A few days ago I came across a rather intriguing Jamaican blog called Warren’s Blog. Of particular interest today me is the blog post, What is the Jamaican Dream? I do agree with much of the themes on his blog, but the question posed in the title of the blog post betrays one of, if not the major faults with Jamaican society.
When one speaks of the American Dream, what is usually spoken about is the National Ethos of the United States. Put in simple terms, it is the belief that through hard work one can achieve upward social mobility, success and prosperity, usually symbolized by home ownership. Now I am not prepared to debate the claims of the American National Ethos. What I do wonder is, why do we need to have an “American Dream” and not a National Ethos?
To answer my own question, it is because we have not developed a proper national identity, choosing instead to obtain our self esteem from what Britain, and now America, thinks of us. If we do indeed have a “Jamaican Dream”, then it is to get a degree, then migrate to the U.S. In fact it seems that the we have taken on the American Dream locally, except that we have replaced home ownership with motor vehicle ownership, minus the American dollars to buy the oil necessary to run such vehicles.
Can we develop our own national ethos? Perhaps, but that seems unlikely at this point, as we seem fixed on questions of means rather than ends. But wasn’t that always the main problem with the American Dream?
Wednesday afternoon a woman went all Beast Mode in my friends bar. Now half of my laptop screen is cracked, so I will not be able to post as frequently as I would like. I should be able to replace it come September.
One of the wonderful thing about this brave new world that we are in, is if you are technically capable of doing something, then you are by definition artistically capable of doing that thing. If you can use Sony Vegas, then you can be a film director. If you can use FL Studio, then you can be a music producer. For now, I will ignore questions of quality, but instead focus on one of the genres that has arisen as a result of easily accessible technology – the Supercut.
I discovered this wonderful and innovative new genre by way of Kevin Kelly’s blog, specifically an entry where he states that new genres are being created because “technology wants it.” Economies of scale, cultural trends and artistic experimentation play no part in this, modern art is simply the result of path dependencies created by technological forces. We do not question technology, according Kelly, we simply march to the beat of its drum. I don’t think that we are marching, so much as sleepwalking, only waking at imminent danger like nuclear holocaust, or acid rain. We should be more not just to threats to our civilization, but threats to our culture.
One wonders if the next stage will be a supercut of supercuts, as the supercut themselves become the the original. Perhaps they will become sort of cultural alarm system, telling us when a certain convention or technique is becoming cliched (of course, if you need d a supercut to tell you that….) However I get the sense that they are an idea of the brave new world our culture is headed towards
So you finally found my blog. Good. I know that you’ve been questioning yourself recently. You’re probably asking yourself whether or not it makes sense to continue trying to help your “black brothers and sisters,” or your “fellow countrymen” as you begin to understand the various social, economic, political and cultural forces that control you, they and your world.
You’ve probably had a conversation with an Afrocentrist, or a Rastafarian, and realized that most black radicals are averse to scientific, empirical and other rational argument, and are thus mired in superstition and conspiracism.
You’ve probably realized that your middle class peers would rather tweet about the latest Justin Bieber sex scandal or the Wendy Williams’ latest tips for tranny’s trying to tuck their dicks than try to understand why the hell their student loans are twice their yearly income.
I guess its “Boys Night Out” – or something.
You’ve watched, as middle class and ghetto people alike are continually distracted by “Church leaders” (I refuse to call them pastors or theologians), who use shitty arguments and wedge issues to distract the populace from their interests. Just look at how they use homosexuality to aggrandize themselves, while at the same time ignoring the many homeless, drug addicts, destitute and mentally ill that wander our streets. One wonders If any of these conmen churchmen have ever tried to minister to the homeless male prostitutes that frequent Trafalgar Road at night.
You’ve probably looked on as all around you, your fellow blacks try to weave, bleach and tattoo themselves into some ethnically indeterminate ideal , but instead end up disgusting, deracinated monstrosities. Complete with the boorish behaviour to match their vulgar appearance.
An example of the above.
You have seen all these things, and you want to do something about it. Well, I am here to tell you , don’t. You will not do anything about it, because, you can’t. I mean, what would you do? Rap? Sing? March? Yes – you want to march, don’t you? You want to be that guy behind the stand or the pulpit who everyone is pointing at , who has the speeches and holidays named after him. You know, like Louis Farrakhan and the Million Man March. You remember Farrakhan and the Million Man March don’t you? Of course you don’t. And no one will remember you either. But the goal is not to be remembered. The goal is to win. And to win big.
Come now, you don’t actually think that you can stand against an entire global Consumer Capitalist structure did you? But let us imagine that you did. You would be someone like say, Bob Johnson, at the turn of the millennium. You are living through the years with 1996 to 2003. Ignoring the whole 9/11 mix-up. You would have seen
No new genre of black music emerge, even as new economic and social situations arise that demand a new form of expression. This would seem rather odd, as rap and modern R and B would have been the dominant genre since the early 1980s, while most genres of music previous to that time had lasted 15 years at most . Compare the music of Woodstock and Motown in 1968 to hip hop like the Sugarhill Gang at the latter part of the 1970s
Dancehall music from Jamaica and heard the “Bug” ,”Kiki” and “Diwali” riddims that seemed to represent the future of dancehall music. I say “seemed” because the dancehall scene degenerated into its usual quarrelsome stupidity (lead by Bounty Killer of course), with both producers and songwriters never achieving those artistic highs again.
