It's cleverly done, I grant you that.
Every day I find yet another reason to shake my head and smile, amazed at the cleverness, the completeness of the trick.
So many good people buy it.
It's a confidence trick. A very, very good one. The best ever. As you'd expect.
Because it carries the highest prize.
Control over the world. What better prize? And it's brazen, if you choose to look.
OK, all human societies, have all been power matrices, however it has been hidden.
Who controls the distribution of pleasure and pain, wields the world. Be it Emperors, or Religions, or Corporations.
Those who control the means of production and distribution, the ones those with the weapons obey.
And the rest of us?
We have what they suffer us to have.
They keep us on the treadmill.
Power is a drug, we are kept down by its addicts.
Not just the Bushes and Blairs, but the real addicts, the Bill Gateses and the Rupert Murdochs.
They play us for fools. They tell us we govern ourselves, but no, we choose one of two teams, whilst the telescreen tells us WHAT to vote for. It tells us, what laws we SHOULD have, and what ones we SHOULDN'T. The telescreen tells us capitalism is good, that we cannot appoint it's enemies, that we need more (armed) policeman to watch over us.
They convince us, it's the only society that can work, that it is the one WE choose to have.
No, on both counts.
If we all sat about, together, and planned the means of production and distribution and the governance of the world from scratch, we WOULDN'T do it this way.
Not with the knowledge and technology we now have.
We should have the confidence in ourselves to dismantle it and put it back together a better way.
Think about it.
Read my archives, there are pretty much eight months worth of solid argument in between the more puerile posts, outlining the reasons behind the points I made in this post.
Delusions they could be, but they are certainly closer to the truth than the crap the TV is telling you.
If I'm right, my arguments stand on their own merits, and the identity of this blogger, or indeed anything that this blogger chooses not to disclose about himself, is totally irrelevant.
My lifestyle has no bearing on whether or not my thought processes are correct.
Thankyou for the tribute, James. From a consummate blogger such as yourself, it means all the more.
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7 comments:
Great picture of the big three. Their shadows are all over today's reality.
I see it, too. We have rights to a point, freedom with exception, justice for the highest bidders.
Carry on this tradition of speaking out, and spreading the word. You or I or many others may not be able to change much, but we never know who might one day have the power to do something that is actually beneficent. They might be reading right now. Most of the power structure is bent on keeping itself and its families on top. But every now and then, a freak comes along who will do something good and not be forced to do it. The last freak of this sort that I can think of to attain the office of the presidency was Theodore Roosevelt. He did not have to go after the trusts and monopolies of his day, they are in line with a free market, after all. He did not have to make room for unions to grow, but he did, and at tremendous personal loss of payments from the mega corps of his day. He could have been as rich as any from the "gifts" of such powers, but chose to side with the lower ninety percent. That said I'm certain he is no saint. After all, to rise to power some feet and some faces have to be stepped on. But in breaking the will of the first monopolies, he reaped rewards that went to the majority, and few since him have ever done anything remotely close.
Rights have been rolled back considerably in this country of mine. The people in power currently will do little to restore what has been taken. But one has to have hope that there will be one who will have a pure enough spirit to resist total corruption.
But as you have said, nothing will change if we all stay quiet. If the spread of ideas and information are one of the main things we can effectively do, then we must do that. We must not go quietly into the dark, even if there is a price to be paid for speaking our wills.
"Do you want to see a vision of the future? Picture a man's face being stomped forever."
--Orwell
Just as in Orwell's novel, it's the television that is feeding the minds of the masses. Too bad more people won't turn off their TVs and pick up a book, any book at all. That's the trick of the piss poor education system I mentioned yesterday. Every day I hear people say things like "I haven't read a book in years!" and the worst part is the voices that chime in their agreement.
Dumb voters, dumb consumers, perfect sheep for the shepherd wearing a wolfskin.
Well it's always interesting here even if I don't agree with it a lot of the time.
We should have the confidence in ourselves to dismantle it and put it back together a better way.
This is the very distressing part, that we have the ability but not the will. Whatever is tried, there is always some group crying out that they don't like the change.
In answer to this
Because we'd distribute the labour that needed to be done equally. Everybody would do an equal amount of work, and get an equal share.
This is just not realistic:
1. because in this technological age there are not enough jobs for everyone.
2. people's abilities vary widely so there will always be people doing jobs requiring higher qualifications so many will be in school acquiring those qualifications so not producing (my son and daughter were in University for 12 years each)
3. Even people doing the same job side by side do not do an equal job. Some one is always slacking off while someone is doing 1 1/2 times the work. This is just how people are.
You have to take into account what people are really like and they are all so different.
Sigh. :)
Remove Gates or Murdoch and two new oligarchs will step into their shoes.
Mankind is a pyramid. Perhaps that's what the Egyptians were trying to tell us.
Have a Happy Christmas, Ingsoc. All the more to you for your piety.
Kevin.
The same high school teacher who taught me about 1984 also introduced me to the notion of conformity. Not just in a pre-packages manner, but with true passion, telling us we have no clue about how much of our life is predetermined by forces above us that we don't bother to challenge. It was a pretty shaking moment.
I'm not sure I understand all this, but I'm with Sartre: "Elections are a trap for fools".
Eric- The Orwell quote you use, is one I am constantly reminded of.
Because that is the REAL point of power matrices, it is what drives Blair, Mugabe, the lot of them.
But yes, her we have a chance to do something. At least WE are talking, until they come for us.
jmb- You buy the fallacy :)
What do you mean by 'not enough jobs'?
It just means, we all need to put in LESS labour to be fed. None of us need to work long hours. We can all share the workload.
Five hours a day for everybody.
James- I wish you could see what I see.
There is much good in Man, and so much of it is wasted.
Just think about it. Look at the bigger picture.
E-K- Piety, hmmm.
I'm not sure piety is apt, but cheers :)
We need to remove the pyramid. There shouldn't be such personal concentrations of power. Power needs to be split up.
Princess P- Your teacher is right. So many of our conceptions are forced on us, and we don't stop to think.
Welshcakes- They are, in the sense that Universal Nahood suffrage only emerged AFTER party systems were in place.
We have never experienced true democracy, which would not allow strong parties.
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