'Big Brother is watching, so learn to be invisible'

[Quentin Quire]

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I have no idea about this book, but that's the point...I therefore cannot reach such conclusions about it.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Which was the point I was trying to make, DE. I'm quite happy for Hugh to read this stuff and then we can discuss it within the context of his ideas of agit-prop and mind war. I don't believe one can accurately comment on the themes and content of a text without actually reading and experiencing it for themselves. This would seem - to me anyway - to be the cornerstone of any rational discussion.<br><br>The equivalent would be Hugh posting about a book or article I have no personal experience of and then me arguing my views on it. Semantic sophistry and continual theorising won't cover up the fact I'm not truly informed about the text and therefore not truly able to come to my own conclusions.<br><br>I find much of value in Hugh's posts and viewpoint, but I feel in some cases he's applying it to things which he isn't fully informed about - in this case a comic book he hasn't read. <p></p><i></i>

[slimmouse]

<br> Violence in any revolution is completely unneccesary, since IMHO the vast majority of humanity is born good.<br><br> Given that premise ( discuss ), all that is now neccesary is educating people as to what is REALLY going on in this world, as opposed to the crock of "economy with the truth" to put it very mildly, that the minions are subject to.<br><br> To my mind, one generation of reasonably accurate education is all that is required, given that I believe we arent all born with a desire to murder, thieve, cheat, lie and abuse in our hearts.<br> <br> Overcoming the Fiscal framework that has created our nightmare however is where the real problem lies.<br><br> Discuss <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>

[thoughtographer]

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Not a fan, then? Not quite sure what this says about me ... ;)<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Not really, but I suppose I should have used the word "followers" instead of "readership". I sincerely apologize.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><br>Your Sigil/Pornography conundrum is an interesting one though. Perhaps the net effect - if you view pornographic images as sigils - would be the increasing sexualisation of both the sigil user and 'reality' as a whole.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Thank you. That's what I was trying to imply.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Of course this would posit that everyone who masturbates to any pornographic image is somehow using will and intent (the cornerstones of any magical system) to deliberately cause a change in the paradigm which I don't think is the case in the majority of most porno users.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>True, nothing applies to everyone. I don't claim to know what's going on in the minds of others while their masturbating (to pornography), but I would venture a guess that a large amount of visualization and "wishing" take place for quite a few people. I'll try to shore up my analogy later, but it's time for dinner. Thanks for responding. <p></p><i></i>

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Guilty as charged. And I'll take the opportunity for a moralist rant about why. Your welcome.<br><br>I've learned the hard way that information is a life and death matter. Bandwith is eaten up with amusements and puzzles <br>Cultural creatives are diverted into either amusing or confusing others quite easily. This is the divide between Americans holding a gun and Americans holding a mouse.<br><br>I'm deliberately focused on warning against the intelligentsia's fetish for paradox, obfuscation, and mixed messages.<br>Yes, fetish. Or perhaps more like brain food gluttony.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>'See what you want to if you can see anything'</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> productions like Morrison's are part of the problem.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>I just read the storyline synopsis at wiki and it is grotesquely violent.<br><br>Then switches to peace-loving at the very end with a follow-up analysis that says 'get beyond both sides-type thinking to another way.'<br><br>Well...ok. Did we need the Clockwork Orange treatment for that? Indulgence in vice and horror just to pull out a 'see the light and sin no more' ending? Hmmm.....<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Morrison presents a magnitude of ideas to the reader, one of which is that humans are like larva waiting to evolve into flies. The realm where these "flies" would live is never revealed (due to a human's inability to imagine anything beyond the third dimension), <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>but it is hinted at in the beginning of the series that in this realm everyone will hear what they need to hear, creating a utopia.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> It is this "eternal" language that the Knights Templar were protecting. Percy Shelley, a poet who Morrison made into an Invisible for the sake of the series,<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong> theorized that utopia could be found in the mind and that it was "waiting for [humanity] to grow up and recognize it and come home". In other words, humanity holds utopia within themselves and only when they see through the binary interpretations of reality the Invisibles and the Outer Church offer can they access it.<br></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>Morrison also had Percy Shelley and his friend, Lord Byron (also an Invisible), argue about whether or not mankind truly wants to be free. Byron believes that "men are like sheep", while Shelley belives they have "a drive towards liberty". This debate is brought up many times throughout the series since much of humanity is content being controlled (albeit unknowingly) by the Outer Church, <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>while the Invisibles fight to be individuals, free to make their own decisions.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Um...the Invisibles slaughter people vigorously for almost the entire series.<br><br>I don't buy this analysis and it smells like 'V for Vendetta' with the same cover story that it "gives you something to think about."<br><br>Yup. A trail of bloody body parts. Think about that? No thanks.<br><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>

[Quentin Quire]

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I'd love to read Morrison but I've learned to be wary of people who intentionally associate justice with violence in any form.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Me too. But remember, this is a comic book and some form of conflict is required in order to create a narrative. However a lot of the 'violence' in it comes from the power of ideas rather than the power of firearms and incendiary devices.<br><br>Peace.<br> <p></p><i></i>

