Under Scrutiny--and loving it!

[Proteus]

Some of you may not have seen this article & it seemed like many who post & read here would find this "interesting."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/arts/17REAL.html?th

It's this kind of information about the state of the culture that challenges my sunny faith that global and positive transformation is happening right now & heading for a "singular" event in less than a decade. But, hey, the via positiva is all about embracing everything until the realization that nothing in commodity culture can feed our spiritual hunger becomes too powerful to resist.

[gone]

Turn off, tune out, drop in.

[Charlie]

For me, this remark from the article was chilling:

“…rhapsodizing about on-air personal growth and the therapeutic value of being constantly watched. As Josh on "Big Brother" explains, "Everyone should have an audience."

Reading between the lines here, Josh’s statement implies that people are forced to be better behaved if constantly observed; i.e., less likely to engage in “anti-social” behavior (thinking or acting in any regard rather than the accepted norm).

If this does not profoundly echo one of the cautionary messages expounded in Orwell’s book, I don’t know what does.

[daniel]

I know it sounds bleak and Orwellian and all that. However, there may be another aspect to it that could be interesting to think about: Perhaps part of the transformation is the Ego becoming more transparent.

In a strange way, we are transitioning from an opaque society where everyone's secrets are hidden or veiled, to a transparent society where everything is revealed (the word "apocalypse" means "uncovering"). At the moment, this of course mainly benefits the corporations, but this may not be the final end of the movement (just as the Internet was originally built for the military-industrial complex, and here we are using it for vastly different purposes).

I was just reading a bit of Bucky Fuller, and he had a fascinating comment on the movement of "precession," how evolution takes place in a kind of sideways movement, a 90 degree angle, from what seems to be happening at the time. Once again,this was the case with the military developing technologies that then found other uses.

So in any case, the subconscious psychic movement towards transparency may not ultimately be a bad thing - and in our current corporate specular culture, this would be the logical form it would take at first.

[gone]

I fear this may be wishful thinking. The egos on Big Brother are not so much showing to be transparent as transcending, they’re that vast. It’s like that guy in Hitchhiker’s Guide who is sent to be destroyed in the Infinity Machine by seeing the inconsequential nature of Self but comes out liking what he sees. I guess you could argue that Infinite Ego shares some commonality with transparent ego – the all and nothing – but it’s a little academic.

[Proteus]

Actually, Daniel, i've been re-thinking my original reaction to this article and see your point. My reaction proceeded from fear of Big Money and Big Government and the many abuses that i could imagine they might perpetrate upon us--what with video cameras in every store and monitoring the streets from half the buildings in any city, tracking devices in cars and cellphones, cookies in our computers, etc. And don't get me started on the erosion of civil and privacy rights that the Bushinistas immediately demanded in the wake of 9/11!

But, transparency and openness are, in themselves positive things. No doubt we'd all have less to fear and feel less isolated were we more open with each other and our lives less compartmentalized and hidden.

Still, i'm a bit queasy that this move toward transparency is, by the majority, an unexamined phenomenon. And most of those who are conscious are experiencing it as a forced march at the hands of the greedy and controlling. But, as you say, all such movements take on lives and momentum of their own.

[Charlie]

In a strange way, we are transitioning from an opaque society where everyone's secrets are hidden or veiled, to a transparent society where everything is revealed Substitute the last quoted word "revealed" for "controlled."

For me, therein lies the danger.

[sidecross]

I would lean towards the octopus, and have ink to cloud my being.

[daniel]

no doubt we are passing through the belly of octopus. i hate the surveillance / control mania of the current system also, yet i see paradoxes. First of all, where are the millions of people necessary to collate all that incoming data? The attempt to create TIA may end in chaos.

[willoweyes]

Operating on the assumption that computers tag messages with certain key words, I've started writing all potentially dangerous words in Pig Latin. For example, eorgegay ushbay. Pig Latin just seems to fit.

[gone]

The data collation will continue to be out-sourced to India who will then hold the Western World to information-ransom demanding that everyone stops eating cows.

[dragonfly]

Originally posted by willoweyes:
...I've started writing all potentially dangerous words in Pig Latin. For example, eorgegay ushbay. Pig Latin just seems to fit.Illiantbray!

[sidecross]

"Loose lips sink ships"

The TIA must be frantically adding Pig Latin to their database.

[Halfglass]

Interesting--the transparency angle. I like when a new angle is presented unlooked for...(recently there was the bible as original civility story, the earth as food for the larval, self-aware ape/unit). I often thought that if The Change in human evolution were sudden, it would be the ability to read thoughts, an instant transparency where, if everyone didn't go mad, we'd be able to know everyones' motives (including the Presedent's) just by "looking" into each others' minds. Maybe we'd find the right world leader digging through a dumpster for his or her dinner somewhere, after determining this was the person with the best plan. (Your first shall be last, your last shall be first.)