Remember that game called telephone that you played as a kid in which someone whispers a phrase or sentence into your ear and you in turn repeat what you heard to the person after you? The more people you played it with, the more likely the wording changed drastically by the end. If it was ever explained, it's an exercise in demonstrating how facts get skewed. But did you ever play that game with an asshole who purposely distorted the wording so that at the end when the last person yelled the phrase and the group tried to figure out where it went wrong he (it was always a he; girls were never that immature) would gleefully yell or smugly confide in one student that he did it? That's what Internet reporting is like.
The more traffic a site gets, the more it can charge advertisers more money since that translates into a greater likelihood of people clicking their links. Naturally then Internet reporting (and plenty television and radio "news" as well for the same reason) would seek to sensationalize as much as possible to maximize traffic reducible to ad revenue. Essentially, if the syllogism is sound, Internet reporters are assholes.
But they're actually far worse than that. They're propagators of propaganda without an actual subversive agenda. They just do what they do because they hope it will have the desired effect which in turn will earn them a shoddy income. But there's an epiphenomenon as well that goes unconsidered and if realized becomes ignored just like pouring toxins into rivers. And that is the spread of misinformation causing a grossly misinformed public.
There are of course other factors. Marketing and PR certainly do their share, as well as the agendas of institutionally-backed studies and political rhetoric, but these are to be expected. Each seeks to further its employer's interests, so why should the news be any different? The sad answer is that these journalists don't report the news so much as twist it to make it more sensational and thereby more interesting. Their reporting is a travesty of journalism so far as it compromises the integrity of actually covering a story in favor of maximizing viewership. The story still gets conveyed, but it's filtered through the lens of sensationalism.
On one hand I can't fault the news-entertainment industry for creating such a niche, though it should be pointed out that less baseless news sources such as NY Times, CNN, and BCC rank among the top news providers. But on the other hand, when I consider how the proliferation of utter falsities and misinformation has contributed both to infecting a largely gullible population and making the unadulterated truth harder to discover, I lament what the implications it has for our culture. People are more informed today than ever before, but they are largely misinformed and therefore dumber (although one could argue that being dumb increases the likelihood of being misinformed, the causality is probably dialectical).
The satirical, dystopic movie Idiocracy was scary to me because its projected future reality didn't seem too far off. I could guess at the missing pieces in the causal chain that could lead us from our current society to one in which idiots abound and the policies reflect the values of the people. And while it's a bit of a stretch to say that the relatively recent trend in misleading journalism is indicative of greater societal degeneration, I wouldn't rule it out as a non-factor.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
More Human than Human: Can Androids Elicit the Best in Humanity? A tangential review of Blade Runner
30 years after its 1982 release I finally got around to seeing the sci-fi classic, Blade Runner. Despite its age, I found the film, which is based on the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", to be exceptionally relevant to our present age of questionable humanity. To situate it briefly, the dystopic plot resembles a kind of inverted Nazi Germany in which genetic engineers created a superior kind of human, Replicas, that are generally used for menial labor and dangerous missions on other planets. Banned from Earth for a vague reason (presumably fear of takeover), special police called blade runners hunt them down. The leader of a band of fugitive replicas, with blond hair and blue eyes, immediately calls to mind Aryan perfection as the Nazis might have idealized. This character, Roy, personifies Lucifer in his quest to meet his maker – that his maker might modify his biological structure to undo the four-year lifespan afforded to replicas as assurance that they won't overtake humans. Practically speaking, Roy desires to transcend his mortality by bargaining with God. Ascending into what the trope indicates should be heaven, Roy attempts to persuade Tyrell, his architect, to make the desired modification. Tyrell explains that it is impossible, for a living organization cannot be modified without immediately dooming it. He then caresses Roy's head as a father might sympathetically treat his "prodigal son". Realizing that he is powerless to transcend his mortality and that his other-worldly hope in beseeching God failed, Roy, now a lapsed ubermensch, seeks a Nietzschian "death of God". Roy gives Tyrell a kiss of death before gouging out his eyes – the windows to his soul – and ending Tyrell's life. As his maker's existence could no longer provide meaning, Roy had to destroy the source of false hope. Roy now descends from Tyrell's home ponderous of what meaning his life now has. He is met by the blade runner Deckard, whom he chases and playfully yet insidiously castigates – sporadically expounding on the ephemerality of life. Realizing his own imminent death as signified through unprompted contractions of his fingers, Roy places a stake through his hand in the manner of stigmata, effectively declaring his redemption. While Deckard is about to drop to his death, Roy catches him and, while Deckard cowers at Roy's mercy, he launches into a brief soliloquy on the transience of life and the imperative to live before finally expiring and releasing a dove from his hand. All moments are lost to time, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make the most of it – as Tyrell previously advised Roy. In the end, Roy internalizes Tyrell's purpose for him in making the most of his remaining time as he makes the choice to save Deckard instead of culminating his destruction.
