An Image to Hide Behind

The latest Adbusters article addresses the question: "What is the happiness that has alluded our generation?" Here's part of the response:

Unlike people of my generation who are increasingly defined by their possessions, my grandfather never owned much. But he never complained about not having because he was too busy being. Perhaps I’m unhappy because my concerns are reversed – I’m too worried about having to focus on being. Human fulfillment is no longer equated with what I am, but with what I possess. [Guy] Debord says this is the second stage of modernization, “in which social life becomes so completely dominated by accumulated products that it causes a shift from having to appearing, wherein all ‘having’ must now derive its immediate prestige from appearances.” So all I need to do to fit modern society is to appear to be a possessor of a lot of stuff, but in reality I will be and have nothing. I need a personal image. Perhaps this is the visible sign of happiness Baudrillard was talking about. I have to create an image to hide behind, and this image seems to be the only thing I’m able to produce. Have I really been reduced to an image whose sole purpose is to mix and mingle with other seemingly compatible images? Is modern life really so complex?

Part of the author's answer to this question (found later in the article) is to be unique. In a sense, I completely agree with this. As a friend always reminds me, God has made us human beings not human doings. God desires us to first just be who we are. We were uniquely created to be a part of the larger story going on around us. We should stop trying to be like everyone else, desiring possessions to impress everyone else, and seek to live out of the unique expression of Christ in us.

Instead of hiding behind a self-made, propped up image of ourselves, we should remember this truth:

"And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another." - 2 Cor. 3:18

Philosophy progressing towards irrelevance?

From the latest Adbusters article, entitled The End of Philosophy:

"My [philosophy] professors amaze me with their ability to clearly elaborate on any subject, but they never apply their timeless wisdom to reality. Instead of rigorously debating the problems of today, my professors lull the class to sleep with lackluster lectures on trivial topics. Do I possess a priori knowledge? What is the form of me? Am I a thinking thing? Let’s be honest: being lost in the clouds never saved a child from starvation and it never will...

If we are to believe that philosophy is some guy’s opinion, then we have forgotten the essence of philosophy. Philosophy is the touchstone of all progress. We must remember that philosophy is the purest form of dissent. If we do not ask questions, if we do not question authority, if we do not pressure ourselves, then society will never advance. All progress comes from change, and philosophers used to be the backbone of change. Whether we go back thousands of years to Socrates’ “corrupting the youth” or more recently to Bertrand Russell’s condemnation of the Vietnam War, it is obvious that philosophers used to take a stand against a callous system. Now they simply summarize and overanalyze all the irrelevant aspects of life. "

Virtual Life Creating Private Worlds

The latest Adbusters article reveals how the Japanese are being affected by growing technology of virtual, private worlds. The article looks at recent killing sprees as well as general public interaction to illustrate how "privacy is not simply sustained, it’s thrust upon you." And I don't think the U.S. is too far behind...

Here's the conclusion:

"Committing to a relationship or the achievement of an ambition is usually a lot more challenging than creating a sudden buzz on the internet, posting a blog entry, tweeting 140 characters or adding new friends to your Facebook, Mixi or digital address pages. But a retreat from reality poses its own set of risks: newly emerging anxieties and uncertainties that we are only now beginning to recognize and understand...

Divorced from the very human responsibility to contact and interact directly with other living beings, we may feel hollowed out, emptied of the sense of an evolving self that can make existence worth its painful bouts of adversity and growth. A life spent lurking too long in the shadows of the virtual world might turn out to be no life at all."

Political sway in movies

Adbusters has an intriguing article analyzing the movie industry and how much politics have to do with the movies that come out. The article focuses on movies like Pearl Harbor, United 93, Australia, and a few others. It mentions how business gurus like Rupert Murdoch have more to do with what movies come out than you might think. Here's the conclusion:

"To understand what might happen if big business interests were less prevalent in the film industry, consider the independent distributor Lions Gate Films. Lions Gate was formed in Canada by an investment banker, but is not beholden to a multi-billion dollar parent corporation with multifarious interests. The result has been some of the most daring and original popular political cinema of the past ten years: American Psycho, which criticized corporate capitalism; Hotel Rwanda, which highlighted the failings of US foreign policy and Lord of War, which focused on the arms trade.

