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"How a functionalist farce became a modern morality play"
By AndrewGradman
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| | I.1.i Question: "Does nationalism conflict with globalization?" |
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< | What impressed me, when I asked this of a FedSoc classmate, was his quick reflexes: “Obviously!” Then again, a libertarian is an adult who still believes an invisible hand will catch him, no matter which way he leaps. |
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> | What impressed me, when I asked this of a FedSoc classmate, was his quick reflexes: “Obviously!” Then again, a libertarian is an adult who still believes an invisible hand will catch him wherever he leaps. |
| | I.1.ii Method: informal colloquy (aka magic) |
| | 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 our virgin shores. |
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> | Conversely, we can define a nation as a group with a consistent social reaction to a known stimulus. 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 |
| | Capitalism is everything between the French and Communist Revolutions. |
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< | But it is more useful to let capitalism denote consumerism, profit's enslavement of thought, marketing's enslavement of man. It functions as a vector for fetishism, the expectation to find more delight in things than in people. |
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> | But it is more useful to let capitalism denote commodification, profit's enslavement of thought, marketing's enslavement of man. It functions as a vector for fetishism, the expectation to find more delight in things than in people. |
| | I.3 His Question Answered |
| | I.3.ii Nationalism vs. Capitalism = socialism vs. solipsism = Us vs. Me |
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< | The tide of globalism has been rising since World War II, drowning ancient cultures, displacing the sea of faith. It is a bloodstream for the metastasis of Chinese-sourced tchotchkes. |
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> | The tide of globalism has been rising since World War II, drowning ancient cultures, displacing the sea of faith. Chinese-sourced tchotchkes metastasize in its bloodstream. |
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< | The Amish invite every member to sample urban narcissism. But his informed decision awaits sixteen years of communal inculcation. Under globalism, the international agents of industrial stockholders invade the communes; glut the next generation's infant fetishes; indoctrinate by addiction. |
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> | The Amish invite every member to sample urban narcissism, but only after sixteen years of communal inculcation. Under globalism, the international agents of industrial stockholders invade the communes; glut the next generation's infant fetishes; indoctrinate by addiction. |
| | I.3.iii Nationalism vs. Capitalism→colonialism = socialism vs. solipsism→utilitarianism |
| | 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. |
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> | So no, it was not a valid question. |
| | I.4 His tragedy |
| | 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. |
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< | 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. |
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> | Capitalism already captured TV; if you're a zombie, come claim your plunder: forever cherish this dividend of childhood, memories of meals eaten in a frontfacing row, parents alongside. |
| | Bloch flees to the Internet to stir the "storm corner for the revolution". |
| | 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 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. |
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> | * It is old-fashioned to think you own 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. |
| | "That's why I love America," said the other. "It invented pragmatism because it doesn't like the truth. Now we can invent the truth too." As if to demonstrate, he took another drag from his reefer.* |
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< | "Then tell your professor I said this," brayed the first: "Our generation may have degenerated into stubborn mules, but if that means we sterilized ourselves as well, then I deny being a mule at all!" |
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> | "Then tell your professor this," brayed the first: "Our generation may have degenerated into stubborn mules, but if that means we sterilized ourselves as well, then I deny being a mule at all!" |
| | [*Editorial note: the actual author just has a headcold.] |