Tag Archives: Consumerism

Blog

A Peaceful & Prosperous New Year to EVERYONE!

Leave a comment

A video Christmas Card: a load of YouTube videos mashed up with a home-made song.

“Woe is us, we”re in a lot of trouble. We’re at a point of maximum denial. People are ignoring the obvious, They’re keeping the news out of the News.”

“The oligarchic character of the modern English Commonwealth does not rest, like may oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.”

G K Chesterton, 1905
Continue reading A Peaceful & Prosperous New Year to EVERYONE! →
Blog

Income of the 100 richest people could end global poverty 4 times over!

1 Comment

The net income of the richest 100 billionaires would be enough to make extreme poverty history four times over.

That’s a pretty extremist statement. A headline from The Morning Star, The Socialist Worker or Marxism Today you might think? Nah. It was from an Oxfam press statement released on 19 January 2014.

Continue reading Income of the 100 richest people could end global poverty 4 times over! →
Blog

Perversions made possible by the machine age

Leave a comment

I’ve just been rereading George Orwell’s essay, Benefit of Clergy, a critique of Salvador Dali’s autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali.

“As a record of fantasy, of the perversion of instinct that has been made possible by the machine age, it has great value.”

George Orwell, Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali

Which set me thinking. What kind of perversion is Orwell talking about here? The machine age has certainly made a lot of things possible, not all of them good. I suppose you could say that lying around in a centrally heated living room bingeing out on TV, junk food, social media and computer games is a kind of perversion made possible by the machine age.

Continue reading Perversions made possible by the machine age →
Blog

Technology and experience

Leave a comment

“Technology is the art of arranging the world so that we don’t have to experience it.”

– Martin Heidegger

So, as technology is based on science, and science is based on empiricism, and empiricism is based on the experience of the senses, then the more technology we have, the less we experience the world, the less empirical science we understand and the less new technology we can create.

Or, put it another way:

“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”

– Karl Marx

QED!

A Town Like New Orleans?, Blog

Off Air, Broadcast, W Stephen Gilbert

Leave a comment

A Town Like New Orleans? BBC2
by W Stephen Gilbert
Broadcast
31 Aug 1981

The BBC Manchester series City was a more random collection of reports on where we’re at. I caught four editions, particularly enjoying Ian McNulty’s well thought-through film on musical life in Leeds. Apart from the diversity of musical styles, the fragmentation of socio-political attitudes also came over.

Continue reading Off Air, Broadcast, W Stephen Gilbert →