The theme of the reckless search for meaning and destruction begetting knowledge of creation plays out time and again throughout the great narratives of history and fantasy. We are presented with characters who so desperately want to live that they destroy everything in their paths searching for what purposive living entails. Then, when they finally realize it, they discover that they have destroyed the one thing that held the key to that realization through reification. It makes them all tragic heroes. They fail to realize, as Douglas Brooks has beautifully written, that life should be "an affirmation of the radical claim that the human experience is the point of having been born human. You are the point the universe has decided to make. Own that experience, receive that as the gift, never stop wanting to become more human: that is divine." Perhaps that is why so many of these tragic figures are cast as inhuman roles: to more aptly illustrate that we all aspire for humanity yet so few actually achieve it. Anakin Skywalker in Starwars; Agent Smith in The Matrix; Roy in Blade Runner; Ernest Hemingway in real life... the list can go on.
One of the appeals of seeing this dynamic play out on the screen is so that we don't have to do so ourselves. We are vicarious aspirants, not exactly living through others, but seeing how their stories play out so we can learn from them. It is the fan-crafted mythology that informs our lives as perhaps more temporally relevant retellings of classic motifs. Only through the perceived imminency of death and destruction does one have sufficient perspective to contemplate life. Georges Bataille reportedly spent hours a day for some time gazing at an image of a tortured Chinese man, quartered and bloodied, so as to inform his own isolated mortality. He writes that the man in the image "communicated his pain to me or perhaps the excessive nature of his pain, and it was precisely that which I was seeking, not to take pleasure in it, but in order to ruin in me that which is opposed to ruin." By this he means that he spent so much time studying the tortured image that, ignorant of such hopeless pain in his own life, he might come to know it vicariously and thus inform his lasting perspective on mortality.
The question of what makes one human has dominated the philosophy of science fiction for over half a century now. For the replicas of Blade Runner, one of the cardinal aspects that designates their inhumanity is their inability to genuinely experience human emotions – although Roy cites fear of death as his motivation for seeking to transcend it. We can perhaps see a modern version of such inhumanity in the driven obedience such attention-demanding drugs as Ritalin and Adderall have on mechanizing children into memorization and robots of directed control to the tasks at hand. This practice, as an article in today's NY Times argues, stymies and stultifies the development of children in the interest of societal expectations, thereby dampening their creative [and therefore human] development. Children are effectively re-programmed, as are stray programs in the movie Tron, or they face its equivalent of de-resolution – failure to make oneself useful to the system and sinking into unmitigated poverty. At stake here is the beginning of de-humanization and robotization of our species in the greater interest of societal values. How much humanity can be sacrificed before a person is only recognized as human aesthetically, but not by one's actions? How far before such humans stop identifying as humans and see themselves more as automatons?
Faced with such questions and realities in which much human labor has been outsourced to machines, we must attend to the existence of clones. A clone is by definition an imitation of an image – a picture of an image. As with the replicas in Blade Runner, some do not even know that they are replicas, as being programmed with the memories of their images and not told otherwise, they have no reason to suspect not being human. Even more terrifying is that they bleed just like humans. They are thus indistinguishable externally – through human appearance and actions – and internally – through the production of human blood. This fact makes clones effectively terrorists, as W. J. T. Mitchell argues in his book Cloning Terror. They look and act, modern cultural stereotypes withstanding, exactly like us until they reveal themselves to be otherwise. Thus unrecognizable even through familiar recognition, clones most grotesquely pervert humanity not due to their inhumanity, but because they would drive us to be paranoid about our own and that of our neighbors.
In the same spirit that we often must find out what we dislike in order to find out what we do like, so too is the maxim true of humanity in the science fiction age. We learn what it means to be human by negative definition of those characteristics that defy our intuitive conception of humanity. I _____, therefore, I am human, as this brief essay has indicated, could best be filled with verb forms of inclination toward creativity and avoidance of rote activities, elicitation of complex emotions, and acute awareness of and discomfort with one's mortality. With such an understanding, however, we could contend that Roy, despite being a replica, is the most human character in the film. Malcontent with his militant programming and dreading his biological expiration, he creatively thinks to beseech God for more life – as numerous characters have done across mythologies. Though it is never overtly spoken and only signified through imagery and action, Roy alone yokes himself religiously. He alone demonstrates the human proclivity toward meaning-making that has been the occupation par excellence of humankind from the earliest recorded histories. And when he finds his maker inadequate, he follows suit of countless individuals who have discarded insufficient theodicies in search of better ones.
