Tuesday, March 24, 2020

It's All Related To This Pivotal Time In Human History


I started this post with just the first article from Knowable. Wrote a whole thing just for that, and from the viewpoint of how information has come so far in its history (truth has always, in one form or another, been "The First Casualty of War," after all) of being "weaponized." In lock step, of course, with how our advances in instrumentality; our extensions of all of our faculties as Marshall McLuhan used to say; with the emphasis, of course, on how the electrification of experience retrieval, especially on Capitalism, has been of primary importance.

And then these other two pieces from Vox caught my attention, whereupon it struck me, again, just how amazingly interrelated all of these events are when you look at it, not only through the lens of McLuhan media theories, but also through the lens of whether this is the "Pivot Point" faced by all sentient species, as they start making the leap, from the tribalism, that sure seems logical, as away to mark, the challenge, that maybe most such entities have to encounter, so as to see what can allow them to continue, now that they have eaten from the tree of knowledge; Because once you do that you have a very, very large tiger by the tail, precisely because of the power, even a single person can wield now, simply by the easy access to this new instrumentality; and there's no getting off, even assuming you can make it to its back, to ride with purpose, without major catastrophe.

In all of this, however, are several underlying points concerning keeping information as a commodity, as well as money itself, that you should keep in mind here:

1: It will make keeping Democracy virtually impossible, and for at least the reason of how can you have true liberty, or be a Libertarian at all, if you are not allowed truly informed consent?

2: It plays into the old tribalism fears of hording, that are especially expressed with Capitalism's ever more emphasized, zero sum mentality, in these modern times; as we have seen with the amplification of greed, and the feeling that the few must marginalize as many groups as possible so as to keep dominance, and control, and most especially the economics of scarcity for the many.

3: It has allowed the few to keep you from understanding your inherent power in simply not participating in a game that stopped making economic sense, for working people, the moment robots could do the old definition of work better than humans could; at least within the cold confines of economic value, the awful, old definition encompassed.

4: Now that a biological event has forced all working people to go on a "Strike" by other means, do we see just how much the moneyed few are suddenly a great deal more incentivized to listen to the real problems of working folks. Problems, of course, that, in my opinion, can be laid at the feet of this grossly out of date, and mutated, and toxic, economic operating system, itself.

The bottom line for me is as it has always been. We are at war, whether we realize it or not, and it is an information war. We are also in the midst of a planetary systems revolt. A revolt demanded because too many, delicately balanced, and interrelated, systems have been overburdened, way beyond their carrying capacities, for far too long now.

As such we have to mobilize as a nation, just as was done before, when the excesses of Imperialism, Fascism, and Capitalism, came to a head in an all encompassing, global conflict. And in all of this do we have to realize that there is absolutely no way to continue "Business As Usual."

Even more complicated, though, is the fact that we have to mobilize, and have a managed economy, but not a managed Capitalist one. Not indefinitely at least (as we will need to stay with it for a transition period).
No, it will have to be one where we must understand the need to redefine work. To come up with a definition that allows working people to own, as well as belong, to the communities they work to support, and make happen, as a part of that redefinition.

As I have also said before, it is time now for the tech to start working for working people, and not the other way around. We are not going to be able to heal anything until we grasp that very important, new, reality. And the only way we are going to get there, across the divide that separates this nation ideologically, is with a "Grand Compromise" that gets both sides to give up up something very important so that we can all find a way to tolerate each other, and then find common ground to work the further comprises with which something truly meaningful can get done.

In my opinion, it won't happen, successfully, any other way.

How the Covid-19 recession could become a depression


The most important lesson of the 1918 influenza pandemic: Tell the damn truth




[Post Note: This is where the original post began. J.V.]
Information Apocalypse: All About Deepfakes


Would There Be Nearly the Number Of Incentives To Weaponize Information If We Weren't In So Many Dangerous Competitions?

And certainly the question that follows from that would be this:

Would there be nearly so many dangerous competitions if we didn't have an electrified economic operating system; one that not only was never meant to be electrified in the first place, but also one that has taken competition to the same levels of excessive amplification that is accelerating everything off the rails of normalcy? And this, of course, precisely because of its own success in spurring on the competition for cutting edge science. The very thing for very sharp people to wield when desperately trying to undercut the other competitors before they do it to you.

