statist television

it's analog tv year zero today as a centrally planned redistribution of wealth to cable companies, electronics manufacturers, and retailers becomes manditory for those who want to remain plugged into the master manipulator...i have plunked down abouy $250 to keep my household ( there is significant pressure from others to keep it so) and my mother's connected to engineered desires...i have vented my frustrations on the fcc and in various blogs...but somehow this is not enough...there are allegedly millions of households unprepared for today who would want what i have but do not want...odd how life can work that way...desire it and it proves elusive...or, after a protracted pusuit of your desire it turns out to be unexpectedly unfulfilling....something wrong with desire? or just what we desire? i'm not sure, but i think the fact that this economy functions by creating desires that might not be there otherwise plays a part...people allow themselve to be convinced that so many superfluous material things are necessities when they are just so much junk designed to agrandize someone else by padding their profit margin...sixteen months of economic contraction have been an education in that respect... i think the old economy based on growth fueled by cheap energy is broke beyond repair ( even though the powers that be insist on trying to fix it...that's because it's what defines them as an elite and if it cannot be fixed they may be left behind) but even if it is recovered i won't look at it the same way... i was questioning what i did and why i did it before this all started, and i am doing more of it now...examining your motivations probably won't make you happy...but it will make you change.

mail call

another long holiday weekend that has been routinely dull and uneventfull (all the cool people seem to be out of town...which is to be expected, but i don't have to like it)...dull at least until i ambled out to the mailbox to peruse what the post washed in....in what i can only hope is high, swiftian satire my union local has sent me a 2009 "pocket planner" on the twenty-third of may along with a letter bemoaning these "tremulous times" and aprising us of the cost-cutting measures they have undertaken ( the local's journal will be bi-annual instead of quarterly and they will only be sending out targeted mailings dealing with referendums on school bond issues because that may be the only work left) and soliciting our "...patience and steadfast support of our union and our elected leaders ( i cannot begin to tell you how wrong i feel that is...see my myspace blog) during this time."...along with a pencil, some bumper stickers, and a lapel pin, this may be the sole return on my membership in this organization this year...but the irony and pathos doesn't stop there...old ed peper, the north american vicce-presidient of chevrolet motors has written to me to reassure me that in these "turbulent times" ( a lot of alliteration in these letters, no?) he and the folks at chevy want me to be sure that they are "...committed to fulfilling your transportation needs." ed, it seems, has been with chevy for four of its ninety-eight years and is in a position to know my needs, and he seems to think i need to know about chevy's new "awesome" compact the cruze (sp?) and the "..chevy volt, the world's first extended-range electric vehicle." a panacea for a "energy challenged world." so the new doomed continue to cling to old forms with new facades rather than re-orienting themselves to a smaller, more local world with some scaled down expectations...denial runs deep, but with any luck enough people will realize that the old economy died last fall and that things will never be the same...less poor is the new rich...we all have adjustments to make...let's not let them confuse us about the realities of the situation and the necessity of the choices

