About Aurora, Colorado's "Batman" murders and other random cultural bubbles popped in it's wake:
Of course violence is amplified. There is an old saying in journalism- the yellow variety and other shades more pastel- that states, "If it bleeds, it leads.". The core idea here is that this might stem from, and I'm being very generous here, those events that strike fear into our hearts and suggest a threat to survival are part of a so-called "hardwired" results steeped in the bath of evolutionary genetics for all of humanity that has succeeded in allowing as many of us to exist as continue to.
I would think the feeling that we're being watched, for an example, may suggest this is a perception that would seem to have grown out of enhanced peripheral vision born from the need to detect animal predators. The descendant of that type of intelligence might be symbolically represented with much more frequency by the flashy television bulletin, a heavily "hit" or searched site on the net or a banner in one of our quaintly surviving newspapers than it is likely to be the result of a physical encounter with a hungry mountain lion or bear.
Obviously as people continue to encroach on what paltry remains there are of actual habitats for wild animals we may yet have an opportunity to be torn to shreds by a displaced bear whose favorite haunt was razed and foaled a Home Depot in it's place. In this sense at least the likelihood of any of us walking out to doom at the hands of a frustrated, sociopathic fellow citizen at a shopping mall, theater, fireworks display or the opening of said Home Depot may yet, again, be superseded by an unfavorable date with a species facing a messy and morbid extinction- and by that I mean a mammalian species besides us.
The United States of America's refreshingly unique form of "herd individualism" masks an almost continuous series of ills that continue on unimpeded with nary a politically effective thought that the notion of a "public good" has any currency.
Oh sure, you and I, my friends, may think of this societal dilemma quite clearly from time to time and wonder why. But it doesn't take a lot to see how cowed, insecure, unheeded and superfluous many of us are led to believe we are to the greater engines of our destiny.
At times the religious right in all of it's fierce, unrelenting, evangelical Protestant and hidebound selective Bible-thumping, along with doctrinaire Catholic hardliners each of who have been leading their respective charges since the early 1970s seem poised to merge with their comparatively newly minted Chinese Corporate Pseudo Capitalist Manufacturing Dogmatists and the latter's Western globalists enablers to build the final boobie hatch by which we may all fall from this screwed up world into a Brave New Fascism that will solve all of our ills.
It's tempting to say that we are doomed. But of course it is.
I had a friend, and I still do, it's just that he died a few years back, who believed that government movers and shakers pushed the notion of fearfulness between individuals as a method of controlling people. I think that's right and the older I get the less I think it's a result of ignorance. It's the result of a paranoid manifestation of avarice that emerges from the amount of unlived life an individual soul has to bear.
That's not an excuse- just an arguably shaky diagnosis.
It behooves us to wonder if their are preeminent among us who control us and for what end and why?
My friend called himself an anarchist and a radical Christian. By anarchist he truly felt and thought- because this guy was anything but a non-thinker- that people left to their own devices among one another at this point in our history would opt for that which was fair, nonviolent and mutually agreeable. Even if we are gay or of a "minority" race (only measurable by one's relative setting) or simply hungry and/or sick- his thought was that the best path would be obvious. And that path encompassed, implied he, sharing resources that yet allowed people their true individuality on the premise that from these freedoms we aspire to life would naturally allow the widest rather than the narrowest of latitude in what we allow in others as a reflection of what we want the chance to experience ourselves- and that leads to people living serious, actual lives out with others doing the same.
Sadly I think this all amounts to one ideal outcome of the famous "enlightened self interest" the Libertarians used to be so fond of speaking of and which is also an undeniable stripe of the modern world's assurance about the progression of Man from beast to an ideally considerate renter of property owned by someone else.
Alas, we appear to be awash in the next Not So Big Idea which is that we'll all have to find the best path to tiptoe through during an especially intense era of UN-enlightened self interest. And, as it seems to me, this unenlightened self interest is based on a minimum of ideas, simmered very briefly, with no serious thought of improving the recipe in the raw onrush of the acquisition of capital, property, and, above all, essential resources- water, air, outdated fuel, arable land and the attendant intellectual property rights to give this modern, sad stew of inhumanity some feigned legitimacy as an idea whose time has come.
Somewhere along the line the era of the Green Revolution, Globalization and technology-as-our-savior has seemed to have hit a serious snag. And while I think many peoples' need to feel reassured about our collection of quaking cultures and individual dilemmas in life through the agency of a religion that perhaps was otherwise on the verge of losing its remaining relevance is understandable it still seems like the wrong manner of celebrating the spirit animating our humanity.
It seems pretty much true that the Founding Fathers of the United States died in relative despair about a resurgence in traditional religious doctrines as the new country entered it's third decade or thereabouts and as they were looking at their own passing from this world.
The United States, though you may not have noticed this mentioned very much, was actually an offspring from the so-called "Age of Reason" rather than the consensus of the founding of Heaven-On-Earth.
In fairness, the original Puritan settlers DID try to create their Heaven On Earth but their experiment failed. The same Indians that saved them from starving and freezing to death in their first severe winters were later exterminated as agents of Evil for their comparative lack of clothing and other coverings that, to the European eye, were unthinkable affronts - at least once those early Old World dwellers had managed to survive with a little help from Satan's friends.
Perhaps those early settlers began the process of making it through the night only through the aid of others to then realize that their success had "actually" been selfmade all along.
Hence our primal delusions about our debt to one another continues to this day.
That's a grossly oversimplified history I imagine but it will do in order to drop a few hints.
The next wave of settlers that did survive appear to have been the ancestors of the US manner of law and government that made it rockily through the first couple of decades surrounding the American war of independence. But for all of it's virtues - including a renewed appreciation of some of the Indian cultures' horizontally oriented democratic organization and tradition that was exciting and inspiring to the Franklins and Adams and Jeffersons- the new American culture continued to founder in the face of its ideals as seen from the point of view of it's victims that would end with blankets laced with tuberculosis for our red-skinned inspirations, the confiscation of native lands to be exchanged for smallish barren tracts and the issue of the abolition of slavery taking centuries to gain traction even after dramatic shifts in the country's trials and fortunes.
**********************************
Okay, I should have an ending to this but I am trying to adhere to the "publish or perish" mode in honor of my fluctuating readership of 2 to 7 people, some of whom I actually know.
**********************************
I am, in other news, enjoying snippets of the Olympics, mostly to ogle Michael Phelps and those stunning looking divers. The British and Mexican entrants have especially caught my eye in the platform and springboard duet series. But I have also been especially enjoying that Mr. Phelps was all but written off as a has-been who was present based on his residual virtuosity and his historical impact. He has proved harder to ignore than any of that even as his chief rival- who genuinely appears to be his friend as well- has faltered in his bid to become Phelp's successor. I imagine that Ryan Lochte has been the pre-Olympics poster boy for the U.S. largely due to the machinations of others rather than through his own energies or hubris. It all highlights how remarkable Mr. Phelp's accomplishments have been as we watch others fall far short of those marks or consistency.
I still have no desire to be an Olympic athlete but I do rather wish I could've taken showers with Michael Phelps in 10th grade P.E. classes. But then again I had plenty of fantasies with the boys I did take showers with- and many of them had moments when they won the gold in my feverish teenage imagination.
********************************
I've been listening to "Spotify" a music site on the net. It was born in Sweden and has spread worldwide I suppose. I listen to the free version which means you have to hear a lot of advertising ABOUT Spotify from young sounding people who sound pleasantly drugged (for them perhaps) with a combo of some sort of psychiatric assuager along with a mild stimulant that, evidently, absolves them of any care about the vapidity of their resulting performance. I'm sure there are focus groups to adjust the vapidity to "just so" as Goldilocks would've said.
Anyway, in one of the few discoveries I've made on my own I find that I've become a fan of a young woman named Lana Del Rey.
Miss Del Rey has a wonderful range and intonation in her singing and is accompanied by very accomplished orchestration in her music which has a heavily cinematic sound to my ears. Unfortunately, a performance on Saturday Night Live earlier this year has made her an object of some derision regarding her live performing abilities. I endured watching a clip of this performance and found that her manner was a rather limp hands at her side while singing that reminded me a lot of the Nouveau Blandishments of the Velvet Underground's Nico. I thought she was awesome.
