As first world nation-states, the most ego-maniacal governmental administrations the world over are unanimously bent on enabling and empowering private interests to declare ownership of all means for production, with said means for production being their constituents themselves along with everyone else across the planet regardless if they are unable or unwilling to produce lucrative labor and/or pay taxes on behalf of sanctimonious property owners who have already declared ownership of the world at large. The public, thus locked into roles of debasement to flatter the sorts of self-possessed fellows who can certainly afford marketing to the contrary, although it is frowned upon to consider this as modern slavery. As such, modern slave-owners possessing pillaged resources capable of fixing the world’s problems continue to find distractions from doing so, like schadenfreude of vaudevillians.
In keeping with the obsessive-compulsive past-time of growing fat bellies fatter, the UAE have created a space court, to manage potential off-world disputes over territorial mining rights and what have you, for further pillaging and colonizing of that which Earth’s most gluttonous have no earthly claims to. Which can be taken as good news only when we ignore the human rights abuses enacted by this proprietary governing force, as noted by the likes of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Not to be the proverbial pessimist raining forever maelstroms of miseries down on parades, but simply wanting a thing to be good and true does not magically make it so. The need for good news in these trying times does not unto itself manifest good news from thin air, air so thin none may hear us scream. Likewise, the need for something to be malicious and false as well does not automatically make it so, as though the clothes truly do make the man. In reality, diplomacy to protect the most litigious, even that exampled here by the UAE, is little more than being considerate enough to wear cologne to a gang-rape. It’s still the unified theory of self-gratitude, desiring one-sided positivity with no foresight given to how others will be disaffected, disavowed or disenfranchised by the disassociation of cause from effect.
Refusal to embrace reality for the sake of convenience, or entitlement or privilege, runs contrary to reality, because reality is that the universe, the world and the people around us do not exist to service anybody individually. We as individuals in fact exist only to serve the people around us, the world, the universe. The concept of partisan influence where only money talks self-perpetuates in closed circuits exposed to no alternating perspectives. There is no truth to be found in Facebook or Twitter, as those platforms exist entirely for the purposes of fanciful escape from whatever persists outside gated communities, whether ideological or manifest. The social networks online are nothing but DIY segregation. Sometimes that is an attribution of malignancy asserting pure arrogance on the part of those seeking followers and sometimes it is guided that way to irreparably benefit those same self-inclined hoarders of pillaged resource or inheritors of pillaged resource, to prohibit awareness of the mass of reality which lies beyond the comforting gates, elements of which would prove their undoing. The most common American belief is that responsibility for our own actions as individuals or as a society falls anywhere else but ourselves.
The seven deadly sins boil down to embracing self-interest, whereas their counterparts in the seven holy virtues boil down to letting go of ego, no matter if it’s our very own, or that of whomever we’d wish to befriend, to fuck or to vicariously be. It is the singular appeal for giving weight to symbology, because symbols are inherently subjective enough to conceal any variety of private bias, fetish, quirks and whims from scrutiny. Instead of defining the culture of our symbols so as to enrich our identities, these first world societies allow their symbols to do all the heavy lifting so as to inform their identities, when not one of us is god and country or capital. Simply put, we can exist without them, but they cannot exist without us. But rather than address these biases, fetishes, quirks and whims, or the calamitous effects of the one-sided narratives they purport, both credit and blame is rewarded to symbols which, while altogether incapable of direct creation, eternally meet with death and destruction, for favoring biases, fetishes, quirks and whims to the consequences they instill.
I’ve never seen a study to this end, but I am convinced that both personal and interpersonal abuses are more common in creative industries, because so much of creativity necessarily stems from ego. Artisans have to indulge to unearth imagination, but then audiences themselves have to feel catered to all the more, because what is propelled is considerably not art appreciation but the bottomless demands of industry. Self-obsession may produce wonderfully alluring artworks, but it’s also to blame for our biggest societal conflicts and hangups. I mean, patriotism, the grandest form of collective self-obsession, is ironically measured by a willingness to endanger as many lives as possible for the sake of convenience, entitlement or privilege, from being pro-gun and pro-war no matter the native casualties which invariably result, to opposition toward welfare and universal free healthcare as though keeping all citizens alive and healthy were somehow unpatriotic. This pathos is loudest today among those personalities indignant about not wearing masks in a pandemic, their own words and actions inferring that personal comfort, personal entitlement and personal privilege somehow matters more than the life of others. If there exists a bigger problem than the censoring of words and ideas, suppressing or magnifying them beyond reason usually for lucrativeness but also for the sake of personalized comfort, entitlement and privilege, it’s this concept that endangering others is itself some sort of right. And that any impairment against infringing the rights of others to life and liberty is itself somehow an infringement of civil or basic human rights. I see the uphill battle in all of this and I realize how providing a nonpartisan, objective perspective, regardless if all the logic in the world supports the argument, irrevocably falls on deaf ears. For it is a hard thing to stomach, the realization that the most self-serving among us by default never have our best interests in mind. It stings no less realizing that what we want of this life is not what this life provides for us.
I’ve been trading email with the current Prez of the CBLDF, suggesting they adapt one of the old initiatives from the Friends of Lulu as their own, and he looks to be open to my idea. When the FoL was dissolved a decade back, I had suggested we donate the archives of records to the MoCCA comic book museum in NYC, for posterity and historical curiosity, and while I served on the final board of directors for FoL at the time he was actually on the MoCCA board, so somehow he thinks my current suggestions come from a valid point of reference.
But what I’m suggesting now is a system for the CBLDF to provide nonpartisan voice of reason, to resolve certain issues by way of added perspective, ideally to save some of these matters from ever actually going to the courts. Like an in-house anti-defamation league, reminding industry insiders who may not know the details of a particular harassment scandal leaping to defense for whomever, and to save industry outsiders who may know no actual details about a particular harassment scandal demanding heads on spikes, to all just step back and mind their own beeswax. And then today Wikipedia announces the same thing for its entire platform, a community code of conduct to preempt any abuses of power. I told the CBLDF guy, that there is so much call now for the government to step in to oversee the digital social networks, as well as demands for these networks to better police themselves, and when neither wants to regulate for fear of cutting into profit margins or self-ingratiating chains of command, it really does fall on the people to set the standards for themselves, or at least for their better angels. Like not just a digital variant of a neighborhood watch, but one that is mindful enough to know the differences and to respect the differences between what is private and what is public. Part of the new CBLDF initiative is expanding their mission statement to protect whistler-blowers, and preventing mob mentality, especially lynch mobs which generally grow from personality cults, is perfectly well in keeping with that, good and true. I learned firsthand how foolhardy it is to exert my own will across a medium, but wanting the betterment of all its players nonetheless is a rich example for how life is as unconcerned with ambition as it is with vainglory or retribution, as such constructs are servicing only one’s own throbbing member and nothing more.
Because we are all here and now together, and that does not mean we are rendered capable of imposing our wills upon one another, but it does mean that we must disallow the imposition of wills upon each other, freeing one and all to think and to feel independently for the good of the whole. No matter how flattering a conviction, and no matter how much we may think we desperately need a given something which ultimately benefits none save our lonely selves. And when no government in today’s world is truly of the people, by the people and for the people, then no government of today’s world must be permitted to call shots beyond their grabby reach, which all evidence confirms only ever encompasses one particular thing.