ben
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skip, you don’t know what the hell you are talking about. here’s what LG wrote:
Some of this may be difficult to believe simply because it is very difficult for normal human beings with a basic sense of empathy and decency to get into the head and (empty) heart space of our global leaders. They are psychopaths and have been self-bred for psychopathy for centuries (at least). In addition, they are covertly conditioned as children to reinforce their genetic tendencies.
this means that the elite are being bred — inbred or simply selectively so — for genetic psychopathy so that the percentage of them that are genetic psychopaths is much higher than the general population. beyond that, the non-genetic psychopaths are being programmed to be functional psychopaths so that the percentage of them that are functional psychopaths is much higher than the general population.
get it? whether or not you agree that this selective breeding is actually occurring via arranged marriage, you must agree of course that selective breeding does indeed create genetic tendencies.
LG is not anti-semitic. his is anti-zionist. i also know for a fact that he in no way advocates physical violence against the elite. you dishonored the man and if you have any sense of honor yourself you will issue a retraction.
RE said
Far as your selective choices go of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot et al go as representative of the Evil Dictator outcome, it remains a possibility but does not HAVE to be the outcome. All I need to do is demonstrate ONE instance of a Dictator who improved the lives of the people he ruled over to show this outcome is not inevitable. I think Fidel Castro does that pretty well by his lonesome. There is little doubt that quite a few Innocents were sent to the Great Beyond when Castro took over, but on balance things mostly were better for the Cubans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mongol_Empire_map.gif
Bring In The Genghis Man!
ashvin post=3373 wrote: [quote=ben post=3353]
I also found that to be a deeply inconsistent suggestion by ash. naturally he will claim otherwise, but implicit in the claim will probably be a judgement that’s not his to make.
Inconsistent… with what? What implicit judgment?
RE asked for ideas about other ways to deal with the NWO elites, and I gave him one. It’s not the path I have personally chosen to take at this point, but it undeniably a path that many have chosen to take and that many regard as a very productive one.
But anyway… I don’t think I will ever truly understand WTF it is you are talking about, ben, so…
how bout them Cs last night?? They’re taking it to Game 7 for sure.
oh, right. of course. with what? silly me for being so characteristically obscure with my references.
lemme refresh your memory with your most recent comment at DD, which was a response to LG (bold), and which is just the latest of your box-shaped, Can’t Tell Shit From Shinola broadsides against icke and the other anarchist esotericists whom at the very least you should be cheering on for their anti-fascist empowerment:The rest might satisfy themselves with just sniffing at the entrance to the “rabbit hole” as Icke so cleverly puts it. I am now well into that rabbit hole and exploring.
Oh you are deep into the rabbit hole, alright. So deep that you have become a shill for the very same Illuminati that you spend your time railing against. How else do you explain your constant promotion of someone who is so clearly a Theosophist (Icke), hijacking most of his core ideas from admitted Satanists Helena Blavatsky and Alice Bailey, who incidentally formed Lucis Trust (i.e. the Lucifer Publishing Company). If you took the time to think critically about it, instead of accepting whatever he says because his ideas seem to mesh with your spiritual “research”, you would see that I am right.
You want to dismiss anyone who still uses science, rationality and logic to analyze various issues in the real world, because you cling to Tom Campbell’s pseudo-spiritual, pseudo-scientific TOE (which is itself a variation of much earlier New Age propaganda), all the while not realizing that’s exactly the best outcome the Illuminati and NWO promoters could ever hope for. They want to marginalize anyone who thinks with their head, and appeal to the self-deluded who believe they can be a God.
You are already talking like someone who will be eager to dispense with anyone who is not furthering what you believe to be humanity’s spiritual evolution, as if the rest of us are just holding you back with our “chicken shit”. Trust me when I say that I mean the following with no ill will towards you: I feel lucky that you are in your 60s rather than much younger, because we do not need any more people with your beliefs and your way with words in the trying decades ahead of us.
Your rabbit hole will pave the way for THEIR power and humanity’s descent into a never-ending abyss, so I beg you, climb out and get a grip before it’s too late.
over and out, ash.
SB, i think you will think highly of this op-ed in the LA Times on Puttnam’s Law. i obviously agree that Puttman’s Law is a dynamic that exists, but i also believe this article is retrogressive for what it omits – the well-documented, active social programming by the elite (might wanna click on some of Triv’s links sometime). which is why it went to print.
