A little more Horrible Truth™, Jim: Hating America

[Elder Iptuous]

The feeling is the same, the biological urge sated - that's the scary part. These mass produced phantasmagoria milk the passion from our masses like sucking the venom from a diamondback. Viper may as well be toothless by the time the "vote now" message has been transmitted.

Right...
what was it in Brave New World?
Passion Surrogate treatments.  they used these because people's bodies require the physiological effects of passion to function properly, but for obvious reasons, we can't have real passion gumming up the cogs of progress....

[P3nT4gR4m]

Real passion is unpredictable and not generally conducive to status quo

[Payne]

The way I see it something like this zero "energy" is total apathy, as you increase the "energy" you approach more passion, if you over load the "energy" or are fundamentally incapable of handling passion then you end up with what LMNO described, a kind of mental saturation (like turning the volume up too high on shitty speakers).

To be most effective, I guess you have to maintain just enough passion to still be able to think well enough to put it to good use. (Loud enough to rawk with your cawk out, but still hear the kick ass solo clearly)

If you've got yourself a batch of 'Passion^TM', you're never going to be able to put it to good use. It's flawed from the beginning. (You accidentally bought a Jimmy Shand CD)

[P3nT4gR4m]

"Love under will"

[Elder Iptuous]

Real passion is unpredictable and not generally conducive to status quo

If that's the only difference, then there's not really any advantage in that vs. the Passion™ of pop culture foci, outside of the minority groups of Discordians and their ilk.
further, i don't see why those of us that seek spontaneity and status-quo busting couldn't be channeled and corralled with a modicum of clever engineering.

Add:  ... just noticed there is a pic in your post that nannywall blocked.
perhaps makes my response stupid....  posting anyways.

[Payne]

?

[P3nT4gR4m]

If that's the only difference, then there's not really any advantage in that vs. the Passion™ of pop culture foci..

There isn't. Lot of angry people will have you believe otherwise but, ultimately, if existence is meaningless then a hollow sham of an existence is no more or less so.

Comes down to personal taste. Personally I think the mainstream swimmers smell like junk food but I don't pretend there's any higher judgment than my opinion.

[President Television]

Fuck looking for meaning or depth in Passion. You want to know what real Passion is? You want to know what makes it better? It's when it's the only thing that makes sense to you. It's when it's the thing that you enjoy the most. It's when you love and hate it at once and you don't even want to bother reconciling the two, because they go so fucking well together. I'm that way with punk rock. Hell, I'm that way with rock and roll in general. I've found that opposites like love and hate tend not to be separate things, but rather the same thing viewed from different perspectives. The trick is staying close to the edge and giving it all you have. Be loud and fast and out-of-control. I think that's what we all love here. Rebellion. Maybe that's the key. Maybe Rebellion is True Passion.

[Chief Uwachiquen]

But you've got to be careful there, man. Rebellion is a tricky subject. After all, isn't it just another tool of The Machine™? Rebellion these days is carefully controlled and contained. I think Rebellion is a lot like Passion, in that regard. There's Passion, and then there's Passion™. Sure Rock at one point was Pure, Raw, Powerful, it was fucking beautiful. But all of that is being swept aside by the Radio, fucking MTV, here's what you should listen to. Here's what you should buy. Buy. Buy. Buy. Listen to this, wear this band's shit. Like every other tool of Rebellion, The Machine™ figures out how to turn it against us. Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking "Hey, Chief, what about X band's message or their Ideology. They're still rocking it!" And that may be true. But for every one of them, one of us that gets it? There's thousands--millions, who don't fucking get it. They bob their heads because they're programmed to. That's Rebellion™ for you.

That's what makes The Machine so fucking horrible. It can turn one free thinker's ideas and thoughts and scramble it over the airwaves to their drones. They can take something so beautiful, and market it, spin it, overplay it, until the message is lost among all the noise.

[Requia ☣]

wasn't there also some thing about how crying and laughing are really similar on some biological level or something?

Crying and screaming in horror too.  Mirth uses the same chemicals as stress reactions.

But you've got to be careful there, man. Rebellion is a tricky subject. After all, isn't it just another tool of The Machine™? Rebellion these days is carefully controlled and contained. I think Rebellion is a lot like Passion, in that regard. There's Passion, and then there's Passion™. Sure Rock at one point was Pure, Raw, Powerful, it was fucking beautiful. But all of that is being swept aside by the Radio, fucking MTV, here's what you should listen to. Here's what you should buy. Buy. Buy. Buy. Listen to this, wear this band's shit. Like every other tool of Rebellion, The Machine™ figures out how to turn it against us. Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking "Hey, Chief, what about X band's message or their Ideology. They're still rocking it!" And that may be true. But for every one of them, one of us that gets it? There's thousands--millions, who don't fucking get it. They bob their heads because they're programmed to. That's Rebellion™ for you.

That's what makes The Machine so fucking horrible. It can turn one free thinker's ideas and thoughts and scramble it over the airwaves to their drones. They can take something so beautiful, and market it, spin it, overplay it, until the message is lost among all the noise.

[President Television]

But you've got to be careful there, man. Rebellion is a tricky subject. After all, isn't it just another tool of The Machine™? Rebellion these days is carefully controlled and contained. I think Rebellion is a lot like Passion, in that regard. There's Passion, and then there's Passion™. Sure Rock at one point was Pure, Raw, Powerful, it was fucking beautiful. But all of that is being swept aside by the Radio, fucking MTV, here's what you should listen to. Here's what you should buy. Buy. Buy. Buy. Listen to this, wear this band's shit. Like every other tool of Rebellion, The Machine™ figures out how to turn it against us. Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking "Hey, Chief, what about X band's message or their Ideology. They're still rocking it!" And that may be true. But for every one of them, one of us that gets it? There's thousands--millions, who don't fucking get it. They bob their heads because they're programmed to. That's Rebellion™ for you.

That's what makes The Machine so fucking horrible. It can turn one free thinker's ideas and thoughts and scramble it over the airwaves to their drones. They can take something so beautiful, and market it, spin it, overplay it, until the message is lost among all the noise.

Haha, that's not rebellion. Rebellion isn't what the machine gives you. Rebellion is something you have to look for, and if you don't find it you make it yourself.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

But you've got to be careful there, man. Rebellion is a tricky subject. After all, isn't it just another tool of The Machine™? Rebellion these days is carefully controlled and contained. I think Rebellion is a lot like Passion, in that regard. There's Passion, and then there's Passion™. Sure Rock at one point was Pure, Raw, Powerful, it was fucking beautiful. But all of that is being swept aside by the Radio, fucking MTV, here's what you should listen to. Here's what you should buy. Buy. Buy. Buy. Listen to this, wear this band's shit. Like every other tool of Rebellion, The Machine™ figures out how to turn it against us. Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking "Hey, Chief, what about X band's message or their Ideology. They're still rocking it!" And that may be true. But for every one of them, one of us that gets it? There's thousands--millions, who don't fucking get it. They bob their heads because they're programmed to. That's Rebellion™ for you.

That's what makes The Machine so fucking horrible. It can turn one free thinker's ideas and thoughts and scramble it over the airwaves to their drones. They can take something so beautiful, and market it, spin it, overplay it, until the message is lost among all the noise.

This is the best thing written on PD this month.

[Payne]

I agree with that post. Rebellion is an essential part of The Machine^tm and of the human experience. Real Rebellion. The packaged shit we've been fed for the last 20 years and more hearkens back to that "Doing everything different from the mainstream is exactly the same as doing everything exactly the same as the mainstream" bit. The problem is in identifying which is which, as ever.

I dunno, I have some ideas floating around I need to pull together for this.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Rebellion is like Freedom in this respect.

If you see either, printed on the front of an overpriced teeshirt, available in a range of rad, this-season colours - assume it's counterfeit.

protip: Real rebels don't think of themselves as rebelling - they're just exercising the freedom that everyone else thinks you have to ask for.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Rebellion is like Freedom in this respect.

If you see either, printed on the front of an overpriced teeshirt, available in a range of rad, this-season colours - assume it's counterfeit.

protip: Real rebels don't think of themselves as rebelling - they're just exercising the freedom that everyone else thinks you have to ask for.

THIS.