Technological Colonization of Albanian Culture

It says: Ergis Mertiri

Consumer culture is the inevitable result of a long process of emancipating modern societies from human nature, which, we can say, begins with the myth of reason and continues with a series of political, economic and cultural developments, where technology holds an important place. The myth of reason did not bring about a legitimate set of values, nor an improvement of human cognitive abilities in modern societies, but led to the production of ideology that, like old world myths, formulate simplified interpreting schemes on society in the function of their political and cultural design. Totalitarianism is one of the logical consequences of this process.

The other is the cynical nihilism of a world incapable of building a common set of values. Consumer culture is the inevitable result of this process, in which, ironically, reason becomes even poorer than in traditional societies. THE view of MASAVE One of the important concepts that mark industrial societies is that of “mass association”, which, according to Hannah Arendt, tells of a destroyed society that encompasses all features of crowd psychology: lack of standards, of being alone, the inability to think, the consumption capacity of all egos and alienation. Initially, this process appears in Philistineism, where art and culture lose their universal values, becoming the medium of rich new population classes, 2/6 in the function of their need to gain a higher social standing. This made culture viewed as a valuable commodity. It becomes a coin with which the Philistine buys his social status. However, Arendt says that no matter how much the association of the period of Philistineism devalued, used and abused cultural objects, she did not of “calculated”, as is true today.

The arrival of mass society makes it possible to create another standard, where society no longer cares about culture in itself but only about entertainment. The culture industry uses culture as an entertainment consumer commodity. Unlike the nature of art and culture whose objects are valued through longevity, products of the culture industry are quickly consumed and served freshly. The culture produced by this type of industry does not require anything to resist time but, rather, to be quickly consumed so that new products can be produced, constantly filling the unspoiled market need for consumption.

So entertainment robs culture. This subject has been recovered from many social scientists. Douglas Kellner and Herbert Marquez have developed a criticism of societies by recounting the role of technology. Marquez views technology in general, especially television, sports, and sex as cultural production tools. He judges that they are used as a means of controlling individuality and softening social response, causing individuals to lose their ability to think critically about society. So culture is no longer generated spontaneously by societies, but through such tools, of control, which have led to human transformation into a one-dimensional “ ”).

According to him, modern technology is an incentive to totalitarianism, as an effective means of slavery to dominate people, limiting and conquering the inner freedom of social actors. Kellner, processes the concept of technology, with which it marks consumer culture, where consumer goods and entertainment, including computerized information, dominate culture in modern societies. Technology is created through new cultural products that are coordinating “daily life”, such as “spectals, images, ethictics of comforts” etc. Kellner puts the emphasis on television as an important part of this industry, viewing it as a threat not only to culture but also to democracy, individuality and freedom.
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After the fall of the communist regime, Albanians received a new cultural and political orientation, being oriented by Europe. However, the long totalitarian ideology made it difficult for this orientation to be properly absorbed and Europeanization became more a myth than a clear political and cultural project. Europe became more projective of the unabated desire for consumption, without thinking about the system of values that holds European societies.
3/6 Europe was made for Albanians the projection of the need to have all of those goods missing in 50 years of extreme poverty, under conditions of economic survival where even minimal food needs could not be guaranteed. Europe became the dream and greed of a hungry people. In the general rhetoric of these three decades, European integration is perceived more as a process of modernisation, which, in fact, produces more imitations of Western models through means of communication.

Being European means being modern and being modern means breaking away from the old, from tradition, cultural heritage that comes from the past. Like everything, any aspirations of Albanian society come dialectically, as a mechanism to eradicate something existing. Albanians are currently transitioning to a cultural transition, where follow-up has broken. The Albanian Europe is an abstract perception that does not respond to any concrete country, which has more to do with consumer society than with the real culture of European societies. Albanians tend to equate European culture with global culture, the culture of measures, as it does through consumerism. For this reason, modernisation of the country has already become a deep process of agriculture, which implements those very features of consumer culture, criticised by many Western scholars.

In essence, Albanian culture has been reduced to a reflectedly implemented technology as a result of the absorption power of new means of communication, as well as a completely materialistic and hedonistic lifestyle. This, of course, has produced a series of major problems of social, cultural, political and economic nature. Albanians today are an easily manipulable people, unable to evaluate critically and filter goods, principles or views that are served by various mass processing agencies. Consequently, they are easily victimised by abusive politics and unable to establish barriers or to organise in defence of their values and lives. Backing to Kellner, Albanian technology has produced a model of society where consumer culture, consumer goods, as well as entertainment, dominate unhurtly. This new culture is colonizing social life through entertainment, manipulative image, aesthetics, and commercial products. /Panorama/