#media spin

On page 21 of California by Kevin Starr, he describes the Spanish Explorer’s willingness to believe in fanciful tales like those of cities of gold or fountains of youth.  Specifically he says “Today it is easy to dismiss such stories as fairy tales, but in the early sixteenth century, among a people not yet fully emerged from a medieval mindset and gifted with vivid imaginations, such myths and legends possessed the power to motivate some of the most arduous and heroic overland and maritime expeditions in human history.”  This is rather sweeping and grandiose, and it seems foolish to describe actions motivated by apparent greed and ending in the destruction of entire populations as “heroic.”  Further it seems to obscure historical processes and perpetuate a certain arrogance in assuming a “medieval mindset” – something we apparently don’t have to worry about anymore – as the agent for human gullibility.

These “heroic” men were apparently looking for what the stories had promised them (as you can learn from a closer reading of the Calafia tale), specifically beautiful and exotic women who would marry them, convert to their religions and in doing assure European ego’s of their superiority, all while presenting them with their very kingdoms, gold jewels and a life of leisure in terrestrial paradise.  These men ended up affording that leisure with the slave labor of Indians, and while they didn’t find any ravishing, willing, amazons they did find plenty of opportunities for rape.

Again, I don’t think this is a product of some former mindset humans have evolved past.  Large endeavors with gruesome consequence are still organized around media spin and the manipulation of public opinion through modern lies and ‘fairy tales,’ i.e. a foreign invasion will be greeted as a liberating force of democracy, or individual terrorist acts that come with the promised reward of 'virgins’ in heaven.