Pinboard: bookmarks for adamcrowe tagged 'metanarratives'

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The Archdruid Report -- The Blood of the Earth, or Pulp Nonfiction

'I’ve talked more than once in these essays about the immense role that narratives play in our mental and social lives. In what we are pleased to call "primitive societies," a rich body of mythology and legend provides each person with a range of narratives that can be applied to any given situation and make sense of it. Learning the stories, and learning how to apply them to life’s events, is the core of a child’s education in these societies, and a learned person is very often distinguished, more than anything else, by the number of traditional stories he or she knows by heart. More technologically advanced societies often, though not invariably, move away from this, consigning their inheritance of stories to children—think, for example, of the role of fairy tales in nineteenth- and twentieth-century industrial societies—while narrowing down the range of stories adults are supposed to think with, until all that’s left are variations on one narrative. Serious thinking in these societies is by definition thinking that follows the accepted narrative.'

storytelling framing metanarratives mythology myth magick JohnMichaelGreer
january 2012 by adamcrowe

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Ribbonfarm -- The Evolution of the American Dream

'You can compare Pig Narratives on the basis of the degree of prey liberty (or conversely, predator control) they represent, allowing you to plot the evolution over time. ...to remain secure, Pig Narratives must not be shifted too quickly, because they provide the functional logic of dominant institutions. Ideally, changes should be so small that the prey barely notices. Fortunately for the Pigs, Pig narratives are naturally hard to shift. Unfortunately for the Pigs, there is also a dynamic which forces rapid shifts despite their best efforts. This is the impact of the defining events for each generation, which provide the motivation and raw material for each rewrite, and therefore constrain the level of spin achievable. Things get garbled during such times, leading to widespread anomie among those waiting and expecting to be programmed by a Pig. The pig narrative is a normative behavior at the scale of the average life, and it can change no faster than the rate at which generations displace each other from the population.'

hegemony metanarratives intergenerationalwarfare
november 2011 by adamcrowe

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Adam Curtis: For 10 years, Osama bin Laden filled a gap left by the Soviet Union. Who will be the baddie now?

'One of the main functions of politicians – and journalists – is to simplify the world for us. But there comes a point when – however much they try – the bits of reality, the fragments of events, won't fit into the old frame. ...the fundamental problem with this simple story of good versus evil is that it does not permit a proper critical framework that allows you to properly judge not only those you are fighting, but also your allies. -- America and the coalition invaded Afghanistan with the simple aim of destroying the terror camps and setting up a democracy that would allow the country to be ruled by good people. But in the ensuing decade they have been tricked, spun round and deceived by the complex web of vested interests there. And their inability to understand and deal with this has led to the rise of a state crippled by corruption in which it is impossible to know who the "good" people might be any longer.' -- YOU

metanarratives propaganda forcedmemes terrorism! spectacle AdamCurtis from delicious
may 2011 by adamcrowe

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BBC Newsnight: Paul Mason -- Twenty reasons why it's kicking off everywhere

'#15. People just know more than they used to. Dictatorships rely not just on the suppression of news but on the suppression of narratives and truth. More or less everything you need to know to make sense of the world is available as freely downloadable content on the internet: and it's not pre-digested for you by your teachers, parents, priests, imams. For example there are huge numbers of facts available to me now about the subjects I studied at university that were not known when I was there in the 1980s. Then whole academic terms would be spent disputing basic facts, or trying to research them. Now that is still true but the plane of reasoning can be more complex because people have an instant reference source for the undisputed premises of arguments. It's as if physics has been replaced by quantum physics, but in every discipline. -- ...are we creating a complete disconnect between the values and language of the state and those of the educated young?'

forcedmemes metanarratives cognitivesurplus internet apocalypse intergenerationalwarfare from delicious
february 2011 by adamcrowe

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Wikipedia -- Global village (term)

'McLuhan described how the globe has been contracted into a village by electric technology and the instantaneous movement of information from every quarter to every point at the same time. In bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion, electric speed heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree. -- No chapter in Understanding Media, or later books, contains the idea that the Global Village and the electronic media create unified communities. In fact, in an interview with Gerald Stearn, McLuhan says that it never occurred to him that uniformity and tranquillity were the properties of the Global Village. McLuhan argued that the Global Village ensures maximal disagreement on all points because it creates more discontinuity and division and diversity under the increase of the village conditions. The Global Village is far more diverse.' -- Every village seen globally NOT one globe-spanning village.

metanarratives internet retribalization globalvillage McLuhan from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe

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The Daily Bell -- Tunisia Anarchy Meme

'Dominant Social Theme: Will a great revolution lead to a more transparent, democratic government? -- Is this the narrative the power elite intends to offer to handle the clash between the new electronic communication and their fear-based promotions? This is not, in fact, the narrative offered by the Daily Bell, which is that the Internet will spark a variety of unexpected changes and lead to a fundamental shift in the way people regard their sociopolitical environments. Such changes need not include revolutions (of various colors and shades) or "anarchy" that needs to be dissipated by the proper approach of "authorities" to initiated "democratic change." The Tunisian Jasmine Revolution contains all these narrative notes: anarchy, grave authority figures promising significant democratic reform and even reports that various WikiLeaks leaks memos are the reason for the rioting. We note the "neatness" of this theme – from WikiLeaks ... to revolution ... to democratic reforms.'

metanarratives "anarchy" statism blacklash internet precuperation forcedmemes democracy populism wikileaks from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe

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The Daily Bell -- Europe Falls Toward Enlightenment?

