#COMPLACENT CONSUMERISM IS A NIGHTMARE

[cozylittleartblog]

yeah like having to deal with the obnoxious middle aged women who thrift to resell wasn't bad enough, now we got the braindead fast fashion bozos cluttering things up too.

its ok shirt, i will love you like somebody else apparently couldn't even if you shed microplastics into the water supply and will fall apart after 7 wears. and then i'll sew you back together like anyone with two braincells to rub together Should

[qqueenofhades]

Do you think society as a whole understands and values history? I don’t think they do. And I don’t understand why.

HoooooWEEEEEE, anon. What follows is a good old Hilary History Rant ™, but let me hasten to assure you that none of it is directed at you. It just means that this is a topic on which I have many feelings, and a lot of frustration, and it gets at the heart of many things which are wrong with our society, and the way in which I try to deal with this as an academic and a teacher. So…. yeah.

In short: you’re absolutely right. Society as a whole could give exactly dick about understanding and valuing history, especially right now. Though let me rephrase that: they could give exactly dick about understanding and valuing any history that does not reinforce and pander to their preferred worldview, belief system, or conception of reality. The human race has always had an amazing ability to not give a shit about huge problems as long as they won’t kill us right now (see: climate change) and in one sense, that has allowed us to survive and evolve and become an advanced species. You have to compartmentalize and solve one problem at a time rather than get stuck in abstracts, so in that way, it is a positive trait. However, we are faced with a 21st century where the planet is actively burning alive, late-stage capitalism has become so functionally embedded in every facet of our society that our public values, civic religion, and moral compass (or lack thereof) is structured around consumerism and who it benefits (the 1% of billionaire CEOs), and any comfortable myths of historical progress have been blown apart by the worldwide backslide into right-wing authoritarianism, xenophobia, nationalism, racism, and other such things. In a way, this was a reaction to 9/11, which changed the complacent late-20th century mindset of the West in ways that we really cannot fathom or overstate. But it’s also a clarion call that something is very, very wrong here, and the structural and systemic explanations that historians provide for these kinds of events are never what anyone wants to hear.

Think about it this way. The world is currently, objectively speaking, producing more material resources, wealth, food, etc than at any point before, thanks to the effects of globalism, the industrial and information revolutions, mass mechanizing, and so on. There really isn’t a “shortage” of things. Except for the fact that the distribution of these resources is so insanely unequal, and wildly disproportionate amounts of wealth have been concentrated in a few private hands, which then use the law (and the law is a tool of the powerful to protect power) to make sure that it’s never redistributed. This is why Reaganism and “supply-side”, aka “trickle-down” economics, is such bullshit: it presupposes that billionaires will, if you enable them to make as many billions as possible without regulation, altruistically sow that largess among the working class. This never happens, because obviously. (Sidenote: remember those extravagant pledges of billions of euros to repair Notre Dame from like 3 or 4 French billionaires? Apparently they have paid… exactly not one cent toward renovations, and the money has come instead from the Friends of Notre Dame funded by private individuals. Yep, not even for the goddamn cause célèbre of the “we don’t give a shit about history” architectural casualties could they actually pay up. Eat! The! Rich!…. anyway.)

However, the fact is that you need to produce narratives to justify this kind of exploitation and inequality, and make them convincing enough that the people who are being fucked over will actively repeat and promote these narratives and be fiercely vested in their protection. Think of the way white American working-class voters will happily blame minorities, immigrants, Non-Murkan People, etc for their struggles, rather than the fact of said rampant economic cronyism and oligarchy. These working-class voters will love the politicians who give them someone to blame (see: Trump), especially when that someone is an Other around whom collective systems of discrimination and oppression have historically operated. Women, people of color, religious minorities/non-Western religions, LGBT people, immigrants, etc, etc…. all these have historically not had such a great time in the capitalist Christian West, which is the predominant paradigm organizing society today. You can’t understand why society doesn’t value history until you realize that the people who benefit from this system aren’t keen on having its flaws pointed out. They don’t want the masses to have a historical education if that historical education is going to actually be used. They would rather teach them the simplistic rah-rah quasi-fictional narrative of the past that makes everyone feel good, and call it a day. 