When it comes to contemporary American culture, its slogan ought to be “same old same-old.” Same old movies — one bombastic comic book adventure after another. Same old TV shows — one “Friends” clone after another, from “How I Met your Mother” to”Happy Endings”to”Whitney”to “Men at Work.” Same old journalism. Same old politics. There are, of course, outliers and renegades, but there seem to be fewer of them nowadays, and they are just that: outliers. For all the obsession with the new and different, we seem to be living within déjà vu.
If you are looking for an explanation for this cultural gravitational pull that drags everything to the predictable center, it may very well be what one might label “Puttnam’s Law” after David Puttnam, the British film producer. Puttnam’s Law should take its place alongside Murphy’s Law (anything that can go wrong will go wrong), Parkinson’s Law (work expands to fill the time available to complete it) and the Peter Principle (a person rises to the level of his or her incompetence) as a basic tenet of modern life. Indeed, if you understand Puttnam’s Law, you will understand a great deal about the cultural poverty that surrounds us…
Thus Puttnam’s Law: It is more acceptable to fail in conventional ways than in unconventional ways. And its corollary: The reward for succeeding in unconventional ways is less than the risk of failing in unconventional ways. In short, you can screw up with impunity so long as you screw up like everybody else…
There is a scene in Alexandra Pelosi’s documentary aboutGeorge W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign, “Journeys With George,” in which a reporter rises from his desk at the end of the day in a press room filled with other reporters and asks, “What is our story today?” In other words: What are they all going to be writing? One might think that reporters might strive to look for the odd angle or the unreported element — to separate themselves from the pack. You’d be wrong. That’s Puttnam’s Law.
Thus, even when you are wrong, you have the defense of working within the consensus. When you are wrong outside the consensus, you have no defense. You are on your own. That’s Puttnam’s Law again…
Puttnam’s Law is also readily applicable to politics and economics. Woe betide the politician who proposes something new and different, which is why Mitt Romney is still peddling tax cuts, even though they demonstrably failed in the Bush administration, and why President Obama followed a war plan in Afghanistan that was essentially forged by consensus and that changed only when the consensus changed. Puttnam’s Law also helps explain why Wall Street geniuses who should have known better pursued high-risk strategies that brought on the Great Recession and continue to pursue them, as JP Morgan recently showed. Everybody did it. The prudent ones were the outliers, and where are they now?
To be fair, America has long been in the grip of Puttnam’s Law. Conformity is comfort. Early in the 19th century Tocqueville remarked, “I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.” But the law operates with greater force now because the culture has become so status- and success-conscious at its upper echelons that there is more at stake by risking independence, and because mass culture itself intensifies the fear of being different. For all our vaunted individualism, majority not only rules in America; it rules with an iron hand.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-ca-puttnams-law-20120603,0,672709.story
there can’t be herding without predation. intraspecies predation.
Considering “drawing on Spiritual energies” to combat the Forces of Evil, here you are starting to sound like Ben expecting to get an answer from the 5th Dimension. What you are saying in essence is that we should all just PRAY together here, and Kumbaya all will be well. I don’t buy this as a solution, as you say people are Praying RIGHT NOW for this insanity to end, but it AIN’T ENDING. I suggest a more terrestrial based approach and will leave the Spirit world to you and the 5th Dimension to Ben.
I also found that to be a deeply inconsistent suggestion by ash. naturally he will claim otherwise, but implicit in the claim will probably be a judgement that’s not his to make. you have compelled me to raise a couple points of contention, RE. firstly, I don’t expect an answer from 5D (multiversal consciousness) because what framing I have of such a conception with regard to collapse doesn’t include an implicit expectation nor an explicit question. secondly, it is my understanding that a time- and terrestrial- based approach (4D) cannot be separated from 5D if consciousness is believed to be immaterial – and I take it you do.
so basiago’s not 48 going on 48, then.
that’s too bad. 😉 lovely chap all the same.
thanks, grav – you’re the best.
i’ve posted this before, but i thought it might be of interest again.
peak oil?
josh posted this chart two ways at the Undertow on 3/20
Andee post=2608 wrote: Greetings Peter if you’re reading these comments. I thought I was alone. Over the years I have developed the ability to spend time at will on the conscious/subconscious divide that you so clearly describe. What a revelation this is. Very interesting. I will be exploring your further offerings.
andee, in the event you find this helpful, an easy way to read what peter has up at DD so far is to go to his profile and click on ‘show posts.’
i’ll see RE’s skittle shitting unicorn and raise him an andrew basiago:
grav, i expect a full report!
einhverfr post=2610 wrote: Ben: I guess what I am getting at is how you define industrial energy. I don’t think it is possible to draw bright lines there. But how do you define industrial energy?
