If you're in high school, your friends might secretly be on the dole of a marketing agency to promote the latest brand. As if there wasn't enough rampant consumerism in this country already.

In the long term, this could have a deleterious effect on all word of mouth info. When nobody can be trusted to be anything more than a walking commercial, even genuine recommendations become suspect. Trust no one.

Things we've done since I arrived in Lincoln Friday morning:

This article summarizes the Peak Oil problem, and discusses potential economic consequences that are likely to follow. Most of it echoes what a lot of "fringe" sources have been saying for the past couple of years, but this is notable because it's being published in Rolling Stone, and is therefore likely to reach a lot more eyeballs, even if the magazine isn't a "real" news source.

Yes, the rumors are true. Last night, Bitscape abandoned sanity and reason, and after reading a post by Yanthor, decided to make the all night drive to Lincoln, NE.

Sophia Stewart has won her case.

According to court documentation, an FBI investigation discovered that more than thirty minutes had been edited from the original film, in an attempt to avoid penalties for copyright infringement. The investigation also stated that "credible witnesses employed at Warner Brothers came forward, claiming that the executives and lawyers had full knowledge that the work in question did not belong to the Wachowski Brothers." These witnesses claimed to have seen Stewart's original work and that it had been often used during preparation of the motion pictures.

Most telling is the lack of press coverage. A search for "Sophia Stewart" on google shows up NOTHING right now. A search for "Matrix" contains no relevant results. Yet more evidence of the degree of Soviet-style control over the national media, even in the entertainment press.

Correction: She may or may not have actually won the case yet. The article is worded in a confusing manner, but it says her charges were "were received and acknowledged by the Central District of California", which doesn't necessarily indicate a victory. Also, it indicates that this occurred on October of last year. Other sites that follow the issue have made no mention of a ruling in the case, so the headline may be bogus. But my comments on lack of mainsteam media coverage of the case still stand.

Given the fact that the number of novels I've read during the past 6 months has easily surpassed the number of theatrical movies I've been to (which I haven't even been faithful about chronicling anyway), maybe I ought to replace the movielog section with a booklog. In any case, I thought I might put down a few thoughts about the one I just finished. John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

Maps taken from screenshots of games from yesteryear. Check out Dragon Warrior, Metroid, and the orginal Zelda. Is it scary that I still remembered most of the labyrinth entrances and their corresponding level number, even though it's been well over a decade since I last played it? Yeah, those were the days.

Many moons ago, during a conversation with Yanthor, I happened to mention the inherently unfulfilling nature of alienated labor. He asked what I had meant by the term "alienated labor". I had to stop and think to try to come up with a definition. Having heard the term used by others many times before in passing, the concept seemed fairly clear in my head, but coming up other words to define it without resorting to circular references was challenging. (That's why I don't write dictionaries.) I roughly described it as work done under the direction of someone else, and not of your own free will. I knew my definition wasn't quite sufficient, but I couldn't think of anything more precise at the time.

Tonight, I googled, and found out the origin of the term, as well as a lot of other interesting material. Unsurprisingly, it has its origins in the writings of Karl Marx. He used it to describe a condition in which the product of a person's labor becomes, psychologically speaking, a separate entity from the one who produced it. Or, "taking away labor's value from workers in order to create profits." The result is a misery-producing cycle which separates people from nature, their fellow humans, and ultimately themselves.

Anyway, the article I'm linking to, in addition to providing a far more expansive definition than I just did (the entire first section is devoted to defining the concept), adds a corollary beyond what Marx conceived: Alienated Consumption. By consuming products which one had no part in producing, a person's relationship with the rest of the world becomes estranged, especially when such consumption is predicated upon false needs, the illusion of which are created through advertising. But it gets even better.

The article posits that a practical solution to eating disorders might lie in removing the alienating factor from the food production/consumption chain. People who have bulimia, anorexia, binges, or other such problems might be aided by cooking their own food, rather than relying on processed, pre-packaged foods. (Even better if people could grow it from their own gardens, but the article admits that might not be practical for many people.) This theory is based on the supposition that a major cause of eating disorders comes from food being reified by those who consume it. By increasing non-alienated labor and non-alienated consumption, people are able to form a healthier relationship with their food, and thus life a more fulfilling life. Makes sense to me.

A new legal precedent brings us closer to the world portrayed in Minority Report. A man convicted of decapitating cats and arson was given an additional sentence by a judge who believed he was likely to commit more crimes in the future. The guy does sound like a real wacko, but is it right to imprison someone for potential future crimes that haven't been committed?

By now, most people who have been paying attention probably realize that Peak Oil is upon us, even if "peak production" hasn't technically been reached yet (due to the fact that increasing demand is already on the verge of outpacing supply). From here, gas prices keep going up. Of this, I no longer have any doubt.

