One of the greatest scenes in David Byrne's film True Stories is the dinner scene in which Spalding Gray's character illustrates his jobs-centered development using the food from the meal. Thanks to Keith Marquand for drawing the connection between this scene and current events.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Eat Your Future
One of the greatest scenes in David Byrne's film True Stories is the dinner scene in which Spalding Gray's character illustrates his jobs-centered development using the food from the meal. Thanks to Keith Marquand for drawing the connection between this scene and current events.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
Recurrent, would be my assessment. It brought to my mind the cultural, technological, and aesthetic purging of the continent of the first nation peoples---basically to the same hard sell work-ethic pyramid scheme. This kind of piety is mental illness. Back to preservation issues: We should move cautiously into irrevocable changes like demolition, not because we are enlightened or full of passionate intensity about the ultimate value of some marginalized property, but because understanding these values is ahead of us in time. Even if we are somewhat sensitive to the complexity of the issues, with any humility one can see that the opportunity to blunder big-time goes hand in hand with supposed progress.
"Economics has become a spirirual thing". Brudda, ain't dat da trut. Economics, or rather the so-called free market model currently under so much stress, entered into a phase of it's evolution which resembles the sort of blind worship once reserved for 12th Century Christians and Muslims. Any attempts to question the wisdom of the Cardinals and Mullahs, and the teachings which the seminaries and madrassahs (the various and sundry "business" schools) deliver, is met with stiff resistance and appeals to the observers' "patriotism", as if an economic system had something to do with the political system (our Constitutional, pluralistic, democratic republic). In fact, those who are skeptical of capitalistic nostrums about the markets' abilities to correct all that ails a society are often accused of being unpatriotic. Un-American. When thousands die every day for the sake of profit, skepticism is damanded for a system which abandons human and animal life in order to justify the margins which exist at the bottom line. From farmers in China who are pushed off their land by corrupt officials, to shipbreakers in Alang, to farmers in Punjab who are facing collapse of their crops from the ravages of the "Green Revolution" (the one in the 50-60's which brought us pesticides and herbicides on a massive indurtrial scale), profit frequently causes misery and death. This is simply an inescapable truth. Capitalism must become a human and animal first system, with profit a secondary or tertiary consideration. Otherwise, the planet's capacity to support us will simply collapse. To be sure, the planet will be OK. It has been for 4.5 Billion years. We, as humans, in addition to possibly millions of other species, will just not be a part of the biosphere any longer.
ps: We miss you, Spuddy.
Post a Comment