Edit: I could see an argument that the key metric is net energy *imports* but that isn’t what the individual I was replying to said, and coal mines where coal is used nationally wouldn’t be industrial energy by that definition.
sorry, E, i thought your questions were rhetorical.
i think the line between industrial energy and non-industrial energy is pretty bright.
if the horse you mentioned, that’s pulling the plow, is being fed on commercial oats it’s an industrial horse because commercial food production is largely an oil-fueled, machine-based type of food production rather than based on pre-steam machinery and manual labor. this type of plowing is a relatively poor simulation of pre-industrial farming. if somehow the horse is not industrial but the plow is modern, it’s a better simulation and the type of thing we would see in a salvage economy.
if the charcoal you mentioned, for your bbq, was made from scratch by manual labor then that process itself is not industrial. if the axe use to fell and chop the tree was made by pre-industrial forging, or it’s a flint axe, then the cooking of your bbq meal is the real deal – hyperreal, even, if one cares to go there.
same goes for wind powered pumps. depends on the construction.
where does it get fuzzy for you?
einhverfr post=2610 wrote: Ben: I guess what I am getting at is how you define industrial energy. I don’t think it is possible to draw bright lines there. But how do you define industrial energy?
Edit: I could see an argument that the key metric is net energy *imports* but that isn’t what the individual I was replying to said, and coal mines where coal is used nationally wouldn’t be industrial energy by that definition.
other than some small measure of renewables — the manufacture and operation of which are also dependent on fossil fuels — beyond oil the balance of greece’s current energy consumption comes from domestic lignite production. lignite is the lowest quality coal if i’m not mistaken. perhaps this is a simplification but i’m under the impression that surface coal was almost exhausted by the time the steam engine was invented to facilitate mining. edit: greece returning to steam on an early industrial level seems extremely farfetched. steve says it will look more like somalia. as a full-doomer i’d guess only temporarily.
ben post=2606 wrote: [quote=einhverfr post=2603]Ben:
What counts as industrial energy? Is a horse eating oats and pulling a plough different from a diesel tractor? Why would one count and the other not?
Does coal-generated electricity count when it heats my stove, but not charcoal when I do a bbq? Why?
Do wind-powered water pumps not count but electrical ones count?
hey E. you appear to be asking rhetorical questions. if so, feel free to make your point. if not do say so and i will answer the first two but beyond that it would become redundant.
okay, E – short answer is pretty much everything, right? when not taken industrially steve’s use of zero also works figuratively.pipefit post=2605 wrote: Gawd, Ben, are you ever horrible at reading people. Castaneda is my favorite author. As usual, the original is so much better. This is one thing about the web that really bothers me. Folks copy sheeit, almost word for word, without any attribution.
oh, i see. it’s not anti-casteneda baggage. it’s intellectual property baggage.
peter being of the mind that its control function far outweighs its revolutionary potential.”
Duh, by several orders of magnitude. By posting a few photos on facebook, they’ve got you completely figured out, down to the nitty gritty. Think how easy it is going to be for them to confiscate the peoples’ gold, should they decide to do so. I’m just hoping they decide to let the price run up a couple more thousand dollars per ounce before pulling the trigger.you better hope, too, that that black (unreported) gold stays black. cash is king.
einhverfr post=2603 wrote: Ben:
What counts as industrial energy? Is a horse eating oats and pulling a plough different from a diesel tractor? Why would one count and the other not?
Does coal-generated electricity count when it heats my stove, but not charcoal when I do a bbq? Why?
Do wind-powered water pumps not count but electrical ones count?
hey E. you appear to be asking rhetorical questions. if so, feel free to make your point. if not do say so and i will answer the first two but beyond that it would become redundant.
If you agree, then don’t you think the whole point of these ‘off mainstream’ web sites gets a bit catch 22ish awfully fast. Get it?
pipefit. correct me if i’m wrong, but i expect you’ve been lugging around your condescension towards castaneda for decades. you ever consider putting down the baggage?
that said, what about the internet as a double-edged sword?
as i recall, peter and el gallinazo, at last count over on DD, disagreed on this idea, with el gallinazo in the ‘for’ camp and peter in the ‘against.’ peter being of the mind that its control function far outweighs its revolutionary potential.
einhverfr post=2589 wrote:
When energy use in defaulted countries is reduced to zero it will remain at zero … essentially forever.