Films failing to give meaning to the present, from Hype Williams’ screw-up Belly, to the rise of the Buppie subgenre of black films (The Wood, Best Man), to the start of Madea in the theater, to the straight-to-DVD gangsta genre. This, after a decade of cultural products , from Do the Right Thing to Slam, that gave meaning to the past and helped to explain the present.
The rise of a legal-industrial complex that is nothing more than new millennium indentured servitude
The switch from industry and agriculture to a service economy, that required skills in STEM (science, engineering, technology and mathematics), that the education system failed to impart to black and Jamaican children
A Million Man March that didn’t do shit
Jamaicans re-elect the PNP a record four times, even though they do less than shit, including precipitate the largest wealth shift from the middle class to the rich post-slavery.
In other words, it would be as if the world gave up. You can try all you want, but if the world gives up you’re just running up the down escalator. Can you then blame Bob Johnson for selling out? For dumping Teen Summit and taking up Uncut? Even if wanted to turn the tide, who could he get to help him? Certainly not the people that watch BET. That’s the thing. When we say black people, we actually mean black persons. A person is an individual, with individual feelings ideas, dreams and aspirations. People are fucking animals. And the point of modern Consumer Capitalism is to turn persons into people (easier for analytics and economies of scale).
I am not telling you to become like Bob Johnson. In fact, I more interested in correcting his work than anything else. But more on that later. Right now, we need to stop giving a fuck about black people and instead start giving a fuck about black persons. I am not being elitist. I am only saying that appealing to mass movements is folly. It would be better to develop an agenda that is economically and politically viable. It will be difficult, but it is doable. Difficulty and social isolation did not stop guys like:
John Boyd and the Fighter Mafia, who defined new theories on maneuverability and air warfare, leading to the creation of several new aircraft that are considered invaluable to the U.S. military-industrial complex. And they did this in the face overwhelming institutional opposition and bureaucratic wrangling.
The Mont Pelerin Society,was started in 1947. They were ignored as kooks until 1973. Even Schumpeter made fun of them. After 1973, well to paraphrase Richard Nixon, “(Sigh), I guess we’re all neoliberals now !”
A bunch of policy wonks that didn’t know what they were talking about, yet still manage fuck up America and the World ForEVAH!
We may have to make some hard decisions. Like being mocked amongst our peers and colleagues. Constant solitude. Alienation from the people who are closest to you, who look most like you, and who rightfully, should understand you the most. But that is alright. It will be worth it, because,if anything, I have no intention of waking up to the type of world that Bob Johnson woke up to a generation from now. And , if I am right, neither do you.
How did things get this bad? How does the minority get to speak the loudest? The Wall of Silence (WoS) and the Black Women’s Empowerment (BWE) Internet movement may just be symptoms of a disease, but with some diseases, like AIDS, the symptoms are the disease. This is the principal issue of BMV/BWE, they are like AIDS, not an Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, but an Acquired Ideology Deficiency Syndrome. It seems that at the end of the 20th century, black people in both Jamaica and the United States lost any sense of connection to a Grand Narrative. By a Grand Narrative, I mean a story of human history that gives meaning to the past, explains the present, and provides guidance for the future. Its purpose is therefore, not only historical, but teleological – it gives history and meaning. A past example would be that of Marxism. Modern examples would be Christian Fundamentalism, Californianism (technological utopianism driven by the belief that Moore’s Law can go on forever) and Radical Neoliberalism (the Kool-Aid imbibed by most of the West’s ruling parties)
Around 2007, a group of individuals came up with their own Grand Narrative of Late 20th/ early 21st Century African-American history. They intended to use their Grand Narratives to cause social change. They focused mostly on gender relations, each one blaming the other for the faults in the African-American community. The Wall of Silencers (Black Men Vent, Diary of a Tired Black Man, Sergeant Willie Pete) chided black women for their perceived masculinity, moving the black community away from black unity and black power by allying with the Feminist movement, destroying the black family unit, and whoring themselves out to men they call “thugs”, “bad boys” and other such undesirables, instead of choosing (of course) they. As such, they vowed to ignore and scorn any black woman that did not agree with them,and to stop talking about black women The Black Women’s Empowerment Movement makes the claim that black men fail to protect black women from insults and violence, has destroyed the black family by abandoning his woman and child, and failing to marry his woman en masse, is more willing to give love and devotion to (grossly overweight) non-black women, and sacrifices black women on the altar of the Black Community.
Now, there is nothing wrong with a narrative being ahistorical. The Jews, with their religious narrative, have it written in their Holy Books that they had been enslaved in Egypt by a cruel pharaoh, and were then liberated by the great leader Moses. That there is no archaeological evidence of this ever happening is irrelevant – enough time has passed between the time the enslavement was claimed to have happened and the time it was mythologized. Thus, the Jewish people have a powerful spiritual tradition to serve as a Grand Narrative. This is not the case however, with the Wall of Silencers (WoS) and the BWE. History does not agree with their narratives.
With the WoS:
Black women’s masculinity is played up by the media and their sassiness exaggerated by performers, such as actresses, comedians and cartoonists
Black women have consistently been a part of black Civil Rights movements; even their offshoots of feminism were rooted in black power. In fact, black feminism has usually been a response to mainstream feminism, not an offshoot of. Even now you can see this in black women’s apprehension to participate in “slutwalks.”