'A vicious crisis has driven Western citizens to their electronic boxes as they search desperately for a way to understand what has happened to their once-predictable worlds. It has happened before. History is not written by Great Men, by wars or even natural disasters. History is the outcome of a struggle between power elites who create "history" and the great masses of people who only occasionally understand that they are being manipulated to the benefit of a determined few. Technology plays a big role in this struggle, for it is through new communication technologies that masses are occasionally awakened from their slumber – dreamtimes – to confront the reality of their manipulations and the danger of their aggregate plight. The elite of the day fights back with wars, pestilence, famine, whatever tools are available. History is made and then rewritten and rewritten ... until the masses, confused, settle back into sluggish, stultified quiescence. But...'

metanarratives history oligarchy forcedmemes cognitivesurplus internet media themediumisthemessage from delicious
december 2010 by adamcrowe

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Archetypes on the Path

Order out of chaos -- '#1. Heroes are introduced in the ORDINARY WORLD, where #2. they receive the CALL TO ADVENTURE. #3. They are RELUCTANT at first or REFUSE THE CALL, but #4. are encouraged by a MENTOR to #5. CROSS THE FIRST THRESHOLD and enter the Special World, where #6. they encounter TESTS, ALLIES, AND ENEMIES. #7. They APPROACH THE INMOST CAVE, crossing a second threshold #8. where they endure the ORDEAL. #9. They take possession of their REWARD and #10. are pursued on THE ROAD BACK to the Ordinary World. #11. They cross the third threshold, experience a RESURRECTION, and are transformed by the experience. #12. They RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR, a boon or treasure to benefit the Ordinary World.'

poetics archetypes storytelling gaming transformation therapy mecosystem narrativearchitecture narration metanarratives fantasy mythology heroism ethos magick from delicious
december 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Daily Bell -- Demise of the Politically Correct?

'...if one subscribes (as we do) to the idea of an Anglo-American power elite that uses its tremendous, familial banking wealth to move society toward one-world government, then the evolution we are observing makes a good deal of sense. Money power makes all the difference; it provides a formidable incentive for self-censorship. Money determines fashion; wealthy donors fund museums and theatres that make "gate-keeper" decisions. The subtlety of money power—as brutal as it can be—is wondrous to behold. What was resisted in one generation is welcomed in the next. The beauty of money power is that once a theme, trend or cultural direction is set into place, it tends to propagate on its own. Only a relative few gatekeepers are needed. Establish a trend and the mimetic elements of human behavior take over. People are inevitably tribal. It is a survival instinct and a success-instinct. One sees what is successful and wishes to emulate it. Within this context almost anything can be nurtured.'

metanarratives statism crimestop goodthink mimesis memetics forcedmemes propaganda art culture politicalcorrectness usefulidiot herd puppetry consensusreality collectiveunconsciousness from delicious
november 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Daily Bell -- Is the Elite Destabilizing the World on Purpose?

'The solution is usually the same (though again, we have not read Marshall's full book) and features additional programs and initiatives that are somehow not tainted by elite interference. This is government, in other words, without mercantilism. It is a fantasy in our view. It cannot exist. If there are governmental levers of power, wealthy elites will always find a way to pull them. The only solution is to starve the beast. Remove the levers of power altogether, or at least as much as possible. We believe in free-markets. We do not see it in class-warfare terms, necessarily. We do not see it even in terms of capitalist exploitation. We see it as a kind of cultural problem. These families have been pursuing the same goals for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. And for those who say it is impossible, we point to modern royalty and its entrenchment. It is indeed possible to leverage privilege into law and perpetuate wealth through national mandates. The evidence is all around us.'

2+2=5 marxism "capitalism" metanarratives falseconsciousness truebelieversyndrome oligarchy mercantilism statism government delusion stockholmsyndrome from delicious
october 2010 by adamcrowe

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Adam Curtis Blog -- THE STRANGE DEATH OF POLITICAL ENGLAND

'It is the story of how, with the rise of individualism, we all stopped defining ourselves by politics and being part of collective groups, and believing in collective ideas. And instead we started to define ourselves by culture - both popular and high-brow - because music and style and art allowed us to give expression to our individual identities, rather than supressing them in the greater interest of the group.'

metanarratives documentaries AdamCurtis from delicious
september 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Daily Bell -- Rise of the Neo-Authoritarian Intelligentsia

'Thought leaders are necessary from a credibility standpoint. But now the power elite has a problem. Not all of the intelligentsia is leftist or socialist these days. Some of them are right wing and a good many are libertarian. This is a very big problem for the elite. The response (and it is increasingly effective as we have indicated) is apparently to cultivate a whole new brand or class of quasi-libertarian intellectual. This is heady stuff. Hirsi Ali is using the firepower of her intellect not to promote peace or understanding but to advocate what is essentially (in our humble view) the "long war." This is indeed a new paradigm for the modern intelligentsia. In the past century most of the intellectual class has been seen as peaceable and even pacifistic. But the new tone of the modern-day mainstream writer for thought magazines (some of them anyway) is increasingly militant and chauvinistic. It is fascinating (in a queasy way) to watch.'

metanarratives dialetics forcedmemes rhetoric sophistry intellectualism authoritarianism statism usefulidiot complianceprofessionals 2+2=5 dialectics from delicious
august 2010 by adamcrowe

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Center for Media Literacy -- Babylon Revisited: How Violent Myths Resurface Today by Walter Wink

'...how the myth of redemptive violence structures the standard comic or cartoon: An indestructible good guy is unalterably opposed to an irreformable and equally indestructible bad guy. Nothing can kill the good guy... Nothing finally destroys the bad guy or prevents his reappearance... Children identify with the good guy so that they can think of themselves as good. This enables them to project out onto the bad guy their own repressed anger, violence, rebelliousness or lust, and then vicariously enjoy their own evil by watching the bad guy initially prevail. (This segment of the show actually consumes all but the closing minutes, allowing ample time for indulging the shadow side of the self.) When the good guy finally wins, viewers are then able to reassert control over their own inner tendencies, repress them, and reestablish a sense of goodness. Salvation is guaranteed through identification with the hero ...[with whom] one's personal well-being is tied inextricably...'

psychology archetypes tropes storytelling metanarratives evil violence displacement sublimation repression projection morality ethics falseself fantasy magick mysterybabylon from delicious
august 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Daily Bell -- Cultural Marxism: The Corruption of America by Nelson Hultberg

(A God-fearing screed, yet still very useful.) -- 'Under Critical Theory/User Friendly Marxism, every tradition of Western life was to be redefined as ... "victims" or "oppressors." The stream of criticism was relentless and extremely sophisticated in an intellectual sense. Thus it mesmerized the pundit class who then disseminated the criticisms' fundamental content to the populace at large.' These intellectuals now control and administer our schools, media, courts, and legislatures. The cultural Marxists adopted Nietzsche's "transvaluation of all values," in which the Mad Hatter's world is instituted: Everything that previously was an evil now becomes a virtue while all the old virtues become evils. Individualism, self-reliance, property, profit, family, marriage, fidelity to spouse, strength of will, personal honor, rising through merit -- all these integral pillars of our civilization become distinctive evils that oppress us as humans. They must be rooted out of our existence.'

metanarratives criticism marxism criticaltheory relativism subjectivism intellectualism vanguardism subversion forcedmemes griefing demoralization politicalcorrectness mindcontrol from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Daily Bell -- Hollywood's Failing Memes

'When the dominant story-telling of a society becomes disconnected from its reality, then the sociopolitical narrative has lost its hold. When people cease to believe, or when the dominant social themes grow too ludicrous and are unbelievable of themselves, then the organizational "glue" of society begins to fail. What is the American narrative these days? It used to be one of individualism, entrepreneurship, family and community. The mythos was agrarian and frontier-oriented. But the elite succeeded in the 20th century, when it was most untrammeled, in swapping these verities for woman's liberation, big government militancy and welfarism, military and civil policing and anti-free-market activism. Now in the era of the Internet, with collapsing economies and an inability to manufacture believable dominant social themes, the elite has nowhere to turn. It is a victim of its own success. Hollywood's distress signals a larger one.'

metanarratives america mythology hollywood magick forcedmemes prolefeed militaryentertainmentcomplex propaganda predictiveprogramming statism oligarchy from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Daily Bell -- Nullification - the Freedom Meme

'Shutting the Internet off with a "switch" is no more feasible than destroying printing businesses during the heyday of the Gutenberg press. Elites throughout history have turned what they could to their advantage. But that does not mean that technology itself or its resulting impact were preordained. What drives human society are its tools. And when the toolkit grows more sophisticated it can change society radically. Government pushback, of course, is quite powerful and will continue to be (at the behest of the elite in our opinion). But when it comes to the Internet, we would tend to maintain that the more the power elite struggles, the more it generates results that are contrary to its expectations. This is what happened during the era of the Gutenberg press. The same mechanisms are at work today. [The Elite's] regrouping can take a lot of time – enough time for a little bit of renaissance to occur. It's happened before. We think it has already begun to happen again.'

metanarratives history oligarchy forcedmemes internet themediumisthemessage technology humanaction cognitivesurplus freedom from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Freedomain Radio: The Truth Behind 'Lost' - A Philosophical Review

'Reason versus mysticism - it is depressing, though accurate, to see who won...'

lost metanarratives culture StefanMolyneux irrationality
may 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Last Psychiatrist -- Reality Responds To The Matrix

'The narcissist says: if it can't happen to me, it can't really happen. 2500 Americans can't just die in one day. But 9/11 was different. It didn't respect the rules. It violated the most important aspect of postmodern narcissism: story. Not only was the attack a surprise – no warning, no buildup, no exposition, no rising action – but even the characters were a surprise. We were revealed to be powerless. No heroes. No one knew kung fu. -- You might say that the Great Recession we're in now should end postmodern narcissism. Nope. Amazingly, all I hear and read are calls for punishing those who got us into this mess (Wall Street), "fixing the system," "solving the housing crisis." People are waiting for things to "get back to normal." People: this is normal. The past twenty years-- easy credit, college for everyone that leads to a job at Starbucks, unemployment under 6% – that was abnormal. -- So: two huge historical realities have had no impact on our cultural narcissism.'

psychology psychiatry metanarratives identity heroism fantasy grandiosity narcissism entitlement culture delusion irrationality
may 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Daily Bell -- In Defense of Goldman

'The power elite that organized the current Western monetary system was successful back in the 1930s in creating a narrative that blamed the financial industry (Wall Street, etc.) for the crash and subsequent Depression. As books like the Creature From Jekyll Island have shown us, it was the formation of a modern central bank, in tandem with modern regulatory democracy that caused the monetary failures that led to the Great Depression. It was inevitable that the elite would again try to shape the narrative of the modern money crisis, and in the largest sense, we think the Goldman lawsuit is part of the process. We are not necessarily implying, by the way, that the powers-that-be sat down in a conference room and decided to blame Goldman for everything. But just as the Western mercantilist money system itself eventually yields up chaos, so the system, with its farcical and dysfunctional regulatory apparatus, eventually yields up culprits. And it has been designed that way.'

economics mercantilism centralbanking businesscycle malinvestment bubble fraud GoldmanSachs "capitalism" populism metanarratives forcedmemes misdirection
april 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Daily Bell -- Baby-Boomers Rule?

'...the history of humankind is the struggle between an intra-generational elite that believes it is entitled to rule and a larger mass of humanity that opposes the command and control formulations endlessly being laid upon them. It could be said that baby boomers instinctively understood this underlying struggle and reacted, youthfully, in their own way against it. But the Internet was not yet invented during the 1960s and the information about what was really going on was lacking. Today, such information is available, but baby boomers are older now and the passion of youth is diminished. It is not likely that many boomers are apt to take up the fight to live more freely and to unravel the entanglements that elite have placed upon everyone else. That will have to be left to subsequent generations. -- ...a profound dialogue [is] taking place and a historical document is being erected act by act, story by story and report by report within the confines of the 'Net's alternative media.'

history metanarratives babyboomers oligarchy internet cognitivesurplus
april 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Daily Bell -- David Icke on Earth's Artificial Moon and Why Humanity, Ultimately, is One Big, Biological Internet

'Readers can make up their own mind about David Icke and his vision of the way the world works. But we do want to point out that he does something very interesting - that almost no other public personality does in quite the same way. This former professional soccer player and television presenter has made himself over into an almost shamanistic figure, one who makes a living by clothing his observations (though, yes, he does deny it) in allegory. Here is a man who is singlehandedly proposing a kind of creation myth, and making a living doing so. Again, leaving aside its reality, or purported practicality, the level of imagination and determination he brings to the task is noteworthy. Unnoticed by fashionable thinkers of our modern era - and a little like the poet William Blake, strangely enough - he is in the middle of creating his own cosmogony. Its popular acceptance and penetration in this day and age, for whatever reason, is worth pondering.'

metanarratives pathocracy allegory storytelling archetypes shamanism occult DavidIcke
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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transmediale -- Keynote: Bruce Sterling on Atemporality

"It means the end of postmodernism." -- Out of the darkness and into the light: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamcrowe/4343266495/

meta metanarratives history literaryculturevsoralculture BruceSterling retribalization
february 2010 by adamcrowe

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Spiked -- The IPCC: a Vatican for the twenty-first century? by Brendan O’Neill

'...what the recent climate-science scandals reveal is that such dodgy science becomes more likely the more that science is politicised and used to motor social policy and social-control initiatives. The politicians and green activists desperately calling for the IPCC to get its house in order, to get rid of the crap science and only keep the allegedly good stuff, know which side their bread is buttered. They know that the IPCC is the emperor’s last shred of clothing, providing otherwise denuded rulers and campaigners with a form of unquestionable authority for their backward, killjoy, misanthropic agendas. They are really demanding the preservation of the IPCC by any means necessary because they value the way it provides them with a God-like authority for Orwellian action at a time when serious democratic debate is noteable by its absence. And perhaps we should call for the abolition of the IPCC, not because some of its science is daft, but for precisely those same reasons.'

climate metanarratives consensus consensusreality goodthink groupthink authoritarianism environmentalism irrationality
february 2010 by adamcrowe

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Spiked -- Anything ‘sustainable’ is not worth having

'It is telling that the works of the eighteenth-century doom-mongering demographer Thomas Malthus are more popular today than ever before. Malthus is back at the centre of public discussion. The whole hierarchical notion of inequality, and most importantly the whole notion of limits, which Malthus so forcefully promoted, is palpable in public debate today. It is best summed up by the widespread idea that having too many babies is a bad thing, that we should slap a ‘carbon tax’ on children, and that one can demonstrate one’s maturity and sense of responsibility by not procreating because human beings are polluters with huge carbon footprints. That ideology is very important and is underlined by a quasi-religious, almost medieval idea that ‘we are getting what we deserve’.' -- DANGER -- '...we don’t simply want things to be sustainable - we want things to move forward, to progress, to develop. ...what is really lacking today is some kind of progress-related, progressive ideology...'

eugenics metanarratives ideology religion penance populism recession austerity misanthropy
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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blip.tv -- Cooler Heads Event with Dr. Richard Lindzen on Cap and Trade

'Dr. Lindzen disputes some of the claims made by global warming alarmists, presents real climate facts, and questions the purpose of the bill.' -- Quoting Mike Hume: "The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us. Because the idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs. We will continue to create and tell new stories about climate change and mobilize them in support of our projects. These myths transcend the scientific categories of ‘true' and ‘false'"

climate scams fraud propaganda science skepticism environmentalism consensusreality groupthink cults metanarratives RichardLindzen
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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ImageTexT -- The Tides of History: Alan Moore's Historiographic Vision by Sean Carney

'"History, unendingly revised and reinterpreted, is seen upon examination as merely a different class of fiction [...]. Still, it is a fiction that we must inhabit. [...] All that remains in question is whose map we choose, whether we live within the world's insistent texts or else replace them with a stronger language of our own." --- ... Moore understands that in order to change history one must become a part of history, and thus engage in a kind of human sacrifice, as much as he would like to imagine some other way. -- "There's no space and there's no time. It's just as easy for you to think about what you were doing this morning as Victorian street scenes. You can go there instantly. You can imagine a scene from ten years in the future." Idea Space is the medium through which human consciousness draws connections across space and time, finds meaningfulness in the immediate through its mediation within larger contexts. -- Fiction is how reality is made...'

* meta storytelling liminality fiction reality dialectics time space simultaneity literaryculturevsoralculture history metanarratives postmodernism language culture ideaspace magic shamanism sacrifices semiosis realityprogramming consciousness philosophy mythology meaning AlanMoore comics
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wikipedia -- The Decline of the West

'The Decline of the West (The Downfall of the Occident) is a two-volume work by Oswald Spengler ...according to its theories we are now living in the winter time of the Faustian civilization where the populace constantly strives for the unattainable—making the western man a proud but tragic figure, for while he strives and creates he secretly knows the actual goal will never be reached. -- Freedom, to Spengler, is a negative concept, simply entailing the repudiation of any tradition. Democracy and plutocracy are equivalent in Spengler's argument. The "tragic comedy of the world-improvers and freedom-teachers" is that they are simply assisting money to be more effective. The ideologies espoused by candidates, whether Socialism or Liberalism, are set in motion by, and ultimately serve, only money. "Free" press does not spread free opinion—it generates opinion. The only force which can counter money, in Spengler's estimation, is blood.'

civilization metanarratives history predictions democracy negativeliberty money philosophy
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility -- Soviet Consumerism

'I tend to take it for granted that brands of products function only to help individuals brand themselves, to allow them to project certain traits along the lines described in the previous paragraph. (For producers, brands allow for the elaboration of differences between competitors’ commodities where there are more or less materially indistinguishable.) But Red Moscow suggests that brands could be contrived to close off avenues for the development of a superficial self. Nationalist brands would enlist users into helping complete the ideological project of the state, not the self—a state that may not allow for an autonomous self. Such brands would demonstrate conformity and obedience in a much more direct way than our brands.. Consumerism is soft coercion in that sense; it allows for a space where conformity can comfortably coexist with rebellion—the revolution is reduced to continually turning over one’s personal affect within a game whose rules are thereby protected from change.'

russia branding consumerism communism nationalism statism ideology propaganda realityprogramming metanarratives narrativeobjects objects
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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GreenCine -- "A Growing Public Distrust": Adam Curtis

'Curtis: I'll tell you what I think about the neo-conservatives. In a way, I admire them for nostalgic reasons. They are the last revolutionaries - and some of them actually came out of a Trotskyite revolutionary tradition. They are making an awesome attempt to remake and reshape the world, much as Trotsky tried to do in the Russian Revolution, using military power. It's amazing. It has an epic-ness to it. I feel nostalgic for it, in the face of a managerial politics that just seem to want to tweak and adjust its policies to those of the focus groups and the soccer moms. -- ...when it becomes obvious that a lot of this is a constructed fantasy, based often on idealism and not necessarily on conspiracy, there will be a growing public distrust about the very nature of how reality is described to them. ...the neoconservatives have taken us into a philosophical quagmire, which is, "How do you describe reality, how do you make sense of the world? How do you construct it?"'

storytelling metanarratives ideology idealism conspiracy reality realityprogramming reflexivity AdamCurtis
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Little Atoms -- Adam Curtis Interview (cont.)

'Most journalists have run out of knowing what's going on in the world. And they have embraced this idea of media democracy as a way to disguise that fact. I'm deeply suspicious of it. The whole reason why journalism was invented in the first place is that we have the time, the money, and the power of the organisation to go places, push through doors, find things out, bring it back, and tell you it and allow you to make up your mind about it. ...those who are the promoters of the internet, the boosters, the people who put forward the utopian dream of the internet, and those who basically run silicon valley, are arch individualists, they portray the internet as a playground where every individual can invent their own identity, and it's a new form of democracy without hierarchies of power.' -- On the paradox of the booster dependence on datamining: -- 'it's a completely contradictory view of what human beings are, how they behave, to what these boosters actually portray the internet as.'

internet technoutopianism utopia individualism hype temes collectiveintelligence algorithms datamining homogeneity theadvertisedlife doublethink metanarratives ideology conspiracy discourse recuperation rhetoric reality journalism AdamCurtis
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Little Atoms -- Adam Curtis Interview

'What's happened is you had an idea – which in a way was quite an heroic idea – that each individual could be themselves, could express themselves and become better people. In fact, what happened in that process is that you shifted the idea of risk away from institutions and onto the person themselves, and in that process is what people began to do – far from expressing themselves – began to monitor themselves to see whether they are the correct definition of the individual, whether it's in psychology, how they feel and how they behave; and they begin to search for – and are given – ways of monitoring that as individuals, and that paradoxically leads them to trying to become what they think is the right individual, which actually leads to homogeneity... that idea of total expressiveness... it may be breaking up now as we enter an economic crisis and politicians discover they have power, institutions have power, and that's the way to change the world. The idea of the self may change.'

internet utopia hype temes datamining homogeneity theadvertisedlife storytelling metanarratives individualism self sousveillance narcissism negativeliberty conspiracy discourse recuperation rhetoric journalism ideas AdamCurtis
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Guardian -- Market dogma is exposed as myth. Where is the new vision to unite us? by Madeleine Bunting

Adam Curtis: "What we have is a cacophony of individual narratives, everyone wants to be the author of their own lives, no one wants to be relegated to a part in a bigger story; everyone wants to give their opinion, no one wants to listen. It's enchanting, it's liberating, but ultimately it's disempowering because you need a collective, not individual, narrative to achieve change." -- 'Curtis argues that we are still enchanted by the possibilities of our personal narratives although they leave us isolated, disconnected, and at their worst, they are simply solipsistic performances desperate for an audience. But we are in a bizarre hiatus because the economic systems that sustained and amplified this model of individualism have collapsed. It was cheap credit and a housing boom that made possible the private pursuit of experience, self-expression and self-gratification as the content of a good life. As this disintegrates and youth unemployment soars, this good life will be a cruel myth.'

sociology metanarratives individualism narcissism solipsism self theadvertisedlife AdamCurtis
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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OUPblog -- American War Propaganda Top Ten

'Propaganda sells wars. Emotionally powerful and instantly recognizable, propaganda messages serve to simplify complex international crises for public consumption. A persuasive blend of fact and fiction, they resonate with what Americans want to believe about themselves. Here are the top ten messages used by the U.S. government over the past century to rally public support for war.' -- "RISPEKK MAH AUTHORITAAAH!!1" -- "America, FUCK YEAH! Coming again, to save the mother fucking day..." -- "The American Dream, You Have to Be Asleep to Believe It." etc, etc, etc

america empire power propaganda war denial delusion doublethink metanarratives
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Guardian -- Charlie Brooker on Adam Curtis' new documentary experience, It Felt Like A Kiss

"I wanted to do a film about what it actually felt like to live through that time...Where you could see the roots of the uncertainties we feel today, the things they did out on the dark fringes of the world that they didn't really notice at the time, which would then come back to haunt us. The way power works in the world is: they tell you stories that make sense of the world. That's what America did after the second world war. It told you wonderful dreamlike stories about the world...And at that same time, you were encouraged to rise up and 'become an individual', which also made the whole idea of America attractive to the rest of the world. But then this very individualism began to corrode it. The uncertainties began in people's minds. Uncertainty about 'what is the point of being an individual?'" -- Forthcoming doc: "the political and cultural ideas that underlie the internet—and the idea that we are all linked in an interconnected web—out of which can come a new form of democracy."

psychology storytelling metanarratives theamericandream america empire power individualism theadvertisedlife documentaries narrativeenvironments memory AdamCurtis
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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BBC -- Adam Curtis: Into the darkness

"It Felt Like a Kiss started life as an experimental film I made for the BBC last year. My aim was to try and find a more involving and emotional way of doing political journalism on TV. I decided to make a film about something that has always fascinated me - how power really works in the world. To show that power is exercised not just through politics and diplomacy - but flows through our feelings and emotions, and shapes the way we think of ourselves and the world." -- Video: "IT FELT LIKE A KISS. When a nation is powerful it tells the world confident stories about the future. The stories can be enchanting or frightening. But they make sense of the world. But when that power begins to ebb, there are no stories any more. You are on your own. And you have no idea what is coming towards you. Now go into the dark."

psychology storytelling metanarratives theamericandream america empire power individualism theadvertisedlife documentaries narrativeenvironments memory AdamCurtis
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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BBC -- Adam Curtis: The introduction to It Felt Like a Kiss

Vid: "The Introduction. In 1945 America's solider fought terrible battles and saw the horror of death camps. In Japan a new weapon killed hundreds of thousands in an instant. The soliders came home and were told they had fought a Good War. They created a new world for their children. Safe from the horrors that humans can do. And protected from their parent's terrifying memories. But as America rose to supreme power in the world, feelings of uncertainty began to break through the fragile surface. The CIA masterminded coups and assassinations across the world to protect America from enemies in the world outside. It was done in secret so the children would never know and get frightened. But as they grew up the children realised it was a dream. It was only a story told to them by those in power. And they would want to break free and just be themselves. They would create their own enchanted world. Only then they would be *alone. And vulnerable to something else. Fear. Now go into the dark."

psychology storytelling metanarratives theamericandream america empire power individualism theadvertisedlife documentaries narrativeenvironments memory AdamCurtis
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Standpoint.Online -- The Golden Age of Conspiracy

'"There exists," Cohn wrote, "...a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as ideas are churned out by crooks and half-educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant and superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, captures and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people, who thereupon take leave of sanity and responsibility. And it occasionally happens that this underworld becomes a political power and changes the course of history." -- ...they are driven as much by a psychological need as a totalitarian ideology. Their delusions impose a comforting coherence on the mess of life and randomness of death. By "suggesting that there is an explanation, that human agencies are powerful and that there is order rather than chaos," the conspiracy theorist places himself in a sophisticated elite that discerns connections where the multitude sees only happenstance.' -- Um, spot the 'coherence' -making?

paranoia conspiracy thoughtcrime patternrecognition metanarratives realityprogramming irrealism entertainment memetics memes hysteria standalonecomplex
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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First Monday -- Storytelling in new media: The case of alternative reality games 2001–2009

'This paper presents five Alternate Reality Game (ARG) case studies which reveal common features and mechanisms used to attract and retain diverse players, to create task–focused communities and to solve problems collectively. Voluntary, collective problem solving is an intriguing phenomenon wherein disparate individuals work together asynchronously to solve problems together. ARGs also take advantage of the unique features of new media to craft stories that could not be told using other media. -- We suggest that the collective story that emerges during an ARG normally supplants the grand or master narrative (Lyotard, 1984) and allows players to become actors and heroes. ...the goal of these games is not to create an alternate reality, but to create a storyline that infiltrates real life. If the drive to solve collective problems could be yoked to a significant social goal, ARGs could result in collective behavior that does more than market media products.'

agile storytelling alternativerealitygaming collectiveintelligence collaboration narrativeactivism puzzle exogenous metanarratives productnarratives narrativeobjects objects narrativeenvironments augmentationistsvsimmersionists puppetry liminality liminalobjects rabbitholes campfires socialgraph storygraph agencyagency seriousgames cognitivesurplus synaptics #processing #complexity thegamingofeverydaylife
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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RarestBlog -- We’re zombies! Literally. (”Cinderellism”)

'In the 2008ies we need some new way to keep ourselves from thinking. I don’t know the right word for the new way, but maybe something like a “cinderellism“? Like, you know - that tale, where a simple girl suddenly gets everything? Yeah, the midnight is kind of a downer, but, none of these above stories seem to talk about that. Since there’s a lot of problems around, you need to: 1) be deterred from thinking about those problems; 2) vote for the right guys, just to make sure that YOU chose him. Which later, as Robert Cialdini teaches us, leaves you in defensive position even if you made a bad decision... So, you chose The President, now you must approve what he does - he’s your decision. This is really weird - every other day I hear another Cinderella story, but it stops right before midnight. It’s like some weird recurring dream. It seems like marketing/political plays, made to drive sales/elections. But what if ALL those guys were hired actors?…'

metanarratives narrative tropes cognition influence manipulation selling doublethink conformity groupthink herd cindererllism
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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The Archdruid Report -- A Struggle of Paradigms

"[Thomas Kuhn, in his famous book 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'] argued that different paradigms are not attempts to answer the same questions, differing in their level of accuracy, but attempts to answer entirely different questions – or, to put it another way, they are models that highlight different features of a complex reality, and cannot be reduced to one another. -- The industrial paradigm can only interpret running out of one resource as a call to begin exploiting some even richer one. If there is no richer one, and even the poorer ones are rapidly being depleted as well, what then? From within the industrial paradigm, that question cannot even be formulated; the assumption that there is always some new and better resource to be had is hardwired into the ways of thinking that the industrial paradigm makes inevitable. Thus a change of paradigms is necessary."

metanarratives paradigms ecology economics ideology science conformity groupthink dialectics progress growth ponzi delusion #diversity #specialization JohnMichaelGreer
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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FT.com -- Lunch with the FT: Slavoj Žižek

'“The problem is today that when you have chaos and disorder people lose their cognitive mapping. So it is an open struggle as to whose interpretation will win,” he says. “Never forget that this is how Hitler won.” -- What particularly intrigues Žižek is how films that seemingly resist the prevailing ideology, such as Titanic ["It is not a love story. It is vampiric, egotistic exploitation."], often serve to strengthen it. It was a similar story, he suggests, in communist times when people who told seemingly subversive jokes only succeeded in spreading cynicism and indifference... Although people may claim not to believe in the political system, their inert cynicism only validates that system. This is all explained, according to Žižek, by Marx’s theory of “commodity fetishism”, the idea that the way we behave in society is determined by objective market forces rather than subjective beliefs. “The importance is in what you do, not in what you think. I love this dialectical reversal.”'

storytelling metanarratives postmodernism criticism ideology cynicism precuperation philosophy praxis do reflexivity SlavojŽižek
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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Crooked Timber -- The ideology that dare not speak its name

"Unpopular ideas require euphemisms, and these euphemisms wear out over time. From the inside, ideology usually looks like common sense. Hence, politically dominant elites don’t see themselves as acting ideologically and react with hostility when ideological labels are pinned on them. Ideology is only useful for an insurgent group of outsiders, seeking a coherent basis for a claim to displace the existing elite. [Initial] users of [the euphemism] rapidly [drop] it, once they [get] into power.'

metanarratives philosophy ideology language discourse simulacra power politics cults
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Adam Curtis: The Rise of Oh Dearism in Television News

"Because the news had given up reporting them as political struggles, it meant there was now no way to understand why these terrible events were happening. And instead political conflicts around the world are now portrayed to us as simple illustrations of the mindless cruelty of the human race, about which nothing can be done, and to which the only response is, 'Oh dear.'"

storytelling fatalism metanarratives history tv news journalism documentaries AdamCurtis television
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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Mises Institute -- Deliberately Misplaced Blame by Sean W. Malone

'The official story seems to be that everyone knows the financial crisis represents a failure of the capitalist system, and now only a "gigantic program of economic defense" will save us. Sadly, it's all indicative of a bigger problem. The narrative itself is being shaped before our very eyes. Over time, it will come to be generally accepted as historical "fact." Our children will learn the stories of the financial collapse of 2008. And everything they will be told about its causes, the philosophical roots, the main players, it's prolonging, and even the reasons for the next 20 years of (inevitable) inflation will be lies. The fact that it was the Austrians — the heirs of Mises and Hayek — like Peter Schiff who publicly predicted the collapse (and were ridiculed for it) will largely get swept under the rug. That is, unless those of us who are actually interested in truth and liberty stand up right now and come together to defend it.' -- Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

economics history metanarratives thoughtcrime revisionism propaganda realityprogramming reality truth truepast 1984 "capitalism"
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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The Top-Ten Conspiracy Theories

#1: The Secret Cabals Working Toward a Global One-World Government -- "Contemporary events, such as the controlled demolition of the economy and purposely failed U.S. foreign policy are seen as the latest necessary steps toward the inevitable global police state. Even elements of the UFO and ET technology cover-ups can be traced back to this unification conspiracy theory as the power elite use all tools at their disposal to refine the technologies needed to control a global population. In one way or another, according to traditional conspiracy theorists, all lessor conspiracies are traced back to this singular but complex theory that is to conspiracies what string theory is to physics."

metanarratives mythology conspiracy
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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TIME -- The End of Excess by Kurt Andersen

"The popular culture tried to warn us. For 20 years, we've had Homer Simpson's spot-on caricature of the quintessential American: childish, irresponsible, willfully oblivious, fat and happy. We knew, in our heart of hearts, that something had to give. The '80s spirit endured through the '90s and the 2000s, all the way until the fall of 2008, like an awesome winning streak in Vegas that went on and on and on. American-style capitalism triumphed, and thanks to FedEx and the Web, delayed gratification itself came to seem quaint and unnecessary. During the '80s and '90s, we were Wile E. Coyote racing heedlessly across the endless American landscape at maximum speed and then spent the beginning of the 21st century suspended in midair just past the end of the cliff; gravity reasserted itself, and we plummeted."

economics debt credit bubble culture america popculture globalvillage history metanarratives progress growth hologram simulacra solipsism egosim entitlement addiction profligacy greed ignorance corporatism denial ADHD attentiondeficithyperactivedisorder theadvertisedlife creativedestruction pragmatism stoicism mercantilism "capitalism"
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- Legendary Comics Writer Alan Moore on Superheroes, The League, and Making Magic

"...I wonder if the root of the emergence of the superhero in American culture might have something to do with a kind of an ingrained American reluctance to engage in confrontation without massive tactical superiority. It does seem to me that massive tactical superiority might be a key to the superhero phenomenon. That wasn't what it used to mean. That wasn't what it used to mean to me when I was a child. What I was getting out of it was this unbridled world of the imagination, and the superhero was a perfect vehicle for that when I was much younger. But looking at the superhero today, it seems to me an awful lot like Watchmen without the irony, that with Watchmen we were talking very much about the potential abuses of this kind of masked vigilante justice and the kind of people that it would in all likelihood attract if these things were taking place in a more realistic world. But that was not meant approvingly." -- "...there is an inverse relationship between money and imagination."

archetypes america metanarratives reflexivity culture criticism comics storytelling watchmen theleagueofextraordinarygentleman AlanMoore heroes
february 2009 by adamcrowe

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Tate -- Altermodern: Manifesto by Nicolas Bourriaud

"The artist becomes ‘homo viator’, the prototype of the contemporary traveller whose passage through signs and formats refers to a contemporary experience of mobility, travel and transpassing. This evolution can be seen in the way works are made: a new type of form is appearing, the journey-form, made of lines drawn both in space and time, materialising trajectories rather than destinations. The form of the work expresses a course, a wandering, rather than a fixed space-time. Altermodern art is thus read as a hypertext; artists translate and transcode information from one format to another, and wander in geography as well as in history. This gives rise to practices which might be referred to as ‘time-specific’, in response to the ‘site-specific’ work of the 1960s. Flight-lines, translation programmes and chains of heterogeneous elements articulate each other. Our universe becomes a territory all dimensions of which may be travelled both in time and space."

