What's Probably Going On: I, Rambler

Well, dear reader, I've finally disconnected entirely from the world. If this is even posted it will be automatically uploaded via proxy FTP, probably forwarded by satellite. I wrote this on something called a Tandy (it reminds me of being young and has what looked like a full working copy of Doom 2 which I plan to try out), and I keep getting bothered by loud animal calls and rather large insects. Earlier this morning, while wondering if I had malaria or not, I accidentally killed a spider big enough to stand on my shoulders and still see over my head.

Yeah, I'm off the grid. I don't think I need to explain why, but I'll take a shot at it anyway because it's midday and too hot to do anything but type out a blog post. Firstly, after years of becoming more and more negative because I was surrounded by a society that was firmly up its own ass with its tongue in its cheek, I decided to make a life change. That life change was not to 'become more positive', 'find a way to fit in and make your place in the world', or 'surround yourself with healthy people' because those suggestions are made to finally kill the ailing souls of people who decide to 'stick it out' or 'fake it till you make it' in the cities, suburbs, and even rural paradises of the West.

No, not for me the puerile logic that something was wrong in my mind. I already knew I was sick, but what was going on around me was sicker and more depraved by far. I think what finally tipped me over the edge was the giant hype about something called 'twerking' (which seems like the 2013 version of Harlem Shake)... I mean it was a big deal, and reminded me how stupid the West has gotten, to the point where interesting problems and discussions (like alternative energy, the legitimacy of using force, the struggle for peace, and long-term human survival) are buried in mundane discussion about sport, celebrity, and dance fads. There is nothing essential anymore in western life, the material conquest of the world has created a society with no long-term value. There are no immediate problems anyone feels they can solve. There are no heroes, there is no innocence, and everyone is shouting inane shit at each other. With the forces of globalism rampaging, and the rest of the world hungry for 'first world lifestyles' it has suffered under, it seems as if there will be nowhere left to hide.

And I'm not one of these black/white zealots who advocate for revolution or counter-revolution. I think most people aren't that bad at all, but the pity is they give into what they're told, then they believe it, and then they're lost causes because they're stubborn. One day I was verbally assaulted because I suggested that the middle class, and its beliefs and practices, is problematic. More and more I see a world in which simply living the life provided for you is a great sin, a meaningless cog in a vast machine built to make the rich richer while generating enormous amounts of waste and suffering. More and more I see a world that deserves reproach, but reproaching it makes you rather unpopular with lots of people.

I think western governments have failed, they've proven that democracy is just a short road to oligarchy, they've proven that capitalism is just as inherently flawed as communism, they've enabled an apathetic and stupid populace, they're in the pockets of big business and so are you, reading this, and so am I, posting this (via 56k modem, satellites, and an old Tandy in a science camp) on Google... there is nothing but the bottom line... the society reflects it. There is this scary pragmatism where someone might kill you to gain a YouTube following. Step outside of the race to get a nice place, a good spouse, a home, a good car, fair prices... step out and look around: what more is there for you, really? A fit and active lifestyle? Becoming cool? Physical pleasure? A (heavily material) search for meaning? The consolation of a job well done, of the fact that you haven't directly caused anyone suffering today? Friendships with people who are like you? Happiness when your political party takes office, constant pissy passive-aggressive bitching when they lose? The dream is to consume more, consume better, and become respectable by that consumption. Those poorer than you have similar but more modest dreams, and those richer than you are generally just dreaming of bigger numbers and more ostentatious ways to demonstrate them.

Meanwhile anyone in this gracious and plentiful society who dares question the affluence is branded a communist or anarchist, idealist, and deluded. People stand up for low minimum wages and applaud, people get huffy about 'political flashpoints' that are just overblown media braying while the real issues are quietly taken care of. Who cares about the emergence of a world-wide security apparatus or the degradation of freedom? Who wants to suffer or want for anything? It all made me so sick that I couldn't think anymore, in the end. I didn't want to live in the slick World 2.0 where everything is taken for granted, where money and status are the only things worth a damn. Then I realized that the whole world was getting worse every day. Obviously it's reality, and it's never so bad or so good as anyone is saying, but I am seeing a bland and sinister future based on the world I have experienced, and I don't want it.

