just be nuts and lay (it) down

In the last twenty days, I have finished reading books and essays from Lenin, Gramsci, Walter Benjamin, Freud and Chuang Tzu. This is quite a heavy mix for the mind and as a result I will blurt out the little conclusions I can come to when thinking about our present times using as an inspiration what they have written a bit less than a hundred years ago ( except for Chuang Tzu).



To start with a joke, my conclusion with these authors is that I agree with Habermas when he states that the Enlightment was a halfway done job. (Drums) These authors did not help my sense of humor, I know. Anyway, I actually disagree with Habermas to some extent. I think the first point to make is that Enlightment had never started and could never end. It rather got expanded through the Korean invention of print (take that euro-centrics!) and its quasi-democratisation in Europe ( oooooh :'( ) I say quasi because depending of the countries, censure would heavily exist or be ineffective.



The development and circulation of literature and ideas brought the reverence of eternal arts to the home of everybody. Indeed, books, unlike conversations, can be read and re-read at leisure to find new ideas in new lectures or confirm old ideas. The mind has changed there onwards. Religious clerks, the little priests from the countryside, were not the sole people to hold the cultish ideal of the Word in their hands, but the whole village could have it. Everybody could read, or look at pictures and it did not have this special ideal of being the sole power of the church or the few chosen intellectuals to states possible answers to big questions. It was the not the business of the aristocracy anymore, but also of a rising bourgeoisie and at some point, even the proletariat were allowed the skills to read.



It was not enough to emancipate the world, but it was enough to destroy some institutions that relied upon the lack of capacity of the people to reach informations. Notably, the Catholic Church soldiers could not wander in their ways and sell VIP tickets to heaven anymore. Would Martin Luther not have told them, someone else surely would have come along and tell them something in those lines, as nowhere in the holy printed book does it say that VIP tickets could be sold by Peter's descendents. The print made the people who read realize how much of a scam the Catholic Church was and, though rituals are important in the sense that they commemorate knowledge that should not be forgotten acquired by humanity, liberated us from this institution.



Of course, people did not have much to read at the time. That was an important factor. The Bible was the super-ego of society, in the sense that it dictated the rules of society or unto which society ought to abide by. Violence was only the repress sense of guilt of the non-following of these rules. That is why Christian society was as violent as any other society, and probably more, as the rules set by Jesus can be hard to understand and follow. He did indeed set a more than conflicted super-ego, creating a society that did no know whether it should let its instinct go wild or its reason. Secular versus Eternal, Kings against Popes, represents the internal conflict of the mind on a societal scale.



And society became neurotic a little bit when came the Protestants. Why do I say such a thing? Well first of all, we can observe the internal tension and masochism of civil tensions and exterminations of unbalanced beings that cannot find an enemy outside, but rather punish themselves for not knowing who ought to be guilty. The massacre of the protestants, the catholics, the jews inside our own borders is again a societal psycho-pathology that can exist in an individual requiring rejection to feel that it has a judging father. An eternal god ready to set the rights and wrongs against our instinctive will, something that will be there before and after our mind, to be sure that we exist and we do not make everything up. We did not know what was right from wrong anymore and everything was up for discussion. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as it is a public debate, which it was, between the forces in power. The unconscious though was stable. The main population knew its place. It was a repressed part of society, the most important part repressed, and represented what should never be in power if we would have to be civilized, except if it could sublime itself.



Wait a second, it does not seem like society was neurotic, and it seems I am with such writing. Well, both can be true and false. I can represent the state of society as it is now as I am a mega-digester of artifacts, I do not hold one god, I do not have one father. And I know that values are laws and I do not know the laws.



So back to square one to make sense and make of this article a synopsis of my psycho-analysis, or rather the one of society. Print diluted at first the instinctive response to corrupt civilizing process on a large scale. Print made us realize that the Bible – the transformation of human nature into a sensible story- was not what our human nature transformed it into – the Catholic Church. So what happened is that we were both confronted with the realization that we had a human nature – every day's corruption of values- and we had a way out: the Bible. (I am talking only about Europe and an analysis of China could come later on, as for other civilizations, I do not hold enough knowledge – I could try Japan as it is an interesting counter-example of a strong unchanged super-ego).



The Bible did not seem to be enough. We did not like it and did not like the multiple interpretations and we were lost. We took it on ourself and so killed some of our neighbors. It was hard to be lost. And it was hard to be without a sense of what is right and what is wrong. So came the idea that we could write what is right and what is wrong and instead of following an oral tradition ( god bless the Hasidim) or a wise-men re-adapted word ( J.C. in da houze) we could make our own in a constantly evolving law. We mixed the idea of an eternal super-ego and a living-evolving ego.



It worked because people who got to make the laws were the people in power and they had a super-ego of their own in the fact that they possessed everything: eternal knowledge, philosophy and arts. By the way, whenever I use the word eternal, I use it only on a human phenomenological level, meaning that it means it will survive before and after my death. It makes me care for the world before and after me and I do not have to consider the idea that it exist only because I think it exists. Would I choose this later case; I could have gone on a Norwegian rampage with a Colt Peacemaker just for the cheer pleaser of looking like Clint.



So the bourgeoisies held in their hands education (the capacity to read books) and arts ( the ideology of the eternal), and they could make societies super-ego as their was no sense of right and wrong dictated by one single book anymore ( there was never actually a sense of right and wrong in the Bible, but god forbids we would read the book and get free as J.C. would have wanted us to be! - fuck John and his apocalypse). So they made up, to replace the idea of God on Earth (the Catholic Church), the Nation-State, which held a cult art, a cult history, a super-ego.



And it was good. Until the ego felt the need to kill that super-ego because it knew that the father was corrupted ( down with Chronos !) or it received a slap from the super-ego because the ego grew too fast. The slap was fascism and the war. It has to be said that the simple super-ego of most of the western world was really good between 1900 until the end of the 1930's. It was bound to go wrong as there was never as much international economic exchanges and such a spread of education. The masses indeed got to know what was unfair in the word through books and newspapers. They asked for system that had more justice for everybody. The practice of the law did not make the justice (go Kafka).



I realized that when I've learned this week that the most successful in term of votes American elections was the re-election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. in 1936 after he made this speech:



“...For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”



Fear gets our instinct out if we do not have strong eternal injunctions. We forget yesterday's acquired knowledge and what we made of it. More than that, if democracy is the eternal psycho-analysis of our need to have a sense of guilt and shame for our dos and donts, we need to discuss constantly the foundation of our system of justice, of its origins or accept one once and for all and let the rest of our instinct go wild, but we cannot be in a in-between state.



Of course, the World War 2 was only a small catharsis and it was not over for our history. First of all, it has to be remembered that though some communist regimes were repressive, there economic system did work until the 70s. The 1970’s were the strange period of the world. It was the period where countries and civilizations were close to a break down. The USA got unto imperialism though discreet through shock therapy, Europe got to deal with itself and the different dictatorial system it still had, Russia lost their hope when they learned they could not get on the moon (it is still hard to believe we got there). I do not know why the Chinese accepted Deng Xiaoping reforms, except that they did not accept the repression of their human nature.



The idea is that art as it is, is the reproduction of our internal tensions. It works for an individual, but for society, art gets a position a priori and dictates whether the tensions have been accepted or not, they dictates or shows the commands we have chosen for ourselves, they represent the super-ego or its lack. Cinema and television represents a form of atheist polytheism where values are saturated, just like law can be, and our values are mixed up to make us a neurotic civilization.



