I will never forgive the media for using death counters and funeral marches, perverse countdowns of the worst kind.
Because it’s Un-American.
We built this place from nothing, we built all the skyscrapers, covered the land with roads and built a great country from the hills. Manhattan was a hilly island. Why do I say we? Because I came here with nothing but two bags like many here, from a home country I loathed.
We have been through so much. Fires and wars, and 9/11.
It has come to my attention that in the quietness of this city, of the economy, the quietness of work and all kinds of business, the media companies like Facebook ( and their now subsidiary Instagram ) and newspapers like the New York Times have taken it upon themselves to cover us with their Corporate-Speak of Fear and Loathing. I do not read the New Yorker but I see the covers of it here and there. It too Corporate-Speaks Fear and Loathing.
The Number One Fearmonger is the New York Times.
Instead of actually informing and helping people and New Yorkers
The New York Times chose to count the dead Americans and the dead New Yorkers. Is The New York Times the New Media Morgue Death Counter? It is a (un)dead newspaper in a tail spin of Fear and Loathing.
I tell you what - I will boycott The New York Times for life, for the life of the newspaper that is.
I remember the time when the New York Times was selling the Iraq war and telling all kinds of made up stories to stressed Americans about the certain proofs of Weapons of Mass destruction in Iraq. Then they perversely enjoyed counting the dead and killed Americans and the killed and struck Iraqi people, and then they enjoyed every single blow and gun. And counted the dead with glut for blood.
Because we stopped dreaming, we stopped having dreams and lofty goals as a civilization and left corporations with no other purpose than profits to tell us what to think.
The New York Times is not a news organization, it is a yellow tabloid with a website and an army of journalists under pressure for their jobs who would write practically anything for money. They would even write about dead and dying Americans and New Yorkers in order to win the daily bread.
But this is a direct result of our civilization losing its grand vision, losing its dreams and burying its marvels under piles of garbage, aka meaningless possessions.
When you bury yourself in meaningless possessions you can’t see the sky from the piles so you bury your head in the ground, your field of vision becomes a field of dirt ( or dust! ) and this is how counting dead Americans and dead New Yorkers came to be a great entertainment.
This is the naked truth - from the likes of yellow newspapers like the New York Times, which has no other purpose but to save its flailing business by selling eyeballs, you are being sold the most gruesome entertainment in the form of counting dead Americans, and counting dead New Yorkers and the more gruesome, the more awful, the bigger the letters.
We are being sold gruesome entertainment instead of dreams for building a great civilization.
Because if the New York Times was about saving lives - this is what the headlines would have been like - Today We Saved Thousands of Lives! And they would have been the first to champion the plight of the homeless who die on the streets of Manhattan in great numbers every day, and they die of neglect. The homeless die every day in front of our eyes yet their plight was never championed, neither by Facebook nor by the likes of the New York Times. Because it is not entertaining.
Do not even for a moment think that Facebook or The New York Times care about you when they cover you with Corporate-Speak Propaganda and entertain you with the news of death and politics. Where are the Facebook and New York Times soup kitchens?
Because they sell advertisements and as for-profit corporations they revel in the opportunity to entertain you with deathly news.
The New York Times and Facebook perversely enjoy entertaining you with death, because you are afraid of it and it feels kind of close and buzzing when you are close to it, because this is how it feels when they dangle news of it.
I absolutely love when people and corporations thrive and profit, but I loathe Corporate-Speak.
Why would a corporation feel the need to educate me and and tell me things? Do they have education specialists or scientists or visionaries in their cubicles? Or is it just marketing people and editors and writers who, to earn the daily bread, go to their cubicles and write whatever they are told to, based on whatever gets more fearful eyes.
Do not be afraid to cut loose the Corporate Speakers and find anything from the history of mankind, the greatest thinkers, artists and writers to read about. Most of all - educate yourself about everything you need to know and think for yourself first.
Yeah, I know I left out television entirely out of my essay - but see - I absolutely do not watch or even glance at television at all so can’t possibly rage about it. I have been a cord cutter for a while now.
The second part of my essay is about the Material World. What is the material? We don’t know. We do but we don’t really because we haven’t entirely penetrated the fabric of the Universe yet.
Here is the main thing that needs to be sorted about the Material World - you need to inform yourself about it, you need to question it and update your paradigms about it constantly. Every human grows by updating his and her ideas about the world, and I would add to that the ideas and concepts about the Material World. This is what Plato’s Cave is about - you need to know about your shadows.
Here is how to know about the Material World - at some point you will get anxious about all material things around you and they will start not being enough. This is the moment when you know that your paradigm about the Material World has shifted.
Because the Material World is a veil, or series of veils. Every single iPhone is meaningless as a collection of mass of atoms but it is the genius of man in it that makes it useful to us, and marvelous. At one point the iPhone you have no longer brings you the same happiness. I will tell you why.
We are here to be more. We are here as human beings to become more, but not to have more stuff.
I believe the task of every human on Earth is to figure out how to be more.
I believe that having stuff is a diversion and prevents you from becoming more. It is a distraction from figuring out how to be more.
It all comes down from the fact that the messages of Corporations from the likes of Facebook has become so relentless and so well crafted that you feel that they are telling you stuff that you must listen to. You have to simply see these entities for what they are - they are advertising networks who depend on their very functioning as corporate entities on you listening or seeing their messages.
Your life depends on you being able to know the Material World around you and its messages so you can take your life in your own hands and craft your own message.
To become more you need to carefully pick your teachers - I prefer dead people, artists and thinkers from times long past because they are not selling anything relevant to me and the context of their ideas is out of the context of the mundane they lived in.
Thirdly.
There has been a murmur in my head that has been developing in the past month but the murmur grew into a rage in the past week as I was approached on Instagram by Masked Mermaids.
Masked Mermaids !
Now don’t get me wrong, I love mermaids. I also love the human breast and I think really well of human and mammal breasts and I think they should be happily exposed at all times.
But
If you pose with a Mask to be Cute you are an Idiot
regardless of whether you have large or nice breasts or whatever - see previous paragraph.
The number one enemy of mankind are For Profit Corporate News Sites like the New York Times, I include in this category also Facebook which has shifted from its original purpose as connecting people - to its current business model which is to sell advertisement for businesses and to show them to people. The number two enemy of mankind are Entertainment Corporations, which are usually part of conglomerates selling all kinds of things including news and entertainment.
I love being entertained and love movies. I have seen them almost all. So it is not really the companies but
Entertainment Stupor is the number One Enemy of Mankind
Entertainment stupor includes news and especially bad and gruesome news which are designed to bring the nose of a human into the dirt where worms live.
I recently saw an article about us going to the Moon - what a marvelous thing and how exciting for mankind.
Now news are heavily politicized and the face of our civilization are actors. I love beautiful people and of course many actors have brought much joy to my life. But they do not define what we should be thinking about when we turn off the TV or switch off the phone or laptop or tablet or whatever. We can’t pretend act something like going to the Moon.
Lets stop worshipping actors and instead start worshiping scientists, engineers, thinkers, tinkerers, teachers and artists.
I of course love NASA but NASA stooped really low at one point promoting Brad Pitt and his movie Ad Astra. Okay, so you are in possession of the brightest women and men, handpicked bravest and smartest human beings and you have quite a number of them, and you end up touting a guy who.. plays something whatever it is that I did not see it. Because pretending to do something is boring and doing the thing is exciting and kudos to the actual doers.
Let me just say that the value of any communication, including entertainment and movies, is in the message. And I will talk more about this later in About Art at the end, but the most valuable thing in communication is the message. There are actors and entertainers who go beyond simply speaking the words or enacting a scene in front of the camera - actors who are also producers, directors and writers and their message goes beyond speaking the words. These are artists. To be an artist is not the same as being an actor or enactor - see the end of the essay below- it explains what Artists do and why it’s important.
