"there is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening"
i tend to agree
throws a nice little spin on the free will/fate business
the absence of inevitabilty was pre-determined
i lolled
Control what they're contemplating
or the terms with which they define it
and you control the decision
example: partisanship. One state two state, red state blue state
Now when you get think outside of that framework,
("Hm, I need to stop thinking in terms of left vs right")
another kind of freedom emerges.
But it's hard to escape all the pitfalls
American example:
:sadbanana: : Hey man, what party do you belong to?
:tgrr: : Neither!
:sadbanana: : Well who did you vote for?
:tgrr: : Gore.
:sadbanana: : Well then you're a liberal, or at least you act like one.
:tgrr: VOMIT
Quote from: Professor Cramulus on May 02, 2007, 07:04:36 PM
Control what they're contemplating
or the terms with which they define it
and you control the decision
example: partisanship. One state two state, red state blue state
Now when you get think outside of that framework,
("Hm, I need to stop thinking in terms of left vs right")
another kind of freedom emerges.
But it's hard to escape all the pitfalls
American example:
:sadbanana: : Hey man, what party do you belong to?
:tgrr: : Neither!
:sadbanana: : Well who did you vote for?
:tgrr: : Gore.
:sadbanana: : You pussy.
Fixed.
LMNO
-voted 3rd party, like a
real man does.
Real men don't vote.
i was kinda waiting until the whole america voting stuff would start up again
really wondered what the consensus (lol) about it on this board would be
Quote from: triple zero on May 03, 2007, 02:14:37 PM
i was kinda waiting until the whole america voting stuff would start up again
really wondered what the consensus (lol) about it on this board would be
we're screwed sums it up pretty nicely I think.
Oh wait, I'm going to fix that myself.
we are going to continue to be screwed.
To me, the choices on both sides of the aisle, are kind of like going into a convenience store wanting to pick up some cola. Except, they've run out of Pepsi and Coke so now your choices are Tab, R/C Cola, or the local generic brand. You already know you are going to be disappointed so you just pick the one that is going to cost you the least.
I think we should make a list of everyone on this board who will be over the age of 35 on election day so I can just write in one of you fuckers.
Actually, I have been considering running for president.
I have a couple of friends who develop online viral marketing who might be interested.
I'll keep you all informed if anything develops.
I'd vote for you
Quote from: Rev. What's-His-Name? on May 03, 2007, 03:34:50 PM
To me, the choices on both sides of the aisle, are kind of like going into a convenience store wanting to pick up some cola. Except, they've run out of Pepsi and Coke so now your choices are Tab, R/C Cola, or the local generic brand. You already know you are going to be disappointed so you just pick the one that is going to cost you the least.
:lulz: thats a good analogy
Teh reason I have fuck all to do with democracy is that basically I don't believe in it. I don't mean that in the "I have lost my faith in it" sense. I mean I don't believe in it the same way I don't believe in Santa Claus or the fucking tooth fairy.
You got a little box that you get to put a tick in.
Like putting a tick in a box is gonna make up for the fact that I'm gonna get shafted for another 4 years or whatever?
What's the choice exactly?
A lying fuckpig who will renege on all his election promises v's a lying fuckpig with a slightly different face and voice who will (you guessed it) renege on all his election promises.
But hey I could prolly go for that if I wasn't so cynical.
See I know that whichever lying fuckpig I choose will not have the power to make a single decision or even voice an opinion as long as he's in office.
It's the people who run the country that get to do that stuff and you don't get to vote for those fucks. Most of the time you're not even allowed to know who they are.
Paranoid conspiracy theory or realistic appraisal of a scam by a proven expert in scamming (read unprosecuted evar)
The one thing they can't make me do is put an x in that fucking box. So I don't and, in doing so, I excercise the only democratic right that anyone has.
Democracy is a dream people - wake up!
Chaos Graves.
Just made age this year.
Vote Early. Vote often.
McLuhan himself, the spectacle's first apologist, who had seemed to be the most convinced imbecile of the century, changed his mind when he finally discovered in 1976 that "the pressure of the mass media leads to irrationality," and that it was becoming urgent to modify their usage. The thinker of Toronto had formerly spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a 'global village' instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been dominated by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. And this also presents the vulgarity of this spectacular planet, where it is no longer possible to distinguish the Grimaldi-Monaco or Bourbon-Franco dynasties from those who succeeded the Stuarts. However, McLuhan's ungrateful disciples are now trying to make people forget him, so as to rejuvenate his early works and, in their turn, develop a career in mediatic eulogy for all these new freedoms to 'choose' at random from ephemera. And probably they will retract their claims even faster than the man who inspired them.
I think Guy Debord just pwned McLuhan...