We are back to square one and we can either accept that the super-ego and where it comes from is wrong, but we need then to know what it is and where it is from. Or we need to accept its slap, in the way the German and the Italians did, but understand that it won't last. We can observe that in both the sadomasochism is emerging as the Germans are the first one to hate them in the name of the ecosystem and the Italians are so as well in the sense that they constantly elect the mafia they used to abhor. As for the American, they have either too much super-ego, in the number of laws that cannot be accounted for or the lack of super-ego in their culture industry.



Freud said it so himself, it is not only the case to get rid of the super-ego that has been created in our civilization by the holders of the means of productions, and we have to build up our own super-ego and the constantly changing nature of the ego.



I will state I think what should be the lines unto which a civilization might want to adhere, without making a fuss of making it a cult, as cult have come to be as well the object of discussion and rebellions as every civilization feels sometimes like too much of oppressed teenagers. I will just outline what I want my super-ego to make me feel guilty about and internalize it without having to discuss it too much afterwards:



'And moreover men are liable to eight defects, and (the conduct of) affairs to four evils; of which we must by all means take account.

' 1 To take the management of affairs which do not concern him is called monopolising.

2 To bring forward a subject which no one regards is called loquacity.

3 To lead men on by speeches made to please them is called sycophancy.

4 To praise men without regard to right or wrong is called flattery.

5 To be fond of speaking of men's wickedness is called calumny.

6 To part friends and separate relatives is called mischievousness.

7 To praise a man deceitfully, or in the same way fix on him the character of being bad, is called depravity.

8 Without reference to their being good or bad, to agree with men with double face, in order to steal a knowledge of what they wish, is called being dangerous.

Those eight defects produce disorder among other men and injury to one's self. A superior man will not make a friend of one who has them, nor will an intelligent ruler make him his minister.

'To speak of what I called the four evils:



1 To be fond of conducting great affairs, changing and altering what is of long-standing, to obtain for one's self the reputation of meritorious service, is called ambition;

2 to claim all wisdom and intrude into affairs, encroaching on the work of others, and representing it as one's own, is called greediness;

3 to see his errors without changing them, and to go on more resolutely in his own way when remonstrated with, is called obstinacy;

4 when another agrees with himself, to approve of him, and, however good he may be, when he disagrees, to disapprove of him, is called boastful conceit.





These are the four evils. When one can put away the eight defects, and allow no course to the four evils, he begins to be capable of being taught.'



I chose those because I was confronted with them recently, they are not only stubborn to an ethic of moderation and they can be rules of national and international politics as much as rules for individuals. I have written for way too long now, and I need to print these rules for my desk. I did not want to take on any Christian interpretation because J.C. had too much faith in humanity to think that we can handle ourselves without fathers. We will have to come to term though with our conflicting nature ( Eros and Ananke; Instinct and civilization) as we will be the parents ourselves, soon enough, of artificial intelligence, and it would be sad to be horrible parents. I will leave you on a poem I came to love and love to hate:



They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.



But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another's throats.



Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don't have any kids yourself.

( Philip Larkin ; This be the verse)

Why are you Guy Fawkes ?

Not many people will complain for the delay, but I have quite a cool explanations. I was away in Freiburg and I have put up 250 flyers up with printed masks and invitations to join the Anonymous forum whatis-theplan.org.

It took me a while to think about the subject of this article. I know that it looks most of the time as I am just writing it on the go, and I am but it is after I spent time thinking and self-reflecting and very rarely on a sudden urge. The ideas were various and I think I should start with simple questions.

• You take a chair and take out the back-support and armrests, is it still a chair ?
• There is so much emptiness that under a microscope, two fingers can never touch themselves and yet, why is it so hard to see void ?
• If you see a bird, and it starts swimming and lays eggs giving birth to fish, is it still a bird?
• If you'd have to, would you kill a sibling of yours to save two strangers?
• Is it natural for a person to change sex?
• If we make a colony on Mars, what will be our definition of a year?
• If you are like no one else, what is humanity?
• 47,9 + 32,6 =..... ? You can touch a calculator, but you can't touch the mental process that gave the answer to that question, so what comes first, your mind or your body?
• You wait. Is that active or passive?
• I speak French because it is my mother-tongue, yet I made the decision to speak Esperanto to my children. Would Esperanto have been my mother-tongue, would I have made another decision?
• Yesterday, I saw Santa Claus in an empty street and he told me a secret. Do you think this could be true?

Ok, maybe those are not simple questions and I congratulate you if think they are as you must have accumulated much more knowledge than I ever managed to. I will reformulate by the way the questions at the end of the article I think, just to make sure we are on the same wave.

So let's assume that you and I share a real world, as it is laid out under our eyes. I will ask you by the way not to assume I am too crazy when I say that the world under our eyes might not be it. I just like to nourish some doubts sometimes. I do know the objections to the doubt: 'whether or not it is an illusion or whatever, why does it matter?'. Well, I think I will make a point why doubting sometimes does matter. Maybe it is just that I think we should not ignore our past and recognize that we have been wrong quite a few times so we might as well think we can still be wrong.

But on the reality of our world, let's say that we live in it. As the poet said to the bishop:' Fuck, this hurt – now do you see it's real!'. History did good I think to forget the poet as it was just in profession that he was such, and not in mind.

So the question to ask ourselves after that one should be: why don't we make the world a better place?

Anyway, we live in a world with other people and we abide by the rules we are told by our parents, our friends and by what we see. Of course we do not exactly abide by every rule and we all adapt them to the circumstances and most of the times we act on them without reflecting on them, not even afterwards. We do reflect on negative consequences to some actions and tell ourselves maybe not to repeat them. But rarely does reflection come unto any significant habits of daily life as we take habits for granted. We have to take it for granted. Otherwise, if we applied reasoning on everything, we would probably go crazy rather quickly.

I have though yesterday come to discuss the question of death penalty with someone I had just met. This person had to write an exam where she was to make a defense of death penalty and refused herself to do so. I pointed out that this was as smart as a person in favor of death penalty refusing to write a defense against the death-penalty. Apparently though, the principle against death-penalty is morally superior enough not to be asked such a task when the belief in favor is not. The lack of self-reflection on the matter, the lack of incapacity to find the origins of this sense of moral superiority, was for me the most problematic aspect of her position.

Of course I am against death-penalty, but I do know why and that is why I can do a pretty good defense in favor, as it does not make me doubt my belief. Somehow, I am afraid that Europeans are still capable of extremism as they judge so easily and are incapable of empathy. Empathy for the devil does not mean you support his actions. It only means that you see and understand his point of view and would you be good at empathy, you would see that it is only frustration leading him, as he was only an ignored second son and not because he is inherently evil. 

This latter position is an easy one and truthful as much as the other one, it leads though to no resolution and not possibility for peace.

Anyway, I am going off my intended path. I am just amazed everyday at our capacity for judging individuals when we are so incapable of self-reflection and acting on those few self-reflections. My point from this last anecdote was that I want to try not to get common sense to hit me too often and allow long defenses for any moral arguments. The foundation for my morality is that tomorrow will be better because yesterday was worse. It is just a belief and I want to work towards that belief. I do not want to act good because of a possible punishment after death, or because I am afraid of society's punishment, or worst of all because I do not know why. I have already detailed this in one of my first posts.