The classic liberal belief has always been that if you can just teach someone that their facts are wrong, or supply them with better facts, they’ll change their mind. This is not how it works and never has, and that is why in an age with, again, more knowledge of science than ever before and the collected wisdom of humanity available via your smartphone, we have substantial portions of people who believe that vaccines are evil, the Earth is flat, and climate change (and 87 million other things) are fake and/or government conspiracies. As a medievalist, I get really tetchy when the idiocy of modern people is blamed on the stereotypical “Dark Ages!” medieval era (I have written many posts ranting about that, so we’ll keep it to a minimum here), or when everything bad, backward, or wrong is considered to be “medieval” in nature. Trust me, on several things, they were doing a lot better than we are. Other things are not nearly as wildly caricatured as they have been made out to be. Because once again, history is complicated and people are flawed in any era, do good and bad things, but that isn’t as useful as a narrative that flattens out into simplistic black and white.

Basically, people don’t want their identities, comfortable notions, and other ideas about the past challenged, especially since that is directly relevant to how they perceive themselves (and everyone else) in the present. The thing about history, obviously, is that it’s past, it’s done, and until we invent a time machine, which pray God we never fucking do, within a few generations, the entire population of the earth has been replaced. That means it’s awfully fragile as a concept. Before the modern era and the invention of technology and the countless mediums (book, TV, radio, newspaper, internet, etc etc) that serve as sources, it’s only available in a relatively limited corpus of documents. History does not speak for itself. That’s where you get into historiography, or writing history. Even if you have a book or document that serves as a primary source material, you have to do a shit-ton of things with it to turn it into recognizable scholarship. You have to learn the language it’s in. You have to understand the context in which it was produced. You have to figure out what it ignores, forgets, omits, or simply does not know as well as what it does, and recognize it as a limited text produced from a certain perspective or for a social reason that may or may not be explicitly articulated. The training of a historian is to teach you how to do this accurately and more or less fairly, but that is up to the personal ethic of the historian to ensure. When you’re reading a history book, you’re not reading an unmediated, Pure, This Was Definitely How Things Happened The End information download. You are reading something by someone who has made their best guess and has been equipped with the interpretive tools to be reasonably confident in their analysis, but sometimes just doesn’t know, sometimes has an agenda in pushing one opinion over another, or anything else.

History, in other words, is a system of flawed and self-serving collective memory, and power wants only the memory that ensures its survival and replication. You’ve heard of the “history is written by the winners” quote, which basically encapsulates the fact that what we learn and what we take as fact is largely or entirely structured by the narrative of those who can control it. If you’ve heard of the 1970s French philosopher Michel Foucault, his work is basically foundational in understanding how power produces knowledge in each era (what he calls epistemes) and the way in which historical “fact” is subject to the needs of these eras. Foucault has a lot of critics and his work particularly in the history of sexuality has now become dated (plus he can be a slog to read), but I do suggest familiarizing yourself with some of his ideas. 

This is also present in the constant refrain heard by anybody who has ever studied the arts and humanities: “oh, don’t do liberal arts, you’ll never get a job, study something worthwhile,” etc. It’s funny how the “worthwhile” subjects always seem to be science and engineering/software/anything that can support the capitalist military industrial complex, while science is otherwise completely useless to them. It’s also always funny how the humanities are relentlessly de- or under- funded. By labeling these subjects as “worthless,” when they often focus on deep investigation of varied topics, independent critical thought, complex analysis, and otherwise teaching you to think for yourself, we therefore decrease the amount of people who feel compelled to go into them. Since (see again, late-stage capitalism is a nightmare) most people are going to prefer some kind of paycheck to stringing it along on a miniscule arts budget, they will leave those fields and their inherent social criticism behind. Of course, we do have some people – academics, social scientists, artists, creatives, activists, etc – who do this kind of work and dedicate themselves to it, but we (and I include myself in this group) have not reached critical mass and do not have the power to effect actual drastic change on this unfair system. I can guarantee that they will ensure we never will, and the deliberate and chronic underfunding of the humanities is just one of the mechanisms by which late-stage capitalism replicates and protects itself.

