The following short documentary provokes some thoughts on the development of the western monetary system in the previous centuries and mainly through the 20th Century. Though, the way it portrays the reasons behind the 1929 Great Depression seem somewhat contradictory to its historic portrayal in Century of The Self documentary (find it below). Or maybe this aspect is another layer of those historical events, I'm not sure. I found this documentary insightful to watch, although again the video editing is rather sensational with those in-between-scenes animations, why they make it like that? Maybe it's a psychological method to keep the audience attention. Well, I care about the information, not the blink it is presented with, lol.
Anyway, I decided to post it, because it does utilizes historical facts. Of course, let's not forget that history is highly susceptible to interpretation and the way this interpretation is presented can make historic events fit a lot of viewpoints, even contradictory ones, by the art of adaptation. It is true that history can be and on many occasions has been revised.
So, watch with criticism and analyze history from as much aspects and viewpoints as available. Yeah, that last word from the previous sentence has a great importance indeed, uncorrupted information is still available, not on mainstream media I guess. No wonder why.
As fabulously empowering as incredible wealth may be, still, those people's ideals are so narrow, trapped in their own life time. Gaining and gaining out of a huge population mass' suffering. How can they truly enjoy their wealth in this way, seeing all the general misery of those billions of people? I am truly amazed at human nature, truly amazed. All the selfish-derived, most primitive, immoral, ruthless qualities are so abundant in this world in every layer of society. You know, Jung was so chillingly serious in his humorous remark that if someone presented to him a sane man, he would cure him. What a nut house. Ah, America, what a mess you are. What a mess this world is and what a mess is my country too. Horrible.
The term "Masters of the Universe" that the narrator uses by the end of the documentary made me raise my eye brows. I heard it in use addressing people in the banking business in another documentary as well. Interesting designation, so eccentric, very incorrect I have to say. Masters of nothing, transient wealth in a transient history. I am Master of the Universe and I think we'll blow up this ridiculous planet. Just joking, so rude. I dream of a better world....! And those documentaries just make me sick and deprived of any point of doing anything, apart from taking care of my own well-being, I guess. What a bleep. I'm joking again. Here is another video, since we are on a banking wave. A rather cheerful one and educational too. Enjoy.
P.S. Title is "When Markets Go Mad" and I didn't find it in Youtube, so to embed it here. Here is a link to another website where you can watch it, I saw it there.
Recently a lot is being discussed about the expulsion of Roma people from France. Lots of advocates for human rights are voicing aloud their disagreement with this disgraceful act of Sarkozy’s.
I watched a few reports on Euronews and CNN and it became obvious to me that those reports are rather too subjective and do not cover the entirety of the issue with these so called Roma people.
First of all, they have nothing to do with Rome, to make this one clear. They came with the Ottoman empire back a few centuries ago and stayed when the Ottoman armies retreated. That is why most of them are to be found in Bulgaria and Romania, the countries that are closest to Turkey and were occupied by the Ottoman armies the longest. I must say that I feel shame, seeing those despicable nomadic people being portrayed as Bulgarians. They don't even identify themselves as Bulgarians, but as Roma whatevers. Here in Bulgaria, those Roma people are a great problem. Most of them refuse to work and refuse to send their children to school, because it is far more profitable for them to send their kids to beg on the streets.
There have been plenty of attempts here to integrate them in our society, to give them jobs and free education for their children, but they simply refuse to integrate. They steal from their employers and do very poor job and in the end, naturally, get fired. Anyone who does that would get fired, right?! Most of the Roma people, or gypsies, are involved in criminal activities, selling drugs, robbing people, stealing electricity cables from the national grid to sell the copper inside. There have been attempts to roof them and entire small neighborhoods have been built and given to dozens of Roma families to live in, for free, and after a few months they completely wreck the houses, light fires inside, like savages. I mean, come on, those wretched human beings get to have houses for free, well, I want a free house too. Is this fair?! This system is just wrong, so upside down.
