There are a lot of reasons to hate consumer culture, but the best possible reason is that it doesn’t do what it says its going to do.  This is the real nut of my beef with it.  If it was effective at accomplishing what it claimed to accomplish, generally keeping people happy, occupied, and entertained, it would be fine.  I might still think that it ( Read more... )

Two minor points of irritation.  I’ve treated these subjects in depth before, but they have resurfaced in the news like a burrito-burp, and so I must eject their moist gasses from my body in this post.

Number one:  The Arab League delegation’s offer to Israel is not “historic,” unless by historic we mean “has happened many times in recent history ( Read more... )

The plutocratic empire, in which music, movies and television control the masses by determining the images which will evoke the most uncritical emotional response, the media should be seen as the occupation, just in the same way that the Roman officers in Palestine were seen as the occupation.  Because it is in the hands of an essentially ( Read more... )

One does strive to be a gentleman.  Or I do, anyway.  But what does that mean?  “Gentleman” is a word that is rarely taken seriously any more.  Most people are actually contemptuous of the idea that one SHOULD strive to be a gentleman.  I’ve been looking at the subject in great detail lately, and as best I can gather, being a gentleman means ( Read more... )

The “right” political system is determined by the technology and resources of the state.  Western societies have various ideas about “the just state.”  Some proceed from uncritical emotional responses, but the general IDEA that people should be free to fulfil their potential is a sound one.  But even this notion can be deceptive.  In a feudal ( Read more... )

The latter film was one that I had obviously seen before.  The former was one that I decided to watch because... because... I’m not sure.  I had obviously been sniffing glue or drinking paint thinner or something.  Clearly I was not firing on all cylinders.  As further evidence of this, I watched NBK with the Oliver Stone commentary on.  Pray for ( Read more... )

There's a pretty good article here by a young Jewish writer, Jonathan Garfinkel, traveling to Israel and the West Bank.  Today I got my hands on an advance copy of his new book.  It looks pretty good...

Existence, Crowley tells us, is the price of eternal warfare.  This is why I love confrontation and conflict.  As a great man once said:  “I paid my two bits to see the high divin’ act, and ahma gonna see the high divin’ act.”

It is true that words such as “sin” and “religion,” like words such as “spirit” and “God,” cause a lot of confusion because ( Read more... )

While not particularly committed to “music,” as an ideology, I do have some opinions on the matter.  I don’t share them very often,  I despise people who take music too seriously, because they invariably have dismissive attitudes toward things which actually matter in life, such as politics and religion, along with a certain contempt for people who ( Read more... )

This may be difficult to believe, but I really only learned of the existence of this television programme, “24” very recently.  This may indicate the vast distance that I keep from mass media (still never seen a reality tv show).  I had heard of it vaguely, at some point before, but when people start talking to me about television I try to block it ( Read more... )