I decided to empty my bank account and travel to a less fucked-up part of the world where not even ViceTV (BTW WTF VICE?) journalists dare to tread, but first I had some loose ends to tie up. I told my boss' boss that he was a worthless parasite, that I encouraged fellow workers to steal from him at every turn, and that his attitudes towards women would get him killed in a future (or very prehistoric) world. I beat the shit out of my boss, because he was middle management scum, and even though he was a nice guy, he had taken too many verbal liberties with me in the past before we were friends. The look of confused betrayal on his battered face was so satisfying that I worried about myself, but it was the only thing I could do. Nothing made sense that day, but I got out safely, and where I am now is a realm of natives, scientists, and anthropologists... and glorious, empty, unsullied nature, with no bike paths, no litter, no bums, no WiFi, only survival and suffering, only immediate reality with no substitutions and no possible excuses or niceties. Blood, bug juices, and an early death. It is hell, but compared to living in 2013 Earth, it is paradise and I feel free and almost happy for the first time since I was a child.

So I've decided to go deep, get the hell out, keep my head above water (literally – not meeting rent and banking a few hundred dollars a month), and come what may, I'll accept it. Death is just as meaningless as life in this world, there are no glories awaiting us as political pawns, collaborators of exploitation, or as gilded heroes. Escapism is the only human response left, not apologia. As rebels we are mocked ruthlessly if we are nonviolent, and considered rabid juveniles if we use the tools that only the state may rightfully use. A world of monopolies. There is just diversion, diversion, diversion and the endless stream of 'news' from god-knows-where. Even now it bothers me that nobody else sees how problematic and out-of-control everything is. Here's an idea: before we colonize space with our bad ideas, trashy suppositions, and hatreds, let's work on what we're doing here on Earth. I have a few good ideas for starters that don't include ethnic cleansing, chemical weapons, corporate sponsorship, military interventionism, intense religious/national exceptionalism, capital punishment, or nuclear holocaust.

Here's a list of things I think may be happening in the world today, which was meant to be funny, before I got into all that heavy shit like an idiot, but I mean it's hot as hell and I might not be thinking straight anymore:

• David Letterman has recently died and Craig Ferguson has NOT replaced him
• Britney Spears releases a comeback album and is involved with a twerking scandal
• The War in Syria ends when all 20+ sides agree to disagree, co-operate for economic revival
• However, a new War in Somalia causes the War in Syria to re-emerge
• Something something something China, something something something us.
• Wars on Drugs, Crime, Being Cool, Having Fun, Winning all renewed for another decade.
• The NSA admits it has known everything all along, even the conspiracies, but is just breaking down privacy so that 'the good guys continue to get paid'
• My Twitter account gets its first follower and also first retweet about something really funny and visionary I posted years ago
• In a shocking upset, Racism is defeated by Sexism as Most Pressing Social Issue - white women cheer in the streets, insist it will solve other problems as well
• Geopolitical fucking around defended by old white dude who worked for the government in 1960s
• Instead of simply paying interns nothing and working them to death, large firms begin to haze them as well - backing it with studies supporting hazing as 'character building exercises'
• During the rehearsal for the September 11th memorial programme, a Truther is violently murdered
• Workers Rights abuses in sweatshops ignored by pro-consumerist media
• Scientific advances make it all seem worthwhile, somehow
• Grumpy Cat gets lynched by mob
• Society continues to get more politically partisan and fragmented: each person in a secure castle of righteousness

I tried. Once I find the abandoned asylum I am looking for I will ECT myself until I get better. Maybe I will get back to light-hearted, timely, and entertaining updates about movies, song, and anything that does not actually matter instead of... ah fuck it. I tried. I did. When they find my body and hyperlink it to Twitter, RealNet, Facebook, or this blog - use the comment section to tell them I tried. I really tried. I was just as hopeless and confused as the rest, but I managed to stop eating shit and ultimately died like a human being, not a consumer.