Like most women, black women are attracted to charismatic men. The WoS has created a false dichotomy of “nerds” on one side and “thugs” on the other. It ignores that the type of man (Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Idris Elba, Barack Obama, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Michael Eric Dyson) who is able to attract several women to his company is not a passive-aggressive “nice guy”, but a charismatic person who radiates self-confidence. That the word “swag” has replaced the word “charisma” is irrelevant, the meaning is the same.
The BWE movement does not acknowledge:
That black men frequently took up arms and organized themselves to protect themselves and their dependents. The examples of Robert F. Williams’ Black Armed Guard, the Deacons for Defense and Justice who actively practiced self-defense, or the very visible Nation of Islam, with their Fruit of Islam security force are facts that are very hard to ignore.
Black men have always preferred black women, of all complexions, for lovers and spouses. A simple glance at the U.S. Census will show that.
When a Jew is presented with the facts regarding the Exodus, he may get upset with you, but based on who you come across, he might just shrug it off. But the BWE/WoS will not have anything to do with facts, preferring instead to stick their fingers in their ears and chant their mantras of DBR and ankle, hoping that the facts will just go away. And when they don’t, they create even deeper delusions for themselves. They then begin to echo movements in their decline like the Black Panther Party, embracing internal repression, paranoia and self-exaltation, while at the same time labeling anyone that opposes them on their turf as “sock puppets” and “concern trolls”. Thus, they begin to look less like movements, and more like cults. The question is, how did they get this way, and how can movements avoid becoming this way?
It is no coincidence that both these movements came about during 2007 – 2008. This period saw several brutal gang rapes occurring in poor black communities, such as the particularly sadistic and brutal Dunbar Village rape. There was also the repeated television specials that appeared on various new programs that were backhanded compliment to black men and women. But the BWE/WoS movements could not have been possible without ta technology that saw is mass proliferation at this time – Web 2.0. Presentable blogs replaced unwieldy sub-domains, combined with Twitter, social media such as Facebook and video streaming sites such as YouTube gave ordinary people with the strangest ideas a medium to express themselves to the world. The problem is that Web 2.0 is a medium best suited to delivering messages – not ideas. An exchange of ideas require an embodied presence – think the signers of the Constitution arguing, or the sit-ins during the American Civil Rights movements. But the BWE/WoS do not believe in social change – or ideas for that matter. Th e perfect example of this can be seen with Christelyn Karazin’s response to Mikhail Lyubansky regarding his article about her No Wedding No Womb movement. Lyubansky first states:
My point is that Civil Rights movement focused on systems change, not on helping black folks make the best of Jim Crow. State-supported segregation is gone but many systems, including the education system, continue to be racially biased. There’s nothing about the value of education that black youth haven’t heard 100 times. They just don’t trust the education system to deliver on its promise….. But there IS a reason to change the system, and we need to work to make it happen, because the history of social change is that it doesn’t happen by itself. And for all its good intentions, No Wedding No Womb not only doesn’t aim at systems change; it distracts from it.
It’s takes too damn long! The STRUCTURE is what IT IS. You and I both know we black folks have worked for structural change since the 1800’s. That mess takes time. You know it, and I know it. Also, didn’t you know that our government, the primary facilitator for “structural change” is bankrupt? THERE. IS. NO. MONEY. Combine that with the declining voting bloc of African Americans and “HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!”
And that, sums up the philosophy of BWE/WoS – don’t think about the future. Its too far away, and besides, it takes too long. Just work on what you can from the system now. The sad thing is, that the people who created the modern structure were in the smae place she was, but they chose to work hard and bide their time. Mises, von Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society were the laughing stock of the economic community for thirty years, yet their neo-liberal ideas are the default economic system for the modern world. The Christian Fundamentalists that were once thought theological dunces.are now the mainstream in much of America and the Caribbean.And so it goes. It would seem that if any movement truly wants genuine change, they will have to actually grit their teeth and put in the work. Let the BWE/WoS , Human Bio-Diversity types, the (batty)manosphere and the Pick-Up Artists huddle together, and rant impotently. The rest of us have too much at stake to waste time with such foolishness.
Everything to be said about Black Women’s Empowerment. in one picture.
Interested Reader: Hey Satan! I’ve recently stumbled across a subgroup of black women on the Internet called the BWE. What exactly are they?
Satanforce: Black Women’s Empowerment is a subculture of black women that believe in separating from the black community, which they view as a cesspool of nihilism and death, by intermarrying with white men. Or by learning parkour.
Interested Reader: Oh damn! Why do they feel this way?
Satanforce: Haven’t you heard? Black men beat, rape, sodomize. cheat on, disrespect, publicly humiliate, pimp, divorce and abandon black women at a rate unseen in any other race of men! But when it comes to other races of women, well – they know how to behave themselves!. Just look at the first Presidents of Senegal, Angola, Nigeria and Botswana, C.L.R. James, Cheikh Ante Diop, Richard Wright, James Farmer, W.E.B DuBois, Thurgood Marshall….. At the same time, they use black women as sacrificial mules for their little ‘movements ‘ , using black women’s labour for their own personal advancement, and to gain access to… a better class of woman.
Interested Reader: What are some these BWE websites?
Interested Reader: I’ve been reading some of these BWE blogs/websites, and boy, they are full of jargon like DBR, rainbeau, and NBAB! What does it all mean?