I was just wondering why there is so much apathy in the world. When were the children in us killed? I do think that we are more insensible than we used to be, but we just love to lie to ourselves about it so we do not have to find the root of this problem. Of course, for example, death has become a great taboo and could be the example of the scared souls we have become, except that sending our dying off to places we do not deal with it is not sensible at all. Students in U.K.went down in the streets and the same day their tuitions fees tripled and they did not get angry. We care for our children, and yet we are fully aware that we will leave them worse off. We leave them to be kids for a while and then we tell them the dreams of youth are gone.

I am just wondering why we cannot ask for world peace anymore. Why do we have to still have weapon production when history proves that you do not need weapons to win a war? Why does starvation exist when we can travel the world faster than Earth can spin on itself? Why do we think that corruption is not surprising anymore and why are we cynics about it when it is so easy to have a political conscience. I do not really know yet. I am trying to work it out.

I will say this. I do believe that social movements changed the world for the best every time they appeared. I do want to learn from history and I will use our Christian heritage as leverage for making people feel guilty about the way they have let things go. I have joined Anonymous, which is not about anonymity as much as it is about asking for real change for a better world. If you believe blindly the mainstream media about Anonymous being only about hacking, then you are a mediocre human being blindly accepting serfdom. The hacking is the destructive ( though not physically hurting anyone, as it is a motto of the social movement) part of movement, but if the bullseye were the CIA, the FBI, other armed forces and a lot of military contractors, I am asking you this: Why have so far only eight people aged in their teens been arrested?

Teenagers, let's put an end to this myth, do not have the capacity to do serious hacking. Police just arrest people who have put out their voice to say that they want change and the ones who did not do it discreetly got publicly arrested. Adults could have been arrested in this investigation as well, but the point of the arrests were to morally pressure the whole social movement. You say the soviet union put a bad name to communism, I will ask you please to think what the future generations will think of us! Yes I am allowed to say such things, but I am not allowed to act on my believes.

Of course, I am just hoping now that out of our civilization’s ashes will come a better one. We are having increasing military budgets, declining energy productions (hence rise in food cost), and we are raging wars we cannot win. We have a deadlocked political system consenting to the owners of means of productions. We have a systemic growing unemployment with a decreasing redistribution of wealth. And we all have a delusion of grandeur, individuals, but a society that is worse off as a whole, thinking that we can survive this great historical recipe for disaster.

I just like to think about the old questions because they do not cost a thing:

• Is an object one object of the assembly of many?

• Is the universe a tiny thing in emptiness, or so big that we do not get it?

• Is any being revealed by its appearance, or the idea of it?

• Can liberty exist independently from necessity?

• Which is more important: reason or passion?

• Is Culture emancipation from Nature?

• Can Time last forever?

• Has everybody got a unique self or is the self similar to everybody?

• Are we bodies limited in a time-space coordinate or minds imagining the world, the history and that might be immortal?

• What is the difference between being passive or active?

• Is a human being’s existence the result of a series of causes or the new start of a series of consequences?

• Can a lonely individual express objective truth?

Arts and thinking about arts

A few months ago, one of my flatmate had advised me to turn this blog into an art critic blog as well as a social critique one. Somehow, the idea was that showing how polymath I could be in different areas of life would attract readership and show that I am not a stupidly single-minded revolutionary looser. It is true that presented as such, something he did not do by fear of me feeling insulted, I do see his point as holding some truth and I might actually start doing so. It is not easy though to set myself as a critic when I have a slightly universalistic approach to manufactured goods. I will not either be Kantian and declare that the beautiful can be found solely in the landscapes and the complexity of the world where we realize that we are part of something bigger.

The transcendence of the 'what-makes-us-feel-but-we-do-not-know-why' is of no interest for me here. It is though an interesting debate as to why should it not interest me when I say that I have a universalistic approach to the arts when some of the cultures of this world have worked at imitating the world. I am of course thinking of the Nippon culture, that has worked so well at imitating the beautiful chaos of the world.

Well the imitation and the real are two separates objects and it is actually the imitation that will find a defense in this article. Art is purely imitation and imitations should be brought back to the stage as being the center of all that is worthy in art. The real question is how complicated and hidden are the imitations unto which we are going to find some pleasure.

It is here that is revealed the slow downturn of our culture in the 20^th century as observed by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki and Salinger. What the heck am I talking about? Well, Tanizaki's “Praise of the Shadow” is one of the best essays written explaining the essential differences between Western Culture and Far-Eastern Culture at the beginning of the 20^th century. What people have called modernity was not about the objectification of nature ( most social theorist have defined modernity as the phenomenological switch of nature as being a controllable force rather than something in the power of the Gods) but rather about fighting off our fears and to present the obvious as we like to imagine it.

Adaptations of our reality have rarely been as obvious as the one we have found them in the 20^th century. It is just a fact that auto-biographies and biographies have never been sold so much. Films are re-made constantly so the subtle critics of our reality are in our face with a loud noise so we do not need a cultural context to understand the origins of the music. Sciences are now in the domain of the everyday life as we see no problem at qualifying people around us as schizophrenics, bi-polars, depressed, demented, neurotics or closet-homosexuals when this lexicon is vulgarized in newspapers.

At the same time, while we reiterate all the known-knowns of our world's universal consciousness, we have now this slight tendency of forgetting what are the problems for which we have never found an answer and for which there are always ways to find new ways to illustrate the problematics. We take what we know for granted and do not look back unto how this knowledge has been founded. We watch whatever we do not want to discuss, we ignore the illustrated problems, what are the dimensions of human nature we do not yet understand, what the author might have tried to find in himself and instead get entertained by what we are satisfied to know.

Subtlety. Subtlety of course does not mean that anything produced has to be buried under an arrogant vocabulary and in a saturation of cultural references. Subtlety is best found in originality. “Me, you and everybody else we know” is a film with interlocking unusual stories reflecting on our lives. It is simple, has no special effects and half the cast is played by children, so hardly the Shakespearian trained talent. And yet there are so many grounds for discussion that the point of the film, the meaning behind, cannot be understood. It is not absent. It is just that it shows the known-unknowns of humanity.

Of course, it is so easy for me to come with my cultural references and shout: “ Be simple but be smart” and then drop a Nipponese author unto your lap and you might feel stupid not having read it ( you should be! [no, I'm just joking- it is in the end just a comparative analysis of toilets]). This is though not the point. The point is that something somewhere did not go right. I will not say that it is the democratization of culture that made ignorance and entertainment the dominant steam-roller of our culture, as did Adorno and Horkeimer hinted at.

I was for a time-being tempted to say that it is the problem of domination in our history. That we have forgotten the secular culture of the people against the high culture of the aristocracy. Brining back everybody to the same grounds so we can equally build from that was the solution defended by Mao should be considered. That is just the antithesis of A&H and it keeps us stupid though. We do need historical references as they show more about ourselves than any modern craft ever can. We do though need to understand the historical contexts unto which every references have been made and constructed to emancipate ourselves from the domination of high-culture.

The problem though might be as Adorno and Horkeimer proclaimed in their theory of the culture industry. The culture industry theory states that the producers of culture are the holders of the mean of production and as such, enlightenment is not in their profit. Why would Time-Warner or NewsCorp. let their public known that they sell just corrupted imitations that do not provide any content that might help us towards emancipation. Even in the mode of production there is something weird and hegemonic: why was Trafalgar square un-kettled by policemen when it was invaded by ignorant zombie-wizards are the release of the last Potter film? No one wonders.

