Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Bryon Gysin tucks us in, selling out on the Web, hats for dykes, and Disney kills dogs
Hi Mickey -
I guess Burroughs’ vision is less repugnant than, say, that of the Neocons. And, it could be even worse: We’re in some sort of a Vanilla Sky situation. We’re all Fortune 500 CEO’s, dreaming that we’re just ordinary folks, struggling for our freedom. All we have to do is open our eyes!Susie Day says: “...I shall wear this hat… to a demonstration against the war in Iraq. Perhaps I will not be taken seriously because of my hat, and the US will remain in Iraq.”
Excellent Line!About the dogs: There are so many stray dogs and cats around the world, it’s incredible. In the third world, there were just uncountable numbers of stray dogs. They wandered among desperately poor folks who couldn’t possibly help them. And, of course, they’d been kicked around alot, so there was no way to get near them - tho you could toss them some food, as long as there were not hungry little kids watching you, ready to compete for the morsel. So many must be poor if a few are going to be so very rich. Thank the Lord,then, that those rich folks are safe and comfy and taking good care of their pets… Balances things out a bit, don’t you think?
Generally, of course, what Disney is doing is probably about the biggest effort any corporation will make: Outsource the costs of everything, all the time, including the cost of caring for or killing dogs that have been living on your land.
This park in Hong Kong probably would have shot the dogs themselves but the cost of the bullets would stress the delicate financial balance of their books. The option of rounding them up, cleaning and caring for them and finding good homes, probably never once occurred to them.
-joePosted by joe on from Oregon 07/28 at 02:26 PMdoggone...I can hardly believe it!
Sorry...that’s really crass, isn’t it? I’m feeling a little overwhelmed today. In fact, I feel like I’m sorta pregnant. You know (or maybe you don’t)...that feeling of WHEN THE HELL IS THIS BABY GOING TO DROP.
I’m very anxious to start a new productive activist life, thanks in part to MickeyZ’s “Murdering of My Years” which my oldest son misplaced.
Ok..see you later...I’m rambling.
Posted by deb on from Seattle-ish 07/28 at 02:30 PMHi again, Mickey - and Hello, Deb -
I often find myself thinking, today, about your intro to the Nukes In Space piece. This morning, I overheard my mother-in-law talking to my wife. I heard only this phrase: “...well, that’s human nature, I guess.”
It occurs to me that we don’t necessarily know what that is. For example, we can’t study domesticated canines and conclude that we have a thorough grasp of the nature of wolves. And, though a bob-cat looks a lot like a domestic tabby cat, if your dog decides to chase it, you may be seeing the last of your dog…
Before the thuggery called - the US government, - “we” we were all more or less imprisioned by what was called an “aristocracy.” This latter class-distinction, in various configurations, seems to trace its way all the way back to pre-historical times. (Though, of course, some folks were / are “blessed” to live in some sort of theocracy, which seems to incorporate much of the same class-distinctions, but with different “topic headings.")
In any case, the phrase “Human Nature” refers to the picture we’ve painted of human beings who live, to one extent or another, in servitude. (And those human beings who dominate us are also certainly diminished, almost de-humanized, at times, by their barbarous acts, no matter how civilized and splendid be their environments.)
I guess, all this blab is to say: We don’t really know who we are or what we’re capable of. We don’t really know to what extent the racism and sexism and violence generally found here in the “great herd,” is a result of being taught that rich, powerful white male = good, and all else = beneath contempt.
We’ll not know how much they have stolen from us until we can dispense with their “benevolence” and live as free men and women, with free men and women…
-joePosted by joe on from Oregon 07/28 at 05:25 PMJust as I was learning about my mom’s illness, I posted this here: http://www.mickeyz.net/news/mickeyz/fullarticle/where_we_are. I feel it touches on a lot of what’s been said above.
(It also opens with a paragraph that I probably would craft differently today. More on that next week.)
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 07/28 at 05:48 PMJoe, Deb, and Mickey I believe that the culture might be the most imortant factor in determining how people turn out. I have influenced my daughter in that direction. She is so anti-violence that the other day while she was visiting me with her 18 month old baby, she happened to see a little orange plastic water gun. I happened to have it here to discourage woodpeckers who have been making large holes in the house.(It did not work.) She said, “DON’T LET THE BABY SEE THAT GUN.” It made me very happy to be reminded that there will be NO war toys in their house.......The military is using the culture to sell kids on the idea of war and violence as a fun thing. Check out “Frag Girls”....I believe that one web site talks about broads and bullets....
Posted by rosemarie on from 07/28 at 07:03 PMIs this what you mean, Rosemarie: http://www.fragdolls.com?
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 07/28 at 07:23 PMHi Mickey & Rosemarie -
Mickey, I remember that post - very tasty presentation. You’ve summed things up quite nicely. You have too, Rosemarie: The culture is critical…The “dominant” culture, which in broad terms is “our world,” has enormous influence - right down to the way we might interact with one another if the three of us were in a (well-ventillated, with an exhaust fan for smokers) room together. In fact, it probably has considerable impact on our “interior life,” as it were, influencing how we see ourselves and our possibilities in almost all situations. Corporations (and the nation-states they’ve helped create for such a long time) are incredibly war-like. And, in such systems, if war is the worst thing possible, well - the best we should hope for is to be engaged in an endless “healthy competition” with one another, a (generally) non-physically-violent survival of the fittest, in which most people are left somewhere, “by the side of the road.” In this perverse world-view, human beings are, at their core, violent, aggressive, lazy, deceitful, covetous of other people’s property, profoundly mistrustful of most other people, consistently in need of externalized supervision, discipline and forceful guidance, unintelligent and unimaginative.
This is the culture created for us by the Elites, who themselves, must always be characterized in almost exactly the opposite way. When small groups have tried to change the way people think and work and interact, either here in the US, as with the Black Panther Party in Oakland or Chicago, or with some small groupings of Anarchist workers in Spain before the Civil War, the Elites go mad with terror, and tear them to shreds. Not one good example will be allowed to stand for long…
Without this “dominant culture,” we might well treat each other with considerable respect and compassion and generosity. Instead of seeing most other people as “threats, pretending to be people,” we might see in everyone, reflections of ourselves, of who we are and what we wish to become. We might turn off “Must See TV” forever, and find that engaging with each other is a remarkable joy. We might find that “barn raisings” are sources of great fun and pride, and that we never feel better than when we’ve helped people less fortunate than ourselves get back on their feet. In short, we might become truly human, in more than name.
Perhaps all this and ineffably greater possibilities await a world finally free of the Elites and their incessant savagery…
Posted by joe on from Oregon 07/28 at 09:03 PMI almost passed over Susie Day’s article in my browsing. I’m glad I didn’t though. It’s exactly that kind of soul screaming gutsiness that kept me from being a nasty, phobic piece of work when I was younger. It’s hard to view people as not humans when they take away the language of hatred and show it for what it really is.
Posted by Harry on from 07/29 at 04:36 AMYeah, I probably jammed too much into one post but I’m glad you found the essay, Harry. It made my day, too.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 07/29 at 06:15 AM
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