Deep Code http://themillenniumreport.com/2017/01/deep-code-speaks-the-red-religion-vs-the-blue-church/ Does anyone else recognize the significance of our current situation?
Total Bullshit. Newspapers were the original media in this country, and there have always been many alternatives. The president doesn't like old media not because it's an alternative form of propaganda, but because they are critical of him. That's their job. But reality and facts will always be superior to "alternative facts", otherwise called lies.
That quote looks like a deepity. Or maybe just a truism. Does it not apply to virtually any period of unrest in the world?
"Deepity is a term employed by Daniel Dennett in his 2009 speech to the American Atheists Institution conference, coined by the teenage daughter of one of his friends. The term refers to a statement that is apparently profound but actually asserts a triviality on one level and something meaningless on another. Generally, a deepity has (at least) two meanings: one that is true but trivial, and another that sounds profound, but is essentially false or meaningless and would be "earth-shattering" if true. To the extent that it's true, it doesn't matter. To the extent that it matters, it isn't true. The example Dennett uses to illustrate a deepity is the phrase "love is just a word." On one level the statement is perfectly true (i.e., "love" is a word), but the deeper meaning of the phrase is false; love is many things — a feeling, an emotion, a condition — and not simply a word. Although he is a frequent source of deepities, the name does not come from Deepak Chopra." ... via link
I pretty much gathered as much from the word itself, but I was willing to give the link a try. Thanks, Beer.
This guy seems to think that destroying the public's sources of news and information, and replacing them with centrally managed propaganda output that bypasses all intellectual analysis in favor of direct communications from Fearless Leader to his violent mob, is a new idea. And not at all Top Down. He also thinks using that tactic and other sabotage of discourse to gin up a mob of imbeciles and take down a governing elite is a new idea. Brand new. And not at all Top Down. Meanwhile, his analysis of "legacy media" omitted Hollywood, talk radio, and any news or information source (TV, radio, paper, magazine, university) south or west of New York and DC. Apparently Rush Limbaugh was a nonentity unworthy of mention, being controlled by the New York Times or Fox or something in that old fashioned Top Down way, and now he's been destroyed by this New Thing that is not at all like Rush Limbaugh and is not at all Top Down. Also, he seems to be doing some odd arithmetic, whereby an information landscape of hundreds of newspapers and radio stations and so forth was controlled top down by a small New York and Ivy League elite in the interest of a "globalist" agenda, while an information landscape consisting of planetary cross-national borderless domination by (Ivy League and multi-national elite invented) Google, Facebook, and Twitter is immune to top down control and represents a populist revolt against the evils of globalism. And he managed to analyze the resurgence of the neo-Confederate cultural fraction in the US, the restoration of its political power via the rise of fascism and its takeover of the Republican Party, as not only a new thing arriving with Trump but essentially a propaganda victory: So we see that it's not actual racism or sexism that is resurgent - it's immunity to the label. Apparently it used to be if you called a bigoted fundie "racist" or "sexist" it really stung, really made them back off and change their ways, but now they're newly immune - y'know, maybe not even bigots or fundies at all ! The weapons whose usefulness is now being ruined were not improvements in governance and successful bases of extraordinary prosperity, but insults and namecallings (by both sides, of course) - no wonder they don't work any more. There was one ray of possible light, one actual moment of reflection in that thing, and it was this: Hold that thought, son. It - and others like it - will come in handy. In a non-linear way, of course.
Well, your analysis of it speaks of the intellectual analysis. Perhaps the information should be presented without analysis, so it might not be tainted by opinion and politics. Are you surprised a different opinion or political persuasion might arise? When the discourse is ruled by a few, there's going to be a revolt. I suppose it's a matter of interpretation. No more than the use of the terms 'commie' or 'traitor'--unless they are true, of course. It's a reaction to what people are watching on the streets. I personally believe a true Liberal and a true Conservative might find themselves agreeing on a lot of things, but we are propelled, at the moment, in a time of extremes. Compromise might be our only salvation.