* manifesto altermodernism art theory criticism relationalobjects relationalaesthetics space time metanarratives paradigms history reflexivity transformation multitude navigation networks #bandwidth #socialization #diversity NicolasBourriaud itr retribalization
december 2008 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Altermodern by Nicolas Bourriaud

"Nicolas Bourriaud previews his hypothesis that postmodernism is over and that a new type of modern - the altermodern - is emerging."

* altermodernism art theory criticism relationalobjects objects relationalaesthetics metanarratives paradigms history reflexivity multitude #diversity NicolasBourriaud itr retribalization
december 2008 by adamcrowe

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Flickr -- Stephen Colbert's Greenscreen Challenge

MmmHmm.

storytelling narrativeenvironments productnarratives metanarratives production transparency StephenColbert starwars fandom
december 2008 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- 'Truthiness' Could Swing Stephen Colbert Into Marvel White House

"Stephen Colbert is running for president in the Marvel Universe. Stephen tried to run for president in our boring universe, but unfortunately his campaign was stymied by the powers that be. Not so in the Marvel Universe, where his campaign is in full swing and gaining momentum, once again proving that we would all rather be living in the Marvel Universe than the real one."

* StephenColbert marvel comics transmedia tv news simulacra alternativereality fiction metanarratives diegesis storytelling narrativeactivism america politics failure television heroes
october 2008 by adamcrowe

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Twitter -- OnMadMen

"A critical look at the Mad Men on Twitter shenanigans..." -- Narrative Anthropology

madmen twitter narrativeactivism fandom fanon canon storytelling transmedia metanarratives anthropology continuity
october 2008 by adamcrowe

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Bruce Sterling -- "Computer Entertainment," Flurb #6

"... these are the weird ones—the convergence culture people. They will play your game all right, but they play it while using six or seven other kinds of media. They don’t make any distinction between the media they use. They use the networks as a meta-medium. They don’t play the roles in your role-playing games. Convergence people are metamedia people who are looking for meta-fun. Not your fun. Their meta- fun. Why are they important? Because they are you. You’re outside the game because you developed it, and they want to be in the same space that you are in. They’re super-knowledgeable game fanatics. They’re the people from whom you recruit your own talent."

BruceSterling gaming thegamingofeverydaylife entertainment meta metanarratives objects narrativeobjects storytelling narrativeenvironments narrativeacts
september 2008 by adamcrowe

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Britannica Blog: Sven Birkerts -- A Know-Nothing's Defense of Serious Reading & Culture: A Reply to Clay Shirky

"[Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'] ought not be mocked quite so glibly. It is not just the work, it is the inheritance of the work, the vision of history, the understanding of the intersection of the singular with the societal, that is at issue."

reading internet literacy literaryculturevsoralculture culture history mapping metanarratives modernism postmodernism context content communication #processing #storage #bandwidth retribalization
july 2008 by adamcrowe

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The New Yorker -- Annals of Innovation: In the Air

"For Ogburn and Thomas, the sheer number of multiples could mean only one thing: scientific discoveries must, in some sense, be inevitable. They must be in the air, products of the intellectual climate of a specific time and place."

brainstorming ideas invention innovation collaboration history diversity emergence hivemind memetics metanarratives
may 2008 by adamcrowe

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Guardian - How we learned to stop having fun

"An arrogant insouciance might, for example, seem more fitting to an age of imperialism than this wilting, debilitating malady; and enlightenment, another well-known theme of the era, might have been better served by a mood of questing impatience."

* happiness melancholy depression suicide psychology extensionsofman skin house architecture fashion archetypes history storytelling narrativeactivism metanarratives culture class people health self status subjectivity personality roleplay acting individualism relativism existentialism nihilism sociology work death "capitalism"
january 2008 by adamcrowe

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Whitechapel Art Gallery -- Adam Curtis: The World of the Self/Our World

'Adam Curtis presents an illustrated talk on the ideas behind this unique series and the things that link these episodes together.' -- Adam Curtis: "Ideas have consequences." Indeed. Great talk.

AdamCurtis events presentations documentaries ideas politics journalism news metanarratives power mapping ideology reality simulacra self feedback freedom
december 2007 by adamcrowe

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Digital Rain - What are you doing? Going to the dentist?

'Twitter could then perhaps just as easily be called Flutter because it is in some respects a response to a chaotic, folk view of history; an attempt to somehow weave this web of human chaos that we all feel inextricably part of.'

folk media memory collectiveintelligence history ideology chaos strangeattractors storytelling narrative metanarratives politics twiter ambientintimacy lifecasting retribalization
september 2007 by adamcrowe

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AMALGAMATED

"Cultural Branding begins with the most basic insight: The most poerful branding is ideological, not merely creative or emotional. the most powerful branding expresses a provocative cultural ideal, a view about how society should be."

agency advertising marketing research branding planning positioning ideology metanarratives
august 2007 by adamcrowe

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Guardian - Why do we have to die in games?

"Roleplaying games challenge us directly by setting goals... There are three types of goals in computer games: Endogenous goals originate within the game; exogenous from outside it. Diegetic goals come in when you start to role-play."

death gaming goals motivation gameplay games design ludology narratology endogenous exogenous diegesis poetics roleplay thegamingofeverydaylife storytelling objects narrativeobjects metanarratives life lifecasting
august 2007 by adamcrowe

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