The man got his news from one source, and one source only. He didn’t need to diversify his sources, because “This is America, daggonit, and as an American in America I’m allowed to do as I please.” The talking heads appearing on his favorite conservative-leaning television station told him everything he needed to know, and he liked it that way.
He also listened to his wife, of course, who sometimes passed along knowledge and advice gained from her circle of friends and family. Which meant he got news from at least two sources. He also listened to the pastor of his church, of course, and read such bible verses as appeared on the mobile application a grandchild had installed on his phone. Which meant he got news from at least four sources. He also listed to some of his conservative-leaning friends, whose opinions tended, at times, to match his. Which meant he got news from at least eight sources.
And yet, when pressed, he insisted that he got his news from one source, and one source only. The man was fearful, you see, and stubborn. He had learned to stick to his guns no matter what. Even if it meant being wrong, and lying to himself, and riding roughshod over the gut-knowledge that he was acting foolishly. Even if it meant being cruel to others, and attacking them personally because of their views. Because, in America, where the gentle nonconformist gets steamrolled daily by ten million angry yes-men, corporations don’t profit when people are open-minded or learn from mistakes.
americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
02 August 2017
28 September 2012
jobs now offline
The grand American experiment in shifting to the Internet the system for finding, evaluating, and hiring employees seems to have failed. According to an ABC news report, 80% of all available jobs in America are to be had only for that special person-in-the-know, not merely to the first schlub with an Internet connection. This author is not the least bit surprised to hear that companies have stopped hiring off the Web; each job at which I have worked in the last decade I got through a personal contact, a temporary-employment agency, a physical visit, or a similarly old-fashioned method, and only a few of the hundreds of resumes and job-specific cover letters I have ever emailed, posted, or uploaded garnered even a brief response.
Thousands of templates exist on dozens of sites that job-seekers can use to craft for themselves slick-looking resumes, and the World-Wide-Web abounds with page upon page of detailed instructions on how to puff up or expand one's job-history, on how to use bullet-points to the greatest effect, on what the placement of those bullet-points says about the applicant's character, on the varying importance of a snail-mailed thank-you note, and on just the right thing to say in the subject line in order to catch a downtrodden recruiter's eye; I can only imagine the difficulty of doing the job of a human-resources officer sifting through mountains of documents that all look the same, that all sound the same, that all employ the same tricks. The Online resume, it seems, has faded into oblivion almost as quickly as it hurtled to the forefront of our commonly-shared dream of finally doing something satisfying or worthwhile with our lives. (Whether or not we are misguided fools for seeking fulfillment and reward outside of ourselves – in stilted and stifling job-environments – rather than within the crowded recesses of our own souls, is not in question here, although it probably should be.)
Some of us still have a bit of spunk left in our gullets, however, such as the young man who posted a fake hiring-bulletin on craigslist.com in order to spy on his competition for personal-assistant jobs, receiving over four hundred responses before the end of the first day. (He now has the names and addresses of hundreds of different people, data he can sell – to advertisers, political campaigns, or Kenyan scammers – for good money.) One idea is to get all of the people looking for jobs to come together at a physical location where they can network and figure out which businesses to start with each other, or get paid to assemble widgets, thingamajigs, or whatnots – for a few hours a day while getting paid the federal minimum wage. (With just a sliver of the hundreds of billions of dollars that the United States of America spends waging war on foreign peoples, we could employ every single job-seeking man, woman, and teenager in this country for a whole decade, in the spirit of the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps.) Another idea is to pay these unemployed masses to stand out in the streets to watch the watchers, to keep an eye on corruption-prone and law-breaking police officers. Our ultimate purpose as a nation, however, is to create methods by which our citizens can discover their true passions and abilities, so that they might Pursue their Happiness independent of outside pressure, outside influence, and outside coercion rather than sitting around all day staring at television screens and computer monitors and eating junk food; but, with our state and federal governments filled with persons who have sold their souls to corporate scumbags from agribusiness (Monsanto) and to banks awash with debt-payments (BofA, TD Ameritrade, etc.), we, the American people, will keep on suffering, all the good jobs having been shifted to South-East Asia. But, hey, someone has to restock these t-shirts, and man the deep-fryers. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
Thousands of templates exist on dozens of sites that job-seekers can use to craft for themselves slick-looking resumes, and the World-Wide-Web abounds with page upon page of detailed instructions on how to puff up or expand one's job-history, on how to use bullet-points to the greatest effect, on what the placement of those bullet-points says about the applicant's character, on the varying importance of a snail-mailed thank-you note, and on just the right thing to say in the subject line in order to catch a downtrodden recruiter's eye; I can only imagine the difficulty of doing the job of a human-resources officer sifting through mountains of documents that all look the same, that all sound the same, that all employ the same tricks. The Online resume, it seems, has faded into oblivion almost as quickly as it hurtled to the forefront of our commonly-shared dream of finally doing something satisfying or worthwhile with our lives. (Whether or not we are misguided fools for seeking fulfillment and reward outside of ourselves – in stilted and stifling job-environments – rather than within the crowded recesses of our own souls, is not in question here, although it probably should be.)