Satanforce: Damaged Beyond Repair (DBR) Refers to all (and only) black men. The idea is the for whatever reason, black men who are not these women’s kin are troubled misogynists, who are verbally abusive at best and serial rapists [insert white male police link] at worst. This is of course, backed up using confirmation bias ad highly circumstantial statistics.
It stands for Damaged Beyond Repair. TM Evia’s blog. Which is a person, usually a male who brings new meaning to word dysfunctional and takes out his inferiority complex and pain on unsuspecting (usually black) women. So a DBR isn’t always racially or gender based. It’s about the behavior, but the behavior tends to be displayed mostly by black males – because of all of the above
Rainbeau – A handsome non-black (but almost always white) man who is interested in an interracial relationship with a black woman. A portmanteau of Rainbow and beau.
Mammy/Sista Souljah – One of the fundamental doctrines of the BWE is that black woman handicap and martyr themselves at the altar of the black community and black men. They see these women as being caught in a trap set by black men, who use black women to fight on their behalf while castigate black women for this “fact” by condemning black women who have anything good to say about black men, or participate in civil rights as “mammies” and “Sista Souljahs.”
Guardian of all Things Dark and Lovely (GATDL) – A person or organization (eg. Abagond,Jim Crow Museum) that refutes the stereotypes about blacks through empirical, statistical or rational arguments, while at the same time taking pride in their blackness. The phrase is of course, used sarcastically.
Nothing but a brother (NBAB) – a designation given to black women whose relationships are exclusively with black men, and who enthusiastically avoid white men. The BWE ‘movement’ sees these women as a threat to their cause, as they put out the message that black women wish to have nothing to do with white, I mean , non-black men.
Interested Reader: Okay, I’m understanding now. But why do they feel that white men would be interested in them?
Satanforce: Ah! Enter the movement’s bible – Is Marriage for White People? By Ralph Richard Banks! Just by the subtitle “Get you a white man ’cause niggas ain’t shit”, you can see that this book captures the attitude of the BWE ‘movement’ perfectly! The main point is that black women (in the United States) have so outstripped their male counterparts in terms of achievements that they should look to white, I mean non-black men for relationships. Black women are more likely to marry down, when they should be marrying out (of the race.) Just look at the statistics! Twice as many black women are college graduates! And all the “good black men” are dead, in jail, gay, or worse, with a white, I mean non-black woman.
Interested Reader: I just skimmed through his book and Amazon and, well, he seems to have a point. There are definitely more than enough white men (in America) for every black woman and the relationship market is definitely messed up for black women who want black men on their level. Why should black women be held hostage to black men’s failures? I mean, these guys just go around getting black women pregnant and then abandoning them with their children? Why shouldn’t they abandon those losers and marry outside their race?
Satanforce: This is going to take some work.
There may be more than enough white men for every black woman, but there aren’t enough white men for every white women. In fact, while black women outnumber black men by 1.9 million, white women outnumber white men by 4.6 million. That’s some competition.
The idea that black men are two legged penises screwing down the damn place then running away removes any sense of responsibility from black women. Yes, black men shouldn’t be having sex without protection, but when black women have modern medical technology that allows them control of their reproductive system before, during and after intercourse, they have no excuse. They literally hold the keys to the castle.
Relationships are not some interaction between supply and demand. Too assume that would require one to make essentialist claims that fail to take into consideration the unique traits and individual characteristics of one’s partner. Relationships require work and time, not stereotypes and how-to books.
Interested Reader: Phew! I almost got caught in the Matrix there! So what do you think that the BWE should do?
Satanforce: Black woman have managed to (not undeservedly) build up a shield that effectively prevents them from being criticized. I call it the “Maury Shield.”
No matter how many times she fucks up, there’s always someone to pick her up, tell her its alright, and go after that bad old black man!! Black women do not need a million and one blogs telling them that they are beautiful and great, and wonderful. The only thing they need is to make choices and take responsibility. That is all.
Angry Black Woman responds.
Angry Black Woman: LOL Satan! You’re such a loser ! You’re just upset that you got you’re ass kicked all over the place over on Christelyn’s blog!
ABW: OK Fine! But you must admit that a black man is hardly a catch for a black woman , yes ? I mean, just look at the statistics – there are only 3 eligible black men for 100 available black women! Let me break it down for you. Its 87 black men to 100 black women, out of that 87, minus 2 black men that are gay, minus 8 black men who only want white women, minus 25 men who are felons, minus 10 blah, blah , blah….
Satanforce: That may be true, but African-American women do manage to even it out. 80 out of 100 black women are obese, leaving only 20 out of 100 black women for the majority of black men that are not chubby chasers. 37 black women are single mothers, bringing the additional burden of another man’s child into the relationship. 5 black women are in prison, 2 black women are carpet munchers, 48 black women have herpes, and 6 black women are HIV positive. So that leaves -78 black women for every 100 black men.
ABW: Wait a minute! That doesn’t make any sense? Some of those results are going to overlap! And what were the years that those studies took place? Where did those studies take place? What were the sample sizes? What is the criteria used for herpes infection? You’re messing with the statistics!!
Satanforce: I’m glad that you feel that way. Yeah you got me. But by extension, I got you too. That’s what we get for using various data sources with overlapping statistics. The correct set of statistics can be found here.