language, architecture, and you

so much of culture is designed to reinforce the elite that sometimes it's hard to see..it's just second nature..so mundane you hardly notice...unless you're not part of the hegemony...then it's plain as could be. nativists everywhere insist on the use of the "national" language as a symbol of belonging. this may be co-opted by elites as a rationalization, but the destruction of language is an honored tactic in an elite's colonialization of a people. language can provide shelter for cultural resistance to an elite's purpose, and their attcks on it don't have so much to do with belonging as eliminating the establishment (or perpetuation) of an alternative to the elite's influence and control. at some point most peripheral european languages have been repressed and subgbornly maintained at the same time. the irish kept gaelic alive when the british banned its teaching through the use of "hedge schools". my carpatho-rusyn grandmother was a subject of the austro-hungarian empire and bitterly resented the use of the hungarian language at school. the language of a stateless people is always at risk. how many languages have been destroyed under the guise of "assimilation"? and isn't acceptance of an elite's authority a central issue in their concept of assimilation? an offensive against a language is an offensive against a culture...shouldn't acceptance cut both ways? it would if it were voluntary...there's nothing voluntary about being subjugated...elites may not be nationalistic...indeed elites are trans-national, but adopting nationalist forms can provide them with additional weapons in their war against the "other".
the use of space is another facet of elite control. why are "official" buildings so massive? the scale is meant to intimidate and engender the feeling of what geert mak calls ant-ness...the smallness of the individual in the face of the collective power of the elite..like a massive military or an efficient secret police its aim is to project authority and absoluteness...even in its ruins...state buildings can be rendolent of a past greatness (look at rome) that can be utilized by elites that claim direct descent from that past culture (look at mussolini...and why are so many building from britan's imperial era and those things along the mall in washington dc neo-classical?) hitler and speer evolved a concept of "ruins architecture", and their plans for germania ( to be built after the clearing of the rubble from bombed out berlin) were based, in part, on the size and qualituy of ruins those buildings would leave as a testament to future germans about the power of the third reich. urban centers here are full of architecture that speaks of corporate power...they are not accomodating to human existance...stand at the bottom of what was the sears tower ( i don't give a rat's ass what they've renamed it or their
ballparks either) and look up...what's human about that? "it's a struggle to see what's at the end of your nose." (that may not be exact, but it's at least close to what orwell said...same spirit anyway) reinforcing of the hegemonistic culture goes on every day...stop and give it a thought now and then...you may not be happier, but you'll have a more realistic picture of how you live.
happy mother's day to all you moms out there!

change

change is an anathema to elites because what is defines them as an elite and must be preserved...they may be fluid in adopting some new strategies to maintain what is , but like capital's ( and so the elite's) addiction to profit, that need to be defined as an elite frames their percertions and limits their actions. everything relates back to how it impacts their status. a box they cannot escape from. so elites will not sanction collective behavior thay cannot control...uncontrolled behavior can lead to uncontrolled change. banks that have shown a profit in the first quarter of 2009 ( the recesstion/depression may be easing for wall street, but not for those of us who work for a living) are declaring their intention to pay back bail-out funds and so avoid new regulations....that could lead to a change on how things are done, and protocols, mechanisms, and methodologies could change. they may not be set in stone but they are embedded in highly vicous mud so they're hard to move around.

you me and the elite

Our society is a complex maze of interaction and insular activity in front of the television or the computer screen that is engineered to maintain the status quo and butress the elite's hold on power. Social institutuions and the media play pivotal roles in this daily manipulation in which our thinking is channeled in specific directions by the blatant and subtle suggestions of advertizers, politicians, journalists, educators,and clerics. They all have behavioral agendas they want us to adopt, and their work is litterd with visiual, verbal, and written clues about where our behavior should lead us.. From the images they show to the vocabulary they choose, they are reinforcing social structures and framing debate in way that will allow us to reach only conclusions that leave us subject to their authority. This directional control is obscured by by an apparent wealth of social and consumerist choices. You can be a Democrat or a Republican, a conservative or a liberal, a Catholic or a Baptist, a worker or a manager, a student or a teacher. You can drive a Honda or a a Ford, eat at home or at Olive Garden, listen to rap or country, watch the News Hour or TMZ. In the end all those choices lead to the same place...safely within the boundaries of extant social constructions. Limited disorder can be tolerate or even encouraged to vent growing frustration or resentment, but all the behaviors society positively sanctions serve to enhance the control exercised by the elite.
Social manipulation that directs us to insular activites such as consumerism or the pursuit of economic statis serve to short-circuit collective thinking that could endanger the status-quo. A veneer of "rugged individualism" and "enlightened self-interset" serves as a mechanism that divides collective thinking by focusing thouight on personal agendas. The aquisiton of material status serves the dual purpose of enriching the elite who profit from consumerism and curtailing the recognition of shared needs and desires. Moving forward as a group towards a collective goal usually means giving up some individual desires and initiatives in order to support a broader agenda. Engineered self-interest and desire are an effective damper on the necessary compromise inherent in group actions.
For the elites of society then, "character" is subservience to the social institutions, and belief in the overall wisdom and good intentions, if not ethical goodness, of the system. Genuine criticism that coulf lead to real change must be co-opted and marginalized or repressed as alien and dangerous. Substantive change is not possible friom within the system. Any attempt to do so will inevitably run into the legal and philosophicalconstraints promulgated by the system for its own survival. Real change must start with a change of viewpoint and an effort to think outside of institutional limits.
Like Roosevelt a generation ago (for me anyway) Obama and congress seem bent on rescuing what was. I have little interest in that. We need a social system that considers the needs of all its members on an equal basis and acts on them before even considering rewards for innovation or excellence ( those do need to recognized, but there must be limits). A sustainable and innovative economy doesn't need to be one that generates increasing wealth for an elite. A stationary economy can sustain a burgeoning poulation...it simply needs to grow at a pace that can absorb the new levels of need...a balance of need and resources is going to have to come...the sooner the better...the alternative is misery and death for billions...and that may happen anyway if the climate ceases to be supportive...but it shouldn't happen because we can't...or won't... discard unsupportable patterns of thought about what is important.

hope?

i'm hearing this word alot recently, and there's nothing wrong with hope...as long as it's tempered by a good deal of realism...barak's a step in the right direction as far as changing perceptions of ourselves as a nation and other's perceptions of us...better (less unilateral and exceptionalist) relations with the rest of the world will be something of a relief...but as far as substantive change goes...good luck...cosmetic changes, sure..the tone of voice will change, but the system will not...career bureaucrats will change style to suit the new boss, but the rules won't change much...barak's a lawyer and a politician...a smooth talker who has peopled his adminstration with cronies and washington insiders...moving towards the center since his election...he is part of the system, and will stay within its constraints...it is not neutral...it favors wealth, and they will have their way or there will be a new president in 2012...old bill clinton was supposed to be good for working people and all we got was nafta and bad judgement about office etiquette...in the end barak will not change the system, it will change him...i hear a lot of parallels drawn between obama and roosevelt...both inherited economic messes and fdr had a co-operative congress to a point, but there was always resistance to the new deal and as time went on it stiffened...that resistance was premepted by ww2, but as soon as it was over and roosevelt was dead the foes of the new deal began to dismantle it until virtually all that's left is social secutiry...ask a consevative how they feel about that...the system can't be fixed because it isn't broke..it's functioning as its designers intended...to protect wealth from the mob...read the federalist papers sometime...barak won't win if he tries to undo it...his time in office is limited ( another reaction to roosevelt) the system's is not.

opportunity

there is a good deal of economic chaos going on...the herd mentality on wall street has no idea where to turn...they call it volatillity in the market...i'm inclined to call it panic at the realization that all those pompous pronouncements by market analysts, politicians, and economists are unfounded speculation and wishful thinking ( economics seems to me to be nothing more tham an academic search for a rationalization for greed...which is pretty much what's brought us to this pass in the first place) the govenment handed the oversight systen to greed and it took advantage of the laxity to all our detrements...no-one is in control, and no-one can be because no-one can understand all the variables involved in causality...they can only convince themselves they do. there is an opportunity, as we try to understand what has happened, to re-think our priorities and try to move in a more sustainable direction. profit will have to count for much less than common good if we are going to provide for the nine billion people due by mid-century. franklin roosevelt helped to save capitalism in the last century by forcing it to accept that it couldn't have things all its own way...the lesson obviously didn't take. barak obama will not succeed either. he is a politician and as such constrained to work within a system that has had over two-hundred to entrench its methodology and mores. its reliance on the market and the profit motive are the problem. individualism has a place in many aspects of human life...crative self-expression demmands it...but not in decisions that impact us all. the way we feed ourselves, how we are houses, how linited resouces are alloted, the organization of the system that looks after our health...these are things that should be above profit...it could be done. it would require some education...a set of principles defining commual good and a methodology to re-enforce its acceptance as an imperative...but it is completely do-able with the proper mind set. we are all responsible and accountable...somewhere along the line we need to accept production for use as a first principle and learn to measure progress as something other growth in gdp and the number of billionaires we can boast.