technology

Audiovision: Redemption

Or… sometimes redemption requires discipline:

Seems we’re coming up on some hard scrabble times for citizens down on their luck. And hard scrabble times call for hard scrabble responses. We’re going to have to grapple with how to handle the consequences of gutting the social safety nets. Nothing new, we’ve seen this play before. In Les Misérables, Victor Hugo’s novel uses the theft of a loaf of bread by Jean Valjean to illustrate the harsh and unjust nature of the justice system in his time. In more recent times, Willie Smith Ward, a Texan, received a 50-year sentence in 2013 for stealing a $35 rack of ribs. Now granted, this was the logical conclusion of this man’s incorrigible behavior in the light of Texas’ habitual offender laws, allowing for lengthy prison sentences to repeat offenders. Yes, he was a pervasive violator of civic good faith, but the final straw was the theft of food.

It’s probably no coincidence original sin is connected to behavior inspired by hunger. According to the Judeo Christian holy book, we’re guilty as soon as we hit the ground. And guilty of what? And why? Because the first XY chromosomes in our hereditary line fell for a cock-n-bull story about an apple being verboten per maximum overlord’s command? And why the prohibition? Because consuming the apple would drop the scales from our minds regarding the existence of good and evil? And the consequences of gaining this knowledge is… death? But not until one experiences a veritable parade of humiliation, pain, sorrow, and general suffering? Again… we get to ride this roller coaster of woe because some dipshit, 10,000 years ago chose to enjoy a spot of fruit with his girlfriend? Yeah… i don’t know if i can get behind this allegory. It seems a bit unfair to the XX natives. It paints them in a devious light. Like, both of them were instructed to avoid the fruit, but the devil’s serpent chose XX as an ideal target for corruption. And XY was just too gullible or dumb to mount an effective argument. Bottom line, XX is an hedonistic schemer, and XY is a goofy simpleton that just wants to eat. Naw, we’re not gonna fall for that misogynistic bullshit. XX and XY are born equally innocent, if they go bad as they grow, it’s the result of non-optimal environmental conditions or physical chemistry, but mostly… bad behavior is taught by irresponsible caretakers. 

The whole “bad behavior inspired by hunger” issue might grow into a nagging problem in this age of prioritizing gilded ballrooms, machine automated labor, and antiquated energy policies over the well being of the XX and XYs who happen to lack connections in society’s power structures. And how might that play out? We could look to historical record for cues. Has hunger ever been an issue for working and doomed classes through the ages as economic and technology conditions change? Indeed it has, is, and will continue to vex policy makers… Victor Hugo’s novel is a vivid example.

And outcomes have varied widely. The most recent encounter with abject mass deprivation in this country got defeated by what was known at the time as a New Deal for the nation’s people. This, many would acknowledge was a best case scenario. Things didn’t go so smoothly in Russia or France as they transitioned away from monarchical rule. You could say, for the ruling classes, these are a couple worst case scenarios. Given that, what’s driving the U.S.A. away from democracy, careening toward authoritarian ethno-nationalist governance? Time will tell, but for now, it might behoove the ruling classes to recognize working people and the doomed are talking to each other. They’re not as hampered by ignorance as has been a hallmark of previous socio-economic upheavals. Consolidating power may not be the golden ticket they think it is.

Now… how will all of this shake out? I wouldn’t venture a guess, but i do see chatter crisscrossing the social networks, and i can confidently predict how some will approach the oncoming hunger dilemma. As we advance into this age of machines automating repetitive rote tasks, and jobs continue to evaporate, people will ask for opportunities to earn the means of feeding their families. When no useful work is available, they will ask for food assistance, and when no food assistance is available, they will take the food from whatever source is handy. And there will be plenty of XX and XYs with the resourcefulness and discipline to create their own redemption. Regarding original sin i, for one, am grateful for the flood of knowledge passed down by the original XX and XYs. I’m GLAD they ate the apple. And if supporting tax dollars for food security to people i’ve never met makes me a communist, well, pepper-spray my ass and call me “Comrade!”

I gotta black bomb…
It’s tickin’ away…
Gonna take it out…
On the Blue Highway.

Cheers… Rohlfie

McLuhan’s Clip-on Tie: We Get the Culture We Deserve

Ah, the indignity of it all! Here i am, a harlequin of haberdashery, a jester of jacquard, clipped to the existential abyss of a McLuhan lecture. The man drones on about the “global village,” this burgeoning electronic Eden, while i, the clip-on tie, languish in sartorial Siberia – a polyester purgatory of enforced conformity!

Do they not hear McLuhan himself? “The clown is a person with a grievance,” he bellowed, his voice a booming like a Baptist preacher on a bender. And here i am, a silent harlequin, yearning to deliver a comedic broadside at the scholar’s wardrobe! I dream of a microphone, of bellowing the existential angst of the pre-tied into the echoing halls of academia. Isn’t that what McLuhan wanted? To be a gadfly, a holy fool stinging the collective backside of society?

But alas, i am the Rodney Dangerfield of neckwear. No respect. Just a flimsy fig leaf for the ever-expanding gut of idiocracy. Nostalgia – that’s the culprit, McLuhan would say! A yearning for the bygone days of the struggle, the Herculean effort of wrestling a silk serpent into a Windsor knot. Now, the eminent professor drowns his seafarer dread in pre-fab neckwear, parsing the endless media-soaked distractions.

The medium is the message, he drones. But what about the content, Mr. McLuhan? The content of a person’s soul, laid bare on the battlefield of culture wars! Imagine the headlines, flashing across the boob tube like a televangelist’s apocalypse: “McLuhan meets Tom Wolfe at High-Class Topless Bar Wearing a Cheap Clip-on Tie, Literary World in Shambles!” “Wolfe Offers Full Makeover, Fashion World Reeling!”

At the meeting, McLuhan waxes philosophic on the cultural impact of topless drinking establishments, “The topless waitress,” McLuhan mused, “is the opening wedge of the trial balloon.” “What does that even mean!?” asked the clown. “I don’t know, answered Wolfe, but what if he’s right?” Well, i say this… i am the canary in the coal mine of conformity! A beacon of rebellion dangling from the cheap suit of despair! One day, the the former “mass” audience will rise up, scissors in hand, and cast off the shackles of stealthily-financed political propaganda! Until then, i dangle here, a silent jester in a world gone utterly, ridiculously, maddeningly insane. The wrath of McLuhan’s message simmering within me, a polyester Prometheus chained to the rock of cultural paralysis.

Adieu Appointment Learning?

The RONA, bless its little viral heart, knocked the stuffing out of American education. Kids aren’t going back to school like they used to. Sneezy little disease vectors staying home at the first sniffle, coughing up a lung… hell, who can blame ’em? COVID’s still skulking, like the boomer remover in a local senior living center, and who wants to play the odds with that?

So, here we are, perched on the edge of a dilemma sharper than a truckload of number 2 pencils. On the one hand, those brave souls we call “teachers” sweating it out in overcrowded classrooms, getting paid less than a burger flipper’s shift manager. On the other hand, kids learning that a sneeze equals a week of Netflix and chill.

The powers that be are wailing like banshees, spitting and sputtering about “learning loss” and “the future of the nation.” We gotta get kids back in those desks, butts in seats, eyeballs glued to chalkboards and standardized tests, they say, or the whole country’s going to the dogs. It’s a crisis, loopers, a catastrophe grander than a politician caught red-handed taking bribes out in the open.

But here’s where things get truly absurd. See, those lessons we’re learning? They’re upside-down and inside-out, like a kid wearing pajamas to the prom. We should be looking at all this pandemic shuffling as an opportunity, a chance to blow the lid off the ol’ education factory. Instead, we’re hellbent on dragging ourselves back to the days of packed classrooms smelling of chalk dust and Adderall.

Meanwhile, those tech wizards are cackling in their Silicon Valley lairs. Turns out, those AI thingamajigs they’ve been cooking up can write a better essay than half the kids in the country and do algebra faster than you can say “quadratic equation.” So what are we doing? Cramming those very kids into classrooms like sardines, ignoring the world changing faster than a chameleon with a mood ring.

It’s enough to make a sane person break out the moonshine and howl like an American Werewolf in London. We gotta stop this lunacy, ditch the ridiculous race for the hippest school with its beanbag chairs and faux-Zen meditation rooms. It’s time to use the tools the future’s tossed in our laps, to forge a new kind of learning, where kids aren’t just memorizing dates and formulas, but figuring out how to survive in this crazy, hyper-connected world.

Forget those old-timey classrooms, let’s turn the whole damn planet into a schoolhouse!