Monday, September 10, 2007
alienation
Everyone has felt lonely at one time or another, regardless of their magnitude of wealth, size of family, extension of the friendship circle, or position in a crowd. It crawls on your skin like a shadow, quickly making it’s way into your heart. Once you have experienced this alienation you will never forget it, and you can never adequately explain the depth of it.
What fools we mortals be....
Love is the most destructive emotion n the world. it maybe argued that hate ( the equal and opposite and thus the appropriate comparision ) is the more destructive of the two...afterall,it has caused wars and murders unending throught histroy...so i guess it is the more overt of the two. but love,now THAT is the more covert and potent destroyer...it anahilates the very thoughts of a person and hollows out the soul until only an empty illogical shell is left "existing" ( if it can be called even that)Those who hate look down into the abyss and smile...and leap. Those who love,do not even notice the deapth of darkness....blind love ??? huh. So which then is worse ?
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
note on consumerism no.2
I define consumerism as the voluntary suspension of disbelief in the value of material goods . Suspension of disbelief is desirable when viewing a fantasy world such as a stage play or motion picture, and it is also necessary in modern shopping, and for exactly the same reason — the things on display cannot meaningfully be compared with reality.
Consumerism is itself divided into two subcategories, reactive consumerism and proactive consumerism. Reactive consumerism (hereinafter RC) awaits a public demand for a product and, no matter how absurd the demand, fills it. Proactive consumerism (hereinafter PC) uses advertising to create markets for products that have no natural market.
Before going on, I must add that PC isn't always as parasitic as it might sound on first hearing. Sometimes a perceived need is created out of nowhere, and this engineered need leads to a societal advance — a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will. For example, education is a form of PC — it appears to convey knowledge, when in fact its real purpose is to create a lifelong taste for knowledge. But to the original target audience of young people (and, sadly, to some of their parents), the "product" being offered has no obvious purpose — an acquired taste for ideas makes young people nearly uncontrollable, rebellious, doubtful of received wisdom. Only later in life does this fondness for ideas bear fruit, at a time (in the brief and brittle lifecycle of the average human brain) when it would be nearly impossible to instill the taste anew.
RC can exist in times of deficit, because it only springs to life in response to voiced demand. But PC, the practice of creating a market and then serving it, can only exist in times of surplus. In RC, advertising is an adjunct, a facilitation of the basic process of producing and distributing goods. In PC, advertising is the process — everything else depends on it.
Consumerism is itself divided into two subcategories, reactive consumerism and proactive consumerism. Reactive consumerism (hereinafter RC) awaits a public demand for a product and, no matter how absurd the demand, fills it. Proactive consumerism (hereinafter PC) uses advertising to create markets for products that have no natural market.
Before going on, I must add that PC isn't always as parasitic as it might sound on first hearing. Sometimes a perceived need is created out of nowhere, and this engineered need leads to a societal advance — a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will. For example, education is a form of PC — it appears to convey knowledge, when in fact its real purpose is to create a lifelong taste for knowledge. But to the original target audience of young people (and, sadly, to some of their parents), the "product" being offered has no obvious purpose — an acquired taste for ideas makes young people nearly uncontrollable, rebellious, doubtful of received wisdom. Only later in life does this fondness for ideas bear fruit, at a time (in the brief and brittle lifecycle of the average human brain) when it would be nearly impossible to instill the taste anew.
RC can exist in times of deficit, because it only springs to life in response to voiced demand. But PC, the practice of creating a market and then serving it, can only exist in times of surplus. In RC, advertising is an adjunct, a facilitation of the basic process of producing and distributing goods. In PC, advertising is the process — everything else depends on it.
note on consumerism no.1
It is possible to examine nearly any aspect of modern society — the conduct of war, government, marriage, education — and find a similar practice, an earlier version, in history. In most cases, the seeds of the present can be seen in the past. But this is not true for consumerism, for consumerism has no parallel in early human societies.
The closest thing to consumerism — and this is offered only as a point of reference, not comparison — is the practice of barter. In barter, two or more individuals met and exchanged what they had for what they didn't have. Advertising either didn't exist or was very primitive, and there was no hierarchy — no natural division between producers and consumers, because everyone was both a producer and a consumer.
The motivation for barter was also much more basic — the point was to avoid being dead. It was very straightforward — you could trade your surplus of corn for some arrowheads, or for the services of a mercenary to guard your cornfield, or simply to avoid an untimely death. You could instead keep the corn and hope no one attacked your field, but over time it may have come to you that hiring a mercenary, or owning some arrowheads, would increase the amount of corn you actually kept for more than a few days.
The closest thing to consumerism — and this is offered only as a point of reference, not comparison — is the practice of barter. In barter, two or more individuals met and exchanged what they had for what they didn't have. Advertising either didn't exist or was very primitive, and there was no hierarchy — no natural division between producers and consumers, because everyone was both a producer and a consumer.
The motivation for barter was also much more basic — the point was to avoid being dead. It was very straightforward — you could trade your surplus of corn for some arrowheads, or for the services of a mercenary to guard your cornfield, or simply to avoid an untimely death. You could instead keep the corn and hope no one attacked your field, but over time it may have come to you that hiring a mercenary, or owning some arrowheads, would increase the amount of corn you actually kept for more than a few days.
a little bit of angst
The apathy of modern day life..a rather convinient phrase that cropped up recently in a
conversation...and i feel,a rather true one.Of course it may be argued otherwise that "modern day life" is anything but aphatetic, that
there is energy..sometimes boundlessly unhealthy amounts of it.and therein lies the real apathy....The comfort zone of cynisism,the search for the highways in hiding(a borrowed phrase),pride in lonliness and the degeneration of the natural self...all signs of this apathy
conversation...and i feel,a rather true one.Of course it may be argued otherwise that "modern day life" is anything but aphatetic, that
there is energy..sometimes boundlessly unhealthy amounts of it.and therein lies the real apathy....The comfort zone of cynisism,the search for the highways in hiding(a borrowed phrase),pride in lonliness and the degeneration of the natural self...all signs of this apathy
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