"When you get older, you'll understand." So speaks the purported voice of "realism" when cautioning on the pitfalls of youthful idealism. The underlying message is that once one has "bought in" or "sold out" or however one wants wants to spin it, logic dictates that hungry radicalism must give way to a defensive stance. Lock the doors, man the barricades, and beware the ravenous hordes that covet your treasures.
The rousing, yet polite debate in the comments of the Crass post from the other day got me to thinking about politics, specifically where I stand on the ideological spectrum these days. I've dabbled with the various -isms on the left side of the dial over the years -- flirtations both tempestuous and mild with anarchist, socialist, and communist schools of thought. I'm a registered Democrat, but voted SWP and Green in a couple of elections, and have a lasting mistrust of self-labeled "liberals" and "progressives" over the recurring lack of conviction and undercurrents of paternalism on their part.
In the end, doctrinal semantics or theories built on wishful thinking matter less to me than a core principle, namely that everyone deserves a fair shake and equal access to essential goods and services. Egalitarianism is the cornerstone, and the rest is just trivia to be endlessly debated in closed, self-defeating circles.
Dogma and abstract theory have no purpose towards this end. My idealism is rooted in pragmatism forged by years of empirical evidence. Alliances and associations are made and broken depending on how well they serve the greater objectives, and if that means participating a electoral system that is fundamentally broken for the sake of seeing that rights are extended to those who deserve them or defended from those who would subvert them, then so be it. I would rather play a short term game for tangible benefits than a dubious long term strategy that hurts many in the meantime.
I'm with the Enlightenment thinkers on this: People will be people, no matter how educated they are, and the the best we can really strive for is to encourage the better angels of our nature and mitigate the impact of the worse ones.
No revolution, no shift in the political paradigm, no amount of education will eradicate the intrinsic pettiness of the human animal. Trust in socialist revolution and you end up with Year Zero. Trust in free-market self-interest and you end up with...well, take a look around at the mess we're mired in. Trust in mutual co-operation based on shared interests, and it's likely that you've never had to sit through the collective paralysis and bickering of a union gathering or town meeting.
Education and faith mean less than a modicum of awareness and a functioning sense of empathy. The framework of modern civilization has gotten so elaborate and the threads of interdependence so convoluted that it is too easy to fall into a false sense of moral hazard, so that even when the consequences of one's actions manifest themselves it is an easy enough matter to deny, shift, or ignore the blame.
Barring some massive depopulation of the species and a return to scattered tribes of hunter-gatherers, a shift from psuedo-free market capitalism to autonomous soviets or nationalized industries will not address the real problem. Indoctrination of the abolition of currency will not prevent the emergence of would-be Dick Cheneys looking for angles to exploit.
It's a classic Catch-22: Revolutionary change without a mass awakening in civic vigilance is pointless, but if the masses possessed such a sense of vigilance, a revolution would be redundant.
Ten Years After - I'd Love to Change the World (from A Space in Time, 1971) - The sound of the 1960s counterculture collapsing in on itself.
Comsat Angels - Waiting for a Miracle (from Waiting for a Miracle, 1980) - What's the difference between a miracle and the 134 bus? The 134 bus does show up on rare occasions. The only historical inevitability is that people will do foolish things for foolish reasons.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
tell me where there's sanity
Thursday, September 04, 2008
strange encounter
In a world where Super-Dads can't understand their Super-Sons....
...and Super-Sons can't understand their Super-Dads...
...there is a place committed to bridging the Super-Generation Gap; a place called...
Pronounce it however you like; Enoyreve is a judgement-free zone. (But please spell the name correctly on the check for the non-refundable admission fee. Our accountant is a real hard-ass.)
You will be placed under the singular guidance of resident guru Dr. Timothy Zamm...
...a disciple of Master Bob Haney who has earned non-degree certificates from some of finest community colleges and correspondence schools in the Tri-State area.
Zamm's unique approach to family therapy includes such visionary techniques such as meditative beard-stroking, full immersion bikini sessions of "light as a feather, stiff as a board," as well as the Connery method of backhand faceslapping...
...all designed to challenge one's preconceptions in the most uncomfortable manner imaginable.
If the Funky Robot group dance sessions or the Joe Besser-inspired pinching encounters...
...fail to achieve the necessary breakthrough, our radical "killer-android-armed-with-nerve-gas" therapy...
...is available to those who wish to take things to a higher level. Nothing inspires a little father-son bonding like some rogue WMDs. (They don't even have to be real ones, either. Just ask the Bushes.)
ENOYREVE -- committed to bringing Super-Families together since 1974. Don't take out word for it; listen to the testimonial by these satisfied seekers of Super-Enlightenment...
Sponsored by World's Finest Comics #224 (July-August 1974), purchased by a young Andrew for 35 cents at a local flea market. Some childhood traumas will never heal, no matter how much masculine dance or pinch therapy one undergoes.