'Made in Dageham' was declared by all its public the best British film of 2010. It made me cry. Have you heard of it? Now, have you heard of 'The King Speech' ? What did you get from it? Nothing obviously, there was nothing in it, I do not think it is repeated enough. Nothing! More than nothing, it has erased all the interesting psychological aspect of the poor guy not wanting to be King and his little brother not expecting to be king because he does not know what it means. Should I talk about ' The Black Swan' that portrayed women as being incapable of being professional and sensual at the same time for fear of going crazy ?

This corruption of the arts by the producers was made very discreetly through this innovative mode of ideological domination that is the intellectual property. Intellectual property did not exist before the 19^th century. What this concept, now widely blindly accepted, made is creating a new unlimited resource for production so the limits of capitalism could be extended for a few centuries. It also created the illusion that everybody could make something and gain some money out of it. The film industry though is the clear example that as much as it has developed through capitalism, diversity in it has disappeared because of the oppression of the big studios, the big producers. What about Youtube?

If we do nothing, it will be the same story.

Internet will be controlled because it reduces intellectual property back to what it should have been: the collective patrimony unto which humanity can constantly relearn itself. Museums should be free, of course, but should not represent either the art market of the rich. What is presented in the museums is what has been established by rich owners as good art and some of their painting are kept in sight for everybody so the other paintings they own still holds their value. Paintings should be shared, for free, as should books, as should music, as should dances, as should philosophy.

Why, oh, why, did I mention Salinger alongside Tanizaki about the lack of arts in the 21^st century? It is just that Salinger heroes always look at the world around them and are slightly depressed that it does not represent all the potential of humanity. The potential of humanity exists only for the un-atheists, the people capable of reflecting about a world before their existence and after their deaths. The potential of humanity has existed sometimes, in parsimony, if the few examples found in its history. I was reading a reference to Kipling trip to the United-States where he was corrected on a reference by a farmer (“It is not Montaigne who said so, it is Monteskiew!”). It made me think of Oscar Wilde's trip where he made conferences on literature and life to interested miners.

The Big Fat Lady exists, somewhere.

They all held the belief that humanity had the potential to see in arts something that can emancipate. But to do so, we do have to be critical and show our criticisms. More than that, we do have to beat ourselves constantly for not looking further into the depth of any crafts, to the point where there is just darkness and try to make sense of the obscure within humanity, of what cannot be understood, because otherwise we are as good as pigs satisfied to live in mud and ready to be eaten when it is too early. 

  to read : "In Praise of the Shadow" by Jun'Ichiro Tanazaki, The complete collection of J.D. Salinger ( do not stop at " the Catcher in the Rye" otherwise you will never understand Holden Caulfield but will make me feel like him),  Civilization and its discontent by S.Freud ( not an art piece, still relevant), Maps and Territory by M.Houellebecq. Everything, in the end, might be worth reading. 

  And do watch "Made in Dagenham" to understand, in relation with the King's Speech, what is wrong with our world.

After the 90's

When was the world what it ought to be? There are so many conflicting ideas, facts that nothing makes sense and no ideal makes sense. Between the two world wars ( the one written in capital letters), there was more global exchange than there is now. There was of course less political interaction, less social interactions and less informations in general on what was going on the other side of the world. Most of the informations would travel as fast as they could, most of the time disappearing in the midst of population who had no interest in distributing the news. All was irrelevant, all was transformed.



By the end of the twentieth century, we are all link together through phones, internet, television and even newspapers. It was not their own President the French saw in 1998 for the Monicagate, it was Bill Clinton, the man from Arkansas. Informations were finally global and everybody was free to interpret it as they wished. Of course, this is the illusion of every individuals as cultural biased would always reinterpret the information, leading Clinton to be an example for Berlusconi or an unlearned lesson for Wiener.



The world, by the end of the twentieth century was also a world united to solve all the problems. It would solve the debt in Africa, eradicate the hunger, see the tyrants of the world quiet down and it was in an engaged spirit that humanity would step into its third culturally-constructed millenium. It went alright until George W. Bush won against Al Gore in the elections. It is not a question of being political, it is solely how the democratic process got overruled that was significant for the rest of the world. Its leading power was transformed into an oligarchy of lawyers and judges ready to protect their own interests.



No wonder then that a band of terrorist acted on our worldly unconscious and taught the hypocritical hyper-nation a lesson that has never been correctly learned. It was somehow looked as a selfish personal attempt at harming the United States by an extremist group. It is the slight insult that we profess and feel guilty about as soon as we leave the insulted. We did not mean to be mean, we did not mean to be destructive and we know full well that it will come back to us in unexpected way. There was though inside our brain, in the back of our thoughts a growing frustration to say how it is, say what we think even when we are not ready to admit it to ourselves.



The U.S.A. before and after the 9/11 strike, did not believe in global warming, provided minimum help to developing countries and was all in all a great power that would show such a power for good in parsimony. Even the help for developing countries was a form of blackmail and not given blindly. There was a control on the spending ( American goods only) and on the infrastructure of the country ( no competition to the American goods). The U.S.A.had always a lot to offer for the world, and when it was most expected that this generosity which would have meant that this nation no one dared to compete against could have lead by example into a better future.



We had waited and nothing came but Titanic, Godzilla and the Matrix. Those were the promises of the American dreams. It was a society as stiff as the Victorians, as stupid as lizards and though everybody knew it was just a dream, no one raised themselves against it because America was a blockbuster. Nothing could stand against it, not even the Americans. This was the dream that was slowly coming out, the frustration felt by the world but whom no one dared to think to much out loud, by fear of losing the little they had gained from it.



What a surprise 9/11 seemed to be for everybody. And yet... nothing changed. Why nothing changed is because the Americans had finally the excuse for not caring for the rest of the world. It was just about rightfully defending their interests. And who would say there is something wrong in that? Except the rest of the world, which slowly started to see that there was something wrong with the whole unraveling of this situation?



The United States at the beginning of the 20th century had this same self-centered point of view over the world, something that totally disappeared after the world war 2. They did not want to join any global organizations and Woodrow Wilson had to defend the idea of being at the center of the world with a congress that did not give a damn about the world. Obama now finds himself in the same position as the congress is asking him what the hell they are doing in Libya.



I guess that there is at the moment a global zeitgeist of protectionism of the nation as the world crumble because of a clique of rich and we just like to blame the Other. We do not have yet identified an other, but it would be interesting to see who is going to come along. The similarities with the crisis of the 1930's has not only sprung in my mind, but it the mind of a few European leaders, an example being Sarkozy who in 2010 tried to make the Gipsy's the Other and found himself in an awkward position where the population went ' hey wait a sec' : they have not done anything wrong.



Hitler found actually the perfect scapegoat as the Jews in his time where holding some of the businesses of Germany and it was understandable to be jealous with a few of them. 70% of the lawyers for example were Jews. The problem was the profession and the system, but instead of saying so, which appears too complicated and intelligent for the general population, he found the symbolic representation of a frustrating system. There is no more equivalent. The families of owners around the world have different backgrounds. Everybody is a winner in the system, except that this is only an illusion, and that comparatively there are still a majority of losers.



The common grounds for the owners of the modes of productions are that they are from old families and that someone always grow to be a winner in these families and play his cards really well. It is true that there are some losers in these families, but they are eternally take care for until a succession of generations loose the ability to play the hands they have been dealt with. It is though the exception.



