-
We Have All Been Here Before
If you’re familiar with the “hippie” generation in the United States, you may also remember this refrain (quoted in the title of this post) from a song by a musical group of hippies named “Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young” — “Deja Vu”. Many years later I heard a song by Frank Zappa (which was probably recorded around the same time) mentioning Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young “fighting at the Fillmore East”. Hippies don’t follow leaders — I think Bob Dylan once said something like that.
OK, so here we are — over half a century later … and this post is actually supposed to be about something completely different (although it might also be somewhat inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s quote about “the power of love” vs. “the love of power”). Picking up from last week’s post about “progress” (see “The Progression from Progress through Progressive towards Progressivism”) and also the previous one about Taylorism, etc. (see “Scaling Time”), I want to delve a little deeper into this notion of leadership and power. Apparently there is nearly never any shortage of potential leaders, hierarchical power structures, etc.
Let me provide just one example — a contrast between two such “powerful” leadership icons.
First, we have the quintessential dictator himself, referred to as “Führer” (“leader”) by many millions of followers. This was a case of Influencer 0.1 (or maybe even 0.0.1? … ??)
source: https://blog.todamax.net/2014/perfect-loop-charlie-chaplin-edition/chaplin-hitler-mussolini-charlie-gruss 
source: https://makeagif.com/gif/steve-ballmer-developers-11j2vN Second we have the quintessential caricature of leadership from just a few decades ago: Steve
BallerBallmer.Whereas a full century ago, a leader had to build stuff, make things and maybe also start wars, kill millions of people and many things more, more recent leaders can get by simply by creating enough hot air to increase global warming — either on their own or through oddly “pleasant” [1] humming sound coming from their machines.
source: adapted from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20130527-hummer-h2-3-abri.jpg Lucky for us, leaders have apparently moved on from obvious large-scale death and destruction. Unlucky for us is that apparently the narcissistic hunger for power has transformed natural environments from military battlegrounds to environmental battlegrounds … and the unfortunate transformation has replaced obvious battlegrounds with stealth battlegrounds.
[1] Note that I feel this “oddity” is based on something like a narcissistic personality disorder in which the narcissist is motivated by their experience of complete power over machines.
-
The Progression from Progress through Progressive towards Progressivism
Source: adapted from https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorw%C3%A4rts_(Deutschland) For a couple of centuries, progress has been an industrial undertaking. During this time, smokestacks and iron buildings were built to embellish many skylines. Today, many of these rusty ruins remain as relics of what once happened. And similar “progressive” plans are still being built to make similar results happen somewhere else (in the spirit of “out of sight, out of mind”).
Finding an opponent to progress is probably much harder than finding a needle in a haystack. It is truly difficult to fathom how persistent the belief in mainstream propaganda is — despite the global wakeup-call the CoViD pandemic was. there does not seem to be any dearth of suckers willing to fall for any “progress”-based plan for tomorrow.
I wonder if the progress metaphor is especially well-suited to railroads. Trains usually go forwards, and only rarely in reverse. Ironically, they are a far more rational (and economical) use of energy than electric cars.
It almost seems odd that the metaphor needs to be hammered home through decades of indoctrination in so-called “modern” education systems … and then after “twenty years of schoolin’” they put you on the day shift (or perhaps you go directly to the unemployment line and “do not pass GO”).
-
Scaling Time
Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist
https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php/Logisch-philosophische_Abhandlung#1When I turn on the radio, I usually expect to be entertained more than I expect to be informed — and my expectations seem to be confirmed time after time. This morning was no exception. This morning I heard that something had happened in Vancouver (Canada) and the word “Filipino” was a part of it (is “Filipino” a word? I think it refers to the Philippines — which is not only spelled differently but is sort of on another part of the world altogether). This also seems closely related to words like “Germany”, which just a few centuries ago may not have referred to anything at all. I think even “USA” has been around longer than that. But I digress.