The Wipers - No Generation Gap (from Over the Edge, 1983) - In a fair world, The Wipers would be more than a source of esoteric namedropping by music geeks or a reliable source of cover song material. It's not that the Portland indie rockers are particularly unappreciated as they're underappreciated, mentioned with reverence but never reaching the same levels of fan devotion as many other less-worthy objects of college radio worship.
The Ramones - Psycho Therapy (from Subterranean Jungle, 1983) - I got a chance to see The Ramones when they played at (the now long-gone) Citi in the December of 1990. I spent most of the evening in the company of the most annoying twerp ever to crack open a Dungeon Master's Guide. The club was packed with jocks from Boston University who wanted to check out "that mosh pit shit" and my spectacles were smashed during the course of the festivities.
Afterwards, I had to walk a mile in the snow from Mishuam Station to my home. A shitty experience all around, but I did get to see The Ramones play live and up close, which made the plague of hassles entirely worthwhile.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
when you're unwanted
One of the things I picked up on yesterday's trip to the comic shop was a copy of the July 1985 issue of Starburst, a UK sci-fi fan mag. The initial draws were the photo-heavy feature articles on Max Headroom and Robin of Sherwood (a pagan-slash-crusty 80's retelling of the legend). In typical fashion for these kind of purchases, however, it was the odds and ends material, written up in a breathy excited twenty-years-gone now, that ended up fascinating me the most.
Things like advance speculation on the "forthcoming" Pluto Nash film or the announcement that Tobe Hooper's next project will be the Spider-Man film (wrong horror film director, wrong decade), seem rather poignant and quaint when taken in from a present-day vantage point, not to mention the fact that the tone and tenor of these speculations and teasers haven't changed at all over the years, only the names of the individual franchises. ("Did you hear? Tobey Maguire has been linked to the 'forthcoming' Robotech movie!")
...and then there's the letter page, which offers the armchair pathologist ample material for their study of the fan subspecies. Here are a some choice excepts, featuring annotations compiled by yours truly:
Here we have an excellent example of the bottom-feeding connoisseur at work. While it is possible (and frequently rewarding) to clinically dissect trash culture artifacts in search of hidden meanings and evidence of historical trends, what sets the bottom-feeding connoisseur apart is an intrinsic inability to separate the forest from the trees, and are quick to expend hundreds or thousands of words expounding with a total lack of self-awareness on such matters as how many Daleks coud fit on the head of a sonic screwdriver in terms similar to those used in a doctoral dissertation, and yet utterly miss the point through their obsession with minutae.
In almost every case, their elaborate theses end with an unintentional punchline that serves to verify their status as bottom feeders. For example: "...and this is why I find Crisis on Infinite Earths to be a creative endeavor in all aspects inferior to Dragon Ball Z."
Above is a classic case of dysmorphic proportionality. My father once stated that "the most important thing that ever happened to you is the most important thing that ever happened to you," meaning that significance is subject to a personal frame of reference. Being the first human to set foot on the moon or enrolling at UMass Boston -- the actual scope of such actions for the individuals involved lies within each person, and in that aspect does not lend itself to quick objective comparisons.
That said, most people do have a sense (to varying degrees) of proportionality about such things, understanding that what they strongly value might not be what the next person does, be it pomegranates, cats, or Firefly. Those suffering from dysmorphic proportionality are unwilling or unable to acknowledge conflicting views regarding their own hobby-horses, and when confronted with dissenting opinions turn very nasty, very quickly. This is often because those suffering from the syndrome have chosen to structure their personal reality around the contested subject. Calling its validity into question is therefore seen as a personal attack on their core being, thus calling for a all-out response, ad hominem attacks and all.
When practiced in a casual environment, the act of fan-casting, matching actors to roles to an imaginary film based on some property or other, can be a highly entertaining and frequently amusing activity. (I'm rereading The Count of Monte Cristo currently, and I keep thinking "Armand Assante" in mental picture of Edmond Dantès for some reason.) The inveterate fan-caster, however, has overindulged in the process to a point where their palette of potential choices has narrowed so as as to only include current "hot" actors or operates on overly facile typecasting.
Having entered the terminal phase of the syndrome, the inveterate fan-caster finds his- or herself unable, even in the most ironic or comedic contexts, to proffer selections such as "Gary Coleman as B.A. Baracus in The A-Team movie," but will instead fill every role with either "Samuel L. Jackson" (tough guy), "Scarlet Johannson" (female lead), "Johnny Depp" (male lead),or "that guy who was in that one episode of Farscape who played an android because the character in the imaginary movie is an android."
Also, regarding the above letter: I've read it a dozen times, I have it in front of me printed out in black and white, but I am still having extreme difficulty accepting the fact that anyone, at anytime could have possibly written "I'll be looking forward to the film Santa Claus coming up."
Echo & The Bunnymen - People Are Strange (from The Lost Boys OST, 1987) - The only thing I actually liked about Joel Shumacher's extended vampiric remix of INXS's "Devil Inside" music video. (The wife thinks the film is pretty swell, but there are plenty of iffy patches in her usually unquestionable tastes.)
(Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident.)
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