As we peer up from our popcorn, it is worth remembering that behind the magic of the movies lurks the darker power of corporate public relations."

Belief: the power behind rebellion

The latest Adbusters article is really, really good. It's entitled They believed, why can't I?. It's good, not because I think everything this guy says is true (because I don't). It's good because he's wrestling with the paradox of belief and skepticism. He talks about the ideal of rebellion being attractive, yet it seems that most of this rebellion is shallow because there's no belief behind it, only unbelief in something else. Here's one paragraph:

"Ask liberals in the United States today what they believe in. They might tell you they want an end to the war in Iraq, that they desire universal health care or are inspired by Barack Obama. But these aren’t beliefs, they’re actions, policies and politicians. A belief is something like universal peace or a caring society or a world with great leaders (or no leaders at all). It is only by believing in such grand impossibilities that small accomplishments are possible. This is why liberals, for nearly two decades now, have accomplished nothing. Many contemporary radicals are little better. They have grand beliefs but little desire to realize what they believe. Doing so would jeopardize their outsider status as rebels. As such, their belief is in bad faith."

And then he says:

"Belief motivates. It gets you up in the morning and headed toward the horizon; it makes you act to bring about what you know is impossible."

Go read the rest here

The article reminds me of a chapter entitled The Suicide of Thought in Chesterton's Orthodoxy. He sums up the modern rebel this way:

“The new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it...By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.”

The Uniqueness of the past four generations

Adbusters has an interesting photo piece on four living generations that have set the stage for the political youth of today.

Crime pays in Mexico

Monica Lopez recently wrote an article for Adbusters describing the rise of crime in Mexico over the last few years. Corruption seems to permeate all levels of government. Check out the article here.

Here's her conclusion:

"The outlook for 2009 is not bright. The worst-case scenario is that violence will continue to intensify and include terrorist attacks, leaving both the government and private citizens powerless against organized crime. The best-case scenario is that we might react as a country in a way that strives to understand where the source of the current problems so that we may attack them at their roots. The next time somebody asks me if Mexico is a dangerous place where people shoot each other over disagreements and the authorities are corrupt, I will have to answer, with great sadness, yes."

Are we wrong about our economic principles?

Adbusters has a recent article constrasting two different views of the economy, growth vs. steady-state. Having not ever taken an economics class, I found the article pretty interesting. Most of the time I figure that the way things are running now must be the best, if not the only way to do things. As usual, Adbusters helps me take a look outside my 21st Century Western bias:

"The most important change in recent times has been the enormous growth of one subsystem of the Earth, namely the economy, relative to the total system, the ecosphere. This huge shift from an 'empty' to a 'full' world is truly 'something new under the sun,' as historian J. R. McNeil calls it in his book of that title. The closer the economy approaches the scale of the whole Earth, the more it will have to conform to the physical behavior mode of the Earth. That behavior mode is a steady state – a system that permits qualitative development but not aggregate quantitative growth. Growth is more of the same stuff; development is the same amount of better stuff (or at least different stuff). The remaining natural world is no longer able to provide the sources and sinks for the metabolic throughput necessary to sustain the existing oversized economy – much less a growing one. Economists have focused too much on the economy’s circulatory system and have neglected to study its digestive tract. Throughput growth means pushing more of the same food through an ever larger digestive tract; development means eating better food and digesting it more thoroughly. Clearly the economy must conform to the rules of a steady state – seek qualitative development, but stop aggregate quantitative growth. GDP increase conflates these two very different things.

We have lived for 200 years in a growth economy. That makes it hard to imagine what a steady-state economy (SSE) would be like, even though for most of our history mankind has lived in an economy in which annual growth has been negligible. Some think an SSE would mean freezing in the dark under communist tyranny. Some say that huge improvements in technology (energy efficiency, recycling) are so easy that it will make the adjustment both profitable and fun."

The steady-state economy also seems to be the answer to better helper poorer countries:

"For poor countries GDP growth still increases welfare, at least if reasonably distributed. The question is, what is the best thing for rich countries to do to help poor countries? The World Bank’s answer is that the rich should continue to grow as rapidly as possible to provide markets for the poor and to accumulate capital to invest in poor countries. The steady state answer is that the rich should reduce their throughput growth to free up resources and ecological space for use by the poor, while focusing their domestic efforts on development, technical and social improvements, that can be freely shared with poor countries."