Unless this understanding of humanity is misinformed, then the parabolic nature of much science fiction would appear to be well met. That is, by painting a picture of flawed non-humans striving for humanity, the audience can relate to their own imperfections – how none of them is an ubermensch – with respect to striving for meaning in a broken world (the telos of homo religiosus). Identity is constructed through the creative power of naming. By vocalizing his insecurity, Roy informs his telos, yoking it toward action and shaping his existential identity.
This dynamic might better be explicated through Tron. At the end of the film, CLU, Kevin Flynn's tyrannical turncoat surrogate, exclaims that he created the perfect system just as Flynn instructed him. Flynn responds, "The thing about perfection is that it's unknowable. It's impossible, but it's also right in front of us the entire time. You wouldn't know that because I didn't when I created you." This is all to say an obvious and very blasé point: that to be human is to be imperfect; but to be content is to recognize the perfection of imperfectability. And to embrace this radical view of humanity is, as Douglas Brooks said earlier, divine.
The theme of the reckless search for meaning and destruction begetting knowledge of creation plays out time and again throughout the great narratives of history and fantasy. We are presented with characters who so desperately want to live that they destroy everything in their paths searching for what purposive living entails. Then, when they finally realize it, they discover that they have destroyed the one thing that held the key to that realization through reification. It makes them all tragic heroes. They fail to realize, as Douglas Brooks has beautifully written, that life should be "an affirmation of the radical claim that the human experience is the point of having been born human. You are the point the universe has decided to make. Own that experience, receive that as the gift, never stop wanting to become more human: that is divine." Perhaps that is why so many of these tragic figures are cast as inhuman roles: to more aptly illustrate that we all aspire for humanity yet so few actually achieve it. Anakin Skywalker in Starwars; Agent Smith in The Matrix; Roy in Blade Runner; Ernest Hemingway in real life... the list can go on.
One of the appeals of seeing this dynamic play out on the screen is so that we don't have to do so ourselves. We are vicarious aspirants, not exactly living through others, but seeing how their stories play out so we can learn from them. It is the fan-crafted mythology that informs our lives as perhaps more temporally relevant retellings of classic motifs. Only through the perceived imminency of death and destruction does one have sufficient perspective to contemplate life. Georges Bataille reportedly spent hours a day for some time gazing at an image of a tortured Chinese man, quartered and bloodied, so as to inform his own isolated mortality. He writes that the man in the image "communicated his pain to me or perhaps the excessive nature of his pain, and it was precisely that which I was seeking, not to take pleasure in it, but in order to ruin in me that which is opposed to ruin." By this he means that he spent so much time studying the tortured image that, ignorant of such hopeless pain in his own life, he might come to know it vicariously and thus inform his lasting perspective on mortality.
The question of what makes one human has dominated the philosophy of science fiction for over half a century now. For the replicas of Blade Runner, one of the cardinal aspects that designates their inhumanity is their inability to genuinely experience human emotions – although Roy cites fear of death as his motivation for seeking to transcend it. We can perhaps see a modern version of such inhumanity in the driven obedience such attention-demanding drugs as Ritalin and Adderall have on mechanizing children into memorization and robots of directed control to the tasks at hand. This practice, as an article in today's NY Times argues, stymies and stultifies the development of children in the interest of societal expectations, thereby dampening their creative [and therefore human] development. Children are effectively re-programmed, as are stray programs in the movie Tron, or they face its equivalent of de-resolution – failure to make oneself useful to the system and sinking into unmitigated poverty. At stake here is the beginning of de-humanization and robotization of our species in the greater interest of societal values. How much humanity can be sacrificed before a person is only recognized as human aesthetically, but not by one's actions? How far before such humans stop identifying as humans and see themselves more as automatons?
Faced with such questions and realities in which much human labor has been outsourced to machines, we must attend to the existence of clones. A clone is by definition an imitation of an image – a picture of an image. As with the replicas in Blade Runner, some do not even know that they are replicas, as being programmed with the memories of their images and not told otherwise, they have no reason to suspect not being human. Even more terrifying is that they bleed just like humans. They are thus indistinguishable externally – through human appearance and actions – and internally – through the production of human blood. This fact makes clones effectively terrorists, as W. J. T. Mitchell argues in his book Cloning Terror. They look and act, modern cultural stereotypes withstanding, exactly like us until they reveal themselves to be otherwise. Thus unrecognizable even through familiar recognition, clones most grotesquely pervert humanity not due to their inhumanity, but because they would drive us to be paranoid about our own and that of our neighbors.
