Capitalists interfere in elections, in all elections everywhere. Ideologies unto themselves don’t bully, but mask the greed and gluttony of the entitled rats believing they can buy and sell what is not theirs to buy or sell. They afford PR so we’re told to blame anything else, not Capitalists willing to sellout and endanger their own flags here and the world over on behalf of self-enrichment, but the bullshit symbology of what those flags supposedly represent. If any nation trademarked greed though, it’s Wall Street’s sponsor. No force on Earth has more power over what happens within the USA than domestic Capitalism. Applicable as well to everything above and beyond elections, unfortunately.
Molly Schwartz writes for Wired about self-proclaimed identity activist Kaliya Young, who hopes that a unified branding of one’s online avatars and proxies would limit claims of ownership by the digital platforms and their plethora of third party business partners. I myself have urged for copyright attorneys to consider our virtual personas as our Intellectual Property with whatever supposed rights that insures, elsewise the presumption by these companies that these personae are public domain amounts to a new interpretation of identity theft. But what Young endorses is already possible through consistency and mindfulness, which were some of the earliest virtues western civilization parted ways with on behalf of imaginary ego rights, and which the masses largely are unwilling or unable to pursue as virtues are proven counter-productive to market-driven economies generally. Simply put, people by and large refuse to take responsibility for their own actions.
Some piece of work named Peter Hurford even sees strength and wisdom in dropping individuality to favor conformity and compliance, as though these tech wunderkind industrialists and governmental financial interests might then be less interested in naming and claiming what and who we are to suit their own designs. When turning blind eyes to merits is no less than precisely what empowers all ego, permitting it to find definition in the strengths and wisdoms of others. Judging the many for the few either negatively or positively is stereotyping, and profiling. Contrary to marketing we are *not* all here together to be like one another, but to learn from one another. The opposite of diversity in genetics is inbreeding, the opposite of diversity in economics is monopoly. The difference between bucket brigades and chain gangs is that only one has the potential to end with a triumphantly celebratory orgy. Forbidden fruit should never suffer leftovers.
Following only those we wish to be, to befriend or to fuck is not following what truly *is*. Surrounding ourselves with those who suit us rather than those who need us is the logic of the Trumps of the world, the Trumps throughout all of history. Ego-centrism is never a good thing. Free speech means dissenting opinions. To forbid dissenting opinions is to forbid free speech. Even Capitalism is nothing more than the preferred Halloween costume of ego. Currencies (and guns) are unnecessary middlemen, existing only to insure unfair advantage for those favoring their own bias, quirks and fetishes to diplomacy, or resourcefulness. As I’ve written before, even cancer devours itself only in instances to maintain structural integrity for the rest of the cancer. The idea of a good Capitalism is as preposterous as a good ego. Someone benefits at somebody’s expense.
Kyle Melnick writes a more sensible piece, observing the dangers of smart devices and virtual reality purposefully nudging users into making pre-ordained responses to loaded questions. Emblematic of over the hill Capitalism, manufacturing demands to meet pre-ordained goods and services rather than versa vice, limits options even more than it limits profiteers, our needs/wants defined for us by third parties with one thing in mind. These online social networks are popular, with laws readily bent to get more and more of the population into this artificial domain, because they enable DIY segregation. Empowering the public to believe they can formulate their own personalized electronic voodoo dolls with customizable Barbie dream homes to match, ignorant to the natural effect of comfort zones, echo chambers, news bubbles and safe spaces by design inherently and inescapably being every bit as divisive as physical gated communities. The tech of Big Data and the FAANG corporations explicitly depends on ideological ghettos where every ego is empowered to preach only to its respective choir. Culturally we went from societal demographics revealing themselves to this imposed profiling by corporations. But when identities are largely handed to the public through the contrived subcultures of political partisanship, religious orthodoxy and especially brand loyalty, there’s no reason to believe these chosen idea-spaces are of our own personal design. Because this article’s author cannot fathom the infinite variables establishing agency, intentionality, and choice in regards to what we collectively or individually deem as free will, then they must not exist. Most of the people I have known in my life are arrogant or ignorant enough to have faith that the bulk of their decisions are made by themselves.
The Powers That Be of Big Tech cultivating these inauthentic pocket dimensions should be made to answer whether their own lives are worth more than profitability. If unpatriotic primadonnas such as Jeff Bezos were to see maximum wages capped, with price-gouging and over-charging made illegal, authentic needs of the peoples like good educations and healthcare alike would be so affordable the government actually could pick up the tab. Practically all of the vast array of prevailing problems we are ever confronted with in life, from personal relationships to national socio-economics to global geopolitics, would be fixed by striving to deflate all egos instead of allowing any to be inflated, including our very own. Likewise, I’m antiwar but pro-nukes, provided every country possessing them should either use them or forfeit them to neighbors, and on and on, until the entire world supply is depleted.
Contrary to what the President thinks, the purpose of all faith *is* justification. The grandest excuse for any misconduct freed from the confines of evidence. What unites orthodox religions is belief in an afterlife, faith that your servitude here will meet rewards there, and faith that your tormentors here will meet damnation there. It’s so widespread that even those lacking faith in any orthodoxy still unknowingly carry the mantle. Best observed by the popular idea of the universe being a simulation, as well as the idea of uploading consciousnesses into a digital realm for an eternity. As with faith in traditional variations of afterlife, it frees followers from personal responsibility in the here and now. I think pundits today often erroneously misalign fundamentalists of whichever theology with extremists, for the fundamental belief common in most orthodoxies that sacrifice and salvation are one and the same experience. Just as all forms of government fall when leadership asserts its own bias and whims before the needs of its people, when it behaves as Capitalists, so too do all religions enter civil war when versions of a Prosperity Doctrine assert salvation can be separate from sacrifice. So regarding either religions or governments, faith is the expression that responsibility might be somehow avoided.
Wanting to believe never makes it so, however. And needing to believe is of no difference.