Thanks Internet: Wierd Groups You Fixate On

They were somehow innocent, immune to shame, and their positivity was as naive as it was indestructible. The world was laughing at them. I was a jaded person, I had wasted my innocence, and the part of my life where I would see them as acceptable was over. In other ways, perhaps, but for me there would be no great passion in a harmless, consumer-oriented fandom. If I had ever been close, it had been just before the Star Wars reboot, but that fizzled out for me. So I considered the modern scene amusing at first, and then detestable, and then settled into an indifferent apathy. It was the hands-in-pockets crowd and their best friends from the internet, how could it ever pay off?

The whole internet was like a moth to flame regarding these people: they were like furries and straight-edge kids combined, not such a 'thing' yet that people over 35 had any idea about their existence. Hot property. It was a movement for people who didn't want to grow up. They had managed to get a lot of attention from the indulgent denizens of the internet, who loved to mock and worry about them. It was a movement beyond mockery, in many ways, because it was earnest (if twisted in 50%+ of cases) and simple. It was a worst case scenario for New Sincerity, which is where the blame squarely lay. Some participants were actual children, not just mentally child-like; it was bizarre, and impossible not to get bad vibes from. It was cringe-worthy.

In the course of their mockery I was introduced and re-introduced to the movement. The base users of the internet were enthralled, I think, with the possibility of a group more pathetic than themselves. It was hilarity potentiated by an odd sense of pathos. Lots of good laughs were had at the expense of these stupidly earnest, mentally-ill, immature individuals, but also good money was being made on them. Not that I was a capitalist, and if anything it was their collective identity as consumers that made them beneath scorn. They were, in a word, jokes. Unnervingly awkward, questionable jokes.

Everyone wanted identity and belonging, though. That was the less funny part. The existence of this group was evidence of pathological issues in modern society. It was a symptom of a sick world. Even so, they were having fun, believed in something or everything, and they cared – all of which was drily amusing of course. They were not the ones engaging and propagating the sick society which was eating away human potential and leaving us with manic-depressives, borderlines, and headcases of all sorts. They were harmless eccentrics, 'nice guys', outcasts, and all truly bizarre. To me it was borderline unacceptable, but I didn't want to throw stones and laugh spitefully: that's too close to caring.

Some of them were undoubtedly sick. There was no other explanation. It was bizarre: a combination of tweens, teenagers, twenty-somethings, all the way up to the usual extreme cases: sad and lonely men in their forties and fifties. Not that they were exceptional among modern movements and identity groups, or even particularly embarrassing in that field. The internet was full enough of shit to ruin anyone's mind, victims were plentiful. Their position was defensible in that way and many others, even though it was tone-deaf and ignorant and, essentially, very creepy in a way which does not misuse the word.

They preached fun, acceptance, peace, caring. They were clad in various baggy ill-fitting garments, liked gaudy colours, and especially products which broadcast their love of the entertainment product which they consumed in togetherness. They could be any group of youth, really. I suppose I hated them most for their consumerism, because their cry for identity was not particularly remarkable, nor their lack of critical perspective. In the modern era of disposable society vs. unbending self-righteous fundamentalism there wasn't a single place to stand. It made one nihilistic, which made funny groups attractive to mockers and adherents alike. The rise of the dubstep generation. Heh.

It was all insane. It was best to just laugh and not question any of it, but not questioning it seemed wrong. Same as it ever was, too. Maybe they were historically unique for record levels of meek nebbishism, little else. They would grow, was the problem, and create and kinds of morbid counter-mentalities. Shit like that was going to ruin everything, contribute to ongoing lost generations, influence the future... which made it less funny to watch a mawkish convention mentality spastically going its way in an oblivious, unforgiving world. Less funny; deeper humor, and darker. So if you want to know if there are worse things: of course there are worse things – the rest are all warning signs.

The Gezi Park Protests And The Delayed Media Response

Any time there is a big ado and it is in spirit against corporatism or authoritarianism there is one easy media conclusion to make if you live in the West: you aren't going to hear a goddamn thing about it. Coverage of Occupy Wall Street was spotty enough and it happened in the West's back yard. But don't worry: when the internet isn't being creepy or fighting about fucktarded opinions, it is accumulating data and 1:10000 of its population is presenting information with as little bias as possible.