In the same spirit that we often must find out what we dislike in order to find out what we do like, so too is the maxim true of humanity in the science fiction age. We learn what it means to be human by negative definition of those characteristics that defy our intuitive conception of humanity. I _____, therefore, I am human, as this brief essay has indicated, could best be filled with verb forms of inclination toward creativity and avoidance of rote activities, elicitation of complex emotions, and acute awareness of and discomfort with one's mortality. With such an understanding, however, we could contend that Roy, despite being a replica, is the most human character in the film. Malcontent with his militant programming and dreading his biological expiration, he creatively thinks to beseech God for more life – as numerous characters have done across mythologies. Though it is never overtly spoken and only signified through imagery and action, Roy alone yokes himself religiously. He alone demonstrates the human proclivity toward meaning-making that has been the occupation par excellence of humankind from the earliest recorded histories. And when he finds his maker inadequate, he follows suit of countless individuals who have discarded insufficient theodicies in search of better ones.
Unless this understanding of humanity is misinformed, then the parabolic nature of much science fiction would appear to be well met. That is, by painting a picture of flawed non-humans striving for humanity, the audience can relate to their own imperfections – how none of them is an ubermensch – with respect to striving for meaning in a broken world (the telos of homo religiosus). Identity is constructed through the creative power of naming. By vocalizing his insecurity, Roy informs his telos, yoking it toward action and shaping his existential identity.
This dynamic might better be explicated through Tron. At the end of the film, CLU, Kevin Flynn's tyrannical turncoat surrogate, exclaims that he created the perfect system just as Flynn instructed him. Flynn responds, "The thing about perfection is that it's unknowable. It's impossible, but it's also right in front of us the entire time. You wouldn't know that because I didn't when I created you." This is all to say an obvious and very blasé point: that to be human is to be imperfect; but to be content is to recognize the perfection of imperfectability. And to embrace this radical view of humanity is, as Douglas Brooks said earlier, divine.
Monday, January 23, 2012
The eminence of distance in a moment
Riding home on the bus this evening, I was reading a book – trying to make the most of my time – when a woman a few seats up exclaimed how beautiful the sunset is. I looked up from what was admittedly an enthralling read (on mindful silence, nonetheless) and to my subdued, high school romanticism there across the sky lay the most breathtaking sunset I had ever seen. It beamed bruised blood orange before subduing into a pastel gradient that at last adumbrated the foreboding saturated stratus clouds. I was eminently present in the distance – not wanting to look away.
Then a degenerate thought crept into my mind: I should take a picture and capture this radiance for all time. Yet I hesitated, critical as I am about reproduced art and the beauty of a captured image as being inauthentically inferior to the unanticipated and thus unprimed transcendentalism of the pregnant moment. I hesitated, yet pulled my phone out anyway. I fumbled through the dallying commands to pull up the camera – being sure to look up with every operation so as not to lose the moment. But the moment was already lost the instant I looked away, entering a new moment and betraying my embodying gaze as my eyes readjusted to what was right in front of me. Sure enough, by the time the camera function was engaged, the bus was already rolling. I tried to snap a picture but it came out blurry.
I tried to retain the picture of the image in my mind, but it was already lost to inefficient descriptors – trying in vain to reconstruct what words always fail to precisely signify. Near my stop the bus came into line of sight with the sunset again, but now it had morphed into a goldenrod aura set atop an apricot horizon. Just as delicious, yes, but a totally different sunset; and I wasn't about to make the same mistake twice.
Because it's not right in front of us, it's easy to look away to our foreground. But by doing so, we lose focus so that if we return and attempt to re-gain focus, the object in the distance, not being subject to our immediate, intimate scrutiny, may very well have changed. So too with life.
Then a degenerate thought crept into my mind: I should take a picture and capture this radiance for all time. Yet I hesitated, critical as I am about reproduced art and the beauty of a captured image as being inauthentically inferior to the unanticipated and thus unprimed transcendentalism of the pregnant moment. I hesitated, yet pulled my phone out anyway. I fumbled through the dallying commands to pull up the camera – being sure to look up with every operation so as not to lose the moment. But the moment was already lost the instant I looked away, entering a new moment and betraying my embodying gaze as my eyes readjusted to what was right in front of me. Sure enough, by the time the camera function was engaged, the bus was already rolling. I tried to snap a picture but it came out blurry.
I tried to retain the picture of the image in my mind, but it was already lost to inefficient descriptors – trying in vain to reconstruct what words always fail to precisely signify. Near my stop the bus came into line of sight with the sunset again, but now it had morphed into a goldenrod aura set atop an apricot horizon. Just as delicious, yes, but a totally different sunset; and I wasn't about to make the same mistake twice.
