Wild Thing,
Mass Media, Mass Man, Modernity
Wild thing. You make my heart sing. You make everything groovy. Wild thing. Wild thing, I think I love you. But I wanna know for sure. Information is this Wild Thing. It does make everything groovy. Enquiring minds need to know, and knowing get depressed, and being depressed frozen in place not sure what to do about anything at all. Except double down on group think.
I enjoyed Walter Benjamin’s One Way Street. One emphasis: Benjamin begins by drawing a distinction between two ways in which life can be constructed – according to fact or according to conviction – and claims that it is the former that currently holds sway. Indeed, although convictions can flow from fact implicitly, these facts are not of the kind which convictions can be based upon. https://www.thecollector.com/walter-benjamin-one-way-street/.
Ellul has some thoughts on this information rich world.
We are fed information. The result is a general attitude that we do not think we are capable of caring for our own needs. The commercializing of life is not an end. It is experienced as a means of gaining information and acting upon the world (an illusion). We become consumers because what ought to produce our initiative is inhibited by excess of information. “Consumers are not the decision makers. The decision makers are not those who pay. Those who pay are not consumers.” Information leads to obligatory consumption in the same way as suburban living leads to the obligatory use of the automobile. The lack of consumer power has often been stressed.
Consumers take what the producers give them. But this lack begins with a failure to find out what is useful. The mass of unimportant information which is circulated produces the passive consumer attitude. Educated as they are, consumers constantly want more. It is only thus that they feel they are alive. They swallow the information even though they later disgorge it and seek something new, as they also seek every technical innovation that is presented as indispensable and redemptive.
A fun notion to play with which seals the deal is Covid. At this late date the public accepts they obeyed and accepts as well the cover story that this is for their health. Health centers mask. Health centers urge everyone inject all the time to be safe and cluck that new Booster injections are 80% lower than previously seen.!! Total silence, lies, data destruction on vaccine harms. And MSM-Mainstream Sado Masochism then-gets to play German soldier and say “I zee nothing.”
A small percentage of people do articulate Covid as the Emperor’s New Clothes-a virus bare ass naked is not causation as no virus exists beyond information that is rather disputable as regards to scientific proof. Only a small number. Laughing I wonder if they are only on Substack or if large numbers of Americans like U.S. Senator and trained doctor Rand Paul simply like Johnny in 1955 just can’t read or bother to read information not in conformity with Da Big Money, Mammon for short.
Enough. Enough. Ignorant Hirelings have existed in other nations, in other climes, and ignorant peoples, barbarians say like the Nazi or Communist fanatic or even the Religious Zealot gain power as born a Goddess - as Alexander Pope insists -”Dulness never dies.” Cavafy has a poem that comes to mind as well that I’ll post below.
So I don’t know friends if Substack is a benefit. How much knowledge does a soul need to figure out the con and take action. Take action does NOT mean voting for your Oppressor….and perhaps this is the distinct difference between the Journal of Lingering Sanity and others. The influence of DADA and Surrealism sharpened my wit. Thought became personal. Not I agree with the group, but I also with two weak eyes see very well. Better than many pilots. At night the poet works. And at night dreams come that years to the day later play out but the poet who see’s many things in dreams cannot really know what they Remote View until one morning they walk out into the Morning Dew and know.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51294/waiting-for-the-barbarians
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
Ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity
The Journal of Lingering Sanity is a reader-supported publication. We are beholden to truth not party. “The time has come," the Journal said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings."
for a while i had an old school record player.
I played me some Mitch Ryder.
I am from just outside Detroit, and I would
still play the Mitch Ryder if that
record player had lasted.....Detroit is a
pretty good town for music, but a bit
harsh otherwise. Note recent Flint residents
killed for their exposing of the Flint Water
Crisis exposing. Young people, who were even
younger when they did the work of exposing
it. Flint. They made a stand, it was brave.
I felt right at home in Arabia in November.
I was comforted with the familiarity of the COVID sign in and social distance signs.
They were as homely as the Macdonald s and Starbucks.
Enjoyed also the writ large pledges to diversity and inclusion.
Nothing to worry, wherever one goes one is among friends.