To be honest, the Gezi Park Protests are much more supportable than Occupy Wall Street. Why? I mean, sure, both protests had legitimate issues, but only in Turkey has it become egregious enough to erupt in violence. Occupy Wall Street, if you'll remember, was pretty tame. Innocent teenage girls getting pepper-sprayed, drum circles, the mildest police brutality since a drunk white dude got arrested after a hockey game, and the list goes on. Nobody was impressed. The media largely skipped and told the basics, so that apologists and the uncaring middle class could infer it was a bunch of a dumb goddamn hippies (while their 800 billion dollars in tax monies had long gone up the noses of the financial industry).

Turkey, however, is lit up with Mediterranean passion. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the sinister leader figure around whom these protests center, is sort of a hard-line 'Right-Wing Traditional Values Politician'. In the West he would be seen as a creepy, sinister vampire with a hidden agenda - the Right would generally hail him as Reagan Reborn or something nonsensical. In Turkey, a much more serious populace suffered Erdogan's fuckery quietly until he took a step too far and okayed a plan to turn the last park in downtown Istanbul (or Constantinople if you've been living under a rock for the last 600 years) into a goddamn mixed-use shopping mall.

Shopping malls are absolutely the devil, but they're not properly Satanesque until they eat up scarce greenery. I understand the irony of a Traditional Values Muslim Politician (who hates kissing, beer, and young people) destroying a natural place of peace, but that's the oldest game in the West, where so-called conservatives have bulldozed forests and pillaged history with such acumen that the general populace doesn't even care. In the West, however, no matter how powerful our corporate overlords, the last park in a city would never be bulldozed for a goddamn mall/condo construction project based on a preexisting militaristic building. Despicable.

So, quite rightly, ordinary Turks went apeshit and did their best to stop the destruction of an innocent park. The police responded harshly, shooting tear-gas everywhere and blasting people with water cannons. There were reports of civilians getting shot with bullets as well, in case things weren't bad enough. The military sided, unofficially, with the protestors. That was back on 28 May 2013. Since then the western media have made roughly 5% of a big deal about this news, probably in deference to stubborn Erdogan, who is 'our friend in Turkey' and likely portrayed as some kind of nonsense 'bulwark against radicalization'.

This struggle could overturn the Erdogan political dynasty, with unknown effects for Turkey, a vibrant up-and-comer in the world.  Erdogan has done what all Traditional Values Politicans do: he has attempted to white-wash the past while getting rich on corporatism and brutally enforcing his country. He is afraid of bad press, freedom, and pre-marital sex, but if he's a true Conservative Traditional Values Politician he is right now engaging in sex-tourism in a midwest-America bathroom stall – while signing away resource rights to a multinational corporation that promises to subsidize his police force. But, hey, 'police are heroes' so maybe this story should be kept on the backburner awhile.

When there are reports in the West, they are brief and vague. Nobody wants to say 'too much', it seems. It is almost as if censorship in Turkey has spread into North America. Imagine how crazy that would be. What would it mean about North American and Western media if they kept silent about the abuses, threats, and brutality Erdogan has caused in his decade-plus of rule? But then, this isn't the first time mass media have been slow on the uptake. In Turkey itself is the only case of 'true' censorship, wherein television news reports completely ignore the protests. For the rest: enjoy your scraps of information while 'fair and balanced' reporters and organizations figure out their shit.

What if spurned environmentalists could start similar movements in the West? There are certainly abuses of power, and huge problems with the establishment that will not recede peacefully, but instead worsen every year. I bet you that profits would win at the end of the day, protestors or not. Or, worse: another OWS. What matters about Turkey is the theme: if the fight is lost there then the 21st century will look grimmer for the anti-corporatist and brighter for the career politician and the politician's masters (be they religious or business). That's probably why the Western Media is so mum about this story: they already know the answer. Plus it's Shark Week and tornado season has begun.