The thing I actually want to talk about is that there are (broadly speaking) two diametrically opposed divergent theories when it comes to explaining human behavior. At one extreme, we have an “evolutionary” theory which ascribes the motivations driving much (or even most) of human behavior to evolution, biology, nature and stuff like that. At the other extreme, weighing in as rather lightweight (compared to the heavyweight in the previous corner), is the quasi-scientific community of so-called scientific management … of “business“, no less … with a rather short-standing tradition of just about one century, kicked off by an American named Taylor, and so this philosophy is often referred to as Taylorism.
Taylorism is very fundamental to the way very much (if not most) of the so-called “industrial” world works. Whenever I brought up this topic with my father, his eyes would gleam and he would refer to the “time and motion studies” as if they were sacrosanct.
Source: https://giphy.com/gifs/thecoolidge-charlie-chaplin-coolidge-modern-times-Tj4xrJS9l1FV2ezfVc “Vancouver”, “Filipino” and so on exist somewhere in between these diametrically opposed time scales. As is so often the case, I think Wittgenstein was pretty much exactly spot on. I guess I believe it more than I know it. When we use language, we need to be aware of the fact that it is simply a useful instrument for us to interact with each other in the context of our worlds. There is no more one world than there might be one language. And if we were all to go on strike and SHUT UP then so-called “artificial intelligence” would immediately SHUT DOWN and close up shop.
-
They’re Eating the Sperm
While the global news cycle is winding down to take a little break and people all over listen the Pope’s “urbi et orbi”
Spielspeech, I’ve decided to use this space to cover so-called “women‘s issues” and to highlight yet another episode of Bridget’s “Dumpster Fire” series (over at phetasy.com ).People who follow my writing across the web already know that I have covered Bridget’s insightful remarks many times over (e.g. both here [1] and elsewhere, e.g. “MAGA Country” [ https://branding.photo.blog/2024/11/16/maga-country ] ). Bridget almost never fails to get me to laugh crocodile tears, and her latest production kind of “takes the cake” (with frosting, no less).
Source: https://www.phetasy.com/p/dumpster-fire-207
Bridget’s “main stream” (“men stream“?) commentary is a must-watch. Her astute coverage is proudly opinionated. Yet (unlike the “NoAgendaShow” [2]) she falls short of breaking free from an advertising model (including the “algorithmic” censorship model [1]). What did surprise me is that in her current episode she has apparently won over Hillsdale College [ https://www.hillsdale.edu ] as a sponsor.
In my humble opinion (“where I remain” — to quote John @ NoAgendaShow), although the mainstream remains dead in the water, the abysmally low rate of literacy also will not budge an inch so long as unenlightenment is viewed as modern, vogue or whatever. [3]
[1] See “A jumping off point for the truth“
[2] See in particular the “Value4Value” model, which I also covered on “Brought to you by Natural Language” [ https://phlat.news.blog/2023/08/18/brought-to-you-by-natural-language ]
[3] See also “Mainstream Milieus” , “Voiding and Avoiding the Void” , “The Whole World is Sleeping” , “What’s the Difference (Between Mainstream Media and Echo Chambers)?” , “Does Google Own the Internet?” , … (well, just to name a few 😉 )
-
All the Lobbies’ Lobbyist
This post is probably going to be shorter than most — because it’s so simple and straightforward, I find it hard to fathom how this might need saying at all.
First: What does it mean that you have an organization doing business in the modern world, and the only way the organization “shows up” via a so-called “search” is by spelling the full name verbatim (as one-word string, even if the name comprises two words)? Either you have never heard of SEO, your entire organization has very little or no competence at all, or I simply don’t know what is wrong with you. OR, well, maybe perhaps that is by design? Let’s say your organization is a “lobbyist watchdog” and the way you get paid is for all of the rotten lobbyists not to show up.. One way to do this is simply to not show up yourself … unless some potential client or donor happens to search for your organization by name. Exactly. Not a single typo. Or heaven forbid, when someone does a search for information about actual lobbyists in the real world.
