Text and Hubris

Elizabeth Warren on Debt Crisis, Fair Taxation

I don’t think I really need to add much here, except to say that I wish I lived in Massachusetts. I really hope she wins. Voices of reason in our government are a rare thing.

I am supposed to start moving tomorrow. I am supposed to move to a small farm just outside of Grinnell, Iowa. It’s beautiful land with a large spacious house. My family lives nearby and the price can’t be beat. In other words, it is perfect.

Well, it was perfect. Now, it looks like we can’t go.

Simply put, the telecommunication companies don’t think that this area is valuable enough to provide service to it. To them, the people who live out there are not worthy of internet access. Those companies that do offer some sort of access, via satellite or wireless, enforce such stringent data policies that it is impossible to actually use the modern internet in any meaningful way. From a business perspective, perhaps the cost of providing connectivity is too much. From a practical perspective it eliminates possibilities and it furthers the digital divide in a very real way.

My family requires real internet connectivity. This means that a very nice house will have to find other occupants. There is no other way and, believe me, we have searched. Luckily, we can choose where we go. It’s just a real shame that this had to be the deal-breaker.

Caught this on Eye blog and had to link it for any who may have missed it. This is a fantastic retro cover that is far more honest than Fortune 500 wanted it to be. The rest of us just wish it wasn’t true. This is a great example of the power of art, design and commentary. Take some time on the large version on the Flickr page. It is well worth examining closely.

An¹ initial response to Indara’s Lazy Society:

I am becoming more and more convinced that in order for our present society to operate successfully, the majority of its members must be infantilized. It is the only way for the corporate state to maintain control. By artificially lengthening adolescence, the corporate state creates a society that is dependent upon it. Those products which are deemed “good” and “acceptable” are determined not by an individual who is considered too young to adequately comprehend value but instead by the very same corporation whose function it is to sell the product.

This is the world in which we now live. We do not cook, we do not produce, we consume. We are told by our corporate parents that this consumption is good. From an early age we are taught that we must consume to live and so we do. Since consumption is survival we happily attach ourselves to the state and the corporation in order that our consumption can continue unabated. We enslave ourselves to the very apparatus that perpetuates this condition.

The truly terrifying prospect in all of this is the totalizing power of the corporation. Your description of college as a netherworld is incorrect only in that it does not go far enough. Colleges have become little more than agents of the corporate state. They are no longer places for the education of the populace and academic rigor. They are, instead, places that produce able functionaries for the corporation. This is precisely the problem with our current situation. Those things which act as antidote to the corporate state are inevitably assimilated and become a part of the state. As this occurs, the people become disillusioned and eventually accept that everything is subservient to the corporation. They are, therefore, not only aware of their position but convinced of its inevitability and its correctness.

I should clarify that this position is not a Marxist one. It is, in fact, in accordance with the very essence of Capitalism. As we have repeatedly seen, corporations must undermine Capitalism in order to survive. They rely and grow by centralizing resources under a singular control. They only recognize the individual by his or her role within the context of the corporation. While certain class structures remain at the highest levels there is often little difference between the worker and the supervisor and they can be moved within the corporation at will like cogs in a machine. By appropriating the identity of a human being, corporations have become the dominant structure of the state and of society. Their homogenizing and infantilizing effects are not specific to a single corporation but are a condition of the system. While you are, most certainly, right to mourn the costs to Humanity and to the Arts (the value of which I shall address in a later commentary), so too should your brother mourn the centralization of capital and the diminished competition that remains at the heart of capitalism. While neither Disney nor Marvel is blameless, the purchase of Marvel continues the trend that, sadly, illustrates the system.

^{1. An initial response is heavily influenced by the conditions of the time in which it was produced. Depending on future developments, it may undergo significant change.}