What I have doubted are the predictions that it will be accompanied by a cataclysmic crash in which the world suddenly turns upside down and civilization as we know it goes bananas. Why not a gradual (though still painful) transition to other energy sources and/or more sustainable ways of living as people adapt over the span of decades? This post does do a good job of stating the logic as to why a more drastic version could happen. Basically, it's not the oil itself that would cause a sudden collapse, but the panic reactions of countries and masses of people when realization sets in.

Should the oil markets themselves begin to 'connect these dots', then all our lives are going to be impacted violently and immediately. The commodity traders for various interested firms live solely by anticipating conditions and events, not by debating them and verifying them. The old mantra is, you "buy the rumor, sell the news". This is the reason you'll never see "Peak Oil" covered by a respected media outlet. Because as soon as it is recognized that for all practical purposes the situation is already upon us, then a fast and viscious "resource grab" will be initiated. The price of oil in the markets will begin to rise dramatically. This will initiate a circular hedging / hording mentality in large end-users, governments, and multi-nationals. This will then have a myriad of devastating effects, but all average Joe Consumer is going to notice is that the price at the pump will experience a brief and dramatic blip upward, gas lines will form for a short time at the corner-stations, and then suddenly the corner gas-stations will go dry altogether. [...]

If this scenario sounds over-dramatic, keep in mind that what I'm talking about is a dawning recognition of something that many analysts have already come to realize: that the "oil grab" is in fact already on, that it's not a temporary 'bottleneck' or passing 'shock', and that the losers in this game will not survive. A global game of 'blind man's bluff' is underway, with all the players pleading ignorance of the issue for as long as possible so they can get their pieces in place... all the while anxiously watching for the first itchy-trigger finger that's going to set the whole thing off. [...]

The world powers are positioning themselves for war. The war is over who can take the most oil.

And a few words of wisdom for those of us who may think we'd like an apocalypse...

Also, those who secretly long for the coming collapse will be in for a shock. The initial oil shortage, when it does come, will certainly be a serious inconvenience, but the events which proceed after that are going to humble us all to the core.

Found via one of my mailing lists, here's a way all of us can wage a little act of protest against the credit card companies without much time or effort. Especially pertinent now, in the wake of bankruptcy reform, or just as a general statement against a dishonest and unethical industry.

What am I focusing on? Out of touch, out of place.

An interesting article found via Tim's site about interpreting the Bible -- specifically the book of Genesis -- and how the way it was viewed at the time it was written is quite different than most people, both Christians and non-Christians, see it today. For example, the story of creation:

In the light of this historical context it becomes clearer what Genesis 1 is undertaking and accomplishing: a radical and sweeping affirmation of monotheism vis-à-vis polytheism, syncretism and idolatry. Each day of creation takes on two principal categories of divinity in the pantheons of the day, and declares that these are not gods at all, but creatures -- creations of the one true God who is the only one, without a second or third. Each day dismisses an additional cluster of deities, arranged in a cosmological and symmetrical order.

On the first day the gods of light and darkness are dismissed. On the second day, the gods of sky and sea. On the third day, earth gods and gods of vegetation. On the fourth day, sun, moon and star gods. The fifth and sixth days take away any associations with divinity from the animal kingdom. And finally human existence, too, is emptied of any intrinsic divinity -- while at the same time all human beings, from the greatest to the least, and not just pharaohs, kings and heroes, are granted a divine likeness and mediation.

Drag, resize, and otherwise mutilate images and other crap all around the page. That's messed up.

This only provides official confirmation of what I've strongly suspected ever since the Iraq invasion. For the past several years, multiple U.S. government agencies have been producing and distributing propaganda disguised as "news segments" to television stations, which are then broadcast in a way that is indistinguishable from real news gathered by the reporters.

This revelation amounts to a MAJOR MEDIA SCANDAL people! Why is this not the top headline on CNN, hmmm? Might it be because the corporations don't want to lose whatever trust too many people still place in them?

This is why I love reading Philip K Dick...

So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days later. Or at least that is what my editors hope. However, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe -- and I am dead serious when I say this -- do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life.

Depressing but brilliantly written, and, unfortunately, all too true.

Let us observe a youthful empire in freefall, a nation in decadent decline, collapsing under its own weight and its own self-induced ignorance and unenlightenment, drunk off its arrogance and self-proclaimed aggrandizements of magnificence and manifest destiny. Let us be witness to a land in disrepair, a population in mental anguish. Let us examine a country decrepit in true moral values, empathy and wisdom, a nation quick to rise and fast to fall, lacking the experience of history and the wisdom of time.

Read the rest, it's good. Good like a Leonard Cohen song that makes you weep.

