There is a great quote at the beginning of the Strapping Young Lad song, "OMFG," which sounds like it's from an old sci-fi or thriller movie, "Well, gentlemen, a great deal of money has been invested in this project, and we can't allow it to fail." While listening to the song the other morning, I thought about the significance of the quote to both the song and the world in general. The song seems to be questioning the material reality we are inundated with - and I say inundated with because sometimes you're not even aware that you're taking in something that's completely constructed by humans- as in, not authentically, as in tailor made for human consumption. In regards to just advertisements, for example - they're in bathrooms, in schools, on clothing, on packaging, embedded in the videos (that I am linking to), in/on/part of...everything. The lyrics allude to the modern life experience full of weird eroticism (burger commercials aren't even safe - really Arby's?), the branding of everything (that stupid fucking logo game drives me crazy), hyper-rationalism (but really rationalization of bad behaviors), and the inherent meaninglessness of everything (thanks to those damn ironic hipsters). Thus bringing us back to the sampled quote at the start - someone, somewhere has a lot of money invested in this project of the modern way of life. Someone has something to lose, so we press on, trapped in this cycle ourselves, because we're also participating by working, buying, opting in.
The sampled quote also relates to the Bill Hicks epilogue, It's just a ride. in which he promotes love over hate for us to move on and be happy. He also mocks those that promote security over freedom. This security over freedom doesn't have to be one's physical safety either. Financial security over personal freedoms to choose are also relevant.
But why are we putting up with this apparent meaninglessness? Well, I think there are a few reasons. One that I am going to focus on here has to do with the "end of history." An idea crucial to the Western world, in particular, is that we've reached some sort of plateau, a pinnacle of human existence. Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History" idea, as put forth in his book, The End of History and the Last Man (early 1990s) has done a good job of convincing readers and intellectuals that some sort of "mission" has been "accomplished." In 1992, that might have seemed pretty true, with classical liberalism triumphing over the USSR. This is by no means a new idea. Hegel (and Marx) also saw human civilization climaxing toward some sort of synthesis after years of conflicting dialectics. So the Western bloc won the pissing contest that was the Cold War. Woo! But did it? For 40+ years the Western bloc was defined in opposition to the Eastern bloc. When the Eastern bloc crumbled, so did some of the identity of the Western. All the weapons and preparations made for nebulous wars of the future were now seemingly useless. Good thing terrorist threats were lurking around the corner to give us our noble identity of purveyors of democratic ideologies once again.
Personally, Fukuyama's idea seems pretty preposterous to me. Are we not still facing the consequences of events from the past? Are we not continuing to move through various dialectics today toward new and greater incarnations of mankind? I would HOPE there would be more progression. Is the best we can do at present just to continue to come up with new and exciting consumer goods because our government is maxed out on it's highest level? If we were to market that as a video game, it would sell zero copies because IT SUCKS.
In 2012, 16% of Americans were considered to be living in poverty, with 20% of all American children living in poverty. We can't do better than having 1/5 of America's children having to wait until they get to school to eat? Fuck that. As we're piling another round of billion dollar fighter jets into an airplane hangar to collect dust, there are literally millions of children whose parents can barely afford to send them to school with pencils.
And for all those men and women being shipped off to fight wars to prevent further wars, well, we're not doing them any good either. The treatment of America's veterans is so appalling that I will have to save that for separate post.