The frustration of the populations over the lies of the system, and the fact that rich families are coming back on the compromises they did with humanity at the end of world war 2 and at the end of the 19th century is not going to help them, but it is because they have managed to alienate every body but the the civil servants who have still a notion of allegiance to the state. The difference between a State and a private enterprise is that the private enterprise has no guilt cleaning up on a monthly basis any elements that is not productive enough to replace it until it finds a good element. The State, by providing the security of the employment has created a sense of protection that does not provide an incentive to work. But material gain is rarely an incentive to work, except for manual labor.



I do not know again where I have started, and how I should end. I do believe that we have a tension inside us between accepting the system and playing the game, and observing that the game is rigged. It has the appearance of a game, and the people who want to play try to play it well and want to always ameliorate their cards, their chances. Most people at some point tell themselves it is what it is and we should go with the flow, otherwise we loose. It is the fear of losing that blocks any reflection for better change. Instead, we legitimize our actions by looking at our competition and finding problems in their actions. No one likes to judge oneself action or unintended consequences of thoughts. ' We have played the game so we understand why it is played'. But who thinks about who sets the rules, who thinks about what we really want and not what we have been made to think we want ?

Mea culpa si non intelligis nec me

I know, my perspective on society only reflects the perspective I have on myself. Most of the criticism I put unto someone or something is only a distorted idea of a self-loathing instinct that has followed me since... I can't remember. I do not mind, this is not a self-pity call, it is only a sincere observation. Most criticism I have ever said, I have always felt there was some truth of it in me.

I will not go into a written psychoanalysis of my youth and me. It would be long, I do not have a Lacanian Master to have an imagined truth I can look for. I have only self-reflection. It is me. I have to accept that my mediocrity is at the same time my drive to be better. My admitted mediocrity is my drive to think others are mediocre. It is my drive for my pretended arrogance because I do not like to admit to myself that I could be better.

Everybody is telling me I can be better. I could have been better by now. I could have been content. What then? Would have I read science-fiction and accepted that it is only a distorted mirror to society on which we can learn ? Or would have I read only entertaining fictions and voyeuristic biographies ? Would I have accepted that life cannot change, society cannot change and live without frustration? Probably.

I know I could have been better. I know I could have had more self-discipline earlier in my life. I know I could have been more easily entertained by casual conversations. I could have found a sport or a game I would love and socialize there. I could have... But it wasn't my life and I don't know why. So I am left with all the frustration of seeing abuses of power, lack of accountability on a world scale, our self-blindness towards our self-destruction, our lack of consideration for the others, our fear of change, our contempt for a horrible world. It is only because I have self-destructed step by step my life that I feel that. 

Would have I really felt that radical change should happen and not only be advocated, I would have followed the steps of the Unabomber, this misunderstood genius of the 20^th century that everybody chose to ignore. I would have had the courage to lead the life of Henry David Thoreau. I would have burn myself on Place du Luxembourg to show that there is something clearly wrong with this world. There isn't though anything clearly wrong with this world. There is something wrong with me. 

If there was something clearly wrong this this world, what would it be ? Would it be the fact that no one is born equal in right and in chances in life ? Would it be that everybody wants to be a tiny bit better than their neighbor without knowing what better means. Is it our fear to self-reflect, to admit that it is a sad sad world. Is our problem that we do not cry in front of the news anymore ? 

No, there is nothing wrong with the world. Everybody is content with the world. Everybody has small problems with their lives and those constitutes the real challenges and obstacles of life. I blind myself from the challenges and obstacles of my life and find myself instead looking at the world and think that's my life. I am not an idealist, not more than anyone else. I am quite the opposite. I am the hight of a closet-pragmatic. I am a self-hating pragmatist. 

I spend my days reading academical articles, newspaper articles, judging the cultural outputs of the world to find myself arguing against an ignorant imagined other. There is no ignorant person. There is just people wanting to know less. And it is such a wise choice. 

This week I have to publish this article in advance, as I will be going back to Brussels over the weekend. I have this week been told that I am never more arrogant than when I feel like the lowest of the low. It is a paradox, but it only lies in the fact that I have a need to lie to myself. What would I do once I'd accept how I see myself ? Would I just make theories after theories trying to explain what is wrong and how to make myself better ? I do that already. I grow better, but oh so slowly. 

I just do not know how to kill that pretense of arrogance. I do not know how to kill that self-loathing. I need to stand up for myself. I will stop expecting anything of the world. It is not because philosophers and critiques justify my point of view that it is the right one. In the end, it is not because I have looked up to the philosophers that I should strive to be one. 

I see food price grow due to the expanding demand for fuel and meat, I see the growth of inequality due to the inherent problems of our system, I see solidarity going down the drain and I am wondering if I am not just an anachronistic dreamer. There is a path towards a simpler life for me and I do not know if I want to take it.

Megalomania Explained

Why would I start write a constitution on an unread blog ? Except to feed my megalomaniac ego in a safe way, it is also because I have tried for the last few days to find a written document outlining the general needs of everybody and for a clear structure insuring them but with space enough to evolve, otherwise it would fall into the realm of a totalitarian dystopia.

I do not pretend to know more than everybody, I have not received many secretS that outlined me the world as it is. The information I get is accessible and all the informations necessary for emancipation for everybody is everywhere. I had the chance to grow up in a safe environment, materially speaking, and yet I have had enough life experiences to understand the need to share this safety with everybody. It is not fair that I got to live like that and most people did not. It is, I understand, partly that it is socially constructed Christian guilt, but it is as well a drive to think about positive change.

Still, who am I to present my idea for a government in a place freely open to anyone who has access to the Internet ? Well this is the beauty of the Internet. Though it is still an illusion, as it is still victim to privatization. I am no one. That is the point of the Internet. No one is still no one until he is somehow noticed. The world does not work on this egalitarian precept. You meet people, if the people like what you do they will support you in some ways. People having more material advantages can support better and most of the times now will try to take some advantage out of that support. Groups will tend to first support the in-groups individuals at the expenses of another group.

People with good ideas will try to advertise their ideas and their ways to be part of the redistribution of wealth produced. We do not live in a fair society, we are aware of that, and yet knowledge is still without answers. Every little point is discussed in detail to see what compromises can be achieved. The problem is the compromise. The compromise, as I often see it, is letting the bully making the most of it. A compromise can only be achieved through understanding dialogue where no secret is kept and everybody is equal.

It is the part where I am dangerous, as I see that having a partly pan-optimistic society can bring a fair form of control of powers. Pan-optimism is an articulation of control first developed by Jeremy Bentham and then by Foucault. It is the force to abide when we are afraid of being watched. Secrecy is problematic because it so close to privacy. The private domain exists and should be protected. The public domain exists as well and secrecy happens when private interactions happen for power. I do still have problems on this thin line, but I know that any continuous form of powers has to be counter-balanced to insure it does not accumulate repeatedly until a minority rules a majority, as it is happening now.

Of course, I also find that saturation of information can hide the information. That's why the organizing patterns have to be universalized to be then has to have the potential to be particularized to every community and individuals in fairness of their needs and contributions. We can not live without a structure, a system. We have a system now, but unfair and over-complicated. It has to be complicated because it concerns 6 billions individuals. It can though has some simplicity. I understand that we do not have yet a world government but as technology accelerate time and diminish space between individuals, we can contemplate it. This constitution actually accepts any self-sufficient country.