Inside the Land of Murka do we find ourselves residing in, the land of greed and the home of the slave, where eagles no longer soar, where long held principles have been disappeared and where dreams have turned into hollow fantasies. Murka is the land where nightmares become reality, where fantasy is turned to truth, where delusion and deception become principle, where lies are forever believed, where parallel universes and alternate worlds exist, where Pandora's Box is alive and well and where vicious cycles perpetuate their destructive forces upon the lower castes of society.

Words don't flow as easily as they once did. I don't know why this is. But I don't want this to go unrecorded.

Written from a primitivist perspective, this thoughtful analysis contrasts the various "civilized" models of organization with the ways of tribal foragers. It essentially argues that a society's method of acquiring food becomes the ultimate cause of all the institutional structures (laws, social classes, etc) that subsequently follow. An interesting read.

What happened today...

Ran's latest post to his site has some fascinating observations about what is happening in our world. Since the items on his front page often change/disappear, and he has licensed it under creative commons, I'm going to go ahead and reproduce it here.

When my dad said, "Want a ride to the post news job fair tomorrow?" I knew I was in a bind.

Here's the problem: If I say "No", it looks like I'm not really serious about looking for a job. If I say "Yes", then tomorrow I'll end up wasting several hours going to the dumb thing.

Learn the language people might be speaking 1000 years from now.

Apparently, the kindhearted folks at fox news are now trying to keep people from linking to an article in which Bill O'Reilly demonstrates, for the ten thousanth time, what a blowhard he is. Link away.

I couldn't resist. But really, who's the real troll? A site that calls itself "mp3.com" while spending most of its time promoting services that offer anything BUT real mp3 files, or the person who points out the obvious? The emperor has no clothes. Now, we find out just how deeply they are in the pockets of the RIAA by how quickly my post gets deleted/censored. Or, maybe they're really just ignorant, and can now become enlightened. Haha.

I typically don't like to link to salon articles because anyone who hasn't subscribed has to endure a bunch of crap to read them, but this one is an exception. It's an interview with Thomas De Zengotita, author of a book about mediated culture. While recognizing the instinctive rejection with which many of us react to the perceived loss of genuine identity when confronted with the infinite reflectivity of the hyperreal, he argues that maybe this is not always such a bad thing. Profound stuff! Choice quotes:

It would be very interesting to find out what would happen to what remains of the left if their attacks on global corporate culture and Disneyfication could be separated from their concern for the misery of the millions of people who are exploited by or left out of globalization. What if you said: "OK, suppose you could ameliorate the living conditions of those people who are starving, dying, horribly, by the millions, and the price of that would be a global mall. Everyone would become mediated. Everyone would be politically correct. There'd be foolish tourists everywhere. There'd be no nature left. Everything would be an attraction site. The whole world would be Disneyfied. But there'd be no starvation." What would you choose?

One of his points is that in postmodern culture, we tend to live most of our lives as virtual method actors. Our choices become our "performances" -- the vain attempt of an overly flattered ego to imprint its image upon its surroundings by pretending to be what it already perceives as itself. This exhibition of self to self often ends up feeling existentially fake, yet there is no way out. It is only in the ever-decreasing areas where there is a lack of choice ('accident' or 'necessity'), that reality confronts us unhindered. But maybe this isn't really so bad:

There's the possibility of turning this whole idea -- that we're constantly performing our lives and riddled with self-consciousness -- into a virtue. Maybe we look back on our grandparents -- who had little sense of who they were, compared to us, they were just there -- and envy the authenticity of their being: I feel like such a phony compared with my grandfather. But then, on the other hand, you could look back and say, poor man, he was practically a zombie.

...

But notice how we actually do make efforts to achieve the pain that makes something real, as long as that pain is part of the choice we made. In our efforts to recover nature, for example, we get more and more extreme: boats across the Atlantic, cliff climbing for three days and nights, sleeping in nylon hangers, Outward Bound-type stuff, vision quest, naked on the mountain overnight. We seek raw experience precisely because it gives the feeling of the real. But the ironies are apparent. You're choosing to go out there and starve on a mountaintop. Not because your tribe will expel you if you don't or because you don't know what else to do, but because you want to feel real. So you take a reality trip, as it were.

He's hesitant to prescribe any firm solutions (or even to declare that we really have a problem), except to suggest that anyone who immediately attempts to declare that they have the answer is probably jumping the gun. Interesting stuff. I highly recommend the whole article. (I might even have to read his book.)