Some of us still have a bit of spunk left in our gullets, however, such as the young man who posted a fake hiring-bulletin on craigslist.com in order to spy on his competition for personal-assistant jobs, receiving over four hundred responses before the end of the first day. (He now has the names and addresses of hundreds of different people, data he can sell – to advertisers, political campaigns, or Kenyan scammers – for good money.) One idea is to get all of the people looking for jobs to come together at a physical location where they can network and figure out which businesses to start with each other, or get paid to assemble widgets, thingamajigs, or whatnots – for a few hours a day while getting paid the federal minimum wage. (With just a sliver of the hundreds of billions of dollars that the United States of America spends waging war on foreign peoples, we could employ every single job-seeking man, woman, and teenager in this country for a whole decade, in the spirit of the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps.) Another idea is to pay these unemployed masses to stand out in the streets to watch the watchers, to keep an eye on corruption-prone and law-breaking police officers. Our ultimate purpose as a nation, however, is to create methods by which our citizens can discover their true passions and abilities, so that they might Pursue their Happiness independent of outside pressure, outside influence, and outside coercion rather than sitting around all day staring at television screens and computer monitors and eating junk food; but, with our state and federal governments filled with persons who have sold their souls to corporate scumbags from agribusiness (Monsanto) and to banks awash with debt-payments (BofA, TD Ameritrade, etc.), we, the American people, will keep on suffering, all the good jobs having been shifted to South-East Asia. But, hey, someone has to restock these t-shirts, and man the deep-fryers. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
17 August 2012
perspective - it matters
Time, age, tiredness, joy, sadness, loss, gain – these hard-to-define concepts are aspects of the human condition, not iron-clad rules of law but rather matters of perspective that change with one's outlook on life. What is to one person a grave insult is to another as a joyous and welcome gift. A few days ago, a family friend was telling me about growing up Jewish in a Christian town, and how the other kids would throw pennies at her and call her a penny-pinching kike, and other bad names, and how she would pick up those pennies and use them to buy herself cartons of milk and boxes of cookies, which cost about five cents a-piece. And then there is my longtime partner-in-crime, Mr. P, a friend from my childhood in Germany, who makes over a hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars a year, who lives in the new W residences near the World Trade Center site in New York City, and who is so upset with his former boss in Thailand for that man firing him and forcing him to leave that country that his heart has become swamped with hatred, keeping him from seeing his life as blessed, the kind of life that people kill for.
I spoke with Mr. P a fortnight ago, trying to help him see things from a different perspective so that he might come to enjoy his time Stateside and not be so miserable and mopey all the time, but changes in perspective are achieved only by each person individually and are not easily forced, or coerced. So subtle is perspective, and at once so powerful, that entire industries exist to shape and to mold the views of persons who consume media (which accounts for any person who has ever watched TV or listened to the radio). Even as far back as the 1930s, American advertising was so effective and so quick to control and to shape the perspectives of millions of far-flung and unrelated citizens that the National Socialists in Germany, the Nazis, adopted Yankee-pioneered advertising and propaganda techniques and used them to brainwash tens of millions of good, honest Teutons into acquiescing to the invasion of sovereign foreign nations and the eradication of train-loads of men, women, and children. The power of the American advertising machine persists – so great is it that an imbecile such as the political puppet Sarah Palin can be packaged and sold in such cunning fashion that otherwise intelligent individuals come to see her as a desirable candidate for the second-highest office in the land.
