Discussion

[Muddy Love]

Nice question, it hurt my brain. I would think that TV is a huge offender and probably the most dangerous medium. Everyone watches tv. To answer your question of whether its out of our hands or not, I think yes and no. Is it out of my hands personally? No, I don't think I'm that fuct...yet. If you were born yesterday into a white, middle class, suburban family who watches Lost every wednesday night and Survivor every week, you're up shits creek. This is because I feel that society (oddly enough, like the porn industry) is cannabalizing itself. There is a huge profit to be turned for something with shock value or something "original" or "real." One day we're just going to be watching loops of bombs going off and a guy fucking a horse who's fucking a dog, who's fucking a midget.

[dmvernona]

to further generalize your point though i think that technology's worst produst is debatable b/w 2 things. the one i'll go with is media. tv included, all the babble we hear about the world is the biggest obstacle from the common person thinking for themselves and acting like they're not a dick shit. rubbish just gets under your skin and effects your worldview - some real clockwork orange shit. that's problem number one to me. without popular media today it would most def. occur to a lot more people that there are better ways to live than the way most people do now...i hope. it couldn't hurt, that's for sure. that's got to be the worst thing technology's doing is subverting people in general to just mucking along through their lives like they have to live the way cnn and dubya tell them, cause shit, it's on tv and like, that's real. this also has to do with what you were saying, ml, about tv porn and shit. people are so subverted into their menial, ultimately destructive consumer yuppie lifestyles that they think they're doing what they want watching that show with the fucking midget and bombs going off. if they didn't grow up on/get hooked on tv it'd never occur to them to draw that in a flipbook and watch it all day. they'd be reading a book or walking in the park doing something real.

on the other end of the spectrum it could be argued that technologies that degrade the natural world and the general standard of human living whether by polluting with uranium or big ugly buildings fuck people over the worst. most people i talk to about this kind of shit think they're in a hopeless situation and that's because of their hopeless suroundings. i don't think shit would have gone as far as it has today without media to perpetuate a "popular opinion" though.

i def. agree that it's a personal problem as much as you let it be though and that some people are worse off than others. your quote, ml, "society is cannabalizing itself" is pretty much the best interpretaion of the situation in a nutshell i've heard. free markets, greed, systematic violence and hate getting institutionalized and a lot of bullshit being perpetuated is a great way to turn people into mush.

that said, fishtown, i def. think every once in a while that i'm glad i'm alive now cause i'm able to make my music and shit independently. it's a big give and take but we can all agree a lot more has been taken from us in our lives than has been given in the general sense of personal freedoms, availablity of a natural existence...the shit that really matters.

adrock brought ml and i flyers for bush/war protest monday. they're national so check it out if you give a shit about this conversation and also think that your personal opinion persence matters. i constantly question the 2nd part of that but at the end of the day if it doesn't i might as well fucking die so i guess i'm acting on an assumed opinion of my own..

i'm really getting out of control with this post but since i've gone this far i'll pose a question of my own that i was debating last night. it is man's primitive and inbred instict to act in some ways that cerebrally don't make sense. acts of violence, irrational emotions, etc. are what i'm talking about. this is kind of the essence of humanity and life to an extent in that living organisms aren't mechanical and irrationality/creativity can be both "postitive" and "negative" but what i'd like you to weight in on is the instance of such said phenomenons in the situations in which they negatively impact other people - greed and hate essentially are fucked in my opinion so that's one definate part of human nature that you see a lot to weight in on - but to go further and find a grey area, something like general hostility creates a real ethical dilemma. my thought processing abiltiy tells me that man is such that if i act in a way that's simply rationalized by an irrational emotion and isn't "right," "productive," or "positive" in a anyway - aka start a streetfight with a stranger b/c i'm mad or a better example, start a war, slight another man for my benefit, etc. - that's evidence that the human psyche is predominated by primitive instincts. look at the world today, it would certainly seem so that's the case. OR is there a plausible hope given the cognisant power of the psyche to evolve beyond "negative" generally hurtful irrational actions despite the current state of affairs which seems to beg otherwise (certainly, for one, the predominance of capitalistic society is a perfect example of the rampance of animalistic nature). the debate in a nutshell i suppose is individual ethical repsonsiblity versus the animalistic nature of man and where animalistic instinct even ends and rational thought begins.

tell me what you think personally about the way YOU should act (according to which side of the above statement that is) and also generally about the human condition and whether or not you see man one way or the other today, the followup to that being if you ever see it changing before the end of the species.

[Muddy Love]

Wow! I'm almost apt to let someone else have first crack at that one. Give me some time to think.

[refill]

well this is certainly a loaded discussion now. however, i'd like to voice my opinion in that people are only as good as what they do. wether you like it or not your defined by your actions. the trouble comes when the media and all of our other technologies send up this smoke screen to what is really good in the world. to maintain power the elite classes of the world have made us believe that certain things like money, property and control matter when in fact they dont. therefore it is our job as good people to see through the smoke screens to what is really going on. for example, the red cross is a wonderful organization but the tragedy in new orleans could have been seriuosly reduced or avoided for the most part if we werent off spending money like its going out of style to start and maintain illegal wars and occupations. to make some sense out of what i'm saying, i do the things i do and believe what i believe in order to, in the words of my boy chris cornell, "leave a better world than you found". hopefully in my lifetime i will begin to see the tyranny of the christian right, islam and ultra right wing evil corporate war lords be overthrown and replaced by people like us who seek a truly eglatarian world for all.