I realize that I sound like an old man yelling at a cloud/going off on my paranoid rant, but…. this is just the way we’ve all gotten used to living, and it’s both amazing and horrifying. As long as the underclasses are all beholden to their own Ideas of History, and as long as most people are content to exist within the current ludicrous ideas that we have received down the ages as inherited wisdom and enforced on ourselves and others, there’s not much we can do about it. You are never going to reach agreement on some sweeping Platonic ideal of universal history, since my point throughout this whole screed has always been that history is particular, localized, conditioned by specific factors, and produced to suit the purposes of a very particular set of goals. History doesn’t repeat itself, per se (though it can be Very Fucking Close), but as long as access to a specific set of resources, i.e. power, money, sex, food, land, technology, jobs, etc are at stake, the inherent nature of human beings means that they will always be choosing from within a similar matrix of actions, producing the same kind of justifications for those actions, and transmitting it to the next generation in a way that relatively few people learn how to challenge. We have not figured out how to break that cycle yet. We are an advanced species beyond any doubt, but we’re also still hairless apes on a spinning blue ball on the outer arm of a rural galaxy, and oftentimes we act like it.

I don’t know. I think it’s obvious why society doesn’t understand and value history, because historians are so often the ones pointing out the previous pattern of mistakes and how well that went last time. Power does not want to be dismantled or criticized, and has no interest in empowering the citizens to consider the mechanisms by which they collaborate in its perpetuation. White supremacists don’t want to be educated into an “actual” version of history, even if their view of things is, objectively speaking, wildly inaccurate. They want the version of history which upholds their beliefs and their way of life. Even non-insane people tend to prefer history that validates what they think they already know, and especially in the West, a certain mindset and system of belief is already so well ingrained that it has become almost omniscient. Acquiring the tools to work with this is, as noted, blocked by social disapproval and financial shortfall. Plus it’s a lot of goddamn work. I’m 30 years old and just finished my PhD, representing 12 years of higher education, thousands of dollars, countless hours of work, and so on. This is also why they’ve jacked the price of college through the roof and made it so inaccessible for people who just cannot make that kind of commitment. I’ve worked my ass off, for sure, but I also had support systems that not everyone does. I can’t say I got here All On My Own ™, that enduring myth of pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps. I know I didn’t. I had a lot of help, and again, a lot of people don’t. The academy is weird and cliquish and underpaid as a career. Why would you do that?

I wish I had more overall answers for you about how to fix this. I think about this a lot. I’ll just have to go back to doing what I can, as should we all, since that is really all that is ultimately in our control.

[xwillstudy-blog]

Rhetoric of Space: “The Jewel of the BnL fleet.”

The place in which a story is set has a very important role in sending the greater message of a movie. It describes the way society and a culture interact, and the way the ideas and beliefs of a culture affect a society. The time can bring a crucial piece of information because it provides background for why the society believes and behaves a certain way. Depending on how far back a story is set in the past, the characters may believe in witches and demons, they may see technology as a privilege instead of a necessity and everyday part of life, or there could be a complete shift in the atmosphere of the cities, regions, and people if the story is supposed to reflect a war zone or a time of recession and economic decay. In contrast, if the story is set in the future, the possibility is unlimited and the future can be bright, vibrant, and full of curiosity, or it can be bleak, frightening, and a dystopian nightmare. The context for which a story takes place communicates the boundaries and possibilities limited and given to the main character. The “space” of a story can be vividly shown, implicitly relatable, or explicitly diverse from the world the viewer is accustomed to. Great examples of space being an essential piece to describing a story are Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, The Simpsons Springfield, Alice’s Wonderland, Coraline’s the Other World, and Peter Pan’s Neverland, but the one being analyzed today is the Axiom from WALL-E.

The machines were never meant to destroy the humans to become powerful. AIs fought that battle in the Incredibles and learned that the fastest way to be the dominate the human race was not through violence or physical confrontation. It was to play it safe and provide the humans with something only machines can provide - perfection. Through constant attention and alleviation of the nitty-gritty, mundane everyday activity, machines were able to hit the humans were it hurt without the humans being aware of it. The society and culture of consumerism became their downfall as the humans became to see the machines’ efficiency and competence for perfection as a norm. As this laziness progressed the planet began to suffer and the humans panicked at the very last moment. Their solution - like every other time they had been confronted with a problem - escape/run away from the problem and rely on machines. They built the axiom as a massive, luxury cruise ship meant to feed, entertain, and reflect the population of the people inhabiting said ship’s lifestyles.

The creation of the ship on its own is a testament to the culture and society. The literal meaning of its name is “something that is taken for granted.” The viewers are able to see the true emotion the ship gives to the humans when they travel with WALL-E aboard it for the first time and see the qualities and attributes associated with keeping the humans happy. There are all sorts of amenities to cater to the every need of each of the inhabitants aboard, and according to the lifespan of the captain, there has to be working in the humans’ favor. However, if the viewer looks closer, he or she will see the persuasive techniques used to sell this idea of a dream world to the humans on the ship. Pathos would be using the desires of the consumer culture to make the humans not want to do anything for themselves. Why should they if everything is taken care of at a faster and more efficient rate by a machine? The ethos would be the AUTO’s explanation of how he was programmed to do his job, and since the humans had been following - subconsciously - the word of the machines without question for centuries, the credibility the machines had far outweighed their curiosity that something might be amiss or that life was too good to be true. Logos is a simple explanation. The Earth, as far as the humans know, is uninhabitable, dirty, and filled with trash that they would have to remove if they returned. The axiom has kept the humans safe and happy for centuries. The question a lot of skeptics might ask is why fix something that’s not broken?

When being introduced to WALL-E for the first time and his daily routine on the desolate planet Earth, the viewers feel broken, lost, empty, and sorry for the world that they know now and what many warn it will become. When viewer aboard the axiom, they see the privilege, the laziness, the unhealthiness, and the carnivorous consumerism that is materialistic convenience. The viewers’ opinions may be split between wanting to experience that same paradise and judging the people for their body shapes, lazy tendencies, and entitled mentality. The Earthen society aboard the axiom in WALL-E is one that places convenience over practicality and independence. The culture of people is very lazy, machine-dependent, and unhealthily complacent with not having control over its people’s own lives.

[calloftheuniverse]

The Seduction of Money

This is probably one of the LARGEST issues facing our species in this modern age. Everyone is consumed by it, they spend all of their time and energy in the pursuit of it, and it has been tied into our survival so deeply that it has caused a necrosis in our societal structure. Parenting has taken a back seat for many because the struggle to survive on the wages of honest work is a very real thing. Housing close to work is expensive, healthy food is expensive, and things like running water, heat and electricity also come at a price. The part that nobody mentions is that the price you actually pay is not measured in dollars and cents as much as it is paid for with life; That precious and limited resource that is measured in the limited amount of time you get to spend on this earth learning, experiencing and growing your consciousness.

In order to more deeply understand the basis of this human sickness, we must first take a look at the structure of the institution that runs the money system and its resulting economies. The currency itself is not backed by any substance or resource that has real value in the world. The paper its printed on has various fibers in it like cotton and silk along with the ink and security features, but for all intention and purpose, its value is nothing more than the material it is made from. BUT...This is where it gets tricky, because we all know you need money for everything...right? Yes, and no. The idea of money on its surface seemed like a solid one. Trading goods and services for a sort of voucher that can be used to obtain needed items goods and services from others. Its light to carry and it doesn't spoil the way food might.  As we grew in numbers and population size, we needed a way to be able to stream line the idea of bartering.

While good in concept, the largest advantage to currency also became the worst failing. It never spoils and it takes up no space. Where people couldn't conceivably or effectively take more than their share or more than they needed with the barter system, they now had something that was perfectly collectable. It eliminated the situation where if you took more food than you needed it would spoil out from under you. So let the competition to have it all begin!

Skip ahead a few generations to the birth of the central banking idea. Many of our founders, our forefathers knew the dangers of this institution, and spoke out against it, got in its way and tried to derail it with speeches and little bits and pieces of our constitution put into place to PROTECT us from a centralized bank. They knew and understood the dangers than came with it because it was exactly the same sort of tyranny that existed in England. It was the root cause of the oppression they rebelled to escape from. This is one of those tidbits in American history they sort of skim over and don't talk about, because to truly educate our children about history could cause them to take a look at the present and wonder about the future. Our founder KNEW that the central bank was trouble, that was why they left, that was why they rebelled. They refused to continually be taxed to pay for the interest on the loans, taken out by the English crown to pay for wars.

All history lessons aside, lets dig into the way the system works a little bit...

The first thing to understand is that the way they (the owners of the central banks) operate left utterly no room for ANY other outcome than the one we are looking at, and they knew this when they crunched the numbers and started taking excessive measures to put it into place. They had lots of money when they first started, they loaned out the money they had to those who had a need for it and charged “interest” for loaning it out. Interest is just a fancy word for getting money simply because you have enough to lend to others. Hold on to that idea for just a moment, I will come back to it.

Lets take a look at another commonly accepted concept...Inflation.

First, what is it and how is it measured? If you have 1 lb of gold (or kg if you are actually on a sensible unit of measurement based on even numbers that end in 0s), the idea of currency USED to be based on gold that existed. you could take bank notes at any time and trade them in for the amount of gold expressed on the face of the note. The amount of gold was the value it was based on. Back in the 1900s there was a forcible seizure of all the gold in our country enforced by threat of prison. This was the beginning of the nightmare we live now. Once the central bank had physical ownership of all the “value” behind the money, i.e. gold, they then started producing more and more and more of these “credits” to represent the same value. For the sake of illustration, consider a checking account that has 1000$ in it, you can write as many checks as you like, but they must all be for the same amount. The more of them you write, the less each one individually will be worth. That is what inflation is, and what it is caused by. The checks represent every dollar in circulation.

What does this have to do with everything you may ask? What does this have to do with any of us. The answer is both more complicated and more simple than anyone realizes.  The central bank has grown by loaning money to our government and to other smaller banks, with interest of course, but that alone wasn't enough. The money they loan is created out of thin air, making the money already in circulation worth less. and not only do they get that back when the loan is repaid, but even MORE because of the interest. (told ya id be back ^^) The equation ends up coming out with everyone in debt. Forever. The money to repay the debt does not and can not ever exist, because to pay it back, there would need to be more than there is, and would increase the debt more because of the interest attached. Catch 22 with all of humanity footing the bill in the name of a few greedy individuals.

Okay, you may be saying “this makes sense, but how does that cause x, y and z?” Well, like this...Big money protects its interests 1st and foremost. To understand how deep the rabbit hole goes, it is important to understand that there’s only one major corporation in all the world that deals with the manufacture and distribution of weapons of war...bombs, planes, tanks, and guns. Funny enough, they are run by the same group of people who graciously provide loans to our government to pay for these implements of war. They manage and fund news stations that focus on the stories they are told to air. Yes, LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE ALIKE. I don't care about your politics or opinions on matters not personally or universally relevant, and they will not be featured here. If you are still so attached to these force-fed ideas that have been artificially imposed by a never ending barrage via media and internet, feel free to continue to read or not as you choose, BUT I wont be baited, and if its an idea you have that you want to impose on another or not something affecting us as a whole species, you won’t be indulged or fed. But...I digress.

Basic truth about all animals, including humans: When their basic needs for Food, shelter, and Social contact go unmet, they do not behave the same way they normally would. They fight, lash out, steal, kill. We are all meant to love and support one another, invest our energy in science, art and creativity, and technological break through. We are not being fairly compensated for the labor we provide as a population. The only thing there is a shortage of is the money itself, and the life experiences we are getting f*cked out of trying to get what we need to survive.

So what is the answer and what can you do personally? Take a stand. Do what you can to plant fruit and nut trees, potted tomatoes, whatever you can from where you are. Garden. If you don't know how, learn, use the greatest tool available to our species right now, the internet. Don't buy their crap, physically and emotionally...spiritually. Boycott their poison foods and their corporate farms that are killing the bees and making us sick to make even more money. Pay off your credit cards and cut them in half, swear off loans of all kinds. Avoid consumerism. Buy only things you cant craft for yourself, and avoid disposable items. Talk to your family, help the children understand that we cannot continue to spend whole lives working to make the rich richer. Every time we punch a clock and don't get the value from the work we have done, and every time we spend those meager dollars on stuff others in the same position have crafted, we are feeding that monster. what you can do is simple...Work for someone else only as much as you need to, and spend only on those things you cant do the labor yourself and reap the rewards. Barter your skills to others who have different skills. Reconnect in your towns, cities and neighborhoods, show them what they can do to help change the world, or at least their corner of it. Be the change you wish to see. The key to ending the enslavement is severing the dependency that allowed it.

The universe is calling to us all, will you answer that call, or will you be just another of the complacent subdued masses entranced in escapism and convinced you have no power?