What DO people want? Eeezze a puzzlement.
In any event she sang superbly and radiates a fatalistically-mannered intelligence that yet exudes an exaggerated femme fatale persona that I might find very offputting in many other performers but oddly captivating coming from her. She is also quite a beautiful woman. She is also elegantly funky just to further confuse the issue. While no one would ever confuse me as being a lady's man- this is one young woman I can understand men having reactions beyond their control about.
The album I have been listening to is called, happily (as Gore Vidal used to say in jest), "Born To Die".
Sing it girlfriend!
Just make sure to live first. And from the sound of it Miss Del Rey is holding up her end of the deal quite well.
Not every song is a gem on the album but they are all competent and some of them are truly extraordinary to my Pop-marinated eardrums.
It is only fair to warn you that I've listened to quite a bit of Fred Astaire, a sampling of Bing Crosby and some of Frank Sinatra's best songs the last couple of weeks at work with me little headphones while I do tasks that would otherwise challenge my ability to remain awake during work hours. It has been time well spent.
(It should be obvious the "world's most interesting man" was not the one who proof-read this little send-up.)
I had a friend, and I still do, it's just that he died a few years back, who believed that government movers and shakers pushed the notion of fearfulness between individuals as a method of controlling people. I think that's right and the older I get the less I think it's a result of ignorance. It's the result of a paranoid manifestation of avarice that emerges from the amount of unlived life an individual soul has to bear.That's not an excuse- just an arguably shaky diagnosis.It behooves us to wonder if their are preeminent among us who control us and for what end and why?My friend called himself an anarchist and a radical Christian. By anarchist he truly felt and thought- because this guy was anything but a non-thinker- that people left to their own devices among one another at this point in our history would opt for that which was fair, nonviolent and mutually agreeable. Even if we are gay or of a "minority" race (only measurable by one's relative setting) or simply hungry and/or sick- his thought was that the best path would be obvious. And that path encompassed, implied he, sharing resources that yet allowed people their true individuality on the premise that from these freedoms we aspire to life would naturally allow the widest rather than the narrowest of latitude in what we allow in others as a reflection of what we want the chance to experience ourselves- and that leads to people living serious, actual lives out with others doing the same.Sadly I think this all amounts to one ideal outcome of the famous "enlightened self interest" the Libertarians used to be so fond of speaking of and which is also an undeniable stripe of the modern world's assurance about the progression of Man from beast to an ideally considerate renter of property owned by someone else.Alas, we appear to be awash in the next Not So Big Idea which is that we'll all have to find the best path to tiptoe through during an especially intense era of UN-enlightened self interest. And, as it seems to me, this unenlightened self interest is based on a minimum of ideas, simmered very briefly, with no serious thought of improving the recipe in the raw onrush of the acquisition of capital, property, and, above all, essential resources- water, air, outdated fuel, arable land and the attendant intellectual property rights to give this modern, sad stew of inhumanity some feigned legitimacy as an idea whose time has come.Somewhere along the line the era of the Green Revolution, Globalization and technology-as-our-savior has seemed to have hit a serious snag. And while I think many peoples' need to feel reassured about our collection of quaking cultures and individual dilemmas in life through the agency of a religion that perhaps was otherwise on the verge of losing its remaining relevance is understandable it still seems like the wrong manner of celebrating the spirit animating our humanity.It seems pretty much true that the Founding Fathers of the United States died in relative despair about a resurgence in traditional religious doctrines as the new country entered it's third decade or thereabouts and as they were looking at their own passing from this world.The United States, though you may not have noticed this mentioned very much, was actually an offspring from the so-called "Age of Reason" rather than the consensus of the founding of Heaven-On-Earth.In fairness, the original Puritan settlers DID try to create their Heaven On Earth but their experiment failed. The same Indians that saved them from starving and freezing to death in their first severe winters were later exterminated as agents of Evil for their comparative lack of clothing and other coverings that, to the European eye, were unthinkable affronts - at least once those early Old World dwellers had managed to survive with a little help from Satan's friends.Perhaps those early settlers began the process of making it through the night only through the aid of others to then realize that their success had "actually" been selfmade all