Depression 2009: What Would it Look Like?

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance
#21

No worries, man, I’m not offended or anything. I don’t want to dismiss any of those things (TV, WoW, MySpace, etc) as items of pacification, but I do think we should shy away from thinking of them only as items of pacification. What’s more, I think we should try to get a better handle on the entire concept of pacification, my gut intuition suggests that there’s a lot being left out in the current discussion. I think we’re focusing on the superficial details and ignoring the underlying forces. Maybe we can find some useful bit of understanding if we dig a bit deeper.

I do agree with you that real friendships/relationships hold up much better to these sorts of technologies when the relationship exists prior to texting, WoW, MySpace, whatever… At least it seems that way to me.

#22

Well, I’ve been reading endgame Vol I, and Jensen is talking about the abuser/abused relationship that repeats itself throughout this culture, and I’m beginning to see that the most harmful form of pacification isn’t social distraction and games, but is the internal justification the “powerless” give to the “powers that be” that allows for continous exploitation.

This had to be in place long before any of these technologies came about, and if anything, technologies like this forum (and maybe WoW ;)) are probably useful for connecting and strengthening dissenters.

I think the most harmful things are the subtle delusions hidden in the subtext of things like advertisements and mainstream news media. Tiny repeated myths that say stuff like :“things will be better if you buy things” … “at least you’re better off than these people”…and “look at how great progress is!..you helped make it happen!!”

Is that kind of what your getting at Jhereg? Or am I going off on a tangent?

Brian

#23

No, I don’t think it’s a tangent. Actually, I think that’s a good point; how much of our cultural pacification comes in the form of consumerism? Does the “buzz” of buying “stuff” create the feeling, however temporary, that we have what civilization/domestication has taken from us? Is consumerism just as addicting for some folks and alcohol is for others? If we peel back all the various forms of addiction we know about, do we always find a subtle form of pacification beneath them? Hmm, maybe. I’d certainly like to hear some other folks’ opinions.

#24

I like this rant by fellow rewild.info member Aquila ka Hecate :

http://aquilakahecate.blogspot.com/2008/11/whats-it-worth-to-you.html

especially this part:

We’re expected from childhood to strive to increase our worth - through being a good student, playing by the rules “contributing” to our society, Being a “good parent”, “good daughter”, “good citizen”, i.e. not operating outside of the cultural boundaries which ensure we’ll never look up, from the day of birth to the day of death, and really see the Machine.

Just look around you and try to evaluate the ways you’re being encouraged to be worthy.

Maybe it’s this constant, unattainable need to “feel worthy” (or the need to ignore that feeling) that’s at the heart of what keeps people consuming, pacified, and turning to addictions to find respite.

In healthy cultural surroundings, i don’t imagine we would feel this confusion. We’d be more concerned with the intuitive sense of whether something “works” or not.