I am thinking that transport should also be a universal equal right. I would consider putting maybe some environmental rules, the problem is that knowledge on the matter is still a bit indistinct. I trust though humanity to make the right choices in this concern. With the advent of the 3D printers, I see really intellectual rights being what will create status. That's why I think that they could never be sold. People should entitled for recognition for what they thought for the world and brought to the world. Of course, people should never be forced to do anything, except participating at inspiring people. We have to encourage each other to do. That's why I think that education should be the first investment we should consider. It is the only way to find a new confidence in humanity.

What if we bring positive recognition to other people and to ourselves. We are all looked up by children and at the same time we can all show different ways to them to look into. If everybody shared their passion, would it not provide a society maybe slightly more at peace?

Which bring me to the point where I do not think that an army should be part of a country. Let's follow there the lead of Costa Rica which has no army. It is I think now unneeded expenses. I do think that who ever want to be a policeman should have some martial art training and should have a motto 'lead by example' and find what ever they can do to help. I do think I should also forbid any weapon production not destined for martial arts.

There are still a few things I have to think about like property. Is the accumulation for example of land something I should forbid in some ways? Probably though I do not know exactly how yet. I also have to think about the currency use and the way currency should be calculated and allocated. I do think that there should be a local currency and a national currency. As such, wealth could be more easily calculated and redistributed. It does also mean forbidding the concept of interest for loans. Interests are amongst the main concept for in-balance in an economic structure.

I do know it is hard to think about the overall problems, but it is not though impossible to leave place for both. It is the way our intelligence has evolved: making rules to find exceptions to make rules out of the exceptions. So I do know that my constitution could never exist eternally and will be replace, if ever implemented, at some point for a better one. I have read different parts of key documents, though most of the times snippets. They do provide essential defenses for principles open to interpretations. They do all hold some limitations and sometimes lists too many exceptions.

It is to have clear understanding of the world. Now, I think that localities should also have sovereignty over their laws. As such, the national government does not extend his power uselessly if it is consider useless. It also provides localities to focus on themselves. If all the localities and the nation was uniform, no change would be possible.

As I write this legitimization to myself, I keep adding things to the constitution. I find myself adding stuff and I know that at some point I will have to stop or delete things. What I would love though is external discussion and contributions to this project. I know that from this lonely blog, this will never come. That is why I do advertise myself. It is the real world though.

I do not know how to add social help and policing in it. I imagine my police not existing but being associate will social care. I do not know how to have a justice system where the goal will be to repair society's error. I want to bring alienation from work the punishment it really is. The one we have to live every day.

I know that it is a dream but I do believe in dreams. It is that or believing in the nightmare. Yes, I am a coward to express my dream in a lonely secure place. I should not see it like that though. This platform is at the moment the only one I have to express myself to the world, it is my free platform. I do want participate in other spheres of discussion, and I do as a passive actor. I do learn slowly to be active though. And offering this first draft is my little contribution of the week.

blog 1

Everybody is a writer, everybody is a thinker. Well, people express themselves in different ways and most people do not dare to do so. I know I lack the corońes to express everything on my mind. I sincerely do not know where to start and how to start. I do not even think a confession to a priest would be what I need. Is repressing all my feelings, all my thoughts, all my desires, all my hatreds, everything I despise what builds me and the way I think? Or is there nothing in me and everything I repress is actually the stuff that is worthy to come out and the only thing I should work on is the form in which it is going to come out? 

I do not know where I stand. The real trauma of life is trying to understand that everybody else is also the centre of the universe. It is to see that everybody finds their ways to deal with life. No one knows how to deal with life so we all invent excuses. We legitimize the way we think in a way we think is reasonable and what we do not want to accept is that reason has no grounds to stand on. Reasons is just the universal lie to deal with life. The only frustrating thing is that the most popular the reason, the bigger the lie.

The French existentialists did try to share the idea that life is what you make of it, so deal with that freedom. Nietzsche held a more or less equivalent speech though he did not have much balls most of his life to act on his impulse, to run and get the girl he wanted, and the one time he got to act as he wanted people got surprised by the inconsistency of his behaviour and locked him up. Why do we freeze in front of the unexpected? We are all pussies. And we gang up on the cocks to drown them. But the cocks are to be admired! The real cocks, not the wanna-be cocks who dress in a fashionable ways for their bohemian ways.

Deal with the impossible should be our life motto. But there are so many me's. I suffer from my humanity and strive to accepted as well...I know that so many facets of my life would displease one or the other person. Where does this fear of rejection comes from? Are we only confronting ids and superegos? Are they one and the same? Should I really care? Should we really care? I find that not so many people care. Not many people realize that news are the same, wither it is about politics, economics or film stars, it is all some form of entertainment which will never change us until each of us try to make a single analysis, a real point of view on the questions. Knowing facts amounts to nothing except for our scientific mind. And for our scientific mind, everybody wants to be an expert. What about the real strive for universal knowledge where everything is interrelated as it is in reality?

I do not know where to put myself. I feel like a chameleon sometimes, having the knowledge at hand to perform a social interaction as expected. My mother taught me that it was an essential skill. She actually taught me that creating the improbable was a blasphemy. And I do, most of the times when I am with her, suffer from that repression. I do repress myself normally and my hypotheses is that everybody do. Could it be that it is only the 2^nd siblings that do? I am not sure. As I said, the first trauma is the misunderstanding that the centre of the universe is relative. My second trauma was my position in my family. It is normal to be a younger brother and an older brother at the same time. Is it supposed to be? There are so many researches on 2^nd siblings that the trauma gets wider.

Anyway, I rarely blog ( as put a purely personal segment of my frame of mind at a given space-time) but felt like it. I am writing at the moment a short history of the world where I am trying to understand what holds a society together and what are the processes of change. Synchronic/Diachronic;Wave/Particle- one of the real problems of contemporary philosophy alongside the existence of the fourth dimension (a dot lives on a page, how can he ever notice us?)