Of course Capitalism spurred us on to do amazing advancements in both general material well being, as well as scientific advancement. We can admit that freely, even as we also admit that a terrible price was paid in the course of achieving this outcome. A price that has come due now, in full, because doing just the minimum payment, as we've been doing, to pretend we're still interested, just isn't going to cut the cord that ties us to the reality of an inevitable outcome:

Burden any complex system beyond it's carrying capacity, for far too long, and you will reap the whirlwind. And aren't we just having bumper crop after bumper crop of those now; in various metaphorical renditions; in every complex system we operate in now, natural and human made.



See Also:
The Danger of Continuing With Dangerous Competitions


Whether You Want To Acknowledge It Or Not, We Are At War



Like I Have Said Before, We Truly Are At A Pivot Point



Within The Absolute Ascendancy of Capitalism











Friday, March 20, 2020

Can You Continue Building, Or Working On At All, Something You Don't Believe In?


Some folks sure seem to think so. Why else, at base, would you work wherever your money, or your ideology (because you'd do whatever thing, clandestine or otherwise. that your ideology required of you), was best served otherwise?

Some people, though, also create things whole cloth, out of whatever fevered fantasies, or delusions, that have hold of them for the moment. And they then work, too often to great excess, the process of trying to make their singular mental construct real; causing great "disruptions" from the obvious conflict with objective reality, however poorly decided upon by the working majority, that such contradictory behavior can usually be counted on to produce.

This is where I need to stop briefly so as to inform you, once again, that the text phrase "Build The Unbelievable" has once again been presented to me as a piece of actual advertising (as a direct email ad). And, coincidentally, that it also comes from the same online retailer that sent me the "Entertain The Madness" phrase of a previous post.

The sales pitch for this new ad was premised on the idea of being able to build the "unbelievable," powerhouse computer of your dreams, with which, of course, to blast through any game, or video composition, or music creation, or streaming process, you might want to be able to brag about; something I have to confess to being into for a while in the past.

In any case, though, this sort of banging of old cliches together, to make some new juxtaposition that draws you in, is as old as McLuhan's book "From Cliche To Archetype" (at the very least), where he described the process of taking old statements, phrases, and words, that once had a particular, significant, cultural meaning placed upon them; whereupon they then came to the inevitable, eventual erosion that both the shine that anything new goes through, along with various forms of satirizing, or criticism, that would turn them into cliches.

But now they can be re purposed, if you have the right, creative expressive ability, to make clever new ways to, in effect, pun them back into grabbing people's attention (McLuhan's favorite example was how the famous book title "The Grapes of Wrath" became the ad phrase "The Wrath of Grapes," way back in the late sixties, for a wine company that, supposedly, really knew how to treat grapes, to avoid such wrath, for the best wine outcomes).

Thinking about this new phrase, however, ought, it seems to me, beg one to frame a better beginning question, at the get go; something that gets us away from whether one can occupy one's self in things not believed in, or not, and ask instead why you would want to in the first place?

That's assuming, of course, that you wanted to live your life involved in something that has real meaning at all; because the only meaningful thing about the game of "Swimming With Sharks," that our hyper competitive, electrically mutated, economic operating system has become, is that it has clearly come to worship only self gratification, and aggrandizement, without limit, as an end goal. And whether that's sustainable or not be damned because we let them keep us working folks on the treadmill to nowhere; debt burdened, marginalized -- one way or another, and thus easily distracted; and at the very least, by having us be pitted against each other; fighting for the meager, trickle down, table scraps, that their insatiable thirst for profits leaves us with.

How could one see it otherwise when not even 100 billion dollar empires, and the ability to manipulate whole nations, are enough for most of the supposed titans of our new "Booming Economy." The people I can assure you are hell bent on doing whatever it takes to build you into someone who actually does believe the unbelievable; so that you will fall in line, to work for it, without causing such a fuss, all of the time; and most especially when their mistakes are paid for in your blood, and bone, suffering, and loss of home.

So, as Congress is likely to give more billions to failing corporations, while at the same time likely to be lucky to get restrictions on the stock by-back shenanigans that enriched CEO's, as well as already rich stock holders; and are also unlikely to even consider some form of "Quantitative Easing" for student load debt, or making Pot legal, and then giving the dispensary industry full banking rights (which would pump a huge new cash flow into the banking system, and get cops out of policing for pot), or even just more realistically increased direct payments to citizens, the only question remaining is what are you going to do about it?