(http://www.discoflux.com/images/voteprolife.jpg)
Quote from: vexati0n on December 21, 2007, 06:47:43 PM
(http://www.discoflux.com/images/voteprolife.jpg)
:lulz:
Quote from: Cain on December 20, 2007, 07:29:14 PM
McLuhan himself, the spectacle's first apologist, who had seemed to be the most convinced imbecile of the century, changed his mind when he finally discovered in 1976 that "the pressure of the mass media leads to irrationality," and that it was becoming urgent to modify their usage. The thinker of Toronto had formerly spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a 'global village' instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been dominated by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. And this also presents the vulgarity of this spectacular planet, where it is no longer possible to distinguish the Grimaldi-Monaco or Bourbon-Franco dynasties from those who succeeded the Stuarts. However, McLuhan's ungrateful disciples are now trying to make people forget him, so as to rejuvenate his early works and, in their turn, develop a career in mediatic eulogy for all these new freedoms to 'choose' at random from ephemera. And probably they will retract their claims even faster than the man who inspired them.
I think Guy Debord just pwned McLuhan...
I think Debord and McLuhan were both blind men with their hands on an elephant. An elephant whose urethra is being raped by SillyCybin.
True. I just prefer Debord because he pissed people off, and was the epitome of an academic asshole.
Quote from: Cain on December 20, 2007, 07:29:14 PM
McLuhan himself, the spectacle's first apologist, who had seemed to be the most convinced imbecile of the century, changed his mind when he finally discovered in 1976 that "the pressure of the mass media leads to irrationality," and that it was becoming urgent to modify their usage. The thinker of Toronto had formerly spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a 'global village' instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been dominated by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. And this also presents the vulgarity of this spectacular planet, where it is no longer possible to distinguish the Grimaldi-Monaco or Bourbon-Franco dynasties from those who succeeded the Stuarts. However, McLuhan's ungrateful disciples are now trying to make people forget him, so as to rejuvenate his early works and, in their turn, develop a career in mediatic eulogy for all these new freedoms to 'choose' at random from ephemera. And probably they will retract their claims even faster than the man who inspired them.
I think Guy Debord just pwned McLuhan...
interesting
tho it might be hard to isolate mcluhan too easily
mcluhan's groupies and supporters and 'disciples' are not a accurate reflection of mcluhan
some might be even more insightful - but most are idiots (of course)
think about how RAW or whoever led to the hundreds of people that have come thru these parts
and then consider the ratio of knuckleheads to people with at least a pinch of integrity
ill check into more about this Debord guy
Another 12 years out from this quote from DeBord...
When I read McLuhan (and I don't know that I'm reading the same stuff Deboard did), it doesn't come off as a defense or embrace of the spectacle. McLuhan is descriptive, not prescriptive - at one point in that famous Playboy interview (https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/spring07/mcluhan.pdf), MCLUHAN SAID
QuoteI'm not advocating anything; I'm merely probing and predicting trends. Even if I opposed them or thought them disastrous, I couldn't stop them, so why waste my time lamenting? As Carlyle said of author Margaret Fuller after she remarked, "I accept the Universe": "She'd better." I see no possibility of
a worldwide Luddite rebellion that will smash all machinery to bits, so we might as well sit back and see what is happening and what will happen to us in a cybernetic world. Resenting a new technology will not halt its progress.
Whereas in contrast, Debord wishes we could rewind to a time when we weren't consumed by conversations about "how much your umbrella cost and where did you get it?" He advocates living one's life in a way that's radically arbitrary, a fly in the ointment of consensus. I imagine that if he lived in 2019, Deboard would not own a smartphone. And he might even be better off for it! But this is why the situationists could only exist for a moment.. they were never able to resist the tide -- except individually.
Passages like this still seem to hit 2019-2020 right on the head. (italics mine)
QuoteInterviewer: Are you claiming, now, that there will be no taboos in the world tribal society you envision?
McLuhan: No, I'm not saying that, and I'm not claiming that freedom will be absolute—merely that it will be less restricted than your question implies. The world tribe will be essentially conservative, it's true, like all iconic and inclusive societies; a mythic environment lives beyond time and space and thus generates little radical social change. All technology becomes part of a shared ritual that the tribe desperately strives to keep stabilized and permanent; by its very nature, an oral-tribal society—such as Pharaonic Egypt—is far more stable and enduring than any fragmented visual society. The oral and auditory tribal society is patterned by acoustic space, a total and simultaneous field of relations alien to the visual world, in which points of view and goals make social change an inevitable and constant by product. An electrically imploded tribal society discards the linear forward-motion of "progress." We can see in our own time how, as we begin to react in depth to the challenges of the global village, we all become reactionaries.
a lot of people read McLuhan's tone as one of reverence and awe for the bright future to come.
But McLuhan admits that he's from a previous generation (linear-literary culture), and is himself alienated by this "electric tribal culture" that was forming at the time. The hippies read this vanishing of taboos as a liberation from uptight 50s conservatism. I think McLuhan saw that in the long arc, it also represents the decay of discourse, the return of the animalistic...
Reminds me of when Nietzsche says "God is dead, we have killed him--you and I", it's in a tone of horror. Even though Nietzsche is an atheist, he is terrified by the "lack of up and down" that he imagined we were approaching.