Those reporters portraying the Roma as victims are so subjective and so poorly informed. Why don’t they take into account all of the above? And those advocates of human rights, why don’t they take into account that those Roma people abuse with their children, making them beg and steal? Isn’t that considered violation of the human rights of those children? Or may be it is not considered as such, because the violators are their own parents. They even mutilate their children in order to make them more *attractive* beggars.
And that the Roma just reproduce mindlessly like animals all to produce armies of beggars and units to suck social benefits for from the unfortunate societies they have installed themselves in. Why are these small details not taken into account? Those people are a great trouble to societies they live in and everyone in Europe knows that.
Of course, there are those very few Roma people who are actually integrated, they have jobs, they have nice homes, their children go to school and even to university. They are normal people and no one minds them. I had two Roma classmates in high school, completely normal, well dressed boys, no one ever minded that they were Roma. But we do mind seeing all those pitiful Roma kids begging on the streets and women with drugged babies on their hands begging and Roma gangs stealing cables and creating trouble, we mind those people, yes, and I personally would love to see them go away somewhere else, far. You see, it is not about irrational ethnic discrimination, as those “advocates” try to present it, but about social trouble makers that are a burden for our societies. It is a fact that more than 80% of the Roma population are involved in the aforementioned activities.
So, these human rights advocates are extremely subjective, not taking into account so many important aspects of those Roma people lifestyle. This way of presenting the situation is fundamentally flawed and shapes opinions in an incorrect manner. They must be making good money for this meaningless lobby overexposure of theirs, those “advocates”.
And the EU, the European Union is one political bulk of thousands of clerks and office workers down the hierarchy that are completely needless. Sometimes I am truly amazed at the level of ignorance supposedly educated people may have. And yes, the title is highly politically incorrect, but that again, where is the border between politically correct speech and pure hypocrisy? After all, is saying things that are not correct politically correct?
Quite an insightful documentary on how theory of psychoanalysis was adopted by corporations to create the modern consumer society. The shift from products that you need, to products that you simply desire. Creating the need for products, rather than responding to a need with a product. The workings of the unconsciousness brilliantly utilized in mass marketing. Group behavior, psychology of the crowd, social engineering and commercial manipulation. It's like McDonald's former "Super size", they observed that people felt guilty buying twice the same portion, but this guilt was bypassed if the portion was enlarged. Managing the irrational judgement of the masses and guiding it to consume.
Channeling and shaping people's opinion, views and even the way they think. The birth of PR and lobbyism in modern society. Wow, stunning.
Can the individual ever be truly free? It seems that true freedom is found only outside the crowd.
And what about Equality? Are individuals truly equal or is it just a democratic bullshit? To start with, individuals can have very different starts in life. Your parents may be rich and I may be born an orphant. But, what if two individuals have the same start in life? Say two persons from two average middle-class families. The one is keen to learn, goes in university and graduates, then works and begins to make good money. And the other is lazy, not interested in studying, but just trashes around and does nothing meaningful. Can these two individuals truly be thought of as equal? Well, no, they cannot be equal. People are not equal, because they have different levels of motivation. Thus, social equality is just as an empty concept as freedom of the masses is. Life circumstances and family environment can make a great difference between individuals and the opportunities they may have in life, but in the end it is about motivation. About how far you want to go, in your life, in your character, in your knowledge.
However, still every individual has a right of dignity, of pursuing his or her ideals, freedom of speach and so on. And, of course, an individual can always consciously choose a lifestyle of seclusion and self-sufficiency like a hippie, not aspiring to career or making money or whatever, just enjoying the beauty of nature without bothering about nothing much and without complaining either.
However that, the biggest question of all is, can society function in any other way after all or is this the only way for things to be? (See documentaries below). Or may be the last question is born out of a lack of imagination?! Can human civilization follow any other path of development than the one it currently is on? Is there any other way and most importantly, even if there is, how can it be achieved? Is it possible? A world without military technology, without different Gods, without exploitation, a world of higher intelligence and clearer reason
Documentary title: Century of the Self.
(I cannot agree with the title though, by "Self" they mean "Ego-self").
The documentary follows and analyzes business, social and political developments in the 20th Century and the intimate entanglement of those three.
Episode 1 - Happiness Machines 1 of 6
YOU are part of "the masses", lol. Seriously.
"Understand, Neo, that most of these people are not ready to be unplugged, and many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."
Morpheus
Episode 2 - The Engineering of Consent 1 of 6
Although I do agree with the psychoanalytic notion that you can change people (to the better) by expanding their understanding. However, something went very wrong down the line with this enlightened ideal. And that was its use for social engineering and consumerism. Psychoanalysis should be practiced the Jungian way and exclude psychiatry from its methods. I think the methodology is wrong, very. But hey, how do you establish the right way to do it without going through the wrong ones first?! Lol.
First it was "Repress the primal emotions", then it was "Free the primal emotions", now it is Be freely repressed or repressedly free or something in between with or without emotions, aah, forget it, just go to a pharmacy near you and by yourself a pack of Prozac - it's good for you and it's good for the business, thus everyone is happy and feeling good.
Now I finally understand why Freud gained more popularity than Jung, when the ideas of the latter were far more profound and potentially life-altering on the self-realization level. Because Freud's ideas were commercially applicable for manipulation of the masses, while Jung's were meant to truly bring deeper understanding and psychological clarity to the individual. And if I create a, say, popular entertainment blog, it will have far more hits than this one.
Oh well, people just don't like to think, left aside they are being taught not to. Lol. Everything in this world is about making money and nothing more, nothing less. Making money at any cost
Episode 3 - There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed
Ah, experimental psychology. Experimenting with people and society. Now isn't that cool.
- Hey, what's your job?
- Oh, I'm a radical psychologist.
Speaking of creating trends and commercial persuasion, do you remember this Purple initiative of Yahoo!, I'm not sure when it was, two ot three years ago, when they promoted on their website that that year was "Purple year" or something like this and that everyone should have something purple, whether your sweater, or dress, socks or bike or etc. Yeah.
I just didn't understood why they encouraged people to express their ugliest emotions like aggression and hate? I mean, where is the liberation in this, without reaching to the source of these emotions, there is no realization, but only primal release of pressure?!
I guess people were pondering their new-found freedoms of public expression of their true opinion and discontents. See, one of the many negative effects of the opression of the Church, it makes people pervert and totally lacking of self-control when confronted with freedom.
And I thought the methodology of the Freudians was wrong, lol, just see all those people packed in a room screaming and cursing like crazy, so brutal. By the way, these therapeutic methods weren't invented by those radical psychologists. For instance, Aleister Crowley is known to have practiced similar with his disciples.
Anyway, I thought that the hippie movement was a natural development of sub-culture societies in USA and, this documentary suggests that it was actually driven by psychological circles?! And I also thought that the hippie movement changed the conventions of fashion, and it turns out that they didn't, Marketing did! Ah, the ignorance.
The business was thinking hard "How to appeal to this new breed of *individuals*, how to tap them in. Of course, this is it - offer them product variety!" Ingenious. A.k.a 1960s - Hey, you are so individualistic with this pink ipod of yours.
So, marketing is strongly connected with social research and statistics (Duh) exploring the different lifestyles of people and stereotypes that assemble in groups. "Yo, let's target that *group* with our new product line".
I long suspected there is no true individualism, lol, it's because human psyche doesn't has infinite combinations, just like our DNA. It turns out that, the concept that "Everyone is a unique person" is again a marketing concept and is by no means true. Noone is unique, everyone falls into types, lifestyles and groups. What a bleep.
Episode 4 - Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
So, is the business flexibly adapting to new trends in society or is it creating them? Remains unclear. It is both ways around, I guess.
You can also find the documentary series here and watch it via Google video.
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P.S. Dear Reader, if you happen to find yourself overwhelmed by too much heavy to digest information, please, get a grip on yourself. You have the tools to build yourself consciously and stir your life into whatever desired direction, just take it easy, be focused, perseverant and think. And remember:
