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< | "A functionalist morality play"
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> | "How a functionalist farce became a modern morality play"
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| | By AndrewGradman
Word count: If you turn my table of contents on its side, you will see the Hong Kong skyline. The paper on globalization portrayed therein is worth exactly as many words.
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< | Act I. How a functionalist farce became a modern morality play |
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> | Act I. A functionalist farce |
| | I.1 Man's search for a paper topic |
| | Yet in his reflexive dismissiveness, I recognized myself: a smuggler rushing to judgment, hiding his pet beliefs from logic. |
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< | Seeing my mulishness in his shook my confidence in my masculinity (for, what distinguishes man from the animals, is our patience to articulate phrases like "what distinguishes man from the animals"; plus, mules are sterile). I groped for a path from mulehood to manhood; I remembered Eben saying that the path to insight passes through stillness; my hoof jerked one involuntary hoofstep inward, towards rumination. |
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> | Seeing my mulishness in his shook my confidence in my masculinity (for, what distinguishes man from the animals, is our patience to articulate phrases like "what distinguishes man from the animals"; plus, mules are sterile). I groped for a path from mulehood to manhood; I remembered Eben saying that the path to insight passes through stillness; I jerked one involuntary hoofstep inward, towards rumination. |
| | And a miracle came to pass: two mules ruminated together. |
| | Nationalism is a tautology ("an audience pursuing whatever vision it circled on the museum map") until measured with respect to an outside stimulus. Rousseau called that stimulus the "lawgiver," but it's just a name. |
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< | Conversely, we can define a nation as a group with a consistent social reaction to a known stimulus. Its identity is that reaction. The national axes against which anthropologists measure identities—attitudes towards God, poverty, death, leisure—were entrenched long before corporate cutters mounted their virgin shores. |
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> | Conversely, we can define a nation as a group with a consistent social reaction to a known stimulus. Its identity is that reaction. The national axes against which anthropologists measure identities—attitudes towards God, poverty, death, leisure—were entrenched long before corporate cutters mounted our virgin shores. |
| | I.2.iii A Functionalist Defines Capitalism |
| | These marriages seem more stable, and more volatile, than the one-night stand the Nazis pulled on the Communists. Yet the one thing socialism and solipsism still won't discuss at pillow talk is how to actually measure the utilities they claim to be adding. They can't. |
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> | Let's ask a question we can answer. |
| | I.4 His tragedy
I.4.i While the national folkdance is still getting its shoes on ... |
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< | If business is "That government which markets its brand through sales contracts"—and the marriage of business and government is a never-ending alimony battle—we may restate my question thus: whether corporations (transferable-contractual-solipsistic-private spirited) or constitutions (territorial-democratic-socialist-public spirited) can market (legitimize) themselves better to you, the judge. |
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> | If business is "That government which markets its brand through sales contracts"—and the marriage of business and government is a never-ending custody battle—we may restate my question thus: whether corporations (transferable-contractual-solipsistic-private spirited) or constitutions (territorial-democratic-socialist-public spirited) can market (legitimize) themselves better to you, the judge. |
| | Capitalism already captured TV; if you're a zombie, come claim your plunder: forever may you cherish this dividend of childhood, memories of meals eaten in a frontfacing row with your parents alongside. |
| | Alas, the storm in this corner will fizzle out like all the others. We've long drifted from Jeffersonian democracy into the feudal schizophrenia of corporate contracts. |
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< | * It is old-fashioned to argue that the owner of a media channel controls its content, when some corporate "brand" owns the owner's mind. A neurologist can literally trace the scar where that brand was seared into his optical cortex.
* Every day you vote in several elections—or at least push-polls—in which corporate brainwashing machines compete to renew these property rights.
* Marketing is not sales. It is the rationing of identity. Marketing names us and the mall breathes life into us.
* Long after fallout kills even the cockroaches, our brands will still scar the earth. |
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> | * It is old-fashioned to argue that you control the content of your website, when some corporate "brand" owns your mind. A neurologist can literally trace the scar where that brand was seared into your optical cortex.
* Every day you vote in several elections—or at least push-polls—in which corporate brainwashing machines compete to renew these property rights.
* Marketing is not sales. It's the rationing of identity. Marketing names us; the mall breathes life into us.
* Long after fallout kills the cockroaches, our brands will still scar the earth. |
| | I.4.iii ... so face it, we're fucked. |
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< | I never dreaded the offspring of this dialectical marriage more than when I read Ernst Bloch, who argued that the rhetoric of fascism ("advanced capitalism") is more alluring than Communism's, therefore it would usher in the Revolution, therefore Communists should remove Democrats from Fascism's path to power. |
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> | I never dreaded the offspring of this dialectical marriage more than when I read Ernst Bloch, who argued that the rhetoric of fascism ("advanced capitalism") is more alluring than Communism's, therefore it will usher in the Revolution, therefore Communists should remove Democrats from Fascism's path to power. |
| | I fear that our own strain of public-spirited narcissism (conspicuous consumption) will become incurable the day our rough utilitarian synthesis slouches toward the last tribe on earth. |