The Few and the Many

 

Culture as the social outcome of tensions between the few and the many obviously has a firm political component. This component has various meanings; one of them is the ability to generate change. This changing or generating component can be misused as a repressing tool in the hands of power, whether this power is applied to the benefits or the destruction of society. Not any human alien order is able to protect or to govern individual independence; this is in strong contrast with the obligations and promises contemporary governments and industries are demanding from 'their' citizens and employees.

           

Being part of an organization, whether a government or any other alien body, is conflicting with one's need to "be" free, not to "feel" free, but to "be" free.

The illusion of 'being' given by the sensation of feeling is paramount and leading to conflicting tensions both in the individual and in society

           

Totalitarian mass-culture establishes a terror state.

 

This 'feeling' of not being, but acting according to the outcome of the influences of sensory impulses is in the hands of the malevolent an easy way to full fill their purposes.

When the na•ve and easily pleased masses are manipulated with sense satisfying impulses directed towards the instantaneously consummation of their desires, they turn into willing anthropomorphic machines, who can easily be controlled. This is exemplified by the enormous success of various consumption oriented practises and their intentional propagation of a hedonistic lifestyle as everyone can see on TV, Film and other media.

 

It is very difficult not to consume. Emphasize is directed towards the notion that to consume is 'good', 'good' for the market, 'good' for the economics. But fundamentally it is neither good nor bad. It is mere an attempt to postpone everyone's nearing end and as such both angst and lust driven.

 

To be fully aware of the responsibilities one can take for one's own life and independence is the first step towards a freer and less manipulative society, which as a matter of fact is getting increasingly more difficult when the control and angst/lust driven order is gaining more and more control of our individual lives. There is a tendency towards de-individuating society in favour of socializing the individual.

 

This results in societies where its members are artificially held in a state of angst; fed by their desires which are brutally perverted by pornographic conceptions which at their turn are sold as entertainment by the culture / creative and knowledge industries.

 

Both the ancient left and right wings are neglecting lessons learned

 

Lessons learned from the outcome of the global politico-economical status quo after WW II is not being taken seriously enough by the world population simply because of a lack of self-consciousness. The need to be educated is falsely directed towards knowledge in stead of knowing. By objectification of human thoughts mankind loses its ground in a more fundamental way than the threads of so called fundamentalists.

 

There is a very diffuse intellectual gap between Europe (continental) and the American British alliances which existed before WW II and which is still  unresolved.

 

Ironically the winner of WW II is global fascism, as the bigger brother of its more regional guise; National Socialism. America's role in contemporary society can be characterized by a compulsive attitude towards its own identity, and in that process neglecting the fact that this behaviour is not everyone's concern and not at all to the benefit of the whole. By victimizing the rest of the world it merely shows that it is thinking acting and operating driven by an enormous frustration.

 

Education and politico-economical programs are build on false premises which do not benefit society as a whole, but on the contrary is building a society where one of the most important tasks for its citizens is not to end their lives homeless, unemployed, addicted to whatever addictions are at hand, doing all this with the very na•ve assumption that free market will filter the good from the bad.

 

 

Globalization in economics promises Heaven and maintains Hell

 

The wish of the few for a global economical society results in constructing political ways to force the many in an angst-lust driven society where economical machines easily can reach their goals. Culture, ethics, aesthetics, art, compassion are used as tranquilizers to keep the few reluctant opponents at ease. The dream factory produces 24 hours a day images, sounds, ideologies, documents, papers, and novels about how to be happy in a hellish world.

 

Super economics is a substitute of super ego

 

As a logical consequence of the mechanism of industrialization of knowledge, industries are serving the status quo, and are deforming any trend towards a radical departure from the purposefulness and makebility of society to a marketing tool serving their own intentions namely the complete dehumanization and zombification of humankind.

In a world dominated by super economics, superego's come to the foreground to assist the achievement of its program. So we have our Bush's, Blair's, Saddam's and Bin Laden's as a consequence of the political direction the world as a whole is taking. 

 

Hedonism is instrumental of fascism.

 

The natural state of fascism is a state in which all desires are fullfilable, instead of rejecting the dependencies of desires as a burden and a suffering, by maintaining a more ethical attitude towards its seductions, fascism propagates and fully embraces the orgies, the bacchanal, the bloodshed, the genocide, the total destruction of beauty and is suffocating aesthetics by crossing deliberately the line between the domain of the individual and the domain of society.

 

 

Class struggle 'follows' class consciousness

 

A critical attitude towards the intentions of their employers of a minority of workers ÔinsideÕ the so called creative/ culture knowledge industries, ironically leads to political involvements, creating artificial role functions, which are gradually incorporated into the politico-economical programs of the very same ursurpating financial and state machines, thereby adding another  refinement in the producer-supplier-consumer chain. The ÔCreative ClassÕ of Richard Florida [1], for example, is heavily read and used as a blue-print in developing city economics, at higher and lower governmental circles around the World.

           

A possible way out will be to break the chain, to be able to produce without the economics involved, a nearly unimaginable, utopian alternative, to produce works of aesthetical value which are fundamental purposeless, not serving any need whatsoever. Developing a new aesthetical and ethical consciousness in place of redefining cultural and social consciousness will help to separate the aesthetical and the artistical from the creative and the social and in that process regaining an autonomous position.

 

The creative class does not exist (yet)

 

When there is (again) an autonomous position of the aesthetical and the artistic the possibility arise to interchange thoughts, means of cooperation and the like between the creative and the social, before that the former has to separate itself from the submissive role is has nowadays. 

 

To be able to play a future role 'creative class' consciousness has to be developed and not taken to be granted.

 

[1] The Creative Class, Florida, R. , 2004

 

Andreas Jacobs, Art Ist

Amsterdam, The Netherlands