Chapter 2: The Reaction Package

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will change.


Those humans in The Dawn of Media created, simply by the experience of existing, the reaction package that is present in every human being on the face of the planet today.

The package includes conflict, progress, disaster, consequence, prominence, proximity, timeliness, human interest, novelty, sex, and sensationalism.

Conflict was, and is, basic. We are born with an inner conflict that starts to bug us as early as three or four years old. In Dawn of Media, conflict is everywhere. Finding food. Finding water. Trying to drink water that made them sick. Tension between groups. Fear versus courage. Dominance versus passivity. Earthquakes and eruptions. A deer not moving. Predator animals. Darkness. The sky, and what came from it. Unknowns, wherever they presented themselves. A firestorm. Death.

Progress was where they discovered it. Discovering a brother in the earth, to whom appeals could be made. Discovering the taste of blood, and then of animal flesh. Defenses against predators. Weapons for hunting and defense.

Disasters were sudden, and terrifying. Tribes decimated by fire. A leader lost.

Consequence was all around them, though they probably couldn’t articulate, even in their thinking, the connection between cause and effect. They did, however, leaning over the body of a dead leader, know about fear of things to come. Part of that fear was an awareness that the leader had made those connections for them. The leader saw danger in the impact of this fire, and as they wondered what to do, he took action to move his people out of the fire’s way.

Prominence was important. The leader was different from the others. He seemed to know things, and he had an air of dominance. He was always kept in sight, and given preferential treatment by the group. A leader dying, or being killed, was the worst thing that could happen.

Proximity meant belonging to a group and sharing its codes. What happened in their group was important to them; what happened within other groups was not. It also meant being near or far from an event, like a fire, ignoring the far ones and compelled to action by the near ones.

Timeliness meant finding shelter before darkness, preparing for the night, and knowing what activities day permitted, and night didn’t. Timeliness meant watching the sun, which could tell a leader when the cold time was coming.

Human interest was a feeling, a moving that could be felt in the chest, not understood but nevertheless there. Children could trigger the feeling, and the death of a leader.

The groups lived in a world that was as novel to them as today’s world is novel to a baby. They had no way to replace curiosity with knowledge, except through experience, and experiences, when connections didn’t yet exist between cause and effect, were very slow in becoming complete. They passed their lives in fascination of thunder, and a completely separate fascination with lightning.

Sex is sex. Then, as now, humans were attracted to it in the most fundamental way.

Sensational things were all around them. Of course, they were easily awed, in such a novel world. Events routinely stopped them in their tracks. Then there were the earthquakes, fires, and mountain cats howling in the night.