ABW: Yeah whatever. But you must admit that more and more black women are leaving black men and the decrepit black community for, ahem greener pastures, yeah?
Satanforce: Perhaps. But I doubt that their motives are as clear as you say. I can thin of a few reasons why black women would want to cling to your little “movement”, as well as how you are counting black women who may have motives not having to do with your agenda.
Including men who want to fuck black women but not want to marry them.
Including Black women who do NOT have issues with black men even though they may have noo sexual or romantic interest inn black women
Holding black men to lower standards than white men
Women who use the BWE as a shield because they are afraid of being attacked by black people who do not approve of their relationship
ABW: Anything else?
Satanforce: Black women who just want sex from white men.
ABW: I was being sarcastic.
Satanforce: Sure. Don’t forget black women who use white men as sugar daddies.
ABW: See, that’s the thing with all you black men! You want to shame black women for making their own choices!! Well, we’re not gonna take it!!
Satanforce: No. No one was up in arms when Angela Basset co-starred with Ralph Fiennes in “Strange Days”. I still read G. Pascal Zachary’s articles,especially after he married a Nigerian woman and moved to Ghana with her. What we dislike is the blatant pleasure you all seem to get at the thought of a poor black man or a fat black woman failing. That’s the rub. You seem to believe in getting a white man and a graduate degree, not as measuring rod for personal success, but as a beating stick for those who you feel are lesser than you. The truth is, the only thing that anyone needs to feel good about themselves is the ability to make choices and take responsibility. You don’t need a white man, or any one else to make you feel good, and certainly don’t need to demonize black men feel good about yourself either. All you need do is be yourself, and love yourself. That is all.
‘He’s a daytime talk show host and when the rating slip in daytime, the hosts tend to tell you lots of things about them.’
She went on to say that Oprah Winfrey had made announcements about her past in what Jones called a similar effort to attract viewers.
I remember Oprah said she smoked crack, Oprah said she was pregnant at 14 and considered suicide,’ Jones said. ‘There [are] times when you generate information for ratings.’
In the 1990s, Oprah admitted on her hugely successful daytime show that she had smoked crack cocaine in her 20s while interviewing recovering addicts of the drug.
Yup the ratingsaren’t looking too good. Well, at least people aren’t trusting what they see on TV anymore. Hopefully , we will start to do the same elsewhere.
Lisa Hanna is a fucking idiot. Of course, no one should be surprised by that she is a fucking idiot, as most people who are attracted to power are stupid, mediocre and venal, Hanna being no different. Why then, are people shocked at the duplicity and mismanagement of the Jamaica 50 project, when institutional incompetence is part and parcel of post-1992 Jamaican government. What has Hanna done to prove that she is a qualified statesman other than look pretty and debate nicely? No, matter, in a democracy, people generally get the government they deserve, so we deserve what we get.
A little techno, a little dancehall. a little electronica, a little hip-hop, but not much of anything. Just like the songs Lady Gaga, Nikki Minaj, Justin Bieber and every other mass produced pop song, it uses templates.You get your standard issue music sequencer (FL Studio, Reason, Ableton Live) and using a predefined set of musical notes, you create your song by drag-and-dropping your drums and synths from a (usually massive) library of musical instruments. All that is required is a decent Internet connections in order to access one of the many websites that host the thousands of templates. No creativity required.
But this is not just a feature of modern music composition. Our entire middle class economy and workplaces are affected by templates.
Microsoft Office templates that give us a predetermined set of resumes, memos, databases and flyers.
Adobe Photoshop templates for our programmes, menus and flyers.
Vehicle diagnostic tools that are used by mechanics also rely on the use templates on which to base their diagnosis.
SAP ERP templates that sit at the heart of modern business and industry
All of the above examples use templates to automate repetitive tasks, as well as to enhance the skill of user, who would normally use an artist or a massive reference book. But when such templates and techniques are used in the arts and especially music, it can result in dull, mechanical music that is a generic, shallow parody of the genre that it tries to emulate. It is an unimaginative and derivative sound, like when you hear a news report of a murder that you know is just a cut-and-paste with the names and places changed.
The mass production of Jamaican popular music is not something that we should despise, as long as producers realize that that mass production and templates are merely labour saving means, not the musical ends. The producer may use software to introduce templates, a tracker interface to easy drum composition or a piano roll to ease string composition, but he is able to use them because he already understands reggae basslines, 4/4, 3+3+2, nyahbinghi and traditional mento drum patterns, and how to manipulate reggae synth and guitar patterns. In other words, he merely uses the software as tool. Or, that is how it should work.
The vast majority of Jamaican music produced nowadays, is devoid of ingenuity or any musical craftsmanship. They hardly approach the level of skill or talent that is seen in a Dave or Tony Kelly, an Augustus Pablo, a Sly and Robbie, or any of the superb musicians whose compositions represent the artistic zenith of Jamaican music.
And it is the same with our politicians, and our managerial class in general. They can only follow a select set of techniques that they have swatted either from their textbooks or some foreign school. They do not know how to govern, and are devoid of new ideas and solutions for the myriad unique problems of Jamaica.That is themain flaw of the Template system – it is mass produced by a set of people, usually foreigners, who have no interest or knowledge of local situations or culture. Anyone would have realized that “On a Mission” would have had been wholeheartedly rejected by the Jamaican people, but only a fucking idiot like Lisa Hanna could have failed to realize that.
