Be careful what you wish for... by Nick van der Leek
Our wishes turn into television soaps and movies. Advertisers key into what ordinary people aspire to...and most of the time it's easy. We want to be rich, and desirable, and with someone who is sexy, and desirable. Men want woman who resemble pornstars. Woman want men who are ponzi schemers, who are wealthy and powerful, no matter how or why. Do you really think a ponzi schemer and a pornstar is a marriage made in heaven?
I watched a Steven Soderbergh movie yesterday, The Informant!, with Matt Damon.
MANOHLA DARGIS: Mr. Soderbergh has trained his focus and expertly wielded digital camera on the other side of the buy-and-sell equation, the men in suits who fly in corporate planes, nursing drinks while they chortle about the breasts of their female employees. These are masters of our universe, the big little men who control and distort world markets.
Once again, fiction can sometimes be a great sounding board for fact. Soderbergh tries to show the irony of greed. It's a dark comedy, but let's face it, there's very little irony in the tragic comedy of financial collapse.
What I mean is we won't have the time or the headspace to wryly poke fun at ourselves. There will be a period of self deprecation, and then humor will be pretty black and white. Someone falling on a banana skin will be funny [Laurel and Hardy stuff], but sophisticated dramas will weigh too much on an already darkened and dampened psyche.
Do you think it is any coincidence that we are seeing so many superhero movies right now. Ironman, HULK, Fantastic Four, Dark Knight [Batman], Superman, Spiderman, Watchmen [which tanked for being too realistic] and many many more. On television it's the same, SMALLVILLE, Heroes etc. The reason is because people are increasingly sickened by the sheer amount of dull, gray, garden-variety crime and corruption that fills up local papers around the world. I mean, here is a sample:
Son organises hit on mother
25-strong gang robs mall shops
More shocking claims about Ngcuka
Britain's Serious Fraud Office wants BAE to be prosecuted for corruption
How can 80 ambulances worth R48m disappear without a trace?
Now, I'm not sure about you but I'd rather not read any of those stories. I am not interested in the endless ping pong between accuser and accused. The endless court cases where more and more people are involved, more and more money secreted away, and the plot thickens more and more and congeals into one unholy mess. The lawyers come in and more and more money exchanges hands. The Informant! is a lot like that.
[Read my review of The Informant!]
I'm not interested in evidence. I'd rather it was just stopped, people were jailed and the keys thrown away.
You peel away one layer, and the lies and deception form another layer. And the news is rife these days with record breaking ponzi schemers. Everybody is corrupt. The system is corrupt. The system is based on greed, and too many people out there, are too greedy.
My point is that we don't want to know the muddy truth; we don't want to get involved in the schemes, we just want the schemes and schemers done away with.
We want to see clear boundaries between innocent and guilty, right and wrong. This is why the superhero is coming back with a vengeance. This is why Dan Brown's books on religion are also so popular. We also want to de-mystify religion, because some of the boundaries there are too clear. Homosexuality. Sex before marriage. Have those rules served us, or divided us? What's missing in the world aren't rules - but the discipline to carry our mores and codes through. Discipline is out the window. So we need superheroes, toned, strong, incorrigible, to inspire us.
In the real world, we are far away from real life heroes. Super cops, politicians that are really going to muck in and do the job. We thought we had some sort of saviour in Obama. The era of Mandela is over. The old man won't be around for many months longer. But I believe in the crisis that's coming, two kinds of men will emerge. Madmen, who will do what their mad constituents ask them to do, some will oppress their constituents and hold onto power at all costs [like Mugabe].
And heroes. There will be heroes too, there must be. Many may be in the community and might get no publicity. They may emerge from the ruins of this civilisation as people with inner resilience, true leadership, real strength emerge. But