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>some form of conflict is required in order to create a narrative.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>I suppose. I do remember the violent cartoon show on the Simsons called 'The Itchy and Scratchy Show.' In one episode Marge campaigns to take the violence out of the show and of course it becomes a boring old cooperative love fest that the kids don't want to watch anymore.<br><br>But those mirror neurons in the brain are going to pick up some cues from the gore fest.<br><br>So there's a price. A coherent narrative doesn't require shock value if one resensitizes by turning off the shotgun spray of mass stimuli that characterizes the American childhood.<br><br>Peace with vigor! lol. <p></p><i></i>

[FourthBase]

I totally, TOTALLY agree with Hugh here. <p></p><i></i>

[Ted the dog]

<br>"That's what to look out for."<br><br>actually what I meant was, it sounds like everything is agit prop....so what ISN'T agit prop? <br><br>I'm not asking how to define agit prop, I'm asking what isn't agit prop...as in, specific examples of different forms of media or consumable entertainment like films and music. Are depictions of violence of any kind considered agit prop?<br> <p></p><i></i>

[streeb]

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Of course this would posit that everyone who masturbates to any pornographic image is somehow using will and intent (the cornerstones of any magical system) to deliberately cause a change in the paradigm which I don't think is the case in the majority of most porno users. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Unless the paradigm they're trying to change is Blue Balls. <p></p><i></i>

[professorpan]

Hugh, do you ever think that sometimes a story is just a freakin' story? That a creative mind spun an interesting or provocative tale, without the interference of PSYOPS professionals? That an image on a comic book cover is the product of a creative consciousness and not a disguised vehicle of propaganda?<br><br>I write fiction. My fiction is sometimes violent, features dark themes and disturbing imagery, and has been known to offend people who like "nice stories." I suspect you'd find all sorts of subliminal content within it, but that doesn't mean it's real.<br><br>It's an insult to artists to claim they're propagandizing and that their work carries malevolent, ulterior messages. You're quite good at subjective analysis, but you should realize that just because *you* find dark intentions doesn't mean the artist intended them.<br><br>It's art, dammit. You're starting to remind me of an old Marxist friend who filtered everything through Marxist lenses. It's very limiting to frame all art in political or psychological categories, and it belittles the human capacity for creativity and expression.<br><br>That said, I enjoy reading your analyses -- I just don't agree with them. <p></p><i></i>

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

ProfPan wrote-<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>just because *you* find dark intentions doesn't mean the artist intended them.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Oh, I agree. You're absolutely right.<br><br>Dreams End recently wrote that my posts were increasingly one-noted and I admit that. But I'm sticking to what I think is the right question: "Is this supposed to do something to our minds and if so, what and for who?<br><br>This is useful to ask even if just as a way of examining the aesthetics and not the morality implied since they are linked.<br><br>Just that we are discussing things here anonymously in pixels requires an intense critical examination to find the 'event horizen.'<br><br>I keep being surprised to find evidence of<br>>greasing the rails for projects that give the desired social engineering stimuli (useful idiots and useful geniuses) and/or >intentionally constructed psycho-political events.<br><br>This is why I put every cultural object discussed here through the psychic smellometer to see if it matches a long-term message like 'follow the leader'<br>'get on the team'<br>'ignore women'<br>'America is God'<br>'don't think too much' etc.<br>OR <br>psychic shock absorbers for specific news cycle events like <br>'global warming'<br>'attack dogs at Abu Ghraib'<br>'the recent shuttle disaster' etc.<br>which better illustrate to others (my goal) that much more media is intentional MindWar then they might think it is.<br><br>Re: darkness and kinetics in narratives-<br>There is a baseline of *stimulation* that people turn to although that baseline has been intentionally upped like a drug the American public develops a resistance to. Besides more competition to be noticed, this also serves to antagonize 'conservatives' who then take out their anger on 'liberals.'<br><br>You said you were TV-free for many years. <br>I've been for only a few. And my thinking has become much clearer without the pile up of 60 images/second/hour.<br><br>By not going to some movies I resensitized myself into seeing how much messaging was in 'a book's cover.' THAT was a big 'aha.'<br>I was able to see the forest for the trees.<br><br>I have a dissection of 'Chicken Little' that is so long I'm saving it and still working on it. I found evidence in there you wouldn't believe of a template of messaging for American kids who are on the front line of MindWar. And we thought child warriors were only on other continents carrying AK47s.<br><br>Now I know why Disney took Mickey off their Disney Dollars and replaced the rat with the chicken.<br><br>My point is that I keep finding gold in sand so I keep sifting.<br> <p></p><i></i>

[professorpan]

<!--EZCODE CENTER START--><div style="text-align:center">You said you were TV-free for many years. </div><!--EZCODE CENTER END--><br><br>You have me confused with someone else. I don't watch much TV, but I think it's important to watch it occasionally in order to understand how much of the U.S. is fed information about the world. <p></p><i></i>