The Centralization Of Memory

Once upon a time we used to think of the expropriation of power as being related mainly to land ownership or communal autonomy, but  these days we realize that the expropriation of power reaches into the deepest recesses of the individual, expropriating their personhood, laying claim to their very thoughts and emotions.
Within society there have always been claims on our mind, there have always been priests and shamans to direct our thoughts as best they can, but until the rise of the Roman Church, beliefs and  thoughts emerged from within autonomous societies.
Only with the rise of the Roman Church, with its adoration of patriarchal hierarchy, its alliance with the robber barons, was a systematic centralized thought system imposed on the ordinary people.
Once upon a time the myths of a society, and with it a society's religion, were handed down orally from generation to generation. Each generation would memorize its own story and embellish and adapt it with the telling. In such a way were the scriptures of the Hebrews, handed down orally, learned by memory, and passed on for hundreds of years. Likewise the stories of Homer and the Greek myths were passed on from mouth to mouth, as were the epics of the Norse and the Irish and the Welsh and the Germans.
Each individual, within the mental confines of each community created their own memory, bestowing each act, each event, with their own importance.
Then came reading.
Reading and writing was the magic power of the priests for hundreds of years. With the written word the memory was destroyed and knowledge put in the hands of 'experts'. But, with the printing press people began to take back that power.
Ever since, there has been a struggle to take away the press from the people by the vested interests of power, usually by means of censorship, murder and torture.
In the twentieth century the world was interpreted through state controlled newspapers, radio and television, or the media of powerful semi private interests. Shared memories, such as Cup Finals, the careers of pop musicians, the deaths of princesses and presidents, became as important as the major events of our own lives, as we could share them with the anonymous crowd, hollowing out the validity of own humble existences in an abject submission to hierarchy.
But, the age of the herd, the age of the totalitarian memory imposed from on high: is it at its apex, is it about to disintegrate, or is it a movie that's set to run and run?