Of course reporting will open up when censorship is broken, or a reliable narrative can be applied to the story that will not alienate Turkish political elites, or when the story is over. It's not about a park, and it's not the fault of protestors: the Gezi Park protests are ultimately about resisting authoritarianism. The actions of Turkish police have proven it. At this point a few in-depth reports have probably been published. My sympathies absolutely lie with the protestors, and I wish them victory, because if they win, Turkey will be that much better for it.

Occupy Everything

It started in New York about a month ago and I was a smug bastard thinking that they were all hippies and idiots. I felt for them but on the other hand they were 'neo-hipster, marxist-lite scum' who didn't understand economics or politics. I called my sources and they told me exactly what I thought, that these people would disappear in a week if not a few days and that their incoherent protest would mean nothing. Yet the reason for this puerile protest was entirely valid and concrete. People, I thought, are either too angry or too defeated to voice their complaint precisely and effectively.

I was a little more right about that part. I've been mostly working since the protests started, I've been unable so far to attend the local protest, and I have heard only a few scattered reports and read a little about the issue since it started. But I have been paying attention. At this point, with the protests spreading and dissatisfaction being aired around the world and income equality becoming a talking point that the ignorant or hostile factions cannot slap down into silence, it seems like these protests are hopeful. They certainly point to a vitality that has belonged to lifestyle activists for the past three years and now finally belongs to everyone. In 2008 there were few protests, most of them astroturfed (and badly) or so far across the spectrum that they were close to insane, frothing rambling.

Imagine my relief when I see on the TV crowds of people of mixed ages and origins, all united, across the world, in protest against... well they're in protest against a lot of things. Mostly coming from America is the "99% rhetoric" which targets the super-wealthy and their stooges, and also the financial sector, lobbyists, and many of the other diseases of affluence that have sickened American democracy since its inception. In Canada, the branch plant of America, the protests are similar. The word 'oligarchy' is being thrown around a lot in conjunction with 'corporate' and people might understand what is meant by those words.

My hope is caused by the fact that the protests attract a good cross-section of people, and are opposed only by the ignorant or politically entrenched or apathetic. In other words this is a confrontation between a system that has succeeded only superficially and its adherents and, on the other side, the people who have been forced to subsist under that system, many of whom have suffered, many of whom have made incredible sacrifices, and many of whom have been spat on for most of (if not all of) their lives by 'the bootstrap crowd' and anybody with hard-fought comfort.

It's the age old combat between those who glean the spoils of life off the backs of those who are born into lesser stations. Has modern wage-slavery finally been unmasked? Is the structure of the world going to change? Is commodities trading going to be outlawed in favor of concrete economics? Are world governments going to concede that they have become accustomed and comfortable with oligarchy? Are America's taxpayers going to be reimbursed for the incredibly reckless and unsustainable policies of its government for the last decade? Is the financial bail-out going to be rectified? Is Greece going to be allowed to fail so that its oligarchs can be exiled in shame? Will the money system and its vice-like grip on human life and potential finally be broken? Will this be the renaissance where our species overcomes its petty tribalism and begins to plan for a great future? Or are we going to face yet another vast heartbreak that the global, soulless hive of moneyed villains will mock us about for decade after hopeless decade? Will 2011 influence the coming century? Will we be able to do great things without the deadly crutch of ideology?

It's clear to me that after this point there are a few roads: 1) the tyranny of sums and figures will continue to oppress a strained and breaking world, or 2) some type of financial civil-war will break out, or the world will begin to change for the better in a concentrated effort or 3) business as usual with slightly more awareness on the part of the populace, and increased spite and tension.

There are probably many, many more possibilities but I see the above three as the most likely. 1 and 3 resemble each other but there is a significant difference between how they might play out in terms of impact on majority politics. 2 is what might have to happen, with a large scale flight from monolithic credit systems and centralized financial power into personal and communal responsibility and smaller economic plays. World hunger is caused in part by ignorance, warfare, and politics, but when this year's crop harvest is speculated on as if the food supply is a roulette wheel for the rich, then... well what? What happens then? What has been happening for more than 20 years? Why subsidies? Why bail-outs? Why silence?

And I for one am glad that the silence has been broken, and that the clamor is spreading. And I laugh at those sneering bastards in tailored clothes, drinking champagne as they watch the under-classes raise hell. Their time will come.