version

Well-known member
I keep thinking about this from White Noise atm,
"Everything is concealed in symbolism, hidden by veils of mystery and layers of cultural material. But it is psychic data, absolutely. … It is just a question of deciphering, rearranging, peeling off the layers of unspeakability. Not that we would want to, not that any useful purpose would be served."
 

version

Well-known member
This?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
This reminds me of both what you talk about and what Luka and I were discussing re: investing the other day.
Reminds me of the famous monologue from Network:

"You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear?! Do you think you've merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and You Will Atone!

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state - Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel."
 

version

Well-known member
The way he says "... all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized... " in the film is really unsettling. He's almost whispering it after roaring at the start of the monologue.
 

version

Well-known member
He's in that brilliant room with the ridiculously long table and strange lighting too, stalking round the perimeter, cloaked in shadow.
 

version

Well-known member
nedbeatty.jpg
 

version

Well-known member
The eternal wood-paneled room you can imagine big decisions being made in through a cloud of cigar smoke. I'm sure Luka made a comment about that sort of room the other week.
 

version

Well-known member
All religions and ideologies compete for the young obviously
Cardinal Glick: Fill them pews, people, that's the key. Grab the little ones as well. Hook 'em while they're young.
Rufus: Kind of like the tobacco industry?
Cardinal Glick: Christ, if only we had their numbers.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Yeah optimization I think is a good way to think about it. And the spirit of such an effort would be along the lines of a controlled fire, or a vaccine: incurring manageable damage while you're ahead, in order to minimize the chances of a more total destabilization of the system (in this case, the system being the local ecosystem, and the body, respectively).

Just had a thought about a high-order, low-resolution societal/economic schema:

Take as point of departure the basic conceptual dichotomy of regulated/unregulated economy, namely whether or not there is a ceiling to profit, broadly speaking, a ceiling that is judicially enforced to whatever degree.

One potential synthesis of these two alternatives is as follows: there is an enforced, regulated ceiling to profit, but that ceiling rises in proportion to the average citizen's income. In principle, that ought to incentivize a strategic redistribution of wealth. Arguably, there is already strategy (edit: personal, financial strategy that is) involved in building the economy, but if such a ceiling was enforced, it would necessitate such reinvestment, no?
 
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