The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Go home, Occupy Movement!! > Comments

Go home, Occupy Movement!! : Comments

By Anis Bajrektarevic, published 31/1/2012

The answer to our problems lies within, not without.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. All
Aldoux Huxley's Brave New World was much less pretentious, and a more easy read
Posted by colinsett, Tuesday, 31 January 2012 7:37:20 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
It was a bit of a puzzle for me, working out what on earth this article had to do with the Occupy Movement. Which is not actually mentioned, as such, so the linkage had to be a more subtle and allusive, I thought.

I kept getting bogged down in the references, far too many to be of any instant use unless I was preparing a thesis of some kind...

"Revisiting, rethinking and rejuvenating Weber's theory (but also those of Sartre, Heidegger, Lukács, Lefebvre, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Bloch), it was the US sociologist George Ritzer who postulated..."

Wow. That's a lot of homework, right there. Can I be bothered? Not sure yet, I'll read some more, to see if anything clicks.

"[re: McDonalds] In such an atmosphere of predictability or better to say predictive seduction and gradual loss of integrity, the culture of tacit obedience (ignorance of self-irrelevance through the corrosive addiction) is to bread, even unspotted."

I was motoring along, doing fine, until I was pulled up short by the word "bread". Eliminating the parentheses, we get:

"the culture of tacit obedience is to bread, even unspotted"

Too deep for me.

It was difficult to move on from that setback. But I struggled on. After all, the Professor made the effort, getting all those words onto a page, so the least I could...

Uh-oh.

"Sorry Garcin, hell is not other people. Hell are we!!"

But... but...

That's exactly what Sartre was trying to tell us.

"Alors c'est ça l'enfer. Je ne l'aurais jamais cru… Vous vous rappelez: le souffre, le bűcher, le gril.. Ah quelle plaisanterie. Pas besoin de gril, l'enfer c'est les autres"

"Les autres" clearly does not mean "others" in the literal sense of "everyone except me". Sartre is making the comparison between the standard images of hell that we carry around with us - the sulphur, burning at the stake etc. - and people. Not "just" other people. All people. People in general. Everyone, including me.

I guess that's the reference to the Occupy Movement, right there. Silly of me not to have noticed it before.
Posted by Pericles, Tuesday, 31 January 2012 10:06:34 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
To paraphrase Her Majesty's '92 Guildhall speech:

"...it has turned out to be an 'Anis Horribilis'. I suspect that I am not alone in thinking it so. Indeed, I suspect that there are very few people or institutions unaffected by these last months of worldwide turmoil and uncertainty."

Or else, the article has suffered from the 'Spicks and Specks' double auto-translation game for lyrics - though in this case German to 'von Mises' or 'Yoda-speak' thence into English.
Posted by WmTrevor, Tuesday, 31 January 2012 10:57:36 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Probably the worst, name dropping, OLO article I've ever read.

"Occupy" in the title appears a desparate attempt to give it relevance - to something.
Posted by plantagenet, Tuesday, 31 January 2012 2:43:44 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Gee that was hard going!

Anyone seeking a bit of light relief after this might like to check out the postmodern essay generator here, which turns out similar (though clearer and more logical) nonsense randomly using a computer generator (go to the bottom of the page and press the link to generate another "essay")

http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

Its products are uncannily similar – the excessive and unnecessary cross references to pomo gurus and forerunners, unrelated parentheses, bizarre neologisms, eclectic misrepresentation of a multitude of genres, and fundamental meaninglessness.

The one paragraph in this ramble that looks vaguely like it’s based in fact, gets it wrong. The data in the “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007” are in real terms – that is, adjusted for inflation. So the conclusion that “the nominal growth would turn to a negative increase in real incomes for almost 80% of the US households” is incorrect
Posted by Rhian, Tuesday, 31 January 2012 3:09:20 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Of course, Rhian, of course! Silly me...

>>...check out the postmodern essay generator here...<<

To think, I was *this* close to imagining it was a serious article!

And it also satisfactorily explains the mystery phrase, "the culture of tacit obedience is to bread, even unspotted".

I was beginning to obsess about the mystery loaf. Was it unspotted, in the sense that no-one had seen it? Or devoid of mould - which, as I have had occasion to observe, appears first as small green "spots".

The pomo program clearly needs a debug, though. No-one, I am certain, has ever taken it upon themselves to display obedience to a baguette, whether in its spotted, unspotted, or even its spotless, state.
Posted by Pericles, Tuesday, 31 January 2012 4:59:43 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Yep – the bread was good, but at least one feels it could actually have some meaning. But what about this:

"Depth and frequency of critical insights and of unpredictable human actions driven by unexpected conclusions is rationalized to a beforehand calculable, and therefore tolerable few."

I wonder if some poor person had to edit this? If so, they must have given up early.
Posted by Rhian, Tuesday, 31 January 2012 5:34:37 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
"Anis Horribilis" I love it.The Occupy Movements will get bigger and better so long as the ,"Big Billionaire Club" continues to steal from the masses.

Get used to it Anis,the 1% in the future will have to actually work for a living.
Posted by Arjay, Tuesday, 31 January 2012 7:27:49 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
If we really reflect upon what Anis has concocted,it is a collage of words with no meaning or central idea.

Perhaps this is a lawyers graveyard; of words without meaning,ideas without action and intent without integrity.Perhaps too clever by less than half.Very sad.
Posted by Arjay, Tuesday, 31 January 2012 7:43:54 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy