Humor/Philosophy: CFR, a Joseph Heller Story #1

 

The Medium is the Mess-age: A CFR Tale of Infinite Irony

Scene One: The Meeting to Plan the Meeting

The Council on Foreign Relations had convened yet again, this time for a meeting to plan their next meeting. The air in the room buzzed with anticipation, an energy fueled by the sheer complexity of their task: to discuss how to better define the media as the ultimate arbiter of truth.

At the head of the table, Major Medium McLuhan adjusted his glasses and looked over at his colleagues, each of them surrounded by stacks of reports, digital projections, and abstract diagrams illustrating the most important media platforms.

"We need to explore the essence of the narrative we control," McLuhan declared, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow. "The media is the message, after all. But we also need to determine how to frame that message—how to shape it so subtly that even when it’s questioned, it reinforces our power."

Colonel Context, his ever-loyal assistant, nodded enthusiastically. "Right, we’ll make sure to control the message by controlling the medium. The platform, the format—those are the real vehicles."

And then there was Barrett Dylan Brown, seated slightly apart from the Council, scribbling in his notebook. Barrett was an outsider—a philosopher who had wandered into the CFR symposium after hearing about their "influence on global discourse." A former academic turned skeptic, he found himself both fascinated and disturbed by the Council’s operations.

"Excuse me, but," Barrett interrupted, raising his hand lazily, "if the medium is the message, doesn’t that mean you’re already trapped in your own game? If you control the platform, don’t you also become a prisoner of the platform’s limitations?"

There was a long, awkward silence. Everyone at the table stared at him, unsure if he was serious. Barrett had that way about him—constantly making valid points while simultaneously sounding like he was mocking everyone in the room.

General Consensus, ever the pragmatist, was the first to respond. "Barrett, my friend, you’re missing the beauty of it. We control the narrative by controlling the form. That’s the brilliance of it—we set the rules while pretending we’re not even involved."

Barrett leaned back in his chair, his brow furrowing as he considered this. "So you’re telling me that you’re not just manipulating content, but also people's perception of reality itself?"

"Exactly!" Colonel Context chimed in, “We make the world believe they’re seeing truth while we make sure they only see what we want them to see.”

Barrett couldn’t help but smirk. “Ah, yes. The grand illusion. Which leads to another question: If you’re controlling the illusion, aren’t you also being controlled by it? Are you, in fact, the message?”

---

Scene Two: The Symptom of Control

Later that evening, as the CFR members gathered for cocktails, Barrett found himself in a quiet corner of the room, pondering his thoughts on the paradoxical structure of the Council’s existence.

"You're too cynical for your own good," General Consensus remarked, sidling up next to him. "You’ve got to understand—our job is to create a controlled narrative. It’s not about power in the traditional sense. It’s about shaping the message to ensure that, no matter how you slice it, we’re always at the center."

"But what happens when you try to become the center of everything?" Barrett countered. "You lose all perspective. You become trapped inside a bubble, one of your own making. Doesn’t that make you… irrelevant?"

Consensus laughed loudly, a sound that felt more like a cough. "Irrelevant? Oh no, my friend. Irrelevant is what happens to the people who don't know how to play the game. We're the game-makers."

Across the room, Colonel Context was already drafting the first in a new series of reports: “How to Prevent Narrative Fracturing by Maintaining Media Consistency.”

But Barrett wasn’t convinced. If the medium was indeed the message, the real question was whether anyone at the table truly understood the depth of their manipulation, or whether they were simply feeding into their own narrative, like marionettes on a string. What if the true message—the one they thought they controlled—was simply: we don’t control anything at all?

---

Scene Three: The Moment of Truth

The Council had gathered for their final discussion on the symposium's theme. McLuhan began with his usual fervor. "We've concluded that it’s not enough to control the message, the true power lies in embedding the message so deeply into the medium that no one even knows it's there."

Barrett’s eyes narrowed. "So what you're telling me," he said, standing up and cutting through the debate like a blade, "is that you’re so good at controlling the narrative that you’ve convinced yourselves the narrative is controlling you."

The room fell silent. Even General Consensus appeared momentarily disoriented. It was a simple observation—too simple, perhaps—but Barrett knew that sometimes, the simplest truths were the hardest to grasp.

"If the medium is the message," Barrett continued, "then you’ve made the medium into a prison that you can never escape. And you’ve convinced yourselves that the walls are actually freedom."

There was a long pause. The Council members exchanged glances, unsure how to proceed. Colonel Context scribbled a note furiously: "Do we need a task force to investigate if we are, in fact, the message?"

"Well, Barrett," McLuhan said finally, smiling thinly, "maybe you’re right. But in the end, whether we’re the message or not, the important thing is—we’re the ones making the rules."

Barrett grinned wryly. "Ah, yes. The rules of the game you created, which you can never win because you’ve already defined the game to make losing impossible. How… elegant."

---

The Final Spin

As the evening drew to a close, Barrett left the CFR headquarters, still unsure whether his mind had been blown or whether he had merely discovered the truth about the Council’s perpetual state of confusion. But one thing was clear: the medium was no longer just a message. It was a prison. A beautifully constructed, self-reinforcing prison where the game-makers thought they controlled the rules, but the game itself controlled them.

As the doors of the CFR closed behind him, Barrett couldn’t help but laugh. It wasn’t a cruel laugh, nor a mocking one. It was a laugh of pure existential recognition—one that could only come from someone who had glimpsed the true nature of the medium, and found that it had always been the message.

---

Epilogue: The Endless Narrative

Back inside, the Council members continued to draft their reports, write their speeches, and spin their narratives. They had not been convinced by Barrett’s arguments. To them, he was an anomaly, a misguided philosopher, lost in the maze of media theory.

But in their hearts, each one knew that Barrett might have had a point.

Yet, as they sat in their towering office, the windows looking out over the city lights, they also knew something else: the narrative was no longer just about controlling the story. It was about endless stories—stories within stories, layers of perception, until they themselves became nothing more than an echo in a chamber of infinite reflections.

And the message? The message was the medium, forever spinning.