Because it's not right in front of us, it's easy to look away to our foreground. But by doing so, we lose focus so that if we return and attempt to re-gain focus, the object in the distance, not being subject to our immediate, intimate scrutiny, may very well have changed. So too with life.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Work and Play
Hospice workers report that one of the top regrets of people on their deathbeds is working too much and not spending enough time with their family. In the spirit of “living more”, what exactly, if not work, would people do? Looking outside right now it is sunny – a nice day for a brisk walk. But were I to walk, I would likely be thinking of the work I need to do. If my work was done, then I could walk calmly – a serenity produced from a sense of accomplishment. We relax and partake in recreational activities as contrast to our time working. We can only enjoy them with respect to work, for if we had no work to do and had all the time to do recreational activities, then boredom would surely afflict us sooner or later. We are not such a ludic species that, even if independent of economic factors, we could spend all our time reveling and enjoying. Living life, as the superlative phrase has come to mean, signifies breaching one’s comfort zone and doing fun things. But breaching one’s comfort zone can only happen with respect to having a comfort zone, and likewise doing fun things only has meaning with respect to things that aren’t fun. Thus the live-your-life imperative demands that we balance work and play – recognizing the role and necessity of each. It’s not simply that work gives one purpose and play gives one diversion; but that work necessitates play and play necessitates work. Only through appreciating the binary dynamic can, I think, one truly become content with one’s life in the face of a society that demands both that we continuously strive to climb the ladder of achievement while also exhorting us to take the time to enjoy the boons life offers. The best boons of all, if they don’t remove us from the world, teach us how to live meaningfully inside it – those that make sense of an otherwise latently entropy-yoking system.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Another Brick in the Wall of the Tower of Babel
There exists an ideology of the American Dream – a creative symptom of the Protestant Work Ethic brought to the New World. It has since taken the form of what sociologist Robert Bellah, echoing John Locke, calls utilitarian individualism, or the idea that one should maximize self-interest respective to an intended telos. It is this ethos that built America into the “stuff dreams are made of”, yet unmoderated and unchecked, it has degenerated the dream from a recipe for success to plutocratic-controlled socioeconomic stagnation.
Yet there is a solution to this problem – and it is a problem – of which the Occupy Wall Street protests are only the beginning. The first step is the same as with Alcoholics Anonymous: getting people to admit that there is a problem. Except it must be admitted not just by those adversely affected, but also by those who do the affecting. This is called social responsibility.
But this obviously is not so easy, for why would individuals act against their own interest? Basic economics have long demonstrated that there is a symbiotic relationship between the now proverbial 1 and 99% in the exchange between consumers and owners of the means of production: if consumers don’t consume, then producers don’t make money. An article “What happened to upward mobility?” in last week’s issue of Time adduces academic research that income inequality and lack of social mobility are deleterious to everyone, not just those at the bottom. So why would the 1% stand in the way of their own interest?
The answer is that they don’t know it’s in their own interest. David Brooks in last Monday's New York Times column “Let’s all feel superior” called this myopia Motivated Blindness, in which individuals actively don’t see what they don’t think is in their interest to see. Barry Ritholtz came closer in his Washington Post article “What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral”, calling out the plutocrats for cognitive dissonance, which is when a failed belief system is confronted by evidence of its implausibility.
His evocation of the Big Lie is key here, for this is a phrase that Hitler coined in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, and made the central tenet of his strategy for ascending to power and advancing his agenda. In fact, if you compare the current pro-Wall Street Tea Party and Republican agendas, they bear a striking resemblance to the US Office of Strategic Services’ psychological profile of Hitler in their absolute and uncompromisingly self-serving catechism. I realize any comparison evoking Nazism is acerbically hyperbolic, but I do so only to draw attention to the modest beginnings that allowed him to blitzkrieg his way through politics.
But Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, who came to America to encourage the protesters during the early stage of the movement, hits the nail on the head in what he calls the fallacy of ideological fantasy. This builds on the Marxian (can we print his name in America without getting arrested yet?) observation that “they know what they do, yet they do it anyway.” This is to say that individuals recognize the inherent problem of conforming to a flawed system, but its ideology has so fully shaped their realities that they shirk away from that momentary, seemingly alien discomfort when their subconscious wants to prod their awareness with the truth it recognizes. But the mind’s power to believe is formidable, and it can convince itself of anything. This is the Big Truth that Ritholtz called for in response to the Big Lie.
The cornerstone by which the Big Truth can be heard has been laid in the form of OWS. Its resonance can be seen by how many cities across the world have citizens who have taken up its cause. And according to a LiveScience finding published in July, it only takes 10% of the population to espouse an idea for it to be accepted by the majority of the population. If the finding is true, then given 2011’s U.S. Census’ report, the critical mass for public opinion to be changed is 31 million Americans (not including those under 18, it shrinks to 26 million). If 9% of Americans (on the low side) are unemployed and divert their efforts toward advancing OWS, then we’re almost there. We just need, ironically, 1%.