This "revolt" was against discourse by the many, in favor of discourse ruled by a few. Top down propaganda feeds from Fearless Leader and his media operators are a strange idea of information not being "tainted" by politics and opinion. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as information without analysis. It's the analysis that provides the information - the facts don't mean anything without the context. Here's a tip: if a guy claims to be describing the role of the media in US politics over the past thirty years or so, and he never mentions Limbaugh or Gingrich or any media west of the Appalachian Mountains, quit reading. Fascism arose. And no, that was not a surprise. It wasn't " non-linear thinking" either. The problem is the Republican Party, which has been taken over by American fascism. That's the only "extreme" involved, and we all have to deal with it. And compromise is not an option: for one thing, it never compromises in good faith; for another, it's basically evil and compromising with it will cost you your soul. Don't believe me? Look at Paul Ryan's eyes.
Another interesting little comment from the deepity code essay: Now generally the bothsides promulgators, the all of society establishment Blue/Red equivalenters, the technological change knows no Party and is beyond all such labels (but the Establishment thinking it has surpassed is Blue Church - the establishment is bothsides but all the wrong thinking came from liberals), like this guy, who directly asserts that his audience under 40 was raised in the Blue Church and all the assumptions etc they must outgrow are Blue Church inculcations, which is standard wingnut presumption, are closet wingnuts, guys who would be Tea Party or Ayn Rand allied above-it-all Techie Meritocracy advocates if they hadn't caught on to the fact that they would look stupid to people they know are smart if they signed on to such things. So one of my curiosities is how that crowd is going to handle the fact that most of them have spent the last couple of years being played by Russian trolls and bots on their magic revolutionary beyond the establishment social media. That without the professional journalism and elite media gatekeeping they regard as passé or beneath them, they are patsies whose entire political worldview can be choreographed and controlled by the Russian equivalent of an American telemarketer upselling the trailer trash on Direct TV features. And that's an interesting reaction: get off social media, get away from the world of distant learning and unfamiliar thinkers, make your household/block/gang/tribe your "intellectual" base. The analogy with oppressed and betrayed people becoming clannish and homeground loyal is immediate - but how does this work in the world of information?
Do you? Do you actually have a clue what you posted? Could you possibly put some effort into it? I just read that shitty article and don't even know where to begin. Maybe you could offer some useful commentary on your sources? Why should anyone else put any more effort into this than you do?
In every generation there are people who believe that THIS time is unlike any other, that the new problems we face will surely either destroy us or damage society irrevocably. And then we deal with the new issue. The "linear world" isn't a linear world, and it's not ending. We are just interacting in different ways. We saw the same transition when most people became literate, when newspapers became common, when magazines became common, when telegraph lines linked the world, when telephones became common, when radio became common, when TV became common and when the Internet became common. The world didn't end (or change into something unrecognizable) then either.
Interesting side comment on the red religion's tactics: https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/969614094675345418/photo/1
But what does that mean? Here, let's try it this way: • Change is frightening — This is a market reality in our society. • lack of change is more concerning — I would not specifically disagree, but we must consider what we mean by either "lack of change" or that some circumstance or outcome is "concerning". Beyond that, though, it is more objectively observable that stagnation is largely and generally bad for our society. Within that framework, we have a market reality—e.g., consumer attitude that "change is frightening"—versus a more reliable prospect of stagnation degrading the marketplace. I tend to say that nothing ever begins, which in turn comes from Barker, who also observes that, "as the narrator's voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making". Consider Billvon's↑ point: "In every generation there are people who believe that THIS time is unlike any other, that the new problems we face will surely either destroy us or damage society irrevocably". Looking back to our topic post↑, we see this is about empowerment, that is, "an existential conflict between two entirely different and incompatible ways of forming 'collective intelligence'". Yes, change is frightening. Yes, lack of change can be more concerning, depending on how we define it. And in such a context we find the proposition of an existential conflict between incompatible elements. This is explicitly dualistic, and seems in that context yet another struggle to retain old dualisms, a Straussian make-believe supremacism as guiding societal principle. But they are incompatible: One requires the subjugation and elimination of the other, so that "everybody" can be free once "everybody else" is out of the way. ____________________ Notes: Barker, Clive. Weaveworld. New York: Poseidon, 1987.