Read the whole thing

What's Left After Obama?

Adbusters latest article is an interesting one. It looks at the possible outcomes of Obama taking charge in Washington.

"What are the possible consequences of Obama’s victory? I think there are at least two possibilities that circle in a perhaps melancholy dialectic. One possibility – which is highly unlikely, but at least conceivable – is that the change of regime will lead to local and diverse forms of popular politicization which perhaps might place in question the current socio-economic doxa. On this view, emboldened by Obama’s victory, various groups might accelerate their political activity around issues such as immigrant rights, union representation or corporate greed. What Obama’s victory might unleash is a sequence of progressive radicalizations inside the US and perhaps outside as well that would act as a serious irritant to the usual business of the state or the usual state of business.

The second possibility is the reverse, namely that the popular force that has been mobilized around Obama’s presidential campaign simply exhausts itself in its governmental victory. On this view, once Obama has been elected, citizens can switch off politically and sit back and watch how well his administration does. Politics becomes reduced to a spectacle of media and governmental representation. Furthermore, this possibility is undoubtedly the one favoured by the Obama campaign itself, which explains the somber, slightly disappointed tone to Obama’s speech on the night of his victory: ‘The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term’. On this view, the rhetoric of change (‘Together we can change the country and change the world’) was simply what it took to get people mobilized. Once the victory is secure, there must be no further mobilizations at the popular level. All must henceforth be mediated through the apparatus of government. Politics as the experience of a people suddenly present to itself and aware of its awesome power has to die at the precise moment when a representative government is elected. "

Garbage City

Adbusters recently created this brief slideshow about the Zabaleen people of the Moqqatam suberb in Cairo. It especially caught my eye because I had the opportunity to visit this place two summers ago and see what is known to many as "Garbage City." Here's the description from Adbusters:

"Moqqatam is one of the most extraordinary and hellish suburbs on earth. It is home to a people known as the Zabaleen, said to be the world’s greatest waste recyclers. The Zabaleen, which means plainly enough, “the garbage collectors,” pick up around 4,000 tons of Cairo’s waste each day. American researchers have shown that the Zabaleen recycle 85% of this garbage into something useful: a higher rate than anywhere else on the planet. The men do two shifts leaving about 4 in morning and again around 9. The rubbish is taken back to Moqqatam for the women to sit in and sort through. The organic waste is fed to livestock, the rest sorted for recycling. The future of the Zabaleen is uncertain. If the Cairo authorities get their way, this community of 25,000 Coptic Christians living in a Muslim country will be gone, and with it their unique, astonishing lifestyle. "

Here are a couple pics from our trip of "Garbage City"

Does virtual morality exist?

Adbusters looks at this question in their lastest article. They examine the violence and sexually perverse behavior happening in video games and other virtual worlds, and wonder if immorality has free reign there.

"Technology is dragging morality into some deep and murky philosophical waters, forcing us to reexamine our understanding of it as many of us choose to become actors in virtual worlds. By putting choice and consequence in closed virtual worlds where we can kill without harming others or facing punishment ourselves, we are forced to reconsider the case for moral behavior. New video games such as Grand Theft Auto IV and online communities such as Second Life, invite an increasingly large percentage of society to participate in fantasy worlds where we are invited to experience life without rules – to be the bad guy or the sexual deviant. The implicit suggestion of these products is that, like gravity, morality does not necessarily exist in a virtual world. Morality and consequence can be switched off. Anything goes...

...When Jesus began teaching and interpreting the moral code of the day, he radically redefined adultery, translocating the sin from the physical realm of actions and words to the virtual world of the mind and imagination. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says, 'You have heard the commandment that says, ‘You must not commit adultery.’ But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.' What Jesus teaches is that God is concerned not only with what plays out in the physical world of actions (reality), but also with what takes place in the virtual world of our minds. A sociological approach to morality judges murder wrong because it harms an innocent person. A theological approach to morality finds murder sinful not only because of the physical act, but also because God is offended by an angry mind as well as violent hands. The humanist or secular view of morality is concerned only with what we do. True religious morality is concerned not only with what we do, but with who we are, with what we desire to do."

The dangers of Facebook

Roy links to a good article describing how Facebook can turn into endless narcissism (and in a virtual world at that). Check it out.