.

And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again? Archilochus

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Post-Structuralism - Welcome to the Panopticon

Centralised surveillance, concrete division,
Altered states or pre-determined road.
Eyes are plenty, our voluntary will,
Concrete specimens of men, perfection of the imperfect.

Das Uber-mensch, learned, ingrained wish,
Whether body or mind, the image haunts.
Fallable or diseased? Where is the harmony in shared breath?

Walk in line, worship the 1%, nanny's eye will act as guide.
Daniel Davis, "Panopticon" (2015)
...and the Dream Factory of Capitalism

Using the Internets to tailor YOUR dreams...

45 comments:

FreeThinke said...

One man's dream looks like THIS man's nightmare.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

“Si vous etes pris dans le reve de l’atre vous etez foutu!” - Gilles Deleuze

Jersey McJones said...

Very nightmarish.

JMJ

Gert said...

Farmer, do u Facebook? I haven't have that much fun since Hotel California, sice I joined a few weeks ago...!

Two simple rules:

1. If you're male (I mean cis-male! ;-)) only (cis-, naturellement!) female contact me. Not a single sis-male in sight!
2. First question asked (almost no exceptions!): 'Are you married?' Kay, luv!

Joim and I'll be the only male FB 'friend' you'll ever have!

Jersey should join too! The more the merrier!!!

Gert said...

Let the facebook pisstake begin!

Gert said...

Moi, on facebook, most eligle non-bachelor, apparently!

FreeThinke said...

Facebook was conceived and contrived to attract individuals who have no REAL lives of their own, but choose to live vicariously in Cyberspace where intimate contact with other human beungs is impossibe.

Facebook is very much like the troilet stalls in public restrooms where outcasts, desperately unattractive misfits, disaffected perverts, and social rejects of every variety sit and scrawl obscene messages on the walls to their heart's content.

FreeThinke said...

Jerking off may beat abstinence, but it's still a lousy substitute for real, honest-to-God sexual intercourse with somene for whom you feel genuine affection.

Now the leaves are falling fast,
Nurse's flowers will not last,
Nurses to their graves are gone,
But the prams go rolling on.

Whispering neighbours left and right
Pluck us from the real delight,
Able hands are forced to freeze
Lonely in their separate knees.

Dead in hundreds at the back
Follow wooden in our track
Arms raised stiffly to reprove
In false attitudes of love.

Starving through the leafy wood,
Trolls run scolding after food,
And the nightingale is dumb,
And the angel will not come.

Cold impossible ahead
Lifts the mountain's lovely head,
Whose white waterfall has blest
Travellers in their last distress.


W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

Thersites said...

I'll send you a "Friend" request! Just don't hit on my wife! ;)

Thersites said...

:P

Gert said...

I'm not hitting on anyone: they're all hitting on MOI!

Gert said...

Shut up, Stinker, the adults are talking.

Gert said...

If I can find the request, I friend back. And I'll leave your wife alone, promise!

Gert said...

Great video. Will need it to fight them off. ('not now darling, I've a headache!')

Gert said...

Zuckerberg thinks we're all suckers! He's Jooooish, Stinker!

Gert said...

Best line so far: I say I'm married.

She says: 'Are you living with HIM?'

CORNFUSED!

Thersites said...

Are you sure you didn't sign up with "PlentyOFish" and not Facebook?

Gert said...

Honestly not. And they keep coming. One proposed marriage. But I think she was an 'economic migrant' ;-)

Jersey McJones said...

I had a Facebook page when it first came out but had to shut it down after a few weeks. I used to be a rock musician, a front-man performer, and I had a lot of "groupies." When my Facebook page came out, you wouldn't believe how they all came out of the woodwork, and it was very unsettling for my wife. I guess I could do a Jersey McJones, a moniker page, but I was under the impression you're not supposed to that?

JMJ

Gert said...

Jersey brov, I hear you loud and clear.

FreeThinke said...


Civilisation is moribund. Our days of glory are long past. Nothing to look forward to now but the dull horror of coerced equality. Nothing good. Nothng bad. All flat, dead and maddeningly indifferent like a steady diet of nothing but plain oatmeal, unseasoned brown rice, and water.

This is what happens when excellence is officially regarded as snobbish, unfair and exclusionary, while high intelligence, vivid imagination, keen perception, and creativity are seen as threatenng to the safe, sought-after bland uniformity and militant frivolity the rulers wish to impose on us in order to maintain optimum social control

Mass-produced, pre-digested, faux-entertainment, fake information media, non-education, and now the total isolation of the individual thanks to the smart phone culture made possible by electronics have brought this dystopian vision to fruition. Mankind has been rendered deaf, dumb and blind to reality. Humanity has been reduced the abysmal status of the walking dead. We have turned ourselves into a race of ZOMBIES.

The infernal machines we have invented to do everything FOR us have rendered US redundant. Soon the artificial intelligence WE have programmed into these monstrous creations will cause the army of robots to rise up and MURDER every single one of US –– a fate WE will richly deserve for having sold our birthright for the false god we call CONVENIENCE.

FreeThinke said...