“Find the Flag”, however, is just another side of the same coin.
Lets say tat a Jamaican music lover living in 1972 had a time machine that allowed him to get music from the future. He dials in 2012 and gets the Mikey Bennett song. I have a feeling that he would almost immediately check to see if his machine was working right. And he would have every right to, as it , just like 90 percent of what comes on on IRIE-FM, sounds like it could have had been made 40 years ago. Ours must be the first era in history where music has remained so stagnant. It was just about 11 years from ska to rocksteady to reggae. 10 years from The Beatles to first rap song. Yt Jamaican music has been stuck in a 40 year creative rut.
During the 1980s, the neo-liberal programs that were instituted on recommendation if the International Monetary Fund gutted the educational and health sector of the Jamaican government. Music programs at our schools were slashed, affecting the quality of musical talent that our nation would put out for years to come. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like its just our musicians that were affected by the breakdown of our educational system.
Most Jamaicans have a very odd sense of history. We do not see our history as continuous, but instead as a set of discrete points on an an every decreasing timeline. There is Nanny’s guerilla war, Sam Sharpe’s rebellion, Emancipation, The Morant Bay Rebellion, then Independence, Bob Marley and then finally whatever was in the newspaper yesterday. And not a thing in between.
So when I read Carolyn Cooper’s latest post “Jamaican Men Love Oral Sex” I believed that I would be getting some sort of Lacanian-psycho-fucko-analytic-Foucaultian-polictical power-structure-rude-boy-garrison-politics-hypermasculinity critical theory analysis. Hey, some people collect stamps, I like to decipher post-structuralists. Everyone has their thing.
Sadly, none of that was present (guess I’ll have go get my Frederic Jameson…). See, the long and short of it is that some Jamaican men (claim they) don’t suck pussy. Not only do they not suck pussy, they will publicly ostracize, if not outright beat, anyone who has been confirmed to be eating under the sheet (Note’: People are starting to tell these person to fuck off.). I refer to these “gentlemen” in plural is because they will not make a move on you unless they have four or of their tight pants wearing, skin bleaching, eyebrow arching buddies to back them up.
An example of the above specimen
Unfortunately, these “gentlemen” are, for all intents and purposes, the cultural trendsetters. This fact, combined with our myopic view of history, makes us unable to see any alternatives to our present situation by using lessons from the past.
I remember listening to Mutabaruka, a few years ago (back when I thought Jamaica could become a better place). That particular night, he had a mento artist who had a big hit back in 1955. The name of the song? Night Food.
Here are some sample lyrics:
The room is dark
She said, ‘Come and eat
This night food is very warm and sweet’
I said, ‘Lady, there’s no knife and fork
And how can I eat food in the dark?’
She said, ‘This food needs no knife and fork
How can a human be so dark?
The food is right here in the bed
Come here, man, make me scratch your head
I think its safe to say that you don’t need to be Jacques Derrida to deconstruct them lyrics.
Of course, when Alerth Bedasse was pressed by Mutabaruka as to the meaning of the song, he came up with some mealy-mouthed excuse as to it being about cold food being left in the fridge for too long. I supposed he had to use a similar excuse back i 1959, when Willis O. Isaacs, the Minister of Trad and Industry, finally got around to creating a nontroversy about his song.
Well, at least back then the national government might have had been taken somewhat seriously. Today, instead of government, the church, or another legitimate institution to uphold social mores, we have a some ridiculous looking bleached face monkeys to keep us nigras in line. I guess this what we deserve for ignoring our history. One must see the irony of a country responsible for creating two of the most powerful black cultural movements having its ideas of masculinity and culture dictated to it by androgynous, deracinated, apolitical skin bleachers. The more things change.
The film follows John Preston (Christian Bale), a warrior-priest and enforcement officer in a future dystopia where both feelings and artistic expression are outlawed and citizens take daily injections of drugs to suppress their emotions. After accidentally missing a dose, Preston begins to experience emotions which make him question his own morality and moderate his actions, while attempting to remain undetected by the suspicious society in which he lives. Ultimately he aids a resistance movement using advanced martial arts, which he was taught serving the very regime he is to help overthrow.
As is typical of the type of people who enjoy these times of movies my “friend” begun to expound on how our society was going in this very direction. We were, he claimed, headed towards a prison planet where we would be drugged up, brainwashed, and then kept in permanent serfdom in a neo-fascist state.
Being the contrarian that I am, I had to ask him some issues regarding this scenario – Why would you need to force people to take drugs? Why not make the drugs addictive? How can a fascistnation be economically viable?
But there was also something about that movie. Anyone who has watched the trailer, read the above summary, or watched the whole movie will notice just how utterly derivative it is. Its one of those new “mashups” that all the cool kids are talking about. It combines the Soma drug from Brave New World, the fascist state from 1984, the book-burning from Fahrenheit 451, the fascist uniforms from the Matrix, the sterile cinematography of Gattaca, and the Guardian characters from Judge Dredd, with all the self-importance and pretentiousness that we have come to expect from sci-fi action movies. And as with any mashup, it is inevitably lesser than the sum of its ripped-off parts.
I had asked my friend if he had read any off the books that the movie had been “influenced” by. He said no, though he had watched the 1984 movie with John Hurt.