You may be asking yourself right about now, “Well then, oh-so-clever LyeSmythe, how can I avoid being brainwashed, and how can I craft for myself a pure and honest view of the world?” Persons who change their perspectives begin by turning off and throwing out their television sets, they refuse to watch junk-TV (think reality- and talk-shows), they get news from sources located in different countries around the world, and they read news in languages other than English. In this manner, self-respecting people avoid the snare of America's propaganda juggernaut, giving their minds enough unique views of news-worthy events that their opinions are not shaped or dominated by just one brand of crazy.
Beyond the political sphere, however, one's perspective of something on the order to time itself – time-keeping via clock or watch, being on or off schedule, on time or off it, early or late – is shaped by society and by the consensual, Western hallucination that time is a rigid temporal plane extending in a straight line from the past into the future. Which is all well and good until one runs into the article entitled the Rebirth of a Sioux Nation in the August 2012 edition of National Geographic in which the author talks about the way the people of the Oglala Sioux view time – as a cyclical maelstrom in which past and present, life and death, and the spirit and waking worlds are shadows of one another, not strictly separate realms. Seeing the world from a point of view so foreign to the cookie-cutter, pre-packaged perception drilled endlessly into the heads of average Americans is a nice way to blow one's mind on a rainy Tuesday afternoon; such adventures into the curious minds of wise and ancient peoples are good ways to keep one's perspectives loose, and flexible. Therefore, on the next occasion that someone complains that you were not on time, you, dear reader, can claim to be changing your views on the nature of the universe, and that the clocks were wrong, not you. Give the gift of cognitive insecurity – change your mind frequently, adopt new points of view as often as you are able, and keep that dome-piece of a swivel. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
I spoke with Mr. P a fortnight ago, trying to help him see things from a different perspective so that he might come to enjoy his time Stateside and not be so miserable and mopey all the time, but changes in perspective are achieved only by each person individually and are not easily forced, or coerced. So subtle is perspective, and at once so powerful, that entire industries exist to shape and to mold the views of persons who consume media (which accounts for any person who has ever watched TV or listened to the radio). Even as far back as the 1930s, American advertising was so effective and so quick to control and to shape the perspectives of millions of far-flung and unrelated citizens that the National Socialists in Germany, the Nazis, adopted Yankee-pioneered advertising and propaganda techniques and used them to brainwash tens of millions of good, honest Teutons into acquiescing to the invasion of sovereign foreign nations and the eradication of train-loads of men, women, and children. The power of the American advertising machine persists – so great is it that an imbecile such as the political puppet Sarah Palin can be packaged and sold in such cunning fashion that otherwise intelligent individuals come to see her as a desirable candidate for the second-highest office in the land.
You may be asking yourself right about now, “Well then, oh-so-clever LyeSmythe, how can I avoid being brainwashed, and how can I craft for myself a pure and honest view of the world?” Persons who change their perspectives begin by turning off and throwing out their television sets, they refuse to watch junk-TV (think reality- and talk-shows), they get news from sources located in different countries around the world, and they read news in languages other than English. In this manner, self-respecting people avoid the snare of America's propaganda juggernaut, giving their minds enough unique views of news-worthy events that their opinions are not shaped or dominated by just one brand of crazy.