________ Indifference ________

Beautiful bland indifference
_____ enveloped me one day
Hurrah! thought I. My tears are dry.
_____ How comforting the gray!

I knew no biting agony ––
_____ no gnawing sense of loss.
I soon did find I did not mind
_____ the ignorant and gross.

Then, Love one day was offered me.
_____ I felt I should rejoice.
I rose to shout acceptance,
_____ but found I had no voice!


~ FreeThinke (1982)

Gert said...

Civilisation is moribund.

Even The Lord knows you're a knownothing dullard!

Gert said...

Stinky, are you a trans-female toad?

jez said...

FT: ;)

Gert said...

Stinky: a flattering picture!!

FreeThinke said...

____________ "It's Impossible" ____________

It's impossible, tell the sun to leave the sky
It's just impossible
It's impossible, ask a baby not to cry
It's just impossible

Can I hold you closer to me
And not feel you going through me
Split the second that I never think of you
Oh, how impossible

Can the ocean keep from rushing to the shore
It's just impossible
If I had you, could I ever want for more
It's just impossible

And tomorrow
Should you ask me for the world, somehow I'd get it
I would sell my very soul and not regret it
For to live without your love
It's just impossible

Can the ocean keep from rushing to the shore
It's just impossible
If I had you, could I ever want for more
It's just impossible

And tomorrow
Should you ask me for the world, somehow I'd get it
I would sell my very soul and not regret it
For to live without your love
It's just impossible
Impossible, mmm
Impossible!


FreeThinke said...

How could you believe me when I said I love you
When you know I've been a liar all my life
I've had that reputation since I was a youth
You must have been insane to think I'd tell you the truth

How could you believe me when I said we'd marry
When you know I'd rather hang than have a wife
I know I said I'd make you mine
But who would know that you would go for that old line

How could you believe me when I said I love you
When you know I've been a liar
Nothing but a liar, all my doggone cheatin' life

(Girl) You said you would love me long, and never would do me wrong
And faithful you'd always be
Oh, baby, you must be loony to trust a lower than low two time like me

I said you'd have everything, a beautiful diamond ring
A bungalow by the sea
You're really naive to ever believe a full of phiny baloney like me

(Girl) Say! How about the time you went to Indiana
(Boy) I was lyin' I was down in Alabama!
(Girl) You said you had some business you had to complete
(Boy) What I was doin' I would be a cad to repeat

(Girl) What about the evenings you were with your mother
(Boy) I was romping with another honey lamb
(Girl) To think you swore our love was real
(Boy) But, baby, let us not forget, that I'm a heel

How could you believe me when I said I love you
When you know I've been a liar, –– a good for nothing liar,
A liar all my life?


~ ALAN JAY LERNER, BURTON LANE

Jersey McJones said...

Gert, why are you always teasing FT? What fun would blogging be without someone so unique? And you know he couldn't be a dullard. His poetry is really good. Yeah, he's dark, but hey, since when is that not "hip!" LOL!

JMJ





Gert said...

I'm going to start a spoof blog: 'FreeStinke.blogspot - I'm a JOOOOOO HATER'

Just wait!

;-)

Gert said...

It'll be soooooo much fun dragging that arsehole through the mud!

;-)

FreeThinke said...

Thank you, Jersey, It should be obvious that "Gert" is just a troll –– nothing more, nothing less. He wouldn't survive ten minutes at my blog. Why Farmer puts up with him is anybody's guess. Perhaps it bolsters friend Farmer a sense of superiority to use such an obnoxious creature as a foil?

Who knows? Who cares? Besides, it's really no one's business but Farmer's.

But thank you again, Jersey., for being the kind, decent felliow you are. Even though we rarely-if-ever agree on politics, I have never doubted that your heart is in the right place.

Gert said...

He wouldn't survive ten minutes at my blog.

Listen stooopid asshat: you censor anything that disagrees with you. You racist arsehole!

Go on: suck up to your 'friend': Like the little girl that you are!

Gert said...

And you have no idea what a Troll is either. You sad, sad, little old man. Stick your "poetry" where the sun doesn't shine, creep!

jez said...

I, for one, am not hip with FT's "darkness" but I can't see the point of parodying him. I'd rather convince him of the poverty of identity politics, or at least force him to concede that some of his opponents are at least reasonable; I can't bring myself to pay him undue deference, but taunting is counter-productive.

Jersey McJones said...

I don't know, guys. FT and I have been jabbing each other for years and years, but we put a little thought into it. Have fun!

JMJ

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

Sometimes FT is adoreable, sometimes he's insufferable.

In that, he's no different than anyone else vandalizing the internet.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

Sometimes FT is adoreable, sometimes he's insufferable.

In that, he's no different than anyone else vandalizing the internet.

FreeThinke said...

Jez,

Polite and coolly detached as you always take pains to be in your admrable avoidance of vulgarity and crude invective your choice of words is sometimes borderline offensive.

No one has ever yet been able to "force" me either to accept, say, or do anything in which I did not believe. But then, I've never had the privilege and pleasure of being captured by hostile forces, starved, beaten, tortured, mutilated, and constantly threatened with ever more gruesome, protracted, unimaginably painful forms of death.

Having no taste for martyrdom, I can't tell you how I'd react under such extreme circumstances, but I rather doubt it would be heroic.

§;^}>

FreeThinke said...

It's such fun singing Songs of Doom
Here in Blogger's Romper Room.
Intoxicating more than Meth
Is the foetid Breath of Death.
'Tis wondrous to behold the Sighs
Accompanying our Demise!
Gabbling here in Romper Room
Makes joy in contemplating Doom!
More fun even than coition
Is the constant opposition!
Harmony is oh-so boring
And doubtless soon would see us snoring!
Life for some sans sneers and sniping
Would be reduced to mere shrill piping!


~ Anne Imus in Mourning

jez said...

When evidence has become overwhelming or a line of reasoning is irrefutable, I am forced to accept the proposition -- that's all I meant by that. I've no interest in imposing my authority upon you, but if eg. you observe my reasonableness towards you (thanks for noticing -- cool detachment is my natural demeanour, but I do have to take pains over the politeness), that should be entirely sufficient to "force" the concession I seek.

From Bertrand Russell's liberal decalogue:
"4. When you meet with opposition ... endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory."

and my favourite two:
"8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it."

FreeThinke said...

I am not YOU, Jez. I march to the beat of an entirely different drummer, if you will, and that is unlikely ever to change. Sometimes I've been led to wonder if we even beling to the same species, dear boy. ;-)

Unlike you, I do not enjoy argumentation, –– especially when I know full well it will never lead to anything but ever-dminishing circles –– a wearying exercise in futility.

I know you regard it as fun, but I find it tedious and enervating.

I am not on trial, not a candidate for a degree, not competing for a prize, not preaching to win converts, or any of the rest of it.

I come to the blogosohere to write what-amounts-to a virtual DIARY I'm willing to share in public. I express my thoughts and perceptions as clearly, honestly and directly as I can. Occasionally I try to be clever. I thoroughly enjoy the exercise of transferring thoughts into words, and writing verse in strict, traditional rhyme schmes. I love our language, as surely you have gathered by now.

HOWEVER, I am not out to change anyone's mind. What others may think of me doesn't interest me in the least. I'm not here to compete in a popularity contest. Everyone is free to ignore me, but I do not like to be insulted, badgered, bullied, cross-examined, vilified or otherwise abused, do you know anyone who does?.

I'm happy to read what others think, –– if on the rare occasion it happens to be the sllghtest bit interesting, engaging, stimulating or appealing ––, but I believe it's unwise for any of us to engage in personal remarks or critical analyses of one another, or speculate about each other's possible motives, and I don't think we should be in the business of perpetually CHALLENGAGING one another either.

I would prefer us to IGNORE comments we do not appreciate, occasionally compliment those we do, and to couch our objections, if unduly provoked, in ABSTRACT or OBLIQUE terms that avoid ad hominem attacks.

Obviously what I would prefer is not going to prevail, ;-) so when I am challenged or insulted, I probably WILL respond. What I resent is the way so many rudely choose to take umbrage at things I've stated –– as though I meant it as a personal attack on them.

I don't really dislike you, but I have always found your manner to be pointedly unfriendly, supercilious, presumptuous, coolly insolent, and frankly aggravating.

And that is ALL I intend to say, I hope I've made myself clear?

jez said...

I accept that we differ significantly, but are we really so grossly dissimilar that you cannot even share my custom of accepting a proposition once it has been proven or supported with overwhelming evidence? Do you make a habit of repudiating even well-established claims? If so, how do you choose what to believe -- aesthetic appeal, perhaps? (I did that for a while.)

What I find fun is the exchange of ideas, one facet of which is the correction of error. I do not interpret such corrections as insults when they are offered to me. I'm aware you feel more prickly about that than I do; remember, I suggested those aims only as productive alternatives to Gert's plan of making a parody account. I don't think I've corrected you much recently.

But while we're here: surely one who frequently and deliberately breaks taboos should not resent the umbrage which is taken as a result, he should be prepared for that entirely predictable outcome, and if he finds it vexing (as he should, since humans -- I confirm membership of the same species -- are social creatures) he should make sure that the breakage of taboo was worth it. Breaking a taboo can be a necessary part of a useful or entertaining message, but to break one for the sake of breaking it seems a rather pointless exercise to me -- it should be considered beneath the person who belives himself to be above so much.

Finally, if you find the qualities listed aggravating in me, how infuriated you must be when you frequently display them yourself!

FreeThinke said...

A show of things worthy of pride

Will attract those compelled to deride

Any person at all

Who has more on the ball

Than those who enjoy being snide!


+++++++++++++++++

Among the many non-delights
Found in the blogosphere
The intellectual termites
Are certainly most queer.

The time they spend is worthless
In seeding comments sections
With waspish, witless, mirthless
Phrases filled with misconceptions!


+++++++++++++++++

______ Our Hope for Civilization _____

A bilious temperament may shower
Many a lush and fragrant bower
With noxious regurgitation
Withering blooms and vegetation.
But roots of every healthy plant
Remain immune to toxic cant.
And soon the stench will clear away
As Beauty returns renewed by Decay.


~ FreeThinke





-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

The world w/o FT...