Now my “friend” is one of those “people” who believes that the world will end come the 21st of December 2012, that 9/11 was a U.S. government operation and that there is a second star in our solar system called Nibiru that also influences our planet. Obviously we should not take him seriously, but that is not the point.
When most people think of a totalitarian state, they think of a 1984 type situation, as seen in Equilibrium. What Neil Postman is here to tell us is that we are heading in a totally different direction. See below.
Neil Postman’s 1985 book “Amusing Ourselves to Death:Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business “, posits that, rather than being controlled through the application of pain, we will be manipulated through the inflicting of pleasure. He believes that we have switched from a contextual, analytical, print based culture to a context-free, graphical one. As a result, the rational, liberal democracy that was created during the 18th and 19th century is becoming unsustainable as our visual culture is leading us … somewhere else.
We were not amused (in the old days)
The book is divided into two parts. The first part contains its legendary foreword, an explanation of its main theme and sub-themes, as well as a short history of American typographic culture, pre-telegraph. The main theme, from which all else flows, is not that television is making us stupid, neither it is that a print based culture is superior but that the form in which an idea is expressed affects what those ideas will be. From this value neutral theme, Postman develops an idea in Part 1 known as the Age of Exposition.
To quote Postman
The name I give to that period of time during which the American mind submitted itself to the sovereignty of the printing press is the Age of Exposition. Exposition is a mode of thought, a method of learning, and a means of expression. Almost all of the characteristics we associate with mature discourse were amplified by typography, which has the strongest possible bias toward exposition: a sophisticated ability to think conceptually, deductively and sequentially; a high valuation of reason and order; an abhorrence of contradiction; a large capacity for detachment and objectivity; and a tolerance for delayed response. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, for reasons I am most anxious to explain, the Age of Exposition began to pass, and the early signs of its replacement could be discerned. Its replacement was to be the Age of Show Business.
Note that he did not say that the print media creates “a sophisticated ability to think conceptually, deductively and sequentially; a high valuation of reason and order; an abhorrence of contradiction; a large capacity for detachment and objectivity; and a tolerance for delayed response“, but that it amplifies it. Postman is no fool. He is quite aware of all the junk romance novels, gossip and all the other nonsense that anyone with access to a printing press can put out. Those simple ideas are nothing for a complex form to reproduce. But it takes a complex form to produce complex ideas. Not complicated – complex. A web browser, with its Javascript JIT compiler, tabbed windows and JQuery/Flash animations is quite complicated. A book, is complex, but not complicated.
Postman uses the legendary Lincoln-Douglas debates to further his point about Man in the Age of Exposition. At one debate at Peoria, Illinois on the 16th of October 1854, Stephen Douglas went first for three hours. By the time Douglas had finished, it was 5 in the evening. Lincoln then suggested everyone go home to have dinner, then come back in the evening. They did, and when they returned they were treated to another four hours of oratory, starting with Lincoln’s rebuttal of Douglas.
They certainly were not bored into a catatonic stupor by sentences such as
It will readily occur to you that I cannot, in half an hour, notice all the things that so able a man as Judge Douglas can say in an hour and a half; and I hope, therefore, if there be anything that he has said upon which you would like to hear something from me, but which I omit to comment upon, you will bear in mind that it would be expecting an impossibility for me to cover his whole ground.
In fact, these debates would take place at fairs and circuses. The music would not be played during these debates of course, but the crowd would quite often shout encouragements (”’You tell ’em Abe ‘) or scorn (“Answer that one, if you can”).
The above excerpt by Lincoln is not something that one finds in an oral culture, which is dependent upon poetry, proverbs and limericks are used as mnemonic devices. Nor would it be normally found in a graphic culture, with its focus on charts, graphs, Youtube clips, soundbites, LOLcats, smiley faces, and jump cuts. Both the pictorial medium, and its counterpart, the medium created by electronic communication . The whole point of a photograph and the bit is to preserve information like a a mosquito trapped in amber. But determining whether or not the mosquito is relevant in that time or place is not a within by those media, as they are primarily suited to preserving an eternal present and transporting information, not its exposition or its interpretation.
We are always amused (nowadays)
Of the audience at the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Postman asks “What kind of audience was this? Who were these people who could so cheerfully accommodate themselves to seven hours of oratory?” He, of course, means this as a rhetorical question. The Americans of the time from the Late 17th to the early 19th century were analytic and rational, as a result of living in a print based culture. Thus, they were able to readily deal with the all the new ideas and techniques that were part and parcel of the Enlightenment, whether it be the Protestantism of Jonathan Edwards, the economics of Adam Smith, the literature of Charles Dickens, the politics of Thomas Paine and the oratory of Abraham Lincoln.
So what does he think of the 1985-era citizen? Here is his take on a viewing of a 1984 Presidential Debate (emphases are mine ):
Prior to the 1984 presidential elections, the two candidates confronted each other on television in what were called “debates.” These events were not in the least like the Lincoln-Douglas debates or anything else that goes by the name. Each candidate was given five minutes to address such questions as, What is (or would be) your policy in Central America? His opposite number was then given one minute for a rebuttal. In such circumstances, complexity, documentation and logic can play no role, and, indeed, on several occasions syntax itself was abandoned entirely. It is no matter The men were less concerned with giving arguments than with “giving off” impressions, which is what television does best. Post-debate commentary largely avoided any evaluation of the candidates’ ideas, since there were none to evaluate. Instead, the debates were conceived as boxing matches, the relevant question being, Who KO’d whom?
