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Musings Report 2018-50 12-15-18 Everything Is Now Predictable After the First 5 Seconds
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
Everything Is Now Predictable After the First 5 Seconds
There's a lot to chew on in this Economist interview of documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis (The antidote to civilisational collapse), and I'd like to highlight one comment that really struck me:
"Politics and journalism have become static and repetitive. I know within microseconds what an article is going to say, what a television program is going to be like and what most music is going to be like."
This was one of those statements that feels obvious, but only after the fact; it was a revelation because I'd never consciously recognized how rote, how managed, how carefully choreographed the media and public discourse have become.
Some time ago I posted a link in the Musings revealing that much of the pop music performed by a variety of current artists was composed by a couple of guys in Scandinavia who have mastered the production of "hits" much as a computer algorithm would were it programmed to generate songs that sound more or less interchangeable.
No wonder I rarely listen to a new pop song longer than a few seconds. The same is true of "the news" and commentary, too, of course; I've given up watching the PBS "News" Hour precisely because each story is entirely predictable once you've seen the first few seconds.
When was the last time you saw a video clip, or heard a podcast or read an essay that didn't go exactly where you expected it go on Second 6?
The entire media / political space is now so heavily scripted, there's no need to watch, listen or read anything mainstream; it's just a repetitive, boring (and increasingly irritating) waste of time.
Even the alternative media is largely predictable: I've given up finding much that's new or insightful in essays on wealth inequality, etc. Even conspiracy theories are now predictable and repetitious.
I think this is tightly correlated to the status quo's panicky obsession with "fake news." So-called fake news is attractive partly because it's different from the bland predictability of the mainstream media. This is one unintended consequence of the mainstream becoming so boring and predictable.
This tight scripting also reflects the ubiquity of professionally managed propaganda: just as marketing is based on endless repetition of the same message, so too are political campaigns, "the news," mainstream commentary, etc.
Just as movie genres demand the same pattern be played out with slight variations, now the entire media is scripted to follow predictable narratives leading to faux sympathy, canned outrage and me-too (and meaningless) virtue-signaling.
I also see another of Curtis' themes playing out: the cultural and political dominance of managerial ethos and techniques. Life has been corporatized: the key is effective management. We don't need any new structures or ideas, we simply need to bear down and stay on message.
It's as if the status quo is implicitly claiming (as per Francis Fukuyama's famous essay) that history has ended, and since we've reached a state of perfection in finance, economics, politics and culture, all we need to do is manage these processes efficiently.
Once can sense the elites' frustration and rage that the commoners aren't buying the notion that The End of History Is Neofeudalism (we rule, you comply). The elitist response--including the cultural elites who are obsessed with enforcing political correctness regardless of the sacrifices of civil liberties-- are focused on suppressing dissent with force (mass arrests of peaceful Yellow Vest demonstrators, etc.) and stripping social media and the Internet of dissenting voices, under the false banner of "eliminating fake news."
I see this homogenization of the media, politics, culture and the economy as the inevitable end-state of Neofeudalism: power and control are two sides of the same coin.
If you haven't seen any of Curtis' documentaries--The Century of Self, HyperNormalization, The Power of Nightmares and All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, to list a few--I recommend investing the time, not because they're flawless but because they're intended to raise questions in a journalistic manner.
In other words, they're not a Ken Burns style documentary with violin soundtracks and an implicit script of regurgitating received wisdom in a homogenized, easy to digest package.
Highlights of the Blog This Past Week
Neofeudalism Isn't a Flaw of the System--It's the System Working Perfectly 12/14/18
France in a Nutshell: "The Government Stopped Listening to the People 20 Years Ago" 12/12/18
The Conflicting Forces of Modernism: Kafka and Kierkegaard 12/10/18
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Cut down and took 400+ pounds of trash-tree trunks to the green-waste composting site. Good riddance!
Musings on the Economy: Assessing the Possibility of a Last Minute Santa Claus Rally
Viewing the stock market as a rigged spectator sport akin to pro wrestling has a lot going for it.
Right now, The Bear has Mr. Market in a chokehold that looks impossible to break. The news is bad: real estate is rolling over, auto sales are slumping, impeachment is being discussed again, and so on.
Who's crazy enough to put money on a miraculous escape by Mr. Market?
Given that the game is rigged, we have to wonder if The Bear's chokehold is a theatrical gimmick to increase punters' bets on the Bear triumphing.
Once the money's been collected, Mr. Market astonishes the crowd by flipping The Bear on his back. Wow! What a move! Who'd a thunk it possible?
Stock market gurus often speak of the "max pain trade," that is, the market move that would cause the greatest pain (losses) and leave the fewest winners still standing.
Famed speculator Jesse Livermore opined that the market seeks to throw as many participants off the bus as possible before the bus rockets off.
The wild swings since late September have certainly made it difficult to maintain a toehold on the careening bus.
The last thing money managers want to see is a meltdown that crushes their quarterly reports to clients. Here's a question: Who's playing who? Since we don't know, the safety of the sidelines is the place to be.
From Left Field
The New York Times Reveals the Horrors of Capitalism--By Showing China’s State-Run Hospitals
If the Times had visited one of China’s many private hospitals, they would have found something quite different from the chaos depicted in China’s public health care facilities.
China's Orwellian Social Credit Score Will Monitor All Beijing Citizens In 2020 -- just another example of China's leadership...
The Next Great (Digital) Extinction
How the Western Diet Has Derailed Our Evolution (via Kurt A.) Burgers and fries have nearly killed our ancestral microbiome.
42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings -- in America,of course...
Why we stopped trusting elites: The credibility of establishment figures has been demolished by technological change and political upheavals. But it’s too late to turn back the clock.
Who Putin Is Not: Falsely demonizing Russia’s leader has made the new Cold War even more dangerous. This from The Nation....
In academia, censorship and conformity have become the norm-- the truth that dares not be spoken...
Smarty plants: They can learn, adapt and remember without brains-- We’re barking up the wrong tree if we think plants have no higher sentience, says researcher Monica Gagliano – they just don’t show it like we do
Brace for the oil, food and financial crash of 2018
80% of the world’s oil has peaked, and the resulting oil crunch will flatten the economy (January 2017)
U.S. Foreign Policy Has No Policy: Why can't we just leave everyone alone?
Here’s How Much Money You Need for Bankers to Think You’re Rich: In an era of hyper-wealth, economy-class rich starts at $25 million. I suddenly feel poor...
INCOME LEVEL AND INCOME INEQUALITY IN THE EURO-MEDITERRANEAN REGION, Circa 14–700 A.D.
How unequal is Europe? With the advent and enlargement of the European Union, we have a pretty good idea. The same question can be asked for the earlier periods: just before World War I, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, in the Middle Ages, in Late Antiquity, all the way to the beginning of the Common Era. -- Academic paper but interesting...
"Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old." Franz Kafka
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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