Welcome to Lobby Control.
Source: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/ngo-sieht-fortschritte-im-kampf-gegen-lobbyismus-100.html To give you a little glimpse of how “State of the Art” this organization is, let me observe that they just recently did an interview with a mainstream media company in which the biggest issue they have with lobby groups is that they now feel that “big tech” companies have too much influence.
That is indeed “State of the Art”. From several decades ago.
-
Mythical Man in the Mirror versus IRL Human in the Middle
I recall hearing Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” being played over and over again on the radio. I didn’t know the title of the song back then, and I actually seemed to hear it as “Man in the Middle”. Every now and then I would think “what is he saying about middlemen?” It probably took me several decades of not paying much attention to it before I learned much more about it (and at some point, I did succumb to looking up the lyrics). Today, I want to delve into how my own misunderstanding may actually have been somewhat prescient.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_in_the_Mirror 
I took the photo above (right) at a retail store today. Let me explain.
One of my local grocery stores sometimes has a promotion they do on “Shopping Sundays”, offering everything in the store at 10% off. On those days, I like to go and stock up on staples that are normally never on sale. One such staple which no-one but me ever seems to want is skim milk. In Germany, there is a special kind of milk which is sort of non-perishable — meaning it can be kept for several months (without requiring refrigeration). As milk prices (as also many other groceries highly dependent on the price of oil) have significantly increased in price in recent years, I was hoping to be able to pick up some savings today.
Nope. There was not a single liter of such milk available. 😯
Well, before leaving empty handed, I decided to look around some more in case something else I might want happened to be on sale. I found the yogurt pictured above. I had taken the two items pictured (and depicted as “on sale” at less than half price) to the cashier and was surprised when the cashier rang up the full price. The cashier suggested I bring them back and called the store manager. I talked it over with the store manager and it seems that there was no way for me to know which price actually applied. Some of the items were being offered at full price, and some were being offered at less than half price. Even the store manager couldn’t tell which was which without scanning the bar codes individually and informing me which items were on sale and which items were being sold at full price. Seeing the great opportunity, I now decided to buy the three items the store manager was able to identify as “on sale” (versus about 30 that were not). Both the store manager and the cashier were actually helpful, and I can see how such frustrations must tax their patience on a daily basis.
Later it occurred to me that the same retailer has another location across town, and since skim milk is indeed a significant staple in my household, I decided to visit the other location to see if my luck might be better there,
Nada. The other location was also completely out of stock. I had asked the store managers at both stores, and both said stocks were completely empty and wouldn’t be replenished until next week (and then the sales promotion would be over).
Several things then occurred to me which link together the “man in the mirror” story with the “human in the middle” story.
These “Sunday shopping” special offers are limited to the city limits. This retail chain has locations all across the country. If the margins on some staple goods are already quite thin, then it might make sense for the national retailer to not replenish stocks in my local store that was offering additional savings (perhaps at expense of the national retailer’s account).
In this way, promotions which are advertised regionally but are constrained by logistics decisions made across regions may very well succeed in getting people to the store, and the brunt of the “failure”, disappointment and frustration is born by the local consumers and retailers (local store managers).
I imagine that much of the same principles apply in many other scenarios, too. When politicians decide to go to war, that is no skin off of their own backs. They send soldiers out onto the battlefields to fight with each other. They send drones to drop bombs on civilians. They increase prices across the board, but they don’t pay a single cent themselves.
“Everyday people” (as Sly and the Family Stone would sing) are living in the real world. Michael Jackson could sing as much as he wanted about a fictional apparition he saw in his reflection, living out some kind of confrontation with his own self-image. In contrast people in the real world are forced into confrontations without any clear or straightforward ability to make a change to their own situations.
