Recently I been doing some work about Global Warming, and all the evidence I collected creates a situation where people choose dumb, and science points to increased warming.
Logical consequence is collapse of human race, with increasingly horrible stuff happening before then.
This creates amazing situation for the artist of the 21st century. Other artists philosophers and other thinkers have talked about the end of existence, but now maybe it is actually happening. And also we are effectively living in the time those artists all dreamed of, and its realization of an artistic project spanning 250 years or perhaps longer.
It goes without saying that this is not a desirable situation, and the artist has a role in illustrating the situation so it can be somehow managed. However the artist is up against significant opposition, as there are interests in the world aimed at encouraging people to ignore the impending calamity and switch onto other things, like their material wealth or small family dramas or their power bills or etc.
There are significant opportunities in this situation however. B/c Global warming is global and therefore effects everyone, it can also be a force for realising global unity. The Copenhagen conference might have been a huge failure but it also brought world leaders together for conversations about real stuff, rather than focusing on their domestic countries agendas and seeing global warming as merely a small section of that.
or whatever
so yeah, chance for a global convo.
Also, everyone on earth will understand these ideas. People will have different engagement with them and different opinions. But everyone will understand them.
So while Global Warming brings us into a new age of austerity and limitation, it also means we can finally talk to one another rather than focusing on the finite and absurd targets of never-ending economic growth and incredible material wealth.
It is a perfect metaphor for the connection through oppression I was speaking about in my last post.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Oppression probably doesn't come from nowhere
Recently been reading some stuff about oppression.
Nutshell is that since Marx wrote about oppression, there has been an idea of oppression being breated by the upper class to keep the lower class powerless.
Don't think this is true.
Reality is wealthy people are also oppressed. Reality is that poor people can become oppressors. Reality is that oppression has nothin to do with wealth, or class. Everyone, everywhere are oppressed. Our oppression is becoming universal.
Someone is oppressed. They get pissed off about this, but rather than build a peaceful or beautiful resistence to this, they pass it on to someone else, and it becomes a cycle of oppression that gets fed around, and results in people ownin each other.
That's a real idea. That actually happens. I've never seen a class, but I've seen someone get hit and then go hit someone else, and I've seen a country go to war b/c they got a history of being persecuted.
I call it 'Political Transference'.
What we can do is build peaceful means by which people can connect with each other through their oppression and create a humanist moment. Through sharing our oppression, we can better understand our oppressors. This is a beautiful objective and a beautiful target, it is not a divisive one like what Marx is. It doesn't aim at revolution. It aims at love.
Nutshell is that since Marx wrote about oppression, there has been an idea of oppression being breated by the upper class to keep the lower class powerless.
Don't think this is true.
Reality is wealthy people are also oppressed. Reality is that poor people can become oppressors. Reality is that oppression has nothin to do with wealth, or class. Everyone, everywhere are oppressed. Our oppression is becoming universal.
Someone is oppressed. They get pissed off about this, but rather than build a peaceful or beautiful resistence to this, they pass it on to someone else, and it becomes a cycle of oppression that gets fed around, and results in people ownin each other.
That's a real idea. That actually happens. I've never seen a class, but I've seen someone get hit and then go hit someone else, and I've seen a country go to war b/c they got a history of being persecuted.
I call it 'Political Transference'.
What we can do is build peaceful means by which people can connect with each other through their oppression and create a humanist moment. Through sharing our oppression, we can better understand our oppressors. This is a beautiful objective and a beautiful target, it is not a divisive one like what Marx is. It doesn't aim at revolution. It aims at love.
"Freedom of Speech"
Recently there have been two current events that have caught my attention.
1. Followers of the religon Islam have been rioting in response to the publication of a trailer for the film "The Innocence of Muslims"
2. Almost simultaneously, The Al-Furqan Islamic Information Centre of Springvale South, about 45km from my house, and the busineesses and homes surrounding and connected with it, were raided by Victorian Police after they discovered (and evicted) an Aussie Spy working for the government. The police raid found that 'one of the members was collecting a magazine that "touts the Sydney Opera House as a potential terrorist target" and appears to have caused significant disruption to the community, with reports of heavily armed police raiding homes occupied by only women and children.