Images for the false coronavirus narrative

images for the fox news version of the coronavirus





Don Lemon says Trump is gaslighting you and rolls the tape


[Post Note: Wanted to be clear that the added, ad text, "Master Your Build," seen at the bottom of the header graphic above, was also just received from the same online retailer that sent me the "Build The Unbelievable" ad text. J.V.]












Wednesday, March 11, 2020

The Danger of Continuing With Dangerous Competitions


I have talked a lot about "Dangerous Competitions" in my Google Blogs ("And Now A Dangerous Competition Becomes Outright War", "Already So Many Dangerous Competitions With Other Nations", "Yes, We Are In Dangerous Competitions With Other Foreign Powers", to just list a few) in the past because I believe it to be a very important way to see how Capitalism has become unacceptable now; precisely because the electrification of it has not only sped it up beyond all human comprehension, it has allowed the unprecedented manipulation of all of our base instincts; so much so as to turn reality itself completely inside out, so that fantasy, and impulse rule more than the rule of law, or so it would seem.

The juxtaposition in the header graphic here is meant to try and illustrate just how complexly interrelated they have all become, with so much of whatever bad happens, affecting everything else we have; inside us and outside us.

This is why a major biological event can exacerbate an already simmering energy situation. Or a new arms race can exacerbate the broken system we now have for not only deciding what is a priority, but which competitor might have the best solution to address that priority, with all of them trying to spread the pork around as much as they can.

The upshot is that jobs might still get created, and the economy might seem to be running strong, but underneath is nothing but rot, bad things happening to innocent people, and a solution that may be making a few people a lot of money, but in actual fact, does nothing to either address the immediate priority (poorly chosen though it might be), or seek to ask the deeper question as to whether we should have been seeking negotiations in the first place, so as to obviate what might already be an out of control race to dominate in a particular aspect of one of these competitions (as in re energizing not only arms control in general, but nuclear arms in particular, before we let a bad contract out on that one too; or create more weapons we don't keep track of, or maintain properly). 

Never lose sight, however, on the bottom line fact that, with this automatically becoming a zero sum game, dominance has to also become the ultimate goal of all the major players. What else would you expect when major economic memes have remained around "Disruption," and "Swimming With Sharks." From which follows, certainly, the inescapable conclusion that you are either going to have be predator, or prey.

This might have been a workable way to do things a few hundred years ago, but is exactly not what is going to work now. Now we must pivot away from the tribalism this stems from, and seek out the re defined economics, and definitions of work, that will demand cooperation, and a dynamic balance, to make that cooperation possible.

The choice is yours dear reader. Yours and the neighbors around you. The only question remaining is whether you will wake up soon enough to realize that our current leaders aren't going to give us this choice. We have to organize; take responsibility for ourselves, and demand a completely new way to go about an equitable deal for all working people.

I'd like to think my alternative is a way to do that. Even if it isn't, though, doesn't change the fact that we will still need one. So if not mine, will you come up with a better one? Because if you did it would be just fine with me. Either way, an alternative is the only thing that is going to save us. And a lot of approaching tipping points are screaming out the fact that we are rapidly running out of time.

Why This Oil Crash Is Different






See Also:
How Working-Class Life Is Killing Americans, in Charts















Thursday, March 5, 2020

Entertain The Madness

We are solicited to action here, apparently, because the madness of "Chaos as Entertainment" wasn't quite ironic enough. Or perhaps simply because not only does one never want to piss "The Madness" off at all anymore, one must work, pro actively, to keep it happy, now that it appears to be in charge.

I hasten to add that the "Entertain The Madness" phrase is an actual piece of advertising text, being used currently by at least one, fairly noteworthy, online retailer of computer, and electronic stuff (a reputable merchant I can assure you, whom I have purchased from myself).

It's supposed to reference "March Madness," of the hoops variety of course, with new, super refined, 4K, and 8K, TV's to watch it on.

As often happens, however, the advertisers who write the copy don't always catch extra shades of meaning (that only a purveyor of metaphors would likely catch). Extra shades juxtaposed so as to demand that deeper questions be asked.