Robert Bellah also posited an idea of civil religion, which, crudely put, unites all Americans not by our love of country, but by our allegiance to a superstructure far greater than ourselves. That ideal is, through the smoke and mirrors of politics, a common moral purpose toward the welfare of all citizens and consequently the nation as a whole. If I might extend Bellah’s religion metaphor, God in the practical sense is the President of our nation. Each and every group lobbying congress to advance its interests is, in a manner of speaking, a nation unto itself speaking its own language, sharing construction in a Tower of Babel to have its message heard. But with so many groups laying bricks and not unifying behind the one cause that really, underneath all different interests, brings them all together, then nothing will get accomplished. But if the churches and mosques, labor unions and PTA, and especially students on college campuses – who were so essential in resisting the Big Lie during the Vietnam era – congregated toward their mutual self-interest in support of OWS, then we might actually do our founding fathers justice in upholding their principles. As Bellah points out, when our individual sensibilities prove inadequate, we have historically resorted to those cultural traditions – religion, which transcends class boundaries; and civic organizations – by which to overcome our limited individual impact.
America was founded on political dissent; its imperative is our national birthright. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.” Thus protests naturally must occur when representative democracy fails to represent the will of the people.
Most importantly, we are all American before we are for a given political party. It is due time that we remember the American Dream that we were promised and unite toward making it realizable again by backing OWS. Otherwise, all in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.
Yet there is a solution to this problem – and it is a problem – of which the Occupy Wall Street protests are only the beginning. The first step is the same as with Alcoholics Anonymous: getting people to admit that there is a problem. Except it must be admitted not just by those adversely affected, but also by those who do the affecting. This is called social responsibility.
But this obviously is not so easy, for why would individuals act against their own interest? Basic economics have long demonstrated that there is a symbiotic relationship between the now proverbial 1 and 99% in the exchange between consumers and owners of the means of production: if consumers don’t consume, then producers don’t make money. An article “What happened to upward mobility?” in last week’s issue of Time adduces academic research that income inequality and lack of social mobility are deleterious to everyone, not just those at the bottom. So why would the 1% stand in the way of their own interest?
The answer is that they don’t know it’s in their own interest. David Brooks in last Monday's New York Times column “Let’s all feel superior” called this myopia Motivated Blindness, in which individuals actively don’t see what they don’t think is in their interest to see. Barry Ritholtz came closer in his Washington Post article “What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral”, calling out the plutocrats for cognitive dissonance, which is when a failed belief system is confronted by evidence of its implausibility.
His evocation of the Big Lie is key here, for this is a phrase that Hitler coined in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, and made the central tenet of his strategy for ascending to power and advancing his agenda. In fact, if you compare the current pro-Wall Street Tea Party and Republican agendas, they bear a striking resemblance to the US Office of Strategic Services’ psychological profile of Hitler in their absolute and uncompromisingly self-serving catechism. I realize any comparison evoking Nazism is acerbically hyperbolic, but I do so only to draw attention to the modest beginnings that allowed him to blitzkrieg his way through politics.
But Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, who came to America to encourage the protesters during the early stage of the movement, hits the nail on the head in what he calls the fallacy of ideological fantasy. This builds on the Marxian (can we print his name in America without getting arrested yet?) observation that “they know what they do, yet they do it anyway.” This is to say that individuals recognize the inherent problem of conforming to a flawed system, but its ideology has so fully shaped their realities that they shirk away from that momentary, seemingly alien discomfort when their subconscious wants to prod their awareness with the truth it recognizes. But the mind’s power to believe is formidable, and it can convince itself of anything. This is the Big Truth that Ritholtz called for in response to the Big Lie.
The cornerstone by which the Big Truth can be heard has been laid in the form of OWS. Its resonance can be seen by how many cities across the world have citizens who have taken up its cause. And according to a LiveScience finding published in July, it only takes 10% of the population to espouse an idea for it to be accepted by the majority of the population. If the finding is true, then given 2011’s U.S. Census’ report, the critical mass for public opinion to be changed is 31 million Americans (not including those under 18, it shrinks to 26 million). If 9% of Americans (on the low side) are unemployed and divert their efforts toward advancing OWS, then we’re almost there. We just need, ironically, 1%.
Robert Bellah also posited an idea of civil religion, which, crudely put, unites all Americans not by our love of country, but by our allegiance to a superstructure far greater than ourselves. That ideal is, through the smoke and mirrors of politics, a common moral purpose toward the welfare of all citizens and consequently the nation as a whole. If I might extend Bellah’s religion metaphor, God in the practical sense is the President of our nation. Each and every group lobbying congress to advance its interests is, in a manner of speaking, a nation unto itself speaking its own language, sharing construction in a Tower of Babel to have its message heard. But with so many groups laying bricks and not unifying behind the one cause that really, underneath all different interests, brings them all together, then nothing will get accomplished. But if the churches and mosques, labor unions and PTA, and especially students on college campuses – who were so essential in resisting the Big Lie during the Vietnam era – congregated toward their mutual self-interest in support of OWS, then we might actually do our founding fathers justice in upholding their principles. As Bellah points out, when our individual sensibilities prove inadequate, we have historically resorted to those cultural traditions – religion, which transcends class boundaries; and civic organizations – by which to overcome our limited individual impact.
