“Truth? You can't handle the truth!”

[Gonk]

You've hit the nail on the head in your rant Shark. The only way for "them" to maintain control now is through economic censorship. The choice we have nowadays is not between authenticity and inauthenticity  -- but rather, can we afford to buy the authentic product -- and not be stuck with something cheap and adulterated as the alternative to something that is real.

[The Legendary Shark]

Let's say Dogface visits the Village of Lambrape Shiteguzzler and they bludgeon him to death with clubs. Then they follow his tracks back to his village. Luckily Catarse Bumslapper has refined Dogface's flint knapping method, and now the tribe has spears and bows.

There's a bloodbath, but the Bumslappers come out on top. It's good thing Dogface didn't share his knowledge.

Knowledge is a deadly friend
When no one sets the rules
The fate of all mankind, I see
Is in the hands of fools

I chuffing love King Crimson

This assumes that neighbouring communities were always at war and that mankind is basically violent and uncooperative. Whilst this is true in some cases, especially when you get religions or rulers (the 'fools' of the song) involved, in my experience people the world over are intelligent enough to cooperate for mutual benefit. If this were not so, there'd be no roads, bridges, trading, laws, hospitals, fire services, etc.

Of course I'm not so naive as to think that mankind doesn't have an aggressive bone in his body but I do believe that the overwhelming majority of people in this world, if given the choice, would favour peaceful cooperation over bloody war. Our biggest failing is that we look to 'leaders' for answers, even if those answers are insane, because it means that we don't have to take responsibility for the decisions they make. The internet gives us the tools to come up with our own answers, make our own (foolish or wise) decisions and take responsibility for them.

It's too late for Dogface, though, as he'd be forgotten by history. Catarse, on the other hand, would probably be elevated to Leader and had cave paintings made of him - giving Batcheese Frogsquasher the deranged shaman the opportunity to whisper in his ear about what the invisible pixies who live in the clouds want. Bloody Catarse - I knew he was a wrong 'un...

[ICONIC_TM]

I Blame The Pixies 

[The Legendary Shark]

You've hit the nail on the head in your rant Shark. The only way for "them" to maintain control now is through economic censorship. The choice we have nowadays is not between authenticity and inauthenticity  -- but rather, can we afford to buy the authentic product -- and not be stuck with something cheap and adulterated as the alternative to something that is real.

You're right there, I think. In the past slaves wore their chains around their necks but today we keep them in our bank accounts and wear symbolic chains (collars and ties) instead. As Bill Hicks used to say, "you think you're free? Try going anywhere without money and see how f***ing free you are."

[TordelBack]

In the past slaves wore their chains around their necks but today we keep them in our bank accounts and wear symbolic chains (collars and ties) instead.

Sorry Sharky, but this grossly misrepresents the reality of slavery.  The level of freedom to operate within an admittedly restrictive economic system is completely different from having absolutely no choice in what you do 24-7, who you spend time with, who you breed with or whether you do so at all, and being physically and mentally brutalised.  Pseudo-capitalism stinks, but ties are a damn sight more comfortable than slave collars - and you can take them off at 5.

[Gonk]

Shark does call them symbolic chains though Tordell -- mind forged manacles if we're going to become allegorical.

I know what those pixies would be whispering in Frogsquashers ear.... "Tell Cartarse to invent taxes now."

[The Legendary Shark]

Shark does call them symbolic chains though Tordell -- mind forged manacles if we're going to become allegorical.

^ This. ^

Also, just for fits and giggles:

"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money."  – Sir Josiah Stamp, Director of the Bank of England (appointed 1928).

[The Legendary Shark]

Some time ago I noticed soething odd on a BBC report about the Occupy Movement in London. The piece began with the camera showing a lovely full moon in the sky above St Paul's Cathederal - the problem was that there wasn't a full moon that night. I can't prove this as I never took proper note of it.

Today I came across this: Channel 4 continuity announcers mispronounce The Simpsons .

Are the good people in the media (there are some - they're not all corporate vampires) trying to tell us that all is not as it seems? Or is it just a prank?

[TordelBack]

Shark does call them symbolic chains though Tordell -- mind forged manacles if we're going to become allegorical.

^ This. ^

Not buying it.  I accept many of your observations in the global banking system and the other self-interested systems of control, but you're invoking a comparison with slavery, symbolic or otherwise - there's never been a slave who (knowing what the choice entailed) wouldn't swap being owned for a job and bank account.  Slavery is an indescribably obscene condition of being, and the ahistorical analogy diminishes the suffering of many millions of people, and in the process undermines your otherwise sensible points. 

Sorry to be a po-faced jerk, but this is one of my (howling troop of) pet bugbears, and invokes an involuntary 'you don't know you're born' reflex. 

[The Legendary Shark]

Some time ago I noticed something odd on a BBC report about the Occupy Movement in London. The piece began with the camera showing a lovely full moon in the sky above St Paul's Cathederal - the problem was that there wasn't a full moon that night. I can't prove this as I never took proper note of it.

Found it: BBC News report, 17 October 2011
             Moon phase for 17 October 2011

[ICONIC_TM]

Some time ago I noticed soething odd on a BBC report about the Occupy Movement in London. The piece began with the camera showing a lovely full moon in the sky above St Paul's Cathederal - the problem was that there wasn't a full moon that night. I can't prove this as I never took proper note of it.

Today I came across this: Channel 4 continuity announcers mispronounce The Simpsons .

Are the good people in the media (there are some - they're not all corporate vampires) trying to tell us that all is not as it seems? Or is it just a prank?

Channel 4 the people who brought you 
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad President of Iran
alternative Christmas message 

[The Legendary Shark]

Not buying it.  I accept many of your observations in the global banking system and the other self-interested systems of control, but you're invoking a comparison with slavery, symbolic or otherwise - there's never been a slave who (knowing what the choice entailed) wouldn't swap being owned for a job and bank account.  Slavery is an indescribably obscene condition of being, and the ahistorical analogy diminishes the suffering of many millions of people, and in the process undermines your otherwise sensible points. 

Sorry to be a po-faced jerk, but this is one of my (howling troop of) pet bugbears, and invokes an involuntary 'you don't know you're born' reflex. 

I get what you're saying, Tordels, I really do - but I'm not talking about the whips and chains method of slavery, I'm talking about the lack of freedoms, rights and opportunities angle.

At least in historical times slaves were looked after (to a point - nobody wants crippled, starving slaves because no work would get done and no profits made). These days, you have to pay the banks for your own (adulterated) food and water, your own shelter, transport (people are now paying up to 1/5 of their income to pay for transport to and from work!), clothing, justice and, well, everything while you work to increase not your profits and freedoms, but the elite's. If you don't submit you don't get flogged but you do get evicted or imprisoned or excluded from society.

A chained slave had no option but to be a chained slave.
An economic slave (as we are) has no option but to be an economic slave.

Yes, our condition of slavery could be catagorized as "velvet slavery" but it is slavery nonetheless. We may not be trapped in the wild, transported to foreign lands and bought and sold as commodities, but we are exploited as a resource and bullied, brainwashed and sometimes even bribed into complying with the will of our self-appointed masters. If we don't play along, what happens to us? We have access to the aspects of our society that make life bearable removed by having our money cut off (our chains shortened). In this sense, every pound coin we own is a link in our own personal chains - the more links you have, the further you can go and the more you can do.

As I'm sure you're aware, the number of bonded ('classical') slaves in the world today remains as high as 12 million to 27 million - but are we not 'bonded' to the banks in a subtler but still thoroughly oppressive way?

And you're not "po-faced jerk", at all. It's good to air your views and argue with me. Hell, if I was right all the time I'd be even more of a tosser! As the esteemed Mr Godpleton once told me, "Shark, if you ever get religion you'll become truly insufferable." Even I can't argue with that!

[TordelBack]

It's not about the the relative degree of comfort experienced - it's about being owned by another person.  I may have colossal debts owned by banks that mean my financial incarnation is effectively their chattel until I die, but those debts aren't me. 

For me there is a fundamental difference between Hobson's Choice and no choice - we may not like the alternatives offered to us by non-conformity with the economic environment we find ourselves in, but there are alternatives, other than death.  A slave needs permission to marry, to have children, to go for a walk, to eat; a slave can be compelled to fuck, to kill, to do anything their owner desires: to have no ability to exercise free will and remain alive.  That's not the condition you and I live in.  Life on Earth is always going to be tricky, we're always going to be bound by our need to acquire calories in all their forms, we're always going to have to interact with societies and systems we disapprove of.  For all that the oppressive picture you paint is a true one, the world we inhabit is exponentially, fundamentally better than the condition of slavery - although as you point out, this improved condition is by no means universal. 

And of course I always enjoy discussing these things with you - otherwise, I wouldn't do it!

[Emperor]

How about if Dogface visits Wormdick Hamstergreaser in another village and hears a particularly lovely song or a story that properly explains how to avoid tigers in an insightful and easy to understand way - would Dogface be penalized for copying this story and telling it to his own tribe?

So the song has value. Wouldn't it then be an idea to reward Hamstergreaser for having the skill to produce such a song? If he got enough back because of it, he could devote more of his time and energy to making more songs that may further benefit everyone? Otherwise he'd have to spend most of his time hunting and gathering. Specialisation requires compensation.

If no one paid Alan Moore for writing his stories, he would have had to spend his days working in a gentlemen's beard care shop (and entering Britian's Got Beards in the hope he'd get some prize money for winning the "you could lose a badger in that" category) and writing in his few spare hours he could carve out in the evening.

I see the above as an argument for online piracy, not one against SOPA.

[TordelBack]

So the song has value. Wouldn't it then be an idea to reward Hamstergreaser for having the skill to produce such a song? If he got enough back because of it, he could devote more of his time and energy to making more songs that may further benefit everyone? Otherwise he'd have to spend most of his time hunting and gathering. Specialisation requires compensation.

The point here for me is that it doesn't really matter if someone copies Hamstergreaser's song.  If his songs are good, and the tribe wants more, they will give Hamstergreaser the time he needs to write/sing them, and not some other guy - unless that other guy is better at singing it, in which case tough.  As Dave Sim* once said, he doesn't care if someone else starts producing their own Cerebus stories, because he's confident that the audience will think his and Gerhard's version is the best, and any extra attention generated will only benefit them by comparison. 


*A shining example of rational thought, I'm sure you'll agree.