Tuesday 29 May 2012
freude oder schadenfreude
Though not everything in the world is being influenced by the state of financial affairs and cultural mores and norms are not always so neatly packaged, a study commissioned by a consulting firm and a liquor distributor is showing that the typical German is having difficulty expressing his or her genetic make-up for joy—something is defective in the bio-chemistry preventing, as it were, the DNA replicating and passing along a capacity for fun and leisure to its messenger RNA. There are stereotypes of the exacting and gloomy German, which might be drawn into sharper focus in the current economic climate where two factions have emerged, like the industrious ant and the lazy grasshopper. This survey, for what it’s worth, really provided some interesting insights about a growing imbalance between work and play. The lens of parable is an apt analogy, with the Germans are weathering the financial crisis with patrician discipline but also too burdened to enjoy how good they have it—collectively and individually, it seems.
They are victims of their own success in another way (not just as beneficiaries of the chaos) too, being spoiled for choice, and the obligation to take up any one of a number of pleasurable pursuits is ringing hollow as a weird and funny (uncomfortably accurate observations, some) sort jealousy comes into effect: jealous of the Joneses, one’s neighbours, as etiquette and appearances dictate, but also being unable to embrace the stylings of Club Med. This is not universally true, of course, and there are plenty of exceptions and recent moments of pride and of joy, suggesting that we’ve simply gotten to be forgetful and misguided and hopefully not naturally dour, but it is worth noting how people rate (and whether they considered their grumpiness—or happiness unique or abnormal beforehand) themselves and how they look from another perspective.
Monday 28 May 2012
papercraft
Some weeks ago it was suggested that the United States will expand (turn inward) its vigourous disinformation and propaganda operations to help sway domestic opinion. There mere hint of more government sanctioned red-herrings diluting journalism—especially when the mainstream and most hard-hittingest comes pre-fabricated in the forms of internet research, stock-photographs and sponsored articles (take the case of the on-going tumult of confusion in Syria, for example)—has met the requirement and served up a hopeless dose of distrust without doing anything further. To bring the level of skepticism this high effectively negates the public’s ability to rally around any cause (or any health-conscious person or stock-market croupier for that matter), since one is not just looking at stance, ideology and motivation with a suspicious eye, which was always advisable, but now has cause also to doubt the veracity of the movement itself. It is as if Anonymous or any protest group is not just prone to infiltration but could be nothing more than a strawman of stuffed-ballots and a colossal toolbox of popular sentiment. To bait the public with such hoaxes is the censoring of the word gullible from the dictionary but puts conspiracy into everything once there is no way of verifying trustworthy sources.
catagories: ๐ง
Sunday 27 May 2012
geisterstรคdte
Der Spiegel’s English-language stories section reports on an exhibition in Berlin about contemporary ghost-towns and the deliberate choices and accidents of history that are creating the phenomenon.
torch song
Protests and boycotts are always of a selective nature. Parallel to the threats by some European countries to sit-out the Euro 2012 final matches to be held in the Ukraine over the host’s treatment of its former prime-minister (apparently having had selectively made an example out of her perceived violation of public-trust) and even propose the games be held in another venue, like Germany or Poland, holding the Eurovision Song Contest in Azerbaijan was not without controversy.