I love movies and love being entertained but this should end with the end of the entertainment. Entertainers and actors bring joy to mankind but they will not take us to the stars. So don’t follow their examples and do not worship the ground they step on - it is not worthy of mankind, or your life. Your life is given to you to be more. I do not know how you can be more but I am sure you are great at something.
The best inoculation against Corporate Speak is to see things for what they are. Think and carefully curate what you look at and when you look at something think of the source. Is the source a corporate boardroom, a corporate meeting where a bunch of people come out of their cubicles to decide the fate of mankind? Not only what is the message but who is behind the message?
Take Facebook for example and Mark Zuckerberg. He is a good businessman and built a large and great business. He has however no other credentials other than being able to create and run a large business. He has no qualifications in science, education, philosophy nor is he hiring scientists, philosophers and thinkers to develop his message. He just.. sells stuff.
Facebook and the New York Times are advertising businesses, they have no business telling you stuff, they are just bigger than the guy who holds a large subway sign on the corner - he just tells you where to go buy stuff.
Facebook and the New York Times are advertising businesses, just like the guy who holds a large subway sign on the corner, they just tell you where to go to buy stuff.
Don’t build your life around a sign on the corner.
My other big problem is the heavy politicization of all kinds of messages, including the entertainmentalization of politics. Okay, I get it, the people who run our country must be heard. That’s it. I don’t want to hear about it more than once a week to make sure they do a good job. I do not want to hear or watch the faces of politicians - they should be at work, solving problems and getting mankind on the next undertaking.
Now all the knowledge that has ever left a human brain, has ever left a human mouth, is now absolutely free for you on the internet to learn. What other stuff have you got to do? Learn and think directly from the source of all mankind’s wisdom. The best and brightest, the most talented, the most eminent humans that ever lived are now with all their thoughts, at our fingertips.
Before you pick the message, carefully pick the source of the message.
Don’t let a corporation barely 20 years old tell you stuff. It is just a bunch of people going to work and coming home like me and you, their message is no more or less valid than the message of any random stranger on the sidewalk. At least with a stranger on the sidewalk you know who you are speaking to.
What About Art.
Artists are the creators of human culture.
Wait, what about the entertainment companies and movies? Aren’t they culture?
Culture is about deep human experience, it is encoded in human objects and experiences like art, great books, great music, for other humans to enjoy and contemplate.
Take Disney for example. Disney’s best entertainment products are based on great works of art created by artists like Walt Disney himself, Brothers Grimm, A.A. Milne and other writers and artists.
Some of the best and most famous movies are based on the works of artists and writers like Tolkien, the Star Wars franchise is the brain child of the great artist and filmmaker George Lucas. It is possible for these creations to dilute their message once the works are removed and extrapolated away from the artist as it happened with the Star Wars franchise.
Among some of the greatest artists of our time I consider people like Steve Jobs who sharpened and took his message to the greatest heights as to produce great works of art in computer design and app and device design. It is a unique and not easily repeated contribution to human culture and every single device you hold in your hand is a copy of what the great wizard Steve Jobs, of course together with other great geniuses at his employ, came up with.
Artists master the human experience, not a medium. Artists make the human experience their message and craft objects or works based on the human experience.
The deepest human experience is encoded in the greatest works of art.
Ever wondered how is it possible that the simple message and brush strokes of a humble artist like Van Gogh are amongst the most recognizable human culture messages, and simple reproductions of Van Gogh paintings hang in villages in China, in huts in Bhutan and in the basements of apartment buildings in Manhattan. Read Van Gogh’s letters - you will find the deepest most profound experience of being a human being, and this is what is in his paintings.
Artist are crafters of deep, human experience. And thus their objects carry the message of the human experience. Human culture is about the individual human experience, encrafted and encoded by an artist into an artifact or an experience which later delivers a message or an experience to the percipient.
If you are one of those people who reads the weather in the newspaper - there’s an app for it and believe it or not they can tell the weather based off a radar. The weather radar is good enough for NASA to plan the launching of their rockets - it must be good enough for you.
If you meet me and I have an umbrella it is likely because the app told me there’s at least 30 percent chance of rain.