America was founded on political dissent; its imperative is our national birthright. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.” Thus protests naturally must occur when representative democracy fails to represent the will of the people.
Most importantly, we are all American before we are for a given political party. It is due time that we remember the American Dream that we were promised and unite toward making it realizable again by backing OWS. Otherwise, all in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost
I used to really enjoy hip hop, but I haven't avidly listened to it in about a decade. When asked why not, I would usually attribute this to it largely having little content anymore. After the 90s, beats displaced lyrical content and street cred as the selling point for a song – and even for an artist. If you pushed me harder, I might tell you that there is nothing original being produced in hip hop anymore. The trope of growing up in the hood and making it, while resonant in their own American Dream sense, have become blasé to my desire for originality. And the all too common motifs of sex, drugs and guns has become has long since ceased to perk up our desensitized ears.
In truth though, I'm disappointed to say that there never was much of anything original about hip hop except the style itself and its art form as a normative outlet for black expression. Maybe I'm over-reducing it. But in terms of content, the beats have all been sampled, and even the lyrics call to mind those of blues – the cultural antecedent to hip hop. Even the messages in what are regarded as some of the deeper songs are repackaged to a generation not only that hasn't been exposed to their earlier forms, but doesn't even know they exist. The result is a culture that keeps re-inventing the wheel and as such never really makes much progress.
Take the recent song "No Church in the Wild" by Jay Z, Kanye West and newcomer Frank Ocean. It's definitely catchy, but it's hook is what get people talking:
"Human being to the mob/
What's a mob to a king?/
What' a king to a god?/
What's a god to a non-believer?/
Who don't believe in anything?/"
Woah, pretty deep right? It's saying that there's a hierarchy in the world that everyone is subject to, but non-believers throw it all off because they don't subscribe to the same system of values that orders the universe. Or, looking deeper, the object of each line has the capacity to supersede its subject... a mob can overthrow a king, a king can command his subjects to worship a different god, the non-believer can have a religious experience by the grace of God. Analysis aside, this isn't really new. Machiavelli has discussed this classically, as have other thinkers. But what makes this song so profound to a number of people is the fact that they likely weren't exposed to the literature in which such sentiments have historically been expressed. And if they were, hip hop (knowingly or not) repackages such truths in a concise, catchy and mnemonic form.
I suppose there has to be merit in this. In the literary tradition of writing with one's audience in mind, so too must the vocative mediums of truth and cultural expression similarly adapt to an audience that not only doesn't know history, but doesn't have the attention span to learn it. Maybe history is irrelevant as long as its truths are preserved. But what are truths without context, and what is context without resonance? As Galadriel tells in the opening of Lord of the Rings, "...some things that should not have been forgotten were lost." One merely has to read or see this trope played out in its numerous extrapolations in book and cinema to see how it ends. Or, if one lacks the patience to read a book or watch a movie, just listen to any real ballad. The real message is inscribed in the riffs between verses.
In truth though, I'm disappointed to say that there never was much of anything original about hip hop except the style itself and its art form as a normative outlet for black expression. Maybe I'm over-reducing it. But in terms of content, the beats have all been sampled, and even the lyrics call to mind those of blues – the cultural antecedent to hip hop. Even the messages in what are regarded as some of the deeper songs are repackaged to a generation not only that hasn't been exposed to their earlier forms, but doesn't even know they exist. The result is a culture that keeps re-inventing the wheel and as such never really makes much progress.
Take the recent song "No Church in the Wild" by Jay Z, Kanye West and newcomer Frank Ocean. It's definitely catchy, but it's hook is what get people talking:
"Human being to the mob/
What's a mob to a king?/
What' a king to a god?/
What's a god to a non-believer?/
Who don't believe in anything?/"
Woah, pretty deep right? It's saying that there's a hierarchy in the world that everyone is subject to, but non-believers throw it all off because they don't subscribe to the same system of values that orders the universe. Or, looking deeper, the object of each line has the capacity to supersede its subject... a mob can overthrow a king, a king can command his subjects to worship a different god, the non-believer can have a religious experience by the grace of God. Analysis aside, this isn't really new. Machiavelli has discussed this classically, as have other thinkers. But what makes this song so profound to a number of people is the fact that they likely weren't exposed to the literature in which such sentiments have historically been expressed. And if they were, hip hop (knowingly or not) repackages such truths in a concise, catchy and mnemonic form.