Beyond the political sphere, however, one's perspective of something on the order to time itself – time-keeping via clock or watch, being on or off schedule, on time or off it, early or late – is shaped by society and by the consensual, Western hallucination that time is a rigid temporal plane extending in a straight line from the past into the future. Which is all well and good until one runs into the article entitled the Rebirth of a Sioux Nation in the August 2012 edition of National Geographic in which the author talks about the way the people of the Oglala Sioux view time – as a cyclical maelstrom in which past and present, life and death, and the spirit and waking worlds are shadows of one another, not strictly separate realms. Seeing the world from a point of view so foreign to the cookie-cutter, pre-packaged perception drilled endlessly into the heads of average Americans is a nice way to blow one's mind on a rainy Tuesday afternoon; such adventures into the curious minds of wise and ancient peoples are good ways to keep one's perspectives loose, and flexible. Therefore, on the next occasion that someone complains that you were not on time, you, dear reader, can claim to be changing your views on the nature of the universe, and that the clocks were wrong, not you. Give the gift of cognitive insecurity – change your mind frequently, adopt new points of view as often as you are able, and keep that dome-piece of a swivel. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
29 June 2012
on gardening as a slacker
Every morning, at 0530A, an alarm sounds, triggering my body into wakefulness. Being a spoiled, snot-nosed American brat and a generally worthless individual, and seeing as how I endeavor to shrink my bad and to grow my good characteristics, I have taken on the awesome responsibility of gardening. That row cover of tulle draped tightly over spans of freshly-split bamboo? Installed yesterday. That Third-World-style drip irrigation unit my missionary uncle sent me via insured mail five weeks ago? Installed last weekend. Yes, though I sometimes take a bit longer to get things done than I might ought to, I am learning a lot from the three separate gardens growing on this dacha's property, among them one that was donated, one that I am growing for a silent partner, and one that I grew from seed. Add to these two fledgling blueberry bushes (which are stuck in a sort of limbo) and one string-bean plant peeking from beneath an upside-down planter hanging on the back patio, and the opportunities for work become endless.
Every morning, as rosy-fingered Dawn is caressing the world with the promise of day but before the chariot of the sun-god has crested the horizon, I haul water up from the stream to moisten the earth within the various plots. And again in the evening, when Helios begins to dip toward the horizon and the birds start flocking home to roost, the soil drinks deeply of the cool running brook. To my great fortune, a good friend gave me a stack of Mother Earth News magazines, and, while foxing around in the barn, I found a trove of Organic Gardening magazines from the 1970s and '80s that I have been reading and studying, and from which I have gleaned much valuable knowledge. What, you ask, is the most useful bit of advice I have come across? Beyond the row-covers of tulle and the genius of drip irrigation, the most useful advice has been to never leave ground uncovered, i.e. that one should always cover one's soil with at least some form of mulch (grass clippings, leaves, layers of cardboard) so that it does not bake too badly in the sun and so that it is always gaining some sort of nutrients as things above it decompose.
I think back often to the lessons my parents once taught me, long ago, before they died, and I am tempted to chide myself for not remembering them, for not having paid better attention to what they said, and for not heeding their advice, but, instead, I bask happily in the memories and try to learn as much as I can from the soil sitting in my hands, from the plants growing in the ground, from the wind, from the rain, and from the subtle interplay that occurs when all of these elements conspire together, somehow, to make life. Among the most enduring lessons I am learning is this: no matter how barren soil may seem, it has the seemingly endless capacity to bounce back. This is but my first time doing this sort of work, but, by Liberty, I like it.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
Every morning, as rosy-fingered Dawn is caressing the world with the promise of day but before the chariot of the sun-god has crested the horizon, I haul water up from the stream to moisten the earth within the various plots. And again in the evening, when Helios begins to dip toward the horizon and the birds start flocking home to roost, the soil drinks deeply of the cool running brook. To my great fortune, a good friend gave me a stack of Mother Earth News magazines, and, while foxing around in the barn, I found a trove of Organic Gardening magazines from the 1970s and '80s that I have been reading and studying, and from which I have gleaned much valuable knowledge. What, you ask, is the most useful bit of advice I have come across? Beyond the row-covers of tulle and the genius of drip irrigation, the most useful advice has been to never leave ground uncovered, i.e. that one should always cover one's soil with at least some form of mulch (grass clippings, leaves, layers of cardboard) so that it does not bake too badly in the sun and so that it is always gaining some sort of nutrients as things above it decompose.
I think back often to the lessons my parents once taught me, long ago, before they died, and I am tempted to chide myself for not remembering them, for not having paid better attention to what they said, and for not heeding their advice, but, instead, I bask happily in the memories and try to learn as much as I can from the soil sitting in my hands, from the plants growing in the ground, from the wind, from the rain, and from the subtle interplay that occurs when all of these elements conspire together, somehow, to make life. Among the most enduring lessons I am learning is this: no matter how barren soil may seem, it has the seemingly endless capacity to bounce back. This is but my first time doing this sort of work, but, by Liberty, I like it.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
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