I guess the most significant insight that can be gained from this contrast is that irrational media (i.e., brand names) should be expected to create such “bait and switch” schemes and to follow the dictum that “there’s a sucker born every minute” every day. [1]
[1] See “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]
-
An Introduction to the Mainstream Trick
I have been troubled with the contrast between mainstream and milieu for several weeks now (see e.g. “Mainstream Milieus“).
This week I discovered a fascinating insight, and I wrote about it on “Epidemic of Knowingness” [ https://podcasts.video.blog/2025/03/28/epidemic-of-knowingness ]. In particular, Chris Williamson describes something he refers to as experiencing a “lonely chapter” in life, which people can experience if (and when) they do something different (than the group — I guess whether mainstream or milieu might not matter that much here). During the discussion, he observes that only few people are willing and able to face such risk and “go out on a limb” (my use of the idiom, not his). I believe this has to do with a fear which has deep roots in human evolution, an anxiety about the potential for an individual action (or behavior or whatever) to lead to ostracization. This is perhaps also related to something sometimes referred to as a “bandwagon effect”. In any case, it seems to be a strong motivator towards conformity.
The propaganda and gaslighting (and similar types of manipulation) used in mainstream media are littered with these types of motivations. The word mainstream itself motivates people to pay attention and fall into line with what “everyone” says.
Yet what happens when mainstream makes a mistake? Do they investigate and find solutions to problems? Hardly.
Source: https://tenor.com/view/sweep-sweep-under-rug-rug-cleaning-carpet-gif-15914451 -
The Razzle-Dazzle of New & Improved vs. the Tried & True But Tired of Old & Over-Used
A while ago, I became aware of a book published last year, authored by Tali Sharot, titled “Look Again”. In an introductory statement to a talk given by the author at Google, the presenter states:
“Look Again” explores all the ways that our brain’s ability to habituate to novel experiences over time affects our behavior, our perception of the world and ourselves.
Somewhere on Youtube (“Talks at Google” episode “Tali Sharot | Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There”)The fact that Tali gave this talk at Google is not surprising, because many of her findings seem to underpin Google’s ideology, which seems to be very much aligned with the American way of making money by advertising crap.
Much of the theory seems to be based on the basic Pavlovian thinking about stimulus and response. The idea is that new stimuli are viewed as intriguing, until we begin to figure them out and then they gradually keep becoming less and less fascinating until they even become boring, on their way to becoming completely zoned out, at which point our habituation to them may actually become internalized as biases.
Source: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/240000/velka/golden-soft-sparkling-background.jpg I myself am also intrigued with Tali’s ideas, so I decided to reach out to her, but I have not yet recieved any reply from her.
What I find particularly intriguing is the idea that apparently new things seem to fascinate us, until they don’t. Maybe anything shiny and new is far more captivating than something tried and true? This bias seems very contrived to me, perhaps especially because I myself am so much about natural language — which may indeed be the oldest information technology known to humanity. Having evolved over many millennia, natural languages are today as streamlined as the most slippery fish, as aerodynamic as the most acrobatic bird and as able to leap tall buildings in a single bound as Superman itself (at least).
And yet languages also appear to be as old and beat up as that favorite pair of well-worn shoes. We slip into them without thinking, without feeling as if this technology were an add-on that might affect our output. By and large, the natural forces of evolution proves us mostly right. We need to be able to switch out one language for another to become aware of how this “alternative” technology can impact our outlook, our output, and so on.
New designs, software and algorithms are not as evolved as natural languages, so we should expect them to be comparatively clunky and cumbersome. Do we? Or are we more fascinated by them, simply because they are shiny and new?
-
Literacy, language, listening skills and crap like that
I have a friend who appears to have poor listening skills. He may pretend to be a good listener, yet time and again I notice he isn’t really listening … i.e. understanding what I say … repeatedly.
The other day we were talking about some media stuff (which, granted, is one of my topics) and I was yet again lamenting about the widespread poor literacy skills leading to poor behavior and such, and he mentioned “yes, but what about the literate people?” (of which I am quite sure he feels he is one).