I suppose there has to be merit in this. In the literary tradition of writing with one's audience in mind, so too must the vocative mediums of truth and cultural expression similarly adapt to an audience that not only doesn't know history, but doesn't have the attention span to learn it. Maybe history is irrelevant as long as its truths are preserved. But what are truths without context, and what is context without resonance? As Galadriel tells in the opening of Lord of the Rings, "...some things that should not have been forgotten were lost." One merely has to read or see this trope played out in its numerous extrapolations in book and cinema to see how it ends. Or, if one lacks the patience to read a book or watch a movie, just listen to any real ballad. The real message is inscribed in the riffs between verses.
Monday, October 10, 2011
iGrieve
I wrote this last week, but didn't get around to posting until today.
I never knew Steve. Not personally. Yet I grew up on Apple. My dad's black and white Macintosh SE in our basement was my first exposure to a computer, something I use every single day. A mac, of course.
Steve has inspired me since I was old enough to be inspired by things. In the same room that the Apple II was connected to the old printer with those things on each side of the paper that you had to tear off, there was a poster on the wall – the only "decoration" in the entire room. It said "Think Different" on it. Those two words have stuck with me and sustained me throughout high school, college and graduate school. I remember my parents encouraging me to "Think Different" all my life. I've been tempted to drop out like Steve many times – to pursue my own ideas wholeheartedly. I only didn't because in addition to imparting the value of thinking different, the other main value my parents ingrained in me was education. Yet even in the academy, I am the "that guy". You know who he is. He's Steve.
It's kind of crazy to think about it – how despite never having met Steve or even being personally connected to him, I am who I am today because he dared to challenge the status quo. He dared not to sell a product, but an ideal – truly the only thing worth buying [into] these days. He has been a living beacon of hope for an entire generation of Americans. Now he joins the greats like Edison and Franklin in the history books – to be learned about in school by future generation of Americans.
And I don't know why, despite never having met him, that I have tears in my eyes as I write this. I can't say I'll miss him. I never knew him. Yet I've always looked up to him. Now, I suppose, I literally will continue looking up to him.
It's premature at this point to speculate what he will be remembered for the most. He changed the world with numerous innovations in Apple and Pixar, and set an example for CEOs everywhere by refusing a "normal" salary. But I think his greatest contribution to humanity has been simply himself. He is a brand in and of himself. He has inspired an entire generation of Steve Jobses, and who knows what impact he'll have on future ones?
I'm proud to be a Steve Jobs. If it wasn't for him, I'd probably think I was someone else.
So here's to the crazy ones, the misfits... the famous commercial that solidified the Apple brand as being tantamount to brilliance. It's time Apple released it with his picture in it as well.
Thanks for everything,
I never knew Steve. Not personally. Yet I grew up on Apple. My dad's black and white Macintosh SE in our basement was my first exposure to a computer, something I use every single day. A mac, of course.
Steve has inspired me since I was old enough to be inspired by things. In the same room that the Apple II was connected to the old printer with those things on each side of the paper that you had to tear off, there was a poster on the wall – the only "decoration" in the entire room. It said "Think Different" on it. Those two words have stuck with me and sustained me throughout high school, college and graduate school. I remember my parents encouraging me to "Think Different" all my life. I've been tempted to drop out like Steve many times – to pursue my own ideas wholeheartedly. I only didn't because in addition to imparting the value of thinking different, the other main value my parents ingrained in me was education. Yet even in the academy, I am the "that guy". You know who he is. He's Steve.
It's kind of crazy to think about it – how despite never having met Steve or even being personally connected to him, I am who I am today because he dared to challenge the status quo. He dared not to sell a product, but an ideal – truly the only thing worth buying [into] these days. He has been a living beacon of hope for an entire generation of Americans. Now he joins the greats like Edison and Franklin in the history books – to be learned about in school by future generation of Americans.
And I don't know why, despite never having met him, that I have tears in my eyes as I write this. I can't say I'll miss him. I never knew him. Yet I've always looked up to him. Now, I suppose, I literally will continue looking up to him.
It's premature at this point to speculate what he will be remembered for the most. He changed the world with numerous innovations in Apple and Pixar, and set an example for CEOs everywhere by refusing a "normal" salary. But I think his greatest contribution to humanity has been simply himself. He is a brand in and of himself. He has inspired an entire generation of Steve Jobses, and who knows what impact he'll have on future ones?
I'm proud to be a Steve Jobs. If it wasn't for him, I'd probably think I was someone else.
So here's to the crazy ones, the misfits... the famous commercial that solidified the Apple brand as being tantamount to brilliance. It's time Apple released it with his picture in it as well.
Thanks for everything,
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