JackRiddler wrote:I capitulate: It's all true, never mind a point here or there where I'd nuance it differently. Hard to describe it without making it sound like a single plot (and obviously we can write one starting with Bernays, or the Sophists, ha, pick your preferred historical narrative of it). It's all organic to the way the technology has developed. A thousand specialties of the bullshit industries figured out its workings long ago, turned it into academic disciplines, became the semi-informed technocrats of refining it, are now in the fourth and fifth generation without necessarily having historical awareness of the overall arc. No one is fully in control, which makes it self-running, overdetermined. I have no idea how it will change on the big scale. Crash, eventually. Change?
I'd like to write my dissertation if I ever really do it on the history of the cop show, but that's not in the cards.
Brings to mind Debord, 'Comments on the Society of the Spectacle,' 1988
"Not only are the subjugated made to believe that, essentially, they are still living in a world which in fact disappeared, but the rulers themselves sometimes suffer from the thoughtlessness of still believing in it. They come to believe in a part of what they have suppressed, as if it remained a reality and had still to be included in their calculations. This delay will not last long. Those who have achieved so much so easily must necessarily go further. One must not believe that those who have not quickly understood the pliability of the new rules of their game and its form of barbaric grandeur will durably maintain themselves like an archaism in the surroundings of real power. The destiny of the spectacle is certainly not to end in enlightened despotism.
We must conclude that a change is imminent and ineluctable in the co-opted cast who manage the domination and, notably, those who direct the protection of that domination. In such an affair, the novelty of course will never be displayed on the stage of the spectacle. It will only appear like lightning, which we know only when it strikes. This change, which will decisively complete the work of these spectacular times, will occur discreetly and, although it concerns those already installed in the sphere of power, conspiratorially. It will select those who will take part in it on this central requirement: that they clearly know what obstacles they have overcome, and of what they are capable."
http://www.notbored.org/commentaires.htmlAlso a comparison of the opening paragraph of Bernays 'Propaganda,' and a passage near the end of Polybius' Histories VI. Same shit, different millennia.
But I ask myself, why? Why go through the motions of putting the quotes here? To enlighten anyone? Do I win RI tokens for making a good point? Everyone nods their head sagely. We're going around in circles, Jack. Circles. Robots, acting robotically. Who needs brainwashing and influencing? And here I go, doing my robotic role in the grand drama. Asking Jack. What do we do, Jack? How do we get out,
ahead of this dumb thing?
We know all this already. Stop insulting my intelligence, RI! I'm disappointed in you. You like that 23 reasons bit? What is this, Cracked? The biggest joke in that piece is the bio. In fact it would be a thousand times better if the bio was a put on.
meh. That Debord essay is kind of great. He's in rare form. You should see what he says about McLuhanites. And yeah, the spectacle has erased history, bla bla bla. Polybius goes on at length, attacking other historians for not doing it right, messing up history. He mostly dismisses Polyarchus as a waste of his time, yet still manages to tear him up. And he really lays into Timaeus. The whole of Book XII is about what a shitty historian Timaeus is. hoo boy, you don't want to miss it. War of the historians.
Debord goes, "The relatively new concept of disinformation was recently imported from Russia, along with many other inventions useful in the management of modern states."
I love that. See, that's called humor.
I'm sorry, but the only way to go is pointless. Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong.
"Vainly relates to the subject; in vain to the object; uselessly without use for anyone. One has worked vainly when one has done so without success, so that one has wasted one's time and effort: one has worked in vain when one has done so without attaining the intended goal, because of the defectiveness of the work. If I cannot complete my task, I work vainly; I am uselessly wasting my time and effort. If the task I have done does not have the effect I was expecting, if I have not attained my goal, I have worked in vain; that is to say, I have done something useless. . . .
It is also said that someone has worked vainly when he has not been rewarded for his work, or when this work has not been accepted; because in this case the worker has wasted his time and effort, without this at all prejudicing the value of his work, which can be very good."
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.