There is a lot to unpack here. Let me start with noting (yet again) that today, literacy requires (at least) media literacy — e.g. in order to look up a definition of a concept you need to know the difference between a dictionary, an encyclopedia, and many other types of media (whether a cookbook or a novel or whatever). Likewise, a website, a smartphone, an app, and so on. To truly understand a lot of media, you need to understand computer languages, fine print, the legal system, … I could go on and on. Most people are not (well) versed in all of these technologies which are fundamental to the way modern civilizations function.
And so today, when I saw my friend again, I asked him about the distinction he had made regarding “literate” people. I asked him to name such a literate person. He said “you”.
This also needs unpacking. I have spoken with this friend at length about my views regarding literacy (many of these are also covered in separate blog posts here). I have mentioned that I (as well as most other people) are obviously far more illiterate than literate (since I can — more or less — use only a very few languages at a level which someone / anyone might refer to as “literate”).
My friend likes to play games. I like to play games, too. One of his games is to accuse me of being narcissistic. He doesn’t actually make the accusation, he just sets me up that way — and this is, I feel, exactly such a case. The implicit accusation is that when I lament about the poor literacy skills of most people, he makes that out to be an example of narcissistic behavior. It isn’t. It is merely a statement of fact.
There is a fine line separating poor listening skills from ignorance.
I have another friend, or perhaps an acquaintance (as I haven’t seen him much lately, as my workplaces have transitioned in the meantime and therefore also my work-related contacts), who I also often discussed with about these and related issues. I think perhaps we shared a somewhat iconoclastic vibe. He once made a fascinating remark, I guess it was intended as a warning, that if I discuss “difficult” (for want of a better term) issues with people, they may very well “shut down” their brain, attention, … — listening skills?
I have time and again made comparisons between very large (“mainstream”) media companies and dictatorships like Nazi Germany — both very large organizations, both very manipulative. No leading business engaging in manipulation and propaganda will ever tell their “consumers” that they are distrustworthy (this is a word I have myself invented to describe when something is worthy of distrust). [1]
You have to reach that conclusion yourself.
Sources used in creating this image include: https://enlargement.ec.europa.eu/news/speech-president-von-der-leyen-european-parliament-plenary-strengthening-european-defence-volatile-2024-02-28_en and https://www.deviantart.com/uponia/art/The-Rolling-Stones-logo-606775750 [1] See also “The Social Construction of Publishing“; for more about the contrast between mainstream media and rational media, see “Rational Media“
-
Bike Trippin’
Over the past few days, the local weather has been unusually excellent. So while I regularly ride my bicycle on a daily basis regardless of the weather, I have taken the “fair weather” opportunity to take my bike out on a few extra tours.
I guess in most so-called “advanced” economies bicycle riders are considered to be somewhat abnormal. People who dare to ride bicycles on ordinary roads are even more extreme. People like me, often finding themselves in situations together with normal folks (which in these so-called “advanced” economies usually translates into motorized participants in traffic) appear to be seen quite like “lone wolves”.
My experience this weekend was no exception to the rule. When riding along an open road from one town to the next, I experienced several people driving cars and also passengers in cars rolling down their windows — not to experience the warm sunny weather, but rather to scream out some inaudible mumbo-jumbo in my general direction. I consider such people to be, um, rather remarkable (to put it mildly).
Yet I realize that the society I live in is rather intolerant of any deviations from the norm. The local government itself is often on a campaign to outlaw dissidents. So often ordinary people feel legitimated in hacking away at anything somewhat out of the ordinary. Never mind that I guess quite often these very same people feel somewhat “holier than thou” when they vote for political parties which proclaim to be aligned with environmental issues. Apparently, inconsistency and self-contradiction are not abnormal.
Social Business (WordPress weblog)
Socio Business blog 