This directly relates to my project, though I do not yet know exactly how. Reading through the press release on the Al-Furquan website, one finds in stark terms the contrast between "Freedom of Speech" both as a universal democratic idea, and as a propoganda tool to reinforce Western Power, and might understand how it can be both at the same time. The irony of freely protesting a video for being offensive to your religon and this being defended with Free Speech is a situation where political context fails to rationally describe the personal.
In the west we think of Freedom of Speech as being a politically neutral idea. It isn't. It is an ideal which has a reality much different to its definition. "Free speech" in Western Countries is in fact very limited - its just that it isn't directly enforced by the government but by social, economic or cultural forces. Likewise, it excludes certain groups, especially other countries seen as unfriendly, or not in national interest, which are freely demonised.
The West has systems of control, its just that they are not initiated by the government, but by the people.
---
I went to visit the Al-Furqan Information Centre last Saturday. There were police in the area, they had sectioned off a bit of the main road near the centre and were sitting around chatting.
Reaching the actual centre itself, I found nothing there. I approached the door, and heard someone vacuuming and a child talking. I elected not to knock, thinking of the intrusion the people here had already suffered, and not wanting to intrude on what was to me at that time a mundane domestic space. I walked around a little, looking mighty conspicuous in my bright yellow leather postie jacket. I tried to take a photo but my phone was out of batteries.
And I left.
Why did I go?
---
Al-Furqan Press Release is available here.
Media reports on the raids, which are quite selective in their reporting and present details which stand in contrast to the Al-Furqan media release, are available here, here and here. The text messages referred to in the articles, which refer to meet-ups between the ASIO spy and the agency and make for extremly curious reading, are available here.
The Innocence of Muslims is a fairly distasteful and rudderless peice of provocation and I have chosen not to link to it. If you choose to find it, a warning, it contains material offensive to followers of Islam.
1. Followers of the religon Islam have been rioting in response to the publication of a trailer for the film "The Innocence of Muslims"
2. Almost simultaneously, The Al-Furqan Islamic Information Centre of Springvale South, about 45km from my house, and the busineesses and homes surrounding and connected with it, were raided by Victorian Police after they discovered (and evicted) an Aussie Spy working for the government. The police raid found that 'one of the members was collecting a magazine that "touts the Sydney Opera House as a potential terrorist target" and appears to have caused significant disruption to the community, with reports of heavily armed police raiding homes occupied by only women and children.
This directly relates to my project, though I do not yet know exactly how. Reading through the press release on the Al-Furquan website, one finds in stark terms the contrast between "Freedom of Speech" both as a universal democratic idea, and as a propoganda tool to reinforce Western Power, and might understand how it can be both at the same time. The irony of freely protesting a video for being offensive to your religon and this being defended with Free Speech is a situation where political context fails to rationally describe the personal.
In the west we think of Freedom of Speech as being a politically neutral idea. It isn't. It is an ideal which has a reality much different to its definition. "Free speech" in Western Countries is in fact very limited - its just that it isn't directly enforced by the government but by social, economic or cultural forces. Likewise, it excludes certain groups, especially other countries seen as unfriendly, or not in national interest, which are freely demonised.
The West has systems of control, its just that they are not initiated by the government, but by the people.
---
I went to visit the Al-Furqan Information Centre last Saturday. There were police in the area, they had sectioned off a bit of the main road near the centre and were sitting around chatting.
Reaching the actual centre itself, I found nothing there. I approached the door, and heard someone vacuuming and a child talking. I elected not to knock, thinking of the intrusion the people here had already suffered, and not wanting to intrude on what was to me at that time a mundane domestic space. I walked around a little, looking mighty conspicuous in my bright yellow leather postie jacket. I tried to take a photo but my phone was out of batteries.
And I left.
Why did I go?
---
Al-Furqan Press Release is available here.
Media reports on the raids, which are quite selective in their reporting and present details which stand in contrast to the Al-Furqan media release, are available here, here and here. The text messages referred to in the articles, which refer to meet-ups between the ASIO spy and the agency and make for extremly curious reading, are available here.
The Innocence of Muslims is a fairly distasteful and rudderless peice of provocation and I have chosen not to link to it. If you choose to find it, a warning, it contains material offensive to followers of Islam.
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