[dmvernona]

i couldn't agree more...i'd really like to hear what you think about my question though.

[refill]

aight i'll answer your question since all i really did was write some statement. what it breaks down to for me, and this is probably oversimplifying the situation, is "absolute power corrupts absolutely". when seemingly normal, civilized men decide to rule a large portion of the wealth or law they become corrupt. it seems to be some innate thing that has occured from the time the egyptians enslaved the jews to build the pyramids. this is why i feel so strongly about the equalizing of wealth and control among all populations of the world. hell, i'll even advocate Lenin's world picture he painted in the song "Imagine". but to conclude my answer to this question its that absolute power corrupts absolutely and to remedy this absolute power needs to be eliminated. there needs to be more control and checks for the leaders of businesses and countries while opening up more control for the laity. if we do not soon implement these checks and offer the laity more control over their fate then those who rule us now are going to send this world down the metaphorical crapper (ie- civilization collapses b/c Dubya is on the rag).

[Muddy Love]

Civilization ended with the invention of one word: "Mine."

[dmvernona]

that's really funny. you two in succession just pretty much summed up some of what i find to be the most poingant notes from my own personal worldview. i'm not the only one leaning socialist in our crew after all.

anyway, it suffices to say that we can agree then man's fucked if we keep walking down the same path. that doesn't take too many brain cells to deduce unfortuneatly these days. the next part of the question and the one i've really been meditating on today is: can man save himself from himself (that is to say, are we more than animals, who would indefinately compete with each other, on a general level - as a species)?

insights on present "civilization" aside, what do you think? should i be assuming, through your noted insights into your view of general civilization, that you're of the opinion that man is more a product of a jungian, subconcious, primitive identity and therefore doomed than rational, cereberal being?

i'll be weighing in shortly but i don't want to create a bias to my own question so i'm waiting on you all for now. one major thought today has been that to possess anything you need to be prepared to lose it. i think that's one of the most relevant ideas to this subject matter.

also, has anyone read huxley's "island?"

[Muddy Love]

It would certainly seem, at first glance, as if possession and the need for it is an innate characteristic in man. However, I'm not quite convinced that this is the case. I know that when some intangible border is breached and something is "taken" from me I do feel a somewhat primal emotion stir up. I, an asshole for sure, also experience an unexplainable feeling of warmth when I give something away or give a gift to someone. This is certainly an innate feeling and the probability that humans are innately driven to both possess and share is absurd to me, though I acknowledge the very strong possibility.
Generally, as I have already hinted at, I think we're fuct. On a individual level, I'm not yet convinced of my doom. I will always be looking for the eject button or the escape hatch. I think, what would need to happen (and we've discussed this before) is that you'd have to completely unplug yourself. Relocate and start anew, with no interuptions or reminders of what you left.
The human race= failure. Any thoughts on that equation?

[eltonjohn]

All right, I'm a bit backed up on these questions, so I'm just gonna ramble on and hopefully hit some of them.
To state the obvious, man is an animal. There is no doubt that we have animal instincts and we act on these all the time. Of course people get pissed when something is taken from them. And what do you think their first reactions will be? If you're a big motherfucker you'll probably use force to do what you will and if your some tiny bitch you'll probably just let it go. It's only natural. I mean, if a hungry lion sees some smaller animal eating a dead animal, I'll be damned if the lion doesn't scare that little bitch away.
One of the biggest differences with humans, concerning force, is that we are able to manipulate people to carry out what we will. The best examples of this is the Iraqi wars, and even more extreme, the Holocaust. And since we are capable of manipulating, we are also capable of understanding when something is right or wrong, moral or immoral. But a lot of people (who have power) have some pretty fucked up views on what's right and wrong. For the most part I blame this on religion. And religion, well I don't think religion is ever going to just disappear. But that's not to say that I think we are completely fucked. I'm just going to hope that there's another Renaissance or Enlightenment waiting right around the corner. If you think about it, you really gotta hit rock bottom before you realize what a mess you've made of your life, and then start anew from there. That's pretty much what happened during the middle ages. It was a shitty fucking time when religion (Christianity to be more specific) seemed like it was going to engulf the entire human race and then the Renaissance came around to make things a lot better for some period of time. I don't think we've quite reached rock bottom yet, we're certainly headed in that direction though, which may be a good thing depending on whether or not you have some hope that people will wake the fuck up after hitting the bottom.
With all that being said, I think for the most part man does give in to negative primitive instincts, but there will always be those people that rise up above those instincts and realize we are rational beings, and give those other motherfuckers a kick in the nuts to set them straight. And then there are always those people that have an overriding drive to do good for others, to give to others.
As for the statement "human race= failure" I'm gonna wait on that one so I clearly understand what you mean by failure.