TheFewAndTheMany
The Few and the Many, an essay about Cultural Epilepticsm
Trechos de The Few and the Many, an essay about Cultural Epilepticsm
Culture as the social outcome of tensions between the few and the many obviously has a firm political component. This component has various meanings; one of them is the ability to generate change. This changing or generating component can be misused as a repressing tool in the hands of power, whether this power is applied to the benefits or the destruction of society. Not any human alien order is able to protect or to govern individual independence; this is in strong contrast with the obligations and promises contemporary governments and industries are demanding from ¿their¿ citizens and employees. [...] When the naïve and easily pleased masses are manipulated with sense satisfying impulses directed towards the instantaneously consummation of their desires, they turn into willing anthropomorphic machines, who can easily be controlled. This is exemplified by the enormous success of various consumption oriented practises and their intentional propagation of a hedonistic lifestyle as everyone can see on TV, Film and other media. [...] To be fully aware of the responsibilities one can take for one¿s own life and independence is the first step towards a freer and less manipulative society, which as a matter of fact is getting increasingly more difficult when the control and angst/lust driven order is gaining more and more control of our individual lives. There is a tendency towards de-individuating society in favour of socializing the individual. This results in societies where its members are artificially held in a state of angst; fed by their desires which are brutally perverted by pornographic conceptions which at their turn are sold as entertainment by the culture / creative and knowledge industries. [...] Lessons learned from the outcome of the global politico-economical status quo after WW II is not being taken seriously enough by the world population simply because of a lack of self-consciousness. The need to be educated is falsely directed towards knowledge in stead of knowing. By objectification of human thoughts mankind loses its ground in a more fundamental way than the threads of so called fundamentalists. Ironically the winner of WW II is global fascism, as the bigger brother of its more regional guise; National Socialism. America¿s role in contemporary society can be characterized by a compulsive attitude towards its own identity, and in that process neglecting the fact that this behaviour is not everyone¿s concern and not at all to the benefit of the whole. By victimizing the rest of the world it merely shows that it is thinking acting and operating driven by an enormous frustration. Education and politico-economical programs are build on false premises which do not benefit society as a whole, but on the contrary is building a society where one of the most important tasks for its citizens is not to end their lives homeless, unemployed, addicted to whatever addictions are at hand, doing all this with the very naïve assumption that free market will filter the good from the bad. [...] The wish of the few for a global economical society results in constructing political ways to force the many in an angst-lust driven society where economical machines easily can reach their goals. Culture, ethics, aesthetics, art, compassion are used as tranquilizers to keep the few reluctant opponents at ease. The dream factory produces 24 hours a day images, sounds, ideologies, documents, papers, and novels about how to be happy in a hellish world. [...] When a minority of workers ¿inside¿ the so called creative/ culture knowledge industries do have a more critical attitude towards the intentions of their employers, they do not want to be employed anymore, instead people are starting to work for themselves and trying to maintain a more indepent life/work environment, which, as an ironical result, leads to a political involvement in this attitude, creating an artificial role function, which is gradually incorporated into the politico-economical programs of the very same ursurpating financial and state machines, adding another refinement in the producer-supplier-consumer chain. The ¿Creative Class¿ of Richard Florida, for example, is heavily read and used as a blue- print in developing city economics, at least in the lower governmental circles in The Netherlands. A possible way out will be to break the chain, to be able to produce without the economics involved, a nearly unimaginable, utopian alternative, to produce works of aesthetical value which are fundamental purposeless, not serving any need whatsoever. Developing a new aesthetical and ethical consciousness in place of redefining cultural and social consciousness will help to separate the aesthetical and the artistical from the creative and the social and in that process regaining an autonomous position.
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