A highly insightful post. I'm trying to pick out the best part to quote; the whole thing is just so good. This paragraph does stand out though:

When speaking of a revolutionary process, the development will proceed in strict accordance with fundamental, natural laws. This can, in fact, be compared to the transformation of a seed. Before a young plant can break the surface into the sunlight, a whole series of processes must have first occurred: a catalyzation begins within the seed. Then this inner metabolism must grow to a force sufficient to break the seed-shell -- itself a rare event really, as most seeds deposited in natural conditions will never 'take' -- after which the new shoot must still work its way up through the rocky earth until it finally reaches the visible surface (and the roots must delve their way down in order to 'root' the plant in place).

Also:

Thus, even this abbreviated illustration of how fundamental laws govern all processes shows us many things, and opens up questions which can truly revitalize our understanding and being. For example, we can recognize that, beyond certain limits, nothing is or can ever be certain -- 'effort' and 'fate' both play vital and pivotal roles in all processes, including those subjective processes we might call our 'hopes' and 'ambitions'. This understanding can be extremely beneficial, helping us to achieve a more impartial, philosophical, or 'centered' attitude in our lives. Also, if we can study further and deepen this understanding, then it will allow us to struggle with one of the central illusions that all human beings suffer under: that belief we are able to 'do'. We can come to realize that the truth is that people cannot 'do' anything; we can make efforts, we can try... and if at certain specific points the outer conditions are beneficial for our endeavors, then we may indeed prove 'successful' in some way (in fact, the recognition of the nature and importance of 'external conditions' itself becomes a help to our success...). And if 'fate' does not smile on us after all, then we can at least recognize the situation clearly for what it is, and we can 'regroup' and 'reassess' our interests correspondingly and harmoniously.

A judge has ruled that the Federal Election Commission must regulate the activity of Internet bloggers. In other words, linking to a campaign website or sending out emails in support of your favorite candidate could get you investigated. I don't see how this could possibly stand in any court that has even a shred of respect for the First Amendment, but we'll see what happens. Boo to Senators McCain and Feingold for their anti-free speech stance.

This paper uses facts, logic, and some basic physics to debunk some of the more paranoid conspiracy theories about what happened on September 11, 2001. At the same time, it manages to be quite funny.

In light of the recent debate that has been sparked, I have decided to reproduce the following tract. I do this in the hopes that it might inspire further thought and insight. Though there is a part of me that hesitates, suspecting that some of my readers might not be quite ready for it, the belief that knowledge is better shared than hoarded prevails.

Long has it been since I woke from a dream with such an immediate sense of clarity and purpose.

Alright, so I'm back to complete the last prematurely aborted rambling. First, to catch up.

I've been puttering along today. Barely.

This post from fantastic planet last week did such a good job of articulating the dilemma we are all in, I wanted to quote from it:

You are imprisoned for a crime you did not commit. You have no way to escape. You can decorate your cell in any way you choose; you can rail against the Authorities but will never overturn them; you can enmesh yourself in prison politics and join a gang; you can chart the routines of the guards and the schedules by which it's determined when you get to go out into the yard for exercise. You can even make friends with the guards and wardens and work for the Authorities, thereby making your physical lot in life more comfortable and bearable. If any of this makes you feel better, well, great-- go for it. In the end, however, you're still in prison; accepting this fact without renouncing the whole kit and kaboodle will enmesh you even further in the system that tossed you away for life for a crime you didn't commit...

In the first Matrix movie, one of the human rebels (Joe Pantaleone's character) turns traitor and agrees to work for the Agents in return for replacement in the Matrix, in which he is promised an ideal physical existence of bodily pleasures, his memories of his rebel days erased. It's difficult to blame him; the "Real" world in the Matrix wasn't exactly a fun place. Nonetheless, as viewers, we find his actions pretty much reprehensible. His renunciation of the world was incomplete; he turned it on its ear. Still, why begrudge him his decision? Isn't an illusory life of luxury far better than a life of poverty in the so-called "Real"? The answer, to me, can only be *no*, it's not, because accepting the illusion also amounts to accepting the fact that one is under the control of the Authorities. With the Real, no matter one's personal circumstances, one is at least Free to create one's own Zion. Within the System, the Materia, the Black Iron Prison, one does not have control over even the smallest aspects of one's existence.

This renunciation is a single, continuous aspect of enlightenment; it's a constant repulsion of the illusions of the Authorities and their ability to control your inner being; it's casting off the fetters of control. This isn't to say that you're physically free of the influence of the Authorities -- by virtue of existing in their world, you often have to play by their rules. Instead, it's the happiness and joy that comes with realizing your existence for itself. No matter how bad things are in this life, one's renunciation of the world allows one to look upon every single occurance as something to be celebrated and a cause for joy.

Wow, Amy Goodman is going to be speaking this week just down the street from me. Quite pricy for my current budget though. Hmmm...

This is where I muse and pontificate on ideas about what it might be fun to have on this web site, blogging, and net content in general.