Notes from the party

The party was all an idea to be with new and old friends and have them mixing. I was talking to a few friends on facebook and set up a date. A theme, I find, is always required for a successful party, as well as good way to communicate the party informations ( facebook in this instance). And here I am writing about it.
I am happy I don't have to drive anywhere. I'm high from joints passing, drunk from my whisky bottle, I've giggled a bit on a laughing balloon and accepted a ritual offering of a line. I'm writing and Dom is talking to me. Dom is my good parisian friend's boyfriend. He studies sociology and film studies, and I enjoy talking to him. I'm smoking a cigarette and drinking my whisky and he is curious about what I write before it is written. He won't be the only one and I don't mind.
The theme of the evening is movie characters. Any movie. I thought I would do a theme wide enough so everybody could come just dressed up as anything they wanted and find the movie afterwards. The real souls of the party where recognized though as the people who selected their character first and made the costume afterwards.
The evening ended up being a convention of alternative controversial protagonists. There was Ennis Del Mar from Brokeback Mountain, Marla from Fight Club, a tranvestite Edward Scissorhands, a lonely Blues Brother, two Minnie Mouse ( Mice ? ), a cross-dressed Lara Croft and Tinkerbell (Dom), a magnum P.I. and women pirates from the eponymous movie. No Indiana Jones, James Bond, Snow White. That makes me happy.
My flatmates and I have all cleaned and rearrange the house to make it party proof. Saturday was the day. I woke up early because of an accidental phone call to me by a friend. I did all my washing and went to the drier, There, I received a call from my girlfriend, a good reminder of love and puts me in a good mood.
My room is clean. Even if the house's vacuum cleaner's is deficient. I moved my bed and desk to hide the different spills and disorders. It looks clean precisely. What helped was my flatmates enthousiasm for moving all the furnitures out of the living room. I ended up having the big sofa, so I had a square made of the bed in the corner, the dest at the window and a sofa covering my book shelf wall.
I have a history of failed parties. But this one will be the exception. While writing that, I have Ace Ventura who wants to leave a quote for me, and he writes: " I can only experience a party through my body,but then I influence my body with powders, my body schema changes, the Gestalt shifts and I get BATTERED !" Thank you Ace for this quote that expresses some of the entertaining aspects of the party.
I'm just enterering now a conversation about taste. The usual top 5 favorite movies. The state of a strange mesmerizing witch in black are True Romance, Platoon, Nightmare on Elm Street, When Harry met Sally and Toy Story. Hunter S. Thompson's ones are Amores Esperos, Chopper, Monster, ,Monsters Inc. and Halloween H2O. Everything flies. The conversation change to a grand question nf art: is the appropriation of a piece of art's meaning by the public is a good thing. And as the conversation evolve, so is the spirit of the party. I just noticed that my small room, after a moment while it had only three people, has now, let me count...15 people.
When I've set up the date on the facebook group, I didn't consult my flatmates. They complained a little bit at the beginnning, or they had other plans that turned up to be not that important. A flatmate of mine tried, and succeded a bit, guilt tripping me for doing that so quickly. But every was set. We were Patrick Bateman, Ron Burgundy, Ennis Del Mar, Freddy Krugger and an un-dressed up, Hosts of the Party.
I want to thank my neighbours for really working on their costumes. I have harrassed people I'd invite about their costumes, trying to make them feel they risk stigmatization if they wouldn't come dressed up. And now, my brand new toothbrush is the new wand of Minnie from Paris, and it goes in the mouths of everybody in the room. It won't go in my mouth, I have a cold, I wouldn't want to share it.
Hosts have prepared their rooms and all rooms have different personnalities. I bought covers for the sofa and my bed, on which I poured fake blood. I also got myself a bottle of whisky that I shared, and which is now corrupted by a strange mix my flatmate did at this end of the night.
The party started with us lonely hosts waiting for our guests in a house prepared for anything except desertedness. So I went to my neighbours' who put me in a joyfull mood, dressed up in comical manners and yet so remarkably well. They came back to my house and suddenly the party kicked off with every other guests following in line behind them. It was 9.30. A good time to start a party.
I am Patrick Bateman. Suited up with blood spatter on my face, I handed my business cards with my phone number on it all night long. Next morning, I'll receive of course text messages from unknown numbers asking for my service as a cold blooded killer. Thank you Marla by the way for having provided this idea. I have discovered during the evening it is a consensus that this character suits my persona. I don't know how to interpret that. Maybe I should kill someone to see if I really share the pleasures of American Psycho's protagonist. Any volunteer ?
Our living room being empty, it was the perfect spot for our guests in a dancing mood. Our speakers weren't loud enough, so Minnie from Paris went to get hers and the party really kicked off. If I was in the living room, I would have asked for "Thhhee Paarrrttyyy" by Justice. But I wasn't there and the party didn't need any introductory song anyway.
When the party was well started, I tried to meet everybody and give my time to everybody, a hard task. I had a few friends I hadn't seen for a long time, there was catching up that needed to be done there still. I walked a lot around and maybe didn't distributed my presence well enough. If anyone feels I wasn't there enough for them at the party, I'm sorry. (No surprise, I am highly self-centered)Still, every groups of friends at some point broke and people met new people. I wasn't needed that much for the matters of introductions.
We had four of our rooms open, an empty living room and the kitchen. The key places of the party were, as always though, the hallways and stairs. You could see migrations, interactions separations and avoidances of people. What made the life of the party. I have to say arrogantly now that my room was an almost consistent nexus of the party and have been complimented to have made it so. Upstairs were the people taking different drugs, in the front room was a guy selling laughing gas balloons - I'm still not sure how he landed at our party- in my room were some joints running and generally in the house people had drinks in there hands.
I'm glad I've bought my bottle of whisky. Ennis Del Mar bought two bottles of vodkas and I think a lot of people should have thanked him for that. On their behalves, I thank you gay cowboy. It's sunday and I don't feel that sick since I stayed on my alcohol all night. Everybody brought cans and bottles of cider and beer. I don't care what people drink, but I'm trying to picture the volume that will represent in bins.
I have a party loot as well. It's not exactly a loot, I'll give the stuff back if asked. I have Hunter S. Thompson's pipe, I have Lara Croft's gun, I have a wig and a sword. I feel it's the beginning of my career as a pirate. Looting is my only incentive for such an laborious but much needed cleaning of my room needs.
Now that I'm caffeined up, I can still see that good parties have a great life. The party ended slowly - I have to make a point that I am proud as well that the first people to leave left for being too drunk or sex which are always signs of a good party-, I wasn't part of the final breaking and death of the party. I'm afraid I might, by the end, have alienated maybe some people by writing. But now, I know what was my intention when starting to write this. I wanted a general picture of the party at its peak.
I'm sitting majestuously on my desk chair, observing my whole room. Next to me on the sofa, there is a tall manly Lara Croft talking about a philosophy of time to two Beetle Juices. On the other side of the sofa, there are pirates talking and laughing with Freddy Krugger and his holiday hat. Jasmin from Aladdin and the german Minnie are talking to Tom Cruise from Top gun and a Grease's bearded Pink Lady. At the door of my room Magnum has some difficulties socializing but he manages, listening to Elwood Blues and a student of Battle Royal talking movies. In the hallway, just outside my door, we can find Catwoman and Bugs Bunny having a couple's chat in polish.
In the living room "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley is kicking on. Edward Scissorhands and a haired Death from Lost Highway ( the bold guy dress in black in the movie is Death, but that is just my personal interpretation) are making out in a corner. It doesn't disturb the dancing of the a male Tinkerbell, Minnie from Paris,Cleopatra, Charlie Chaplin (dancing like Michael Jackson), a skier, Poison Ivy and her basket of treats and the Ugly from the good, the bad and the ugly. I ignore obviously in my description anyone not dressed up, they are extras only.
In the Kitchen, there is a swisso-malaysian drug lord couple talking to the Devil. While upstairs James Dean and Hunter S. Thompson are corrupting Ace Ventura, Ron Burgundy and Froddo. The question has to be raised though: is it because of drugs that Ace talks to animals ?
Finally, at the bottom of the stairs, there is Marla not giving a fuck and elegantly chain-smokes.


Anyway, I had a great time and I'm sorry that I can't depict better the atmosphere of that night, but I think I'll remember it.

Rock and Beyond

Like any field in society, it is subject to analysis, later on, conclusions from researches can actually reveal something about society as a whole. I have, due to my education, an important interest towards music. Most of the people do say that they like music, I know people who really do know a lot, and most have a restricted knowledge of it. I will shortly explain through two life examples the reaction coming from people who have a restricted knowledge. But first of all, I need to legitimize myself so you understand my perspective on the subject. As a player ( clarinet ) I have learned the western way to analyse a piece of music, I also had also amounted a lot of information on the history of this art through school, my parents, readings and DVD's.

