Monday
Jul272009
Life Inc. Dispatch 10: Life on a Monopoly Board
Monday, July 27, 2009 at 11:16AMLife Inc. Dispatch 10: Life on a Monopoly Board from Douglas Rushkoff on Vimeo.
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Reader Comments (3)
Very subtle or nuanced (i should say) Douglas. Also profoundly true....
Even today, i find i am still prone to the same economic thinking and urges that drove me in my formative years. When considering that "chance" for pausing, differentiating and changing, i fancy myself sober and clear eyed.
Of course i imagined myself that way before i fully appreciated the many ideas in you book. In my highschool years i lived in the suburbs of Big Insurance and had the opportunity to get to learn, from children and their parents in the highest echelons of the business, concepts of investment, management, risk assessment, packaging, marketing and sales.
Generally, half of the top crop of kids found the whole industry repellent, but 99.9 of us were completely enchanted with the investment component. Only very very recently do i understand how these (and especially "capital" investment) play through eachother.
After four years of supposedly learning to think critically i never examined the narrative of capital. I feared not having enough to simply live until i forgot what i knew about living simply: a pathetic personal story in many ways.
The truth is enough of us believe in, invest in or promote the narratives of capital (often with great "success") without understanding what we are doing to our businesses, our lives, our friends lives, our country, other peoples globally and the planet.
When one sees the performance and spectacle of evisceration, when one performs it and experiences it as it truly is, one imagines an opportunity, a moment for that chance to exist. Who among us really wants his or her child to experience the work of the evisceration apparatus?
Not one! But how many imagine they want simply to live? That has been my imaginary for more than 40 years.
-mason
The concept of "hegemony" can be useful in thinking about this. Power relations (e.g., the workings of capital) are 'naturalized' through concepts and practices (including manufactured "needs") that become embedded in our daily lives -- and selves -- to the point they disappear, transforming into background assumptions that even those wielding power are not necessarily aware of. We need a grand deprogamming!
All too many wielding capital power are those merely coerced by the narratives of capital, true. But more people are aware of being coerced than you or Douglas or anyone i know is willing to admit.
The most disturbing to me is the condition of the working class and the proletariat. Tho both produce a great share of organic intellectuals, both classes are terribly cynical and seem to enjoy the spectacle of coercion, sometimes even more than the middle class!
No thoughtful person or child really enjoys the experience at first. For this reason the middle class is rewarded so long as it submits. Those not among the elite, who chose not to submit or who simply never get the chance to submit often never develop a passive or aggressive counter narrative or posture, but simply smirk at the proceedings and dupes of coercion.