It should be a wake-up call for everybody

People are so divided in this country — they’re so divided … and there’s so many people that love it, they love that we’re divided and they profit off it — off that division … and they stoke the fires … and they do it for their own profit … and it’s so fuckin’ gross.

Joe Rogan Experience “#2378 Charlie Sheen” [ 2:37:07 – 2:37:25 ]

Yes! Joe Rogan seems to be incessantly spot on, at every moment, time and again he hits the nail on the head.

And that’s why time and again people keep listening to whatever he says. He simply has impeccable media savvy — to the point where you almost think that he must have some sort of “perfect” algorithm wired into his reflexes.

That said, I myself have become increasingly concerned with the difficulty of getting through with my own wake-up call … to everybody (see also “Everywhere Plans for Everybody“).

I think I have written about this quite often already (see also “Sensationalism, Individualism, Mainstream Media Bait & Switch Tricks” + “My No-Know Freeze-Frame World“). It has everything to do with the dichotomy naturally created between what we understand as “self” versus everything else. In economics, you sometimes hear the term “rest of the world”). Likewise, I am not really interested in the entire universe … although perhaps I should be? (see also “If Google is the Pope of the Internet, Then Who Are You & I?“). Instead, I am most interested in what I wish to refer to as my community.

To some degree, I am free to choose my own community. I can make it as narrow as my own family (perhaps I can make it even so extremely narrow as to focus entirely on myself??), or I can widen it out to include a variety of “social groups”. As my perspective broadens, so does my mind — and this is most clearly represented in my own language (or languages). [1]

My “broader” (or even “broadest”) view of language is the frontier where my own understanding reaches its limits (this is essentially one of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s most often quoted observations). [2] I experience this as my “world” — in particular, the world in which “my community” understands my own use of language … pretty much the same way as I do. (cf. also description of “pattern recognition” in “All Your Data Are More Free to Us“)

I view myself as existing within a (widest) community in a “widest world” extending out throughout time and space via the wonder of written language. [3]

Just as many (if not even most or even all) people have freedom of expression (as a “natural” right), they also have the freedom to express (and “formulate”) their expressions as they choose — in whichever modes and technologies they wish (and are “available” to them).

Personally, I feel particularly good about using so-called “open source” technologies (for more about that, see also “Google can’t answer question about using Google (or NOT)“). In contrast, I am also very “concerned” about people with less “advanced” literacy and publicacy skills (see also “Literacy & Publicacy“).

If someone puts all their content on one website, then they seem to be getting everything they want or need from that one website. Likewise, if they only use a few websites, then there must be something particularly satisfying about those few websites. Let me offer an example, in order to make it more clear what I’m talking about.

These days, a lot of content gets uploaded to youtube.com — so what does youtube offer which might make it worthwhile? Some people might argue that youtube is “free”, but such suckers do not realize that youtube spies on its users and sells that information, which then undoubtedly influences the type of propaganda such suckers consume on a daily basis (most of which is consumed via so-called “search results” — i.e. predominantly via google.com )

Of course many people use many websites for many different reasons (obviously, “few” and “many” are relative terms; for more about the scales of these terms on the Internet, see also “Introduction” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/introduction ] ). [4] Some people get paid to “produce” content for websites which use this content as a front to sell advertising. Some people pay with their own (behavioral) information, which is tracked by a wide variety of spyware websites (including not only well-known sites such as google.com , facebook.com , amazon.com and many others, too) and then sold to the highest bidders in clandestine marketplaces (well-known mostly to traders in such industrial espionage operations).

You are free to choose (e.g. whether to use “rational media” vs. “irrational media“; see also “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]). [4] And if you haven’t gotten killed yet, then you also remain free to live with your choices.

[1] I have quite often pointed out to my own “friends and family” that people actually speak different languages with each of their counterparts (which might be a rather commonplace observation to so-called “socio-linguists”); I believe this often overlooked “fact” alone would probably revolutionize linguistics at least as much as another one of my colloquial observations, namely that language can be viewed quite broadly to include all exchanges of information (even as miniscule as “genetic” information, for example).

[2] This quote is often translated as “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”

[3] Note that many “written” languages exist — some are relatively transient (such as the bits sent back and forth during telephone calls, or also the genetic information noted in the previous footnote) and others are relatively permanent (such as the Code of Hammurabi — written in stone and currently stored in the Louvre)

[4] These edits (the parenthetic statements) were made two days after publishing this post