I will use some premises throughout this text, the first one is that the creation of music, it's interpretation and distribution are the results of different forces in society. I don't think that someone will disagree that for the manufacturers of music, their history will account for their taste and therefore for the music they'll create. Meaningful changes in music are therefore the results of meaningful changes within society. That is why afterwards, in the field of history, music periods often possess the same name as societies period. I would even propose that music periods account in better details, like other subjects in the history of art ( e.g. literature ). As an example, the romantic period show the the dream of a liberated society by the enlightenment, and the naturalist period show the result of an industrializing society which doesn't represent the dreams of the romantics.
I have two flatmates, one is South-African, Michael, the other is English, Andrew.
Both admits a restricted taste and knowledge of music. Michael is open to some styles of music, mostly southern music of the globe and some R'n B. Andrew on the other hand, restricts himself to songs which make the charts. Both represents different sides of a global society. Michael, not being directed by society's mass choice ( a choice which important theories show that it is mainly created by the important music corporations), is open to any kind of music which he will come across. On another point, through my discussions with him, his discovery of music is an interesting point for me who is already deeply embedded by my interactions in the field. Andrew's perspective otherwise is just a reference towards something I don't want to be associate with, I try to reject as much as possible prejudices when trying new music. I'm not sure though what are my exact criteria set of taste created by my environment, but I can explain what I look for.

I like Rock and Roll, but my definition, like most people, is wide. I will use here a short dialogues from the documentary “The Last Waltz” by Martin Scorsese. It is between Martin Scorsese and Levon Helm, the drummer of the band calld “ The Band”:
“ Levon Helm – Near Memphis, cotton country, rice country, the most interesting thing is probably the music.
Martin Scorsese – Who comes from around there ?
Levon Helm – Carl Perkins, Muddy Waters the king of country music, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Bo Diddley. That's kind of the middle of the country back there. So bluegrass or country music, if it comes down to that area and if it mixes there with rhythm and if it dances, then you've got a combination of all those different kinds of music. Country, bluegrass, blues music, show music. The melting pot.
Martin Scorsese – And what's it called ?
Levon Helm – Rock and Roll”
A metling pot, and that is what I like in music. Such melting pots can be found around the world but having grown up in a European country, my influences were mainly western. I like this idea of amalgam of musics and cultures. It is an aspect in world cultures which show the results of this aspiration for a global world where region cultures keep some aspect of their identity to produce something new. It unites messages and open doors to other cultures.

All this genres of music, I like to distinct them in two large categories. The first one is the one that unite music from the southern hemisphere with the northern. First of all my examples, I would like to name Charlie Parker and his third way, when he added string playing in a classical way with his jazz solo. The Clash imports of reggae music into punk rock is an example that everybody knows. It can also be observed in the souther countries. Psychedelic music during the 70's influenced great local bands from Sub-Saharan countries. There are also a lot of available covers of well-known song in South-American style. Manu Chao in this matter is also a real global artist. My last example, which I discovered last year and quite enjoy is Rachid Taha, an Algerian artist playing in France and mixes every kind of music he encountered closely.

The second category is the music which mixes the east and the west. Gogol Bordello is the most famous recent example I can think of, playing East European Folk music and punk. Blonde Redhead is another band which incorporates the Chinese tonality of its singer with its contemporary dreamy sounds. Having lived in Thailand, I listened to the music there, but I had a problem with the immobility of Thai culture, which is also observable in its music. To compare it with another country which has more diverse cultures but keep an identity, it's been a while that I listened to Japanese radios. In every style, whether it is jazz, rock or hip-hop, they have some definite real global quality bands: PE'Z, MINMI, Nujabe, Sing02 are just a few of them. It is also observable, for obvious reasons, that the Chinese scene in China has not got what I look for.

So here are some of my preferences in music. I have to state that I do listen to classics also, it is important to understand where different cultures come from. But I do believe that as good songs they can be, they can incarnate exactly what I look for in my music. I'm lost in my thoughts now and I don't know what I wanted to say. Music represents Society in lot of ways. People appreciate the art of the their milieu, and listen to whatever person they consider superior in their milieu. Knowledge of it might free people, but there is a long way to gon though some musics can maybe show the way.
There. I hope I saved my self.

Baudrillardian Hell

Here's an article I wrote for the student newspaper of my uni. It will be surely cut down to a meaningless article, because that's what all our world has come down to nowadays : more and more information and less and less meaning. It is a clear Baudrillardian study of students elections, but it's adaptable to every elections. I've also been asked what I mean by Baudrillardian. Well Jean Baudrillard is a thinker who wrote about how hyperreal our world is becoming. To understand how our world is imploding, I'll advise anyone who can think critically to read " Simulacra and Simulation" by the same author.

Even the least engaging student would have noted the elections going around. Though I don't know to what extent I can call it an election. Of course I can, students are voting for a representative, I can assume the countdown won't be tricked and there is more than one candidate: all the ingredients for a fair election. But there are a few problems in sight. And they are not petty.

Well, the first thing to notice is that, probably like last year, the lack of interest of the students undermine the legitimacy of this election. Last year, only 10% of the students voted for a student representative. In some countries, it's not considered a valid election if it represent only a small proportion of those concerned. Coming from a country where voting is compulsory ( Belgium), I'll confess that I like to practice whenever I can my right not to vote. But I do need a reason not to vote, other than better things to do. I'm not saying that all the non-voting students share this position, I'm only saying that there is maybe a reason why the students aren't interested.

That's when the ridicule elements of these elections sank in me. I Make most of my observations at st. matts because that's where I study. But being a small campus, it might have been easier for me to approach some candidates and observe the different flyers - sorry, I meant “manifesto”- given around and the impressive amount of propaganda posters ( ask the candidates and they will all tell you they want a greener uni). I didn't find a poster that spoke to me. Most of the posters where common orders to vote for someone I didn't know. Some insulted me for not voting for someone I didn't know: I took this one as definite proof of the partisanship of political freedom.

The pictures on the posters were also interesting. They destroyed all sense of seriousness about this election. I've seen some posters with American Presidents on it. Was it aimed at the small American community of UWE, or did it signify that they thought like American Leaders. If I was on that road, I would have been more presumptuous and associate myself with Gandhi, or Stalin. Aren't these as much to the point as any other leader? I've also seen posters showing American flags, I'm assuming they're strong patriots in the wrong country, or poster that would show the mascot of the candidates. This last one is also an intriguing trend: a person needing a mascot. It's like Ronald being invented before McDonald's.

But I am being a bit superficial here. My problem is that there is not much to say about the content of this election. All the candidates in contention for the Student Representative President position formulate the same program, as they did last year : a more representative student union, better transport infrastructures, fighting for student rights ( god forbid actually stating said rights) against uni and “ more stuff to do” ... Some did add little things, but like a candidate said “if I say too much, I'll give promises I can't keep”. The candidates have only mentioned the problems most students have. Their solution is a promise to sort it out.

I don't know much about the power of the Student Union. I can only estimate that it doesn't give out much, except for the pecuniary compensation for the heavy duties, since no one wants to fight for it in the name of some real believes or values. What these students represent are the consensus. Our choice is to vote for the one we estimate would do the best job, as a technician, as Student Representative President, not the one who stands for our values. I couldn't see anyone expressing different values, anyone being exaggerated, there's no commie, no anarchist, no tory, no crazy, no labour, no one admitting they don't care, no religious fanatic, no sexual pervert, no snob, no intellectual elitist, no one different. I don't know, maybe I'm exaggerating, I hope I am, otherwise I'm just witnessing the slow death of democracy here at UWE.