Which is why I, for one, also to have wonder how much sporting madness is going to be able to overcome biological, environmental, and leadership madness, now that life in general is just about as fed up with us as we seem to be with each other. So much so that any large, public gathering, type of event, may suffer great losses before people can be anesthetized again into blissful ignorance. Whereupon I also have to wonder just how long anybody is going to be attending any more campaign rallies. Even Trump Chumps might get the message there, otherwise their "Dear Leader" might actually have to risk getting truly poetic justice sent upon him; talking only hypothetically, of course, as we would never wish that on anyone. Not even that particular "gentleman."

It is interesting, though, just how similar sports madness, and political madness, can both go into amazing extremes; with all of the excess one would expect of something that now revels in over sized rivalry, and divisive competition, making it not only irresistibly attractive, but also a fertile ground for corruption, marginalization, addiction, and now intimidating control (would the athlete abuse scandals, doping and other cheating scandals, have happened otherwise? Would we have the hypocrisy of a Supreme Court Chief Justice admonishing a Senator for pressuring other Justices, when the President himself now feels quite free to intimidate any Federal Court witness, or Juror).

How could it be otherwise, though, when the underlying dynamics at work here, are actually quite revolutionary, and quite by very natural relationships; if for no other reason than "what goes around, comes around." And of course because electrified acceleration of everything naturally makes every recursive process turn faster anyway. Which certainly makes anybody making silly statements like "People don't want a revolution" all the more ridiculous; and that for no other reason than technology is already doing the "revolutionizing" for us. And whether the average working stiff out there fully appreciates the "Swimming With Sharks" competition (where so many of us are made so desperately sharp, to undercut each other) that's now so rampant, or not, it is a mistake the tech titans, and captains of capital, or at least the ones with 50 billion or more in market cap, and cash, are always loathe to make.

This is also why it is such a joke that America hates Socialism. As the Fed rate change clearly indicates, making money much cheaper for those who already have large stashes of it. And certainly, back when "Quantitative Easing" was in play, along with the Ryan tax giveaway, before the Dems took over the House of Representatives. All of it then putting a multi trillion dollar total to the subsidization "Big Money" gets, just as the rest of America is told we can't afford Health Care for all, or a living wage, or good schools for all, etc., etc.

The payoff for the rest of us was supposed to be jobs of course. But that becomes ever more problematic every year, as automation makes the continued, reliable store of value, in human labor, ever more subject to a cheaper alternative. Not to mention the fact that having livelihoods tied to ever more amplified want, fueling ever more amplified consumption, is no longer sustainable at all, to begin with.

The bottom line here is this: Continuing to do "Business As Usual" will seal our doom. Work must be redefined, and a new way to organize community life found, if we are to avoid this doom. `


[Post Note: Every article referenced in the header graphic that tops this post, except for the "Out of Antarctica" article, were taken from one of the two Google image searches listed just below. J.V.]

Images For Government As Reality TV


[Post Note: I, for one, feel compelled to make note of one factor I haven't seen, or heard, much comment on yet. A factor that relates to the meme, more favorably emphasized by the Right, than on the left, where it's supposedly, in a bigger picture view, a good thing that the main threat here is only for a limited set of vulnerable populations; keeping the emphasis there on the aged, and their infirmities, and not so much on the infirmities one gets, for various reasons, as a marginalized population. Bad as that might actually be, there is, inherent in this kind of thinking, an omission of imagination that is astonishing. I say that because one need only take a small moment to consider viable possibilities that ought to concern even healthy, younger demographic groups; and it goes like this:
In a new world, of now two, separate, flu symptom related, virus born illnesses, where the new one is at least ten times more lethal than the already established variety, suppose you are unlucky enough to first catch a new variation of the established flu. And because you're young, and busy, you seldom take the time, let alone have the time to keep reminding yourself, to take whatever flu shots the government tires to provide. So suppose further that that little dance with the virus devil sets you back quite a bit, in order to get over it. Leaving you weakened in other words; generally, as well as specifically to your immune system's response capabilities. And then, unlucky you, you get the new guy on the block version. At which point, dear reader, you are truly rolling the dice as to what is going to happen. And I can only hope you think long, and hard on just how problematic that roll might be. And after that realize you really do need to be involved in how things absolutely have to change J.V.]

Images For Coronavirus In America


Out of Antarctica, churnings of climate change



See Also: