Allan Fels, former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), has compiled a report condemning the price gouging tactics of big business. Croaking his way through the report findings, Allan gave big business a serve, as he described corporate greed as “profit pushing” by companies with too much power. This attack on big business in the name of consumer advocacy is a broken record - over and over and over it plays, year in, year out. The outrage at unfair business practices, the subsequent report, the recommendations, the political promises, the inaction, the diversion, the memory-holing, the vanishing and then … a while later … the outrageous practices of big business and their corporate greed surfaces again to the inevitable denouncement by consumer groups. What we need to do is commission a report! - they cry. Get a reputable body like the ACCC to investigate and produce a list of recommendations to clean up the industry! - they say … just another day in Punxsutawney County.
The touchstones of our cultural landscape are like a cartoon sitcom’s wraparound background. An endlessly cycling scene of existence. It looks like Fred Flintstone is getting somewhere but he’s stuck in a loop. This is our culture. Honeymooners becomes Flintstones which became The Simpsons that in turn becomes Family Guy that begats Modern Family. Philosophical talking points, application of the law, all things endlessly recycled. Technological innovations suffer the same fate - the never ending procession of sameness - it’s a mop, then a mop that wrings out, a mop with a spray nozzle, now a mop with motorised spinning circular pads - turning, turning but never anything more than mopping.
This cultural repetition is the thing that keeps us all on the hamster wheel. If you are over forty years old and still buying into the prevailing narrative then you are an idiot. If you haven’t recognised the patterns yet, haven’t seen the sheer futility of the dominant cultural benchmarks, then it might be high time to pause and reflect. Stop eating the cardboard, it has no nutritional value.
Flinging open the doors of the cultural compound, gazing towards the horizon of possibility unveils the world as it is. Now, many miles across the expanse, the compound a mere speck in the distance, it becomes apparent that the world is ruled by chaos, chance and unexpected things. It’s a little frightening out here, there are few landmarks by which to navigate and no reassuring stories to tell. This is the real world where anything can and will happen.
The indeterminate nature of the world, a world free of the constraints of culture, is a world that mirrors our inner being.
“We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.” - Anaïs Nin
Our understanding is not only limited but highly individualised. For example - if we were to take a room of 20 people and ask those 20 people how various appliances work, we would get 20 different answers. This diaspora of understanding is the nature of our world and one wonders how, if we cannot find uniformity between ourselves, we can have consensus on ideas of governance, law and other societal structures. How is it that we can all agree? The answer is of course - we don’t. It is through the manufacturing of culture that an overarching system of beliefs is imposed. It is a false reality: convenient, safe, reassuring and always the same, it keeps everything turning.
Slotting into the machinery of culture is The Expert. A person who has been anointed by the culture makers to have authority over certain areas of understanding. The Expert may indeed have extensive experience within their subject parameters but this knowledge is theirs and theirs alone. What good is another’s understanding to you? Without the ability to sift that expert knowledge through your own mediated experience it is little more than another aspect of culture, another story, another wraparound background through which your character can run.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” - Anaïs Nin
The bad news is that extracting yourself from this world of recycled thinking necessitates a degree of alienation. You can no longer run with the pack or at least you cannot spend all of your time with the pack. You are going to have to leave the compound at times and explore the desert of uncertainty. One of the tools you’ll need in your backpack for this trek is a willingness to be in doubt. Get comfortable with this feeling. Certainly in these times, this notion of non-commitment to the edicts of culture is met with a fierce opposition. The tribalistic nature of contemporary times is determined to shove you into a box - Left, Right, Conservative, Liberal and all the prescribed values of said position. But as we’ve discussed, these notions are stale philosophies, making the rounds on their never ending farewell tour.
Desert exploration isn’t for everyone, I know. For whatever reason many (oh so many) wish to remain within the fortress walls. All that we ask is that you let us go, those of us who wish to seek the weird in the sands of uncertainty.
Please enjoy my music:
A lot of the brainwashing is done by the language of one's tribe. In our case,
"I believe humanity's foray into fiction began with the breakdown of the bicameral mind, and the insertion of meaningless symbols in between the subject and the seer. In short, back when people used pictographic alphabets, we were limited to discussing things we could actually see in the real world. The invention of phonemic alphabets like this one, which are comprised not of representative pictures but of meaningless letters, provides the opportunity to invent an endless stream of non-sense, the greatest of these being spelled with just a single capital letter."
Alphabet vs the goddess lecture by Leonard Shlain
https://robc137.substack.com/p/alphabet-vs-the-goddess
Also look at the jagoffs running the propaganda... I think people are losing interest in bad bullshit
https://robc137.substack.com/p/looking-behind-the-curtain-of-oz
So good to know ... that there are others out there ... outliers, adventurers, 'individuals', yet such a paradox.