along.Hence our primal delusions about our debt to one another continues to this day.That's a grossly oversimplified history I imagine but it will do in order to drop a few hints.The next wave of settlers that did survive appear to have been the ancestors of the US manner of law and government that made it rockily through the first couple of decades surrounding the American war of independence. But for all of it's virtues - including a renewed appreciation of some of the Indian cultures' horizontally oriented democratic organization and tradition that was exciting and inspiring to the Franklins and Adams and Jeffersons- the new American culture continued to founder in the face of its ideals as seen from the point of view of it's victims that would end with blankets laced with tuberculosis for our red-skinned inspirations, the confiscation of native lands to be exchanged for smallish barren tracts and the issue of the abolition of slavery taking centuries to gain traction even after dramatic shifts in the country's trials and fortunes.**********************************Okay, I should have an ending to this but I am trying to adhere to the "publish or perish" mode in honor of my fluctuating readership of 2 to 7 people, some of whom I actually know.**********************************
I am, in other news, enjoying snippets of the Olympics, mostly to ogle Michael Phelps and those stunning looking divers. The British and Mexican entrants have especially caught my eye in the platform and springboard duet series. But I have also been especially enjoying that Mr. Phelps was all but written off as a has-been who was present based on his residual virtuosity and his historical impact. He has proved harder to ignore than any of that even as his chief rival- who genuinely appears to be his friend as well- has faltered in his bid to become Phelp's successor. I imagine that Ryan Lochte has been the pre-Olympics poster boy for the U.S. largely due to the machinations of others rather than through his own energies or hubris. It all highlights how remarkable Mr. Phelp's accomplishments have been as we watch others fall far short of those marks or consistency.I still have no desire to be an Olympic athlete but I do rather wish I could've taken showers with Michael Phelps in 10th grade P.E. classes. But then again I had plenty of fantasies with the boys I did take showers with- and many of them had moments when they won the gold in my feverish teenage imagination.********************************I've been listening to "Spotify" a music site on the net. It was born in Sweden and has spread worldwide I suppose. I listen to the free version which means you have to hear a lot of advertising ABOUT Spotify from young sounding people who sound pleasantly drugged (for them perhaps) with a combo of some sort of psychiatric assuager along with a mild stimulant that, evidently, absolves them of any care about the vapidity of their resulting performance. I'm sure there are focus groups to adjust the vapidity to "just so" as Goldilocks would've said.Anyway, in one of the few discoveries I've made on my own I find that I've become a fan of a young woman named Lana Del Rey.
Miss Del Rey has a wonderful range and intonation in her singing and is accompanied by very accomplished orchestration in her music which has a heavily cinematic sound to my ears. Unfortunately, a performance on Saturday Night Live earlier this year has made her an object of some derision regarding her live performing abilities. I endured watching a clip of this performance and found that her manner was a rather limp hands at her side while singing that reminded me a lot of the Nouveau Blandishments of the Velvet Underground's Nico. I thought she was awesome.What DO people want? Eeezze a puzzlement.In any event she sang superbly and radiates a fatalistically-mannered intelligence that yet exudes an exaggerated femme fatale persona that I might find very offputting in many other performers but oddly captivating coming from her. She is also quite a beautiful woman. She is also elegantly funky just to further confuse the issue. While no one would ever confuse me as being a lady's man- this is one young woman I can understand men having reactions beyond their control about.The album I have been listening to is called, happily (as Gore Vidal used to say in jest), "Born To Die".Sing it girlfriend!Just make sure to live first. And from the sound of it Miss Del Rey is holding up her end of the deal quite well.Not every song is a gem on the album but they are all competent and some of them are truly extraordinary to my Pop-marinated eardrums.It is only fair to warn you that I've listened to quite a bit of Fred Astaire, a sampling of Bing Crosby and some of Frank Sinatra's best songs the last couple of weeks at work with me little headphones while I do tasks that would otherwise challenge my ability to remain awake during work hours. It has been time well spent.
(It should be obvious the "world's most interesting man" was not the one who proof-read this little send-up.)
Comments (2)
I just watched Lana Del Rey's performances on SNL and she is stunning. She has a 1960's vibe. Prim but possibly wild.
I didn't notice the spelling when I read it. Maybe not noticing is as bad as bad spelling.
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