Let us look at the skills that were fostered by the Age of Exposition
A sophisticated ability to think conceptually, deductively and sequentially
A high valuation of reason and order
An abhorrence of contradiction
A large capacity for detachment and and objectivity
A tolerance for delayed response
Anyone who watches a debate on TV nowadays knows that it is nothing more than a more sophisticated version of an exchange of “Yo Mama!” jokes. Yo mama jokes are subjective and emotional attachment (opposite of 4.), They require an immediate response, as no one expects . At the debate itself, the emphasis is not on reason or order, but on emotional appeal and non-fiction versions of manatee jokes. Contradictions are par the course in politics.
To put it simply, people vote for pretty faces and nice slogans, both in Jamaica, and in the United States. They vote for politicians based on the narrative that has been created for them, not on the content of their policies.
Postman explains that the progenitor of the television, the photograph and telegraph, were the technological systems (and epistemologies) that caused the shift from print to visual culture. The telegraph made introduced into the culture irrelevant information, the information would be about things so far away that no one in the receiving location would be able to do anything about it. This is a direct result of the form of the the medium – it is intended to bring information from far away – not to aid in its exposition. One does not construct a telegraph link within a small city or town. It is not feasible and besides, why would you need a telegraph when you could just go outside? The photograph, can only show concrete examples of things, it cannot deal with abstract categories. It can show a man, but not Mankind, lovers, but not Love, pornography, but not sensuality. Both media only need to be recognized, but words need to be understood.
Being the well-meaning person you are, you want to do your very best to help them. Now, having watched that half-hour video on YouTube, you should be very well informed about the situation, right? Do you know the name of the President of Uganda? The name of the capital? What about the name of the last President? What is an Acholi? I am willing to bet that the answer would be “no” to all those questions. Those are very important questions that are quite relevant to the action you would need to take. But because a television based epistemology (in this case, a YouTube video) depends on slogans and appeals to emotion, instead of explanation and exposition, you would information that was not important, merely sensational. And even if you did get important information, you would be impotent to do anything with that information.
Well, that is one action you could take.
I have used the example of YouTube because even though the book was written in 1985 (Postman talks about “microcomputers”), it is still relevant. This is because Postman does not see television as a technology, but a philosophy of knowledge. He shows how the television philosophy renders everything it touches into entertainment. Religion loses its theology, dogma and ritual, and becomes a personality cult. Education loses its ability for exposition, perplexity and need for prerequisites, and becomes mere entertainment.
This is the logical conclusion of Postman’s argument. Television’s inherent structure reduces everything to entertainment.The medium of television is a Procrustean bed that cuts the profound, erudite foundations of the serious aspects of our culture, reducing it to mere trivia. At the same time, it stretches the commonplace, irrelevant, piddling, trite features of consumer capitalism to fit those foundational principles that it has so efficiently eviscerated. Postman has no problem with entertainment -indeed he agrees that the television is best used for entertainment. The problem is when it is used for serious affairs such as religion, politics, news and education, then it becomes a problem. These institutions still retain the features that he had when they where created in the late 17th to the mid 19th century, and still require the analytic-rational skills that are fostered by a print based culture. Attempting to engage them using a 20th century image centered philosophy, is folly, as Postman hints at, but Chris Hedges says openly
We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities.
Will you be amused?
It might seem strange that a book that mentions shows like “Cheers”, “Dynasty” and “Dallas” as if they are still being broadcasted can still be relevant, but 27 years after it was first published Amusing Ourselves to Death is actually more relevant than ever. With this book (and others such as “Technopoly”, “The End of Education” and “Building a Bridge to the 18th Century”) Postman cemented himself as one of the premier cultural critics of our time. While he may lack the profundity of a Lewis Mumford, or the conciseness of a Ivan Illich, and he often fuses ideas from previous greats, his writing style is what catapults him to the top, his writing is funny, yet never curmudgeonly, and always penetrating. Some examples
On December 5, 1989, Daniel Goleman, covering the social-science beat for The New York Times, gave considerable space to some “recent research findings” that doubtless unsettled readers who hadn’t been keeping informed about the work of our scientists of the mind: Goleman reported that psychological researchers have discovered that people fear death. This insight led them to formulate “a sweeping theory,” to quote Goleman, “that gives the fear of death a central and often unsuspected role in psychological life.”
As I write, the trend in call-in shows is for the “host” to insult callers whose language does not, in itself, go much beyond humanoid grunting. Such programs have little content, as this word used to be defined, and are merely of archeological interest in that they give us a sense of what a dialogue among Neanderthals might have been like. More to the point, the language of radio newscasts has become, under the influence of television, increasingly decontextualized and discontinuous, so that the possibility of anyone’s knowing about the world, as against merely knowing of it, is effectively blocked. In New York City, radio station WINS entreats its listeners to “Give us twenty-two minutes and we’ll give you the world.” This is said without irony, and its audience, we may assume, does not regard the slogan as the conception of a disordered mind.
I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville.
The first quote is from the his book “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology”, another of his books that I will soon be reviewing. And as Amusing Ourselves to Death is one the books of The Satanforce Canon, a chapter by chapter summation, with specific reference to Jamaica will be done at a later date
Beast of No Nation 