Energy use can only be reduced to zero when the last human dies. How else will we cook? Burning charcoal is energy use too. Austerity is here to stay because we have lost the energy subsidy. However that doesn’t mean that energy use can ever decline to zero wherever humans are alive. We are all consuming solar energy whether that sunshine hit the earth recently or in geological ages past.
steve’s use of zero was in reference to industrial energy.
FTTP was a fantastic quarterly that ended its run, not coincidentally I don’t suppose, in spring of 2011. they had .pdf files online for free but hard copies could also be purchased. it was a non-glossy, militant underground counterpart to adbusters. well written articles. A Longing For Collapse Press appears to be publishing hard copies for five bucks an issue:
anybody expecting Occupy to maintain a monolithic pacifism will have those expectations dashed, despite what the MSM has done to emasculate men by constructing a false and pernicious feminism for women. those men that can’t be emasculated are funneled into living vicariously through professional sports and engaging in other supposedly masculine pursuits. i suspect that non-pacifist public resistance to DOT is partially a reflection of this social programming. Occupy is in the process of deprogramming itself.
if you actually examine the photo, which enlarges, you’ll see they are not wearing matching outfits. from front to back we got some Dickies-looking pants, drark gray pants, a pair of rain pants (seattle, i have those, too, along with a black hooded coat and black skate shoes, which is what i would wear a lot down at Occupy), and jogging out of the frame back-left, a pair of tight jeans. same goes for the hooded wear. all look different to me. shoes, different.
if you watched the longer version of the video i posted at DD, there is a girl who takes some shots at an already broken window who is noticeably mismatched. anarchists who want to break stuff do exist. there aren’t enough of them. i’m not saying APs aren’t being used. i do think an Occupy false flag is coming but think that it’ll involve casualties and not broken windows.
here’s a photo from the notorious AP rock throwing incident that the quebec gov’t actually owned up to a couple years ago:
cheers, BloB. funny vid. well written i thought. favorite part was when the director gave the blonde writer a referential hug.
oxymoron it is. no, wait!
🙂
by the way, BB, as for ‘getting back to the land,’ permaculture is a half-measure at best. unfortunately it’s the best we can do until the bottleneck, and after that anyone who continues to practice it will probably be doomed because of their attachment to it.
Bot Blogger post=2564 wrote: Ben:
Damn I thought I had you!But actually we are getting closer to what is truth in advertising. Selling is the only measure of advertising sophistication. It is not indie art ads. So I take my point back!
BB. “selling is the only measure of advertising sophistication” is a sophisticated statement. but untrue. so you can’t have it back! or not yet, until you elaborate in a more convincing fashion. i also find the “selling” usage unclear. “sales” would be preferable to me but even then it would smack of Admanspeak and everything Zen, everything Zen – i don’t think so.
sales are obviously not the only measure of advertising sophistication. but i’m all ears.
Regardless I like the Chipotle ad you use because it’s offers up an interesting test of theory. First, did it succeed in convincing you to go eat one of their tasty burritos? I imagine not, given your reaction, yet you deem it a sophisticated ad. Why? Well the ad plays on the very themes you hold dear. Industrialization…perhaps going back to the land, a more wholesome time…etc. But is that sophistication intentional? Or does Chipotle believe that is what their burrito does?
I would say they believe. They simply believe that they are doing the right thing and that is what they are selling. One may imagine there are evil burrito bosses hiding behind the Chipotle curtain pulling your strings but you risk wandering into the realm of paranoia. I’ve been there.
pffft. i do not believe in chipotle-brand puppetmasters running their ad campaign. this is a function of pathocracy.
yes, they believe, in a sheeple kind of way. as you say, they simply believe. but if any of them followed the nature of the business to its logical conclusion — JIT industrial capitalism — then they would not believe. Farm Aid — of which chipotle-brand is a donor, which is why willie nelson, prez of Farm Aid, did the ad — is a well-meaning joke. if anybody doesn’t think it’s effectively a greenwashing arm of the one-party system i’d suggest that person think again. it’s a spectacle!
wikipedia:
The spectacle associated with advanced capitalism and commodity abundance. In the diffuse spectacle, different commodities conflict with each other, preventing the consumer from consuming the whole. Each commodity claims itself as the only existent one, and tries to impose itself over the other commodities:
“Irreconcilable claims jockey for position on the stage of the affluent economy’s unified spectacle, and different star commodities simultaneously promote conflicting social policies. The automobile spectacle, for example, strives for a perfect traffic flow entailing the destruction of old urban districts, while the city spectacle needs to preserve those districts as tourist attractions.”
— Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
The diffuse spectacle is more effective than the concentrated spectacle. The diffuse spectacle operates mostly through seduction, while the concentrated spectacle operates mostly through violence. Because of this, Debord argues that the diffuse spectacle is more effective at suppressing non-spectacular opinions than the concentrated spectacle.
on your view of paranoia: if you’re no longer willing to risk wandering into the realm of paranoia on occasion then i’d submit you’re displaying avoidant behavior. which is limiting. the cutting edge is where it’s at. i’m not claiming i’m on it.
BB said:
My comment about corporations was not expressing my views on China and India. It was a comment on corporations and whether or not they have a plan to disengage from the nation state, specifically the United States. They are after all transnational corporations. This is what the banks are doing with their debt obligations. They are handing them over to the tax payers of nation states and they will float above with no obligations to anyone other than themselves. The Catholic Church comes to mind as one of the first such transnational corporations that ran influence and power in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire. Perhaps some such arrangement is in the works. We will be obliged to align ourselves (across borders) to specific Corporate Churches.
okay, cool.
Personally I’m going to get my Chipotle T-shirt and baseball cap on right now so I can self identify and make my allegiances known.
there’s no sex in your violence. you better go commando.
the reason, other than dork, that they’re putting cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets in their crusts is to try and compete with the more popular burger joints.
and thinking on advertising sophistication again, BB, I take back my acquiescence to your suggestion that it’s an oxymoron. after all, sophistication is a ruse. advertising is the sophistication of selling. by degrees.
fair enough, BB, regarding advertising sophistication being an oxymoron. i guess i was thinking of ads such as those of the greenwashing genre using several layers of manipulation in order to short circuit the mental processes of those who know better. but i think you’re right and it’s just the same old carrot on a stick. one that i stupidly became incensed over when it played before a movie at the theater some months ago:
i do not share your views on china and india.
https://www.thenews.com.mx/index.php/business/B01-21733.html
Bot Blogger post=2461 wrote: Ben I await your full dissertation on Dorkology. Perhaps this pie chart will help to clarify any overlapping definitions of terminology:
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1AgA_BSRr40/TE78PIoa3NI/AAAAAAAAALQ/4J5l5jABa2s/s1600/nerd-venn.jpg
LOL. nice find, BB. can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. doesn’t matter. here is your link embedded:
a comic or zine on radical dorkology would probably be a good way to get to the kids. but they probably intuitively know it all already.
my point in this thread is also that i disagree with ash’s premise that innovative marketing has gone abroad. if anything they are just exporting things they’ve learned here. new markets. and the hiring figures merely reflect that. it’s got nothing to do with an empire in decline. it’s not as if anyone in the biz with two synapses to rub together doesn’t understand the implications of a deglobalization.
is it not safe to presume the hybrid entity in question — the CCP — was ultimately the staid product of tried-and-true market research, and not some unspecified innovation? i expect there’s very little true innovation in developing countries, black budget industries notwithstanding.
the word itself, innovation – why are we even using it? until further notice, industrialism is a ponzi scheme.
consumer culture evolves just like any culture, and marketing evolves along with it, because they ultimately are comprised of people, and span generations. it stands to reason that the West, probably with some exceptions like singapore, has the most sophisticated advertising market. and following the money, it still has the biggest consumer credit markets.
n’est-ce pas?
for the record, ash was referring to a comment of mine i deleted because it wasn’t very good.
i agree cheeseburger crust pizza is not more empirically dorky. if you reread my comment on the dork vortex (LOL) you’ll see that. in fact, i find the current, ironic denial of dork — dork is always denied in the present — more disgraceful. i reproduce it here.
the reason for crown cheeseburger pizza is because american culture in the middle east is fake as fuck and super dorky. just like american culture in europe is fake as fuck and somewhat less dorky. it’s more dorky because it’s more earnest and less jaded. non-american market gimmicks are just dorkier because like with the noveau riche such consumption requires less irony be attached to it. that’s all. it’s embarrassingly honest. tragically hip. this is not to say of course the late, ironic variant that is post-dorky isn’t also dorky. on the contrary. it’s just dork in denial. which of course brings it all the way back around the vortex as the redux of dork, and embarrassing honesty, and tragic hipness. the recycling never ends. until it does.
as for subjective dorkiness, i maintain that just plain bizarre cheeseburger crust pizza has more dork (LOL) than a double down sandwich in that the DDS is probably a reflection of the low carb movement.
Are you seriously asking us to believe that you have completely decoded the nature of American culture…
course not. what you quoted is just commentary on the, ahem, fundamental nature of the cheeseburger crust pizza.
Are you seriously asking us to believe that you have completely decoded the nature of American culture, as well as its application in all foreign cultures, and how none of that has anything to do with the economic realities of American imperialism? It all comes down to which culture has decided to me more dorky than the other, as the word has been so carefully defined and teased out by ben?
blah blah blah.
The comment from my friend was clearly intended to be more humorous/sarcastic than an exact description or summation of why corporate food commercials are different elsewhere, unlike the dorky-hip spectrum TOE that you have provided us with. The reason I re-posted it is because I thought it was very symbolic of how empires operate when they are in decline.
an i thought it was gimmickry.
There is also a literal (and very obvious) connection between the shift of American corporate innovative/marketing resources and strategies from the developed world to “emerging economies”, as well as the rapid cultural shift (which is not independent of capital shift and corporate manipulation), and the decline of the American empire. But, apparently, that’s a bit too radical of a claim for you to handle.
if you reread what you quoted from me, and the content of my other comment, you will see that all i am talking about regarding my Theory of Dork (TOD) is that the only reason such a stupid fucking ridiculous Cheeseburger Crust Pizza can exist without irony in the middle east is because something of american culture was lost in translation. my high school buddy came back from italy in the early 90s with a shaquille o’neal t-shirt in purple and yellow because the image of shaq was from his purple and yellow LSU days. the funny thing was that whomever made the t-shirt was selling hegemony more than anything and framed the image top and bottom with MAGIC and JOHNSON because the los angeles lakers also wear purple and yellow. these examples are beyond kitsch, and they are everywhere. any expat living in america who has traveled back to his or her home country over the past twenty years is aware of this grotesque charade.
what these wannabe cultures adopt is a bizarre facsimile of a sick culture. they don’t even get the real thing, which, for all its shortcomings, at least has an internal logic. at least americans are authentically fucked up. americana is in our bones. we might have a razor with six blades and three lubricating strips and give it a name but chain restaurants in america sure as hell know that a pizza and a hamburger can’t be combined and have commercial value because it’s just too fucking silly for anyone over the age of five to contemplate. but in the ME you can have a cheeseburger crust pizza and in england a hot dog crust pizza.
it’s tragic. the same thing goes for the MENA revolutionaries and their industrial delusions. these people are trying to claw their way into the matrix because they watch television. it’s easy for me to say and obviously i don’t blame them for doing so in a world of nation states.
Bot Blogger post=2426 wrote: I heartily disagree Ben. This is the kind of article that provides insight into the new ubiquitous urban culture of the world. More people live in cities now then ever before. Having dinner out at Pizza Hut is an extraordinary luxury for many. Dorky has nothing to do with it.
This also has nothing to do with American culture. It’s corporate culture. This ad campaign cannot be judged by standards of hippness. All ads are simply selling some idea of luxury attained. Remember those pizza pop ads that looked like scenes from a sam peckinpah film? An age old story of teenage excess. This is a Middle Eastern version of the same excess and outrageousness. Just a lot more tame. But still it’s the same. The food looks like shit but the article is ok IMHO.
it’s not urban culture that we’re talking about here in the context of pizza hut. it’s american culture. american corporate culture. dorky has everything to do with it. dorkiness is the condition of being out of touch. with one’s cultural roots. i’m not making an argument for industrial hipness. there’s no such thing. i’m making an argument against industrial hipness/sophistication. hence the supposedly arty ads so prevalent in the west that signify the cooptation of indie/’high’ art, which was itself a negative reaction to fully-developed industrialism. joking about how fat americans face diminishing returns in conjunction with the marketing that facilitates obesity is a form of industrial sophistication and dependent itself on intellectual gimmickry.
dorkiness is living in riyadh or jeddah or, god forbid, beirut, and eating out at pizza hut instead of at a local foodcart or restaurant. dorkiness is doing the same in america. the difference being that to the american dorks the middle easterners look dorky but to the middle eastern dorks the american dorks look super cool.
also, having dinner out at pizza hut is not an extraordinary luxury for pizza hut’s target demographic, which is people with adequately disposable income to become repeat customers, like those in the ad. the pizza huts of doha aren’t courting the indonesian construction workers.
this article is feeble. the humor is tedious and it’s also full of shit:
It does make sense that these wonderful products are the brainchildren of thinner nations. Americans have gotten so fat that we have lost the wide-eyed hunger needed for getting fat. The American ambition has now turned to staying fat, which requires a very different and less imaginative skill set.
the reason for crown cheeseburger pizza is because american culture in the middle east is fake as fuck and super dorky. just like american culture in europe is fake as fuck and somewhat less dorky. it’s more dorky because it’s more earnest and less jaded. non-american market gimmicks are just dorkier because like with the noveau riche such consumption requires less irony be attached to it. that’s all. it’s embarrassingly honest. tragically hip. this is not to say of course the late, ironic variant that is post-dorky isn’t also dorky. on the contrary. it’s just dork in denial. which of course brings it all the way back around the vortex as the redux of dork, and embarrassing honesty, and tragic hipness. the recycling never ends. until it does.
there are no imaginative skill sets anywhere – it’s just industrial light and magic. it’s got nothing to do with just saying some bullshit and it getting posted on TAE just because it’s trendy-funny and supposedly rings true.
reddit alert.
ashvin post=2300 wrote: I was grinding out the tables at AC for the last five days, which is why daily content dropped off. That’s what I do most nights and weekends – play poker. I got debts that still need to be paid off! And it’s one of the few things, if not only thing, that I’m good at, is within my ethical boundaries and leaves me some free time during the daytime to write. I probably shouldn’t have up and left for a week without a mumbling word, so I apologize for doing so.
re: the real subject of this thread
To be perfectly honest, I view TAE as only three things (above and beyond a platform for the views of I&S).
First, a venue to express my somewhat customized perspective on what is happening in the world, namely in terms of economics/finance. Second, a way of alerting as many people as possible to the great monetary/physical/mental risks we face in upcoming years, so they are not caught completely off guard. Most of you regulars understandably don’t find much added value in that goal, but it’s one of the most important ones for me. Lastly, TAE is an online community in which people can carry on various discussions, garner psychological support and generally have a “good time”. The last one is a nice thing to have, but one that doesn’t concern me too much.
The one thing TAE is not for me, unlike Ilargi, is a business. That’s my luxury, and his curse. We are all equally critical of our money-oriented, greed-filled society, but he is still required to put A LOT of effort into making TAE a profitable operation. I, on the other hand, really don’t care if the “customers” are comfortable and happy. I want people to keep reading, and I will do anything within my power to make the site more user-friendly and agreeable, but I won’t ever apologize for what I do here or re-think why I do it.
I just go with the flow these days, and try to be grateful that I have a chance to help others in this unique way, during these trying times. Hopefully it works out, but it might not. Nothing is certain and many things are outside of our control. Maybe this is one of those things, maybe it isn’t. It’s only been a few months since the new site went up, so I’m pretty sure people will eventually get used to it and be satisfied with the way things are, whatever that ends up being.
So those are my thoughts on this issue, and that’s the last you will hear from me about it.
appreciate the candor, man. i feel you. fo sho. it’s the nature of the beast.
Triv said
That’s not to say that the existence of money doesn’t grease the skids… it does.
understatement of the year! 😆
pre-steam multispecies slaves to money.
me and you and everyone we know gettin dirty on the undulating peak plateau of slave money.
chicken or the egg money or the slave? egg money chicken slave.
i can only assume that getting to your positive money system entails a catch-22 akin to steveB’s modern moneyless argument. not gonna happen until the food stops getting locked up.
TheTrivium4TW post=2267 wrote: [quote=ben post=2266]Triv, I thought we settled this already when you agreed that gift economies are systems designed to overcome greed. the defining feature of a gift economy is its moneylessness. money/agriculture/civilization/totalitarianism is the root of all evil.
Hi ben,
A gift economy and a positive money system (not the demonic one in place now) are is not mutually exclusive.
It is absurdly obvious to me that people’s decisions result in the evil, not the item used to implement said evil.
Blaming outside inanimate objects for evil leads to the absurd conclusion that a lack of straight jackets (preventing us from executing our will) is the “root of all evil.”
After all, if everyone was in straight jackets tied to a pole…
This is elementary stuff, no?
hey Triv, by root of all evil I mean societal evil and not individual evil. I’m not sure individual evil exists. money/agriculture/civilization is the privatization by which evil concentrates. it’s an anti-civilizational position in which material constraints aren’t seen on balance as constraints but positive values.what’s your idea of a positive money system?
Triv, I thought we settled this already when you agreed that gift economies are systems designed to overcome greed. the defining feature of a gift economy is its moneylessness. money/agriculture/civilization/totalitarianism is the root of all evil.
@ben, I get the gist of what Henderson is saying – but the difference is in definition. I actually agree that it is in our true “selfish” self interest to treat others as we would like to be treated. An enlightened “selfish” person would actually treat others equal to themselves because that’s the ONLY way to lasting peace, prosperity and happiness.
But that’s not how I originally defined “selfish.” I defined it as failing to care about others equal to oneself and that is how people act on a daily basis. I know – people don’t want their dirty laundry exposed, but I deal in reality when I can.
hey Triv,
what i took from the article was that people in gift economies gave in order to receive status. that giving of both assistance and material things elevated one’s social status above others’. the system was set up to deliberately neutralize the human tendency to implicitly care about oneself more than another. while i imagine that a public sense of superiority was looked down upon, it stands to reason that giving a lot and being respected more than less-giving people satisfied peoples’ internal desire for the power that comes with an elevated social status. perhaps egotistical, emotionally selfish members found that by giving more than their fair share of material goods they could achieve more interpersonal success than they otherwise would.
Indigenous cultures hold a high regard for gift-giving. The Lakota Sioux have a giveaway ceremony. The Athabaska conduct potlatches. In Ituri Pygmy society the hunter who makes the kill always eats last. In all hunting and gathering societies there is an understanding that giving is a means of gaining respect and is thus the ultimate act of selfishness…
In indigenous cultures buying and selling occurred only at a local level. Economy was based on sharing, reciprocation and an egalitarian dispersal of resources. Those whose kindness was greatest were honored and respected leaders of their communities.
returning to your original statement: aren’t these examples of systems overcoming selfishness?
TheTrivium4TW post=2192 wrote: Hi RE,
Potlach is not an expression of selfishness, but of giving, no?
sticking my nose in here, Triv. from a recent dean henderson article:
One of the most dangerous dualities which emerged is the notion that our self-interest is naturally at odds with altruistic behavior. I write a paper titled The Importance of Selfishness for a more radical sane professor named Tom Birch. The argument goes something like this:
Indigenous cultures hold a high regard for gift-giving. The Lakota Sioux have a giveaway ceremony. The Athabaska conduct potlatches. In Ituri Pygmy society the hunter who makes the kill always eats last. In all hunting and gathering societies there is an understanding that giving is a means of gaining respect and is thus the ultimate act of selfishness…
In indigenous cultures buying and selling occurred only at a local level. Economy was based on sharing, reciprocation and an egalitarian dispersal of resources. Those whose kindness was greatest were honored and respected leaders of their communities.
Since there was no perceived duality between the interest of oneself and the interests of the whole tribe, the village worldview remained un-fractured and intact – reinforcing a loving, sharing viewpoint towards all living things, rather than one of violence and suppression which has accompanied the rise of industrial capitalism. When resources are derived at a local level it is obvious that any hoarding of goods results in the demise of both community and self.
Self-interest is furthered by a healthy respect for the ecosystem that sustains everyone.As commerce moved beyond a local level, it needed justification for the short term greed which propelled it outward. Self-interest increasingly came to be viewed in terms of money and property, as a system of class sprang up.
Equality and sharing gave way to colonization of resources in far-away foreign lands and the exploitation of cheap labor through a rigged international monetary system. Western philosophies which promote dualism and atomism are merely myths which were fashioned to rationalize this colonization process.
Self-interest became associated with this cunning colonial approach to attaining wealth, probably so that potential competition could be intellectually snuffed out. This supposed self-interest is now played out daily on the world’s stock exchanges and in corporate boardrooms around the world.
https://theintelhub.com/2012/04/09/the-importance-of-selfishness/
