, the normative and the evaluative domain which cannot be given ab extra but rather arise out of operations being applied recursively to their own results. 12
? It seems that a centuries-old tradition has led us astray, with the result that mass media appear in an unfavourable light. The tradi- tion says that the stability of the social system rests upon consensus - or even on an explicitly/implicitly agreed social contract, and if no longer upon a commonly held religion, then at least on consen- sually accepted background convictions, encapsulated in Jiirgen Habermas's concept of lifeworld. Were this not the case, the mass media would be a destabilizing factor, only out to destroy these presuppositions and to replace them with something the French might call symbolic violence.
In fact, however, the stability (= reproductive capacity) of soci- ety is based in the first instance on the generation of objects, which can be taken as given in further communication. 13 It would be much too risky to rely primarily on contracts or on consensuses that can be called for as a normative requirement. Objects arise out of the recursive functioning of communication without prohibiting the opposing side. And they only leave residual problems for deciding the issue of whether one wants to agree or disagree. Modern soci- ety owes it to the mass media that such objects 'exist', and it would be hard to imagine how a society of communicative operations that extends far beyond individual horizons of experience could func- tion if this indispensable condition were not secured through the communication process itself.
This merely serves to re-confirm the fact that communication has a problem of time to solve in the first instance, and this also applies to the mass media in particular which operate under pres- sures of acceleration. The problem is how one gets from one com- munication to the next, especially if the social system has become highly complex and non-transparent to itself and takes on an enor- mous variety every day which it has to transfer as irritation over to communication. It is impossible to make this dependent upon a previously secured consensus that is to be made sure of operation- ally. On the contrary: every explicit communication poses the ques- tion of acceptance and rejection anew, puts consensus at stake, knowing full well that it is still possible to communicate further even and especially where dissent exists. Under modern conditions, this risking of dissent, this testing of communication by communi- cation, is more or less freed of any inhibitions. This is precisely
? vVhv communication has to be run alongside objects constituted by itself which can be treated as topics. It is therefore incumbent upon the mass media in the first instance to generate familiarity and vary it from moment to moment so that in the following communica- tion one can risk provoking either acceptance or rejection.
This analysis can be summarized in a theory of the memory of society. A system which is able to observe the system/environment difference generated by its operations needs a temporal double ori- entation for its observing operations (or, with Spencer Brown, for bringing about the re-entry of this difference into the system). This double orientation, comprising a memory on the one hand and an open future on the other, maintains the possibility of oscillating between the two sides of any distinction. 14 The problem which is posed for the social system and is essentially solved through the mass media is as follows: how memory function and oscillator func- tion can be combined if only the present, that is, practically no time at all, is available to do so. 15 And that is just another form of the old question as to how a complex system can secure sufficient re- dundancy and sufficient variety at the same time.
If one wants to describe the function of memory with regard to the future right from the start, one must let go of the psychologi- cally plausible idea that memory has the task, only needed occa- sionally, of recalling past events. Rather, memory is performing a constantly co-occurring discrimination of forgetting and remem- bering that accompanies all observations even as they occur. The main part of this activity is the forgetting, whereas only exception- ally is something remembered. For without forgetting, without the freeing up of capacities for new operations, the system would have no future, let alone opportunities for oscillating from one side to the other of the distinctions used in each instance. To put it an- other way: memory functions as a deletion of traces, as repression and as occasional inhibiting of repression. It recalls something, however short- or long-term, when the current operations offer an occasion to repeat, to 'reimpregnate' freed capacities. 16 It does not follow from this that memory operates with reference to the envi- ronment, serving the ongoing adaptation of the system to changing circumstances in its environment. It may indeed look that way to an external observer (with a memory of his or her own). However,
? in the system itself all that is going on is a constantly re-activated internal test of consistency, in which the memory performs recur- sions and organizes the system's resistance to surprising new de- mands placed on meaning. And as we have already said, it is through resistance of the system's operations to the system's operations that the system generates reality.
The feats of memory of communicative systems in general and of the mass media in particular are furnished by topics of communi- cation. For only that which can organize a sequence of contribu- tions and is open for future yes or no options will coagulate around a topic. Topics are extracts of communicative relevances, 'local' modules, as it were, which can be swapped and changed as re- quired. As a result they make possible a highly differentiated memory that can tolerate and indeed facilitate a rapid change of topic with the proviso of return to topics put aside at that moment.
All function systems have a memory specific to them. Thus, for example, the money economy has a memory that is designed to forget the origin of amounts of money paid in each instance, so that turnovers may occur more easily. 17 The memory of the mass media likewise functions internally to the system, but additionally produces functions appropriate for the entire social system. Obvi- ously this social use of the mass media constantly to link past and future is connected to the extremely high expectations of redun- dancy and variety which modern society poses and which it must attribute temporally and take account of via the distinction of past and future. For without this temporal, dimensional stretching, on- going reconstructed reality would collapse due to internal contra- dictions. And it is not least this which explains that this feat requires strong selectors which in turn must be protected by differentiation and operational closure.
? 14
The Public
It may be gathered from the preceding observations what kind of questions need to be asked about the 'function' of the mass media. They make a contribution towards society's construction of real- ity. Part of this includes a constant reactualization of the self-de- scription of society and its cognitive world horizons, be this in a form marked by consensus or dissent (for example, when the real causes of the 'dying of the forests' are at issue). The mass media may not have an exclusive claim on constructing reality. After all, every communication contributes to constructing reality in what it takes up and what it leaves to forgetting. However, the involvement of the mass media is indispensable when the point at issue is widespread dissemination and the possibility of anonymous and thus unpredictable uptake. As paradoxical as it may sound, this means not least, when it is a matter of generating non- transparency in reactions to this uptake. The effect if not the func- tion of the mass media seems to lie, therefore, in the reproduction of non-transparency through transparency, in the reproduction of non-transparency of effects through transparency of knowledge. This means, in other words, in the reproduction of future.
This at first paradoxical thesis, only resolvable through the distinc- tion of past and present that is present in each instance, can be treated further if one distinguishes between the system of the mass media and the public. In order to do this, we must first introduce a concept of the 'public' which differs clearly enough from the system of the mass media as well as from the concept of 'public opinion'.
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