Take the power back
Just been reading Channel Zero by Brian Wood (the best comic writer around just now, or is that Jonathan Hickman, do any of you even know who these people are?) and getting angry, mostly at myself but equally at the world and even at people I know. Not angry in a nasty way, but angry that we let all of this just happen to us, we don’t fight back, we don’t make people realise what is happening……we just mumble to ourselves and let it happen ‘cause in the end we’re still able to have our latte’s and watch the next episode of some bullshit reality show.
There’s nothing wrong with entertainment, but when it starts dumbing everyone down then we have to realise that it isn’t a good thing. If anyone can give me a good reason for all these reality shows then please leave a comment, but just now, to me, it’s just bullshit and keeps the population silent and ready to consume. Consume, consume, consume. Fuck, do I sound like Blair there when he said ‘Education, Education, Education’? How full of lies was that, I don’t blame teachers or kids for what they ‘learn’ and get taught nowadays, I blame the fuckin’ government for all their league tables and stats. How do you teach people to learn when you have to reach a certain stat, much better to ‘train’ someone to pass an exam than actually let them learn something that will expand their mind eh? And governments and opposition parties pretend to care, but you know what? They are happy for the populace to be dumbed down, makes controlling them so much easier. The English language is meant to have something like 1 millions words now, yet how many of them are actually used now? Excluding academia of course.
Some of this anger is coming from having watched The Wire, reading Channel Zero and DMZ, and reading Chomsky, but mainly it’s coming from not being able to get hold of the information that matters. I don’t have internet access in my flat just now and it frustrates me, I could read the newspapers but even the Independent that I read has it’s own agenda, and the Guardian can be even worse. The New Statesman seems to have collapsed in on itself, mainly since the New Labour edition which I missed (why they let Alastair Campbell edit an issue I don’t know), and that leaves what in the public domain?
Even with the internet it can be extremely difficult to find the information that you want, one of my main sources is Znet, and occasionally Huffington Post, but since I’ve been away from this source for nearly 12 months I don’t know where to look anymore (if you know any, please leave a comment). I’m about to head to the internet café and download some pages to read at home later as there’s no way I can take everything in in an hour.
And what annoys me about my friends, I’m sure there will be comments about this but I’m angry with them, as well as with myself, as my friends are an intelligent bunch with amazing talent, and we all let this happen. I’m not saying we should spend all our time trying to subvert the system, or destroy the world order or anything, but we need to pass on more information between ourselves, we need to use the time and power we have to try and educate ourselves and others, we need to at least try and do something.
I know that I’m wasting time, I’ve had so much free time since I came back from New Zealand and what have I done with it? Fuck all. Ok I’ve read a few things and put up a couple of links on twitter but that’s it. In about three and a half months that equates to pretty much zilch. Even now, as my volunteer job is still being sorted I spend my day reading comic books and just generally dossing about instead of actually trying to educate myself, that has to stop, and stop now. I’ve got to try and be more than this, more than just a privileged middle class westerner that sits and accepts everything. How do I achieve that I don’t know, I’m certainly going to try and learn more and pass on that information. I want to try and do a project around the Declaration of Human Rights, I want to do additional volunteer work as well beyond this one, and I want to get at least one more person to try and do something in the hope that they can get one other person to try something, ad infinitum (wishful thinking I know). But I also want to remember that I can still have fun as well, because I shouldn’t feel guilty for enjoying a gig, or playing on the playstation for a night, or going to the movies should I?
There’s nothing wrong with entertainment, but when it starts dumbing everyone down then we have to realise that it isn’t a good thing. If anyone can give me a good reason for all these reality shows then please leave a comment, but just now, to me, it’s just bullshit and keeps the population silent and ready to consume. Consume, consume, consume. Fuck, do I sound like Blair there when he said ‘Education, Education, Education’? How full of lies was that, I don’t blame teachers or kids for what they ‘learn’ and get taught nowadays, I blame the fuckin’ government for all their league tables and stats. How do you teach people to learn when you have to reach a certain stat, much better to ‘train’ someone to pass an exam than actually let them learn something that will expand their mind eh? And governments and opposition parties pretend to care, but you know what? They are happy for the populace to be dumbed down, makes controlling them so much easier. The English language is meant to have something like 1 millions words now, yet how many of them are actually used now? Excluding academia of course.
Some of this anger is coming from having watched The Wire, reading Channel Zero and DMZ, and reading Chomsky, but mainly it’s coming from not being able to get hold of the information that matters. I don’t have internet access in my flat just now and it frustrates me, I could read the newspapers but even the Independent that I read has it’s own agenda, and the Guardian can be even worse. The New Statesman seems to have collapsed in on itself, mainly since the New Labour edition which I missed (why they let Alastair Campbell edit an issue I don’t know), and that leaves what in the public domain?
Even with the internet it can be extremely difficult to find the information that you want, one of my main sources is Znet, and occasionally Huffington Post, but since I’ve been away from this source for nearly 12 months I don’t know where to look anymore (if you know any, please leave a comment). I’m about to head to the internet café and download some pages to read at home later as there’s no way I can take everything in in an hour.
And what annoys me about my friends, I’m sure there will be comments about this but I’m angry with them, as well as with myself, as my friends are an intelligent bunch with amazing talent, and we all let this happen. I’m not saying we should spend all our time trying to subvert the system, or destroy the world order or anything, but we need to pass on more information between ourselves, we need to use the time and power we have to try and educate ourselves and others, we need to at least try and do something.
I know that I’m wasting time, I’ve had so much free time since I came back from New Zealand and what have I done with it? Fuck all. Ok I’ve read a few things and put up a couple of links on twitter but that’s it. In about three and a half months that equates to pretty much zilch. Even now, as my volunteer job is still being sorted I spend my day reading comic books and just generally dossing about instead of actually trying to educate myself, that has to stop, and stop now. I’ve got to try and be more than this, more than just a privileged middle class westerner that sits and accepts everything. How do I achieve that I don’t know, I’m certainly going to try and learn more and pass on that information. I want to try and do a project around the Declaration of Human Rights, I want to do additional volunteer work as well beyond this one, and I want to get at least one more person to try and do something in the hope that they can get one other person to try something, ad infinitum (wishful thinking I know). But I also want to remember that I can still have fun as well, because I shouldn’t feel guilty for enjoying a gig, or playing on the playstation for a night, or going to the movies should I?