Yep. For those who have been paying attention to world events these past decades, this dead-on, clear and concise video doesn't teach us anything new; it just lays it bare.
Realizing that this is a sick, demoralizing and dehumanizing reality is the first step. However, the second step shouldn't be where most of us are at, i.e. blaming corporations.
These corporations aren't plucking money out of the sky; whether as investors or as consumers or both, we willingly give them our money and find weak, self-centered justifications for doing so, constantly closing our eyes on this very reality. It is our collective yet individual-driven consumer lifestyles that create, support, and tolerate this.
Blaming corporations is too easy--it's even become an important industry and genre.
But, in this reality, it all starts with the "I", not with finger pointing.
Only once each of us is willing to play an active part at the individual level can we truly unite towards a real, positive change.
Keep on clicking!
PDL
© 2011, Pascal-Denis Lussier .
It seems to me like today's modern, popular and unquestioned modus vivendi is: stay oblivious, wait 'til it's too late, then bitch & moan and sign tons of ex post facto petitions.
Thanks to the Web, every single concern, real or imagined, now boasts at least one e-petition. There's even specialized sites that make it quick and easy for anyone to post and manage Internet petitions.
But is this really how we choose to unite across the globe, through appeals? Rather passive, no?
And because one signed doesn't mean one cares. It's become an empty, reflexive click that's now greatly simplified thanks to Auto-Fill and the wonders of Web 2.0; a feel good action that's performed in between e-shopping and sharing viral pictures and videos of fools and accidents, and cute animals with atrocious spelling while not bothering to learn about the cause beyond the bold headline. It provides a false sense of action and participation; it dissipates anger but rarely leads anywhere. "Hey! I clicked, I care; now it's up to fate."
The people that follow up are few and far between.
Makes me wonder if targeted entities and governments aren't behind some of these petitions, and how many are fronts to steal info and sell mailing lists.
If we really want a change, firstly, we have to look within and change our own attitudes and behaviours that support all those entities whose very attitudes and behaviours we condemn. Everyone is quick to click against child labour and third-world slavery, but the same people all want really cheap prices or are willing to overpay for exploitative status symbols from companies who are legally bound to their 'public' shareholders to do whatever it takes to give 'em a bigger buck. Likewise, no one wants to see cruelty being done to animals while we blindly eat our share of millions of chickens that are killed daily. etc., etc. I could go on.
And how come we can all rally together when a determining World Cup soccer goal is contested, yet we've allowed a company like Monsanto to exist for so long?
Some petitions do have their place, but why do we generally have to wait until it's too late to react? The info is out there before, but it only seems to become relevant and genuine when it's taken the form of a third-party petition.
If we were all just a little more proactive, all a little more actually involved, perhaps we wouldn't need so many petitions; reactive attitudes can only lead to more of them.
Together, we can do far more than fill databases by clicking on petition buttons.
Although it may seem inappropriate this time, it is my catch phrase: Keep on clicking!
PDL
© 2011, Pascal-Denis Lussier
.
Thanks to the Web, every single concern, real or imagined, now boasts at least one e-petition. There's even specialized sites that make it quick and easy for anyone to post and manage Internet petitions.
But is this really how we choose to unite across the globe, through appeals? Rather passive, no?
And because one signed doesn't mean one cares. It's become an empty, reflexive click that's now greatly simplified thanks to Auto-Fill and the wonders of Web 2.0; a feel good action that's performed in between e-shopping and sharing viral pictures and videos of fools and accidents, and cute animals with atrocious spelling while not bothering to learn about the cause beyond the bold headline. It provides a false sense of action and participation; it dissipates anger but rarely leads anywhere. "Hey! I clicked, I care; now it's up to fate."
The people that follow up are few and far between.
Makes me wonder if targeted entities and governments aren't behind some of these petitions, and how many are fronts to steal info and sell mailing lists.
If we really want a change, firstly, we have to look within and change our own attitudes and behaviours that support all those entities whose very attitudes and behaviours we condemn. Everyone is quick to click against child labour and third-world slavery, but the same people all want really cheap prices or are willing to overpay for exploitative status symbols from companies who are legally bound to their 'public' shareholders to do whatever it takes to give 'em a bigger buck. Likewise, no one wants to see cruelty being done to animals while we blindly eat our share of millions of chickens that are killed daily. etc., etc. I could go on.
And how come we can all rally together when a determining World Cup soccer goal is contested, yet we've allowed a company like Monsanto to exist for so long?
Some petitions do have their place, but why do we generally have to wait until it's too late to react? The info is out there before, but it only seems to become relevant and genuine when it's taken the form of a third-party petition.
If we were all just a little more proactive, all a little more actually involved, perhaps we wouldn't need so many petitions; reactive attitudes can only lead to more of them.
Together, we can do far more than fill databases by clicking on petition buttons.
Although it may seem inappropriate this time, it is my catch phrase: Keep on clicking!
PDL
© 2011, Pascal-Denis Lussier
.
Virgin Records... Now the Virgin Group: from music to beverages, airlines, trains, games, consumer electronics, financial services, films, internet, cable TV, cosmetics, jewellery, house wares, mobile phones, and now spaceships too i.e. see SpaceShipTwo, whose first test “drop flight” occurred on Oct 10. Since NASA and the U.S. government can no longer afford to commercialize space, reaching that next frontier in humankind’s profit potential is now left up to a massive empire with intensely far-reaching limbs built out of an industry which is now far from being their primary focus.
Virgin’s record division is now owned by EMI—they also own the Capitol Music Group—which is now wholly owned by UK’s mega Terra Firma Capital Partners (homes, defense, gas, energy/utilities, alcohol, betting... you name it). TFCP is a Normura Group (Japan) investment, which also owns shares in everything from electronics to gas to electricity to banks to...
Entertainment is big business with an insane profit margin; successful entertainment necessitates big bucks. And at the level produced by such companies, don’t be fooled, it’s packaged and sold to us like any other consumer good, be it a pair of jeans, frozen peas or toilet cleaner.
Of course this isn’t to say that the product can afford to be totally devoid of some form of inherent worth—although giants like EMI, Time-Warner, et al. do all that they may to influence and manipulate audience interests and trends, the act of “pleasing the masses” still remains a greatly fickle, incalculable business. Sure there are clear formulas, Pop culture is proof of this, but that yesterday’s nobody may be today’s superstar and end up being tomorrow’s washout still relies on innumerable uncontrollable variables.
But these seem to be diminishing, the gap between the immeasurable and predictable disappearing as the science progresses and their investments spill into all areas, penetrating deep into all other industries.
As such, these corporations seem to be able to exert far greater control on our likes and dislikes by marginalizing “culture” and quickly buying out any trend or meme that explodes in full view, milking it for all its worth.
After all, "one-hit wonders" is really a by-product of the mass-recording and distribution revolution unleashed by major labels, exploited by Television, and immortalized by the Internet.
And as we focus all our anger towards governments and particular types of corporations, spitting venom on the evils we perceive, we willingly allow others to get outrageously rich, exercise an exponentially growing control on us and on all facets of our personal lives, our environment, and now space, too. What's left?
Why do we allow it? Rather than frown on these all-pervasive empires, we seem to glorify them, allowing anything to slip under their logo because the products we associate with them make us happy by, ironically, enabling us to quickly and effortlessly escape those perceived evils.
Is today’s Soma tomorrow’s government?
Keep on clicking!
PDL
© 2010, Pascal-Denis Lussier
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You have to admit, there’s something terribly wrong with a society that places more importance on Lolz pets and the freaks that shop Wal-Mart than on the Fine Arts. If our future's generations were genuinely interested in paying just 1/3 as much attention to wisdom-inducing activities or matters of real value than they do to the Lolz Cat, Lolzers et al., then perhaps I’d be able to feel good about such sites. But not until then.
It saddens me that all these forms of crass entertainment are preferred over the ones that procure a truer and lasting enjoyment but demand some effort. But why should that be surprising? Less than 12% of North Americans have ever set foot in an arts museum; anyone can locate a Lolz Cat site but not everyone can locate their country on a globe, and, on the street, people are more likely to recognize an obese redneck that was featured on “The People of Wal-Mart” blog than Noam Chomsky. A Youtube video of someone farting has over eleven million hits while you'd have a hard time finding 1% of eleven million people who can tell you what happened in Sierra Leone or Bosnia.
Sure, I awww-ed and giggled when the Lolz Cat pictures first hit the net, but now that I’ve been bombarded with countless such pics, I feel I’ve pretty much seen ‘em all. The captions are trite clichés barely surpassed in insipidness by the ones found on those pseudo-motivational images. The pictures and videos have become disturbingly similarly unimaginative whether they’re from Haz Cheeseburger, Lolz Cats, Hot Dogs or the slew of other Hallmark-for-the-mentally-challenged type of animal or feel-good site that’s out there.
That’s because Jim-and-Jane-with-a-pet-and-a-camera are flooding these sites with content, hoping to get their 5 minutes of fame by posting a staged or waited-forever-to-get-lucky but out-of-focus picture of their pet and writing a witless caption in a way that guarantees never having to reach for a dictionary, while site owners are pulling in great advertising bucks thanks to senseless but free content while somewhere yet another truly talented artist is forced to pawn his medium in order to cover rent, throws in the towel, and ends his days in a call center selling bogus products no one makes and no one needs for some guy he’s never seen but rumours are he owns three Bentleys.
And the “humans sicken me so I prefer relaxing by laughing at cute, harmless, uncorrupted animals” line doesn’t fly with me. What’s the one thing these pictures have in common and the real appeal: anthropomorphism. It’s not that you love animals, it’s that you enjoy seeing yourself in an animal. Escaping reality by hunting down and pointing out basal human traits and behaviours in anything that’s non-human, including human babies??? In that case how do you explain the comparable popularity of "Failblog" since logically, who'd want to escape human failings by focusing on human failings and harshly judging those that erred, and thus, are human? So, is it that we prefer to imagine ourselves as creatures possessing a mere fraction of our intellectual capacity and potential? Or is it the belief that less-intelligent creatures would provide a better world if they possessed our intelligence? That still doesn't make sense to me. Do you really think we’d still be the dominant species? If your Golden Retriever had your level of intelligence, do you honestly believe that you’d still be the Alpha-male or that he’d still be your best friend? And I can only imagine that any animal that would think like Cheney would do a hell of a lot more damage than the real Cheney?
We humans have wondrous abilities; we’ve produced extraordinary things of astonishing beauty, breadth, and depth; we’ve probed and theorized and proved parts of the impossibly mind-perplexing. At any moment, at any time, nature bursts with unbridled animation.
And yet we prefer to watch others live a directed reality on TV, a simple story recapitulated for twenty of the show's forty minutes. We smell digital roses and we can't be bothered to observe the raw nature of nature through a non-raciocentric lens. We’ve created an awesome tool like the Internet, and porn, fraud, and content-less content for a pay-click is what prevails. We prefer to share stupid-but-cute pictures rather than a minute of worthwhile information.
Our obsession with the stupid infuriates me, further still when non-participants are frowned upon. It’s glorified brain porn. And these types of sites and attractions now dominate our cultural landscape in between the reality shows and the empty, depressing lyrics and banal beats of synthesized sex heroes.
So why should I be happy about the Lolz-crap site formula when what I see is yet more evidence of our general mental decline through our destructive obsession towards The Spectacle?
This isn’t to say that pipi-caca-tit jokes and annoying pet owners and the Britney Spears don’t have their place in this world and that, by default, anyone that enjoys aspects of such things endorses retardation to a socially-revered anal phase. Original potty humour will always find a way to make me laugh. However, the limits of toilet subjects and (especially) of the people that usually create such jokes are easily reached. Predictable potty humour is as pleasant as a badly performed root canal. Ditto for the dripping-with-sappy-sentimentality crap that’s supposed to warm my heart and the redundantly worn-out pop-picture trends.What's shocking is that these forms of entertainment haven't just become barriers to true culture, they are becoming its equivalent. Human stupidity is the new art form! And while we're all complaining about this, we're more than willing to make it happen.
Whatever happened to our sense of discovery? Have we really become blazé and numb to the point where we’re barely willing to search, to unearth within ourselves emotions and thoughts heretofore unknown. Instead we flock towards the safety of mass acceptance through empty forms that scream out the feelings we’re meant to feel so we don’t have to wonder how we should feel, relying on the same codes that make us increasingly easier marketing targets?
But it’s the government's and the corporations' fault that you don’t care, right?
At this point our future relies on the sacrifices we're willing to make.
At this point our future relies on the sacrifices we're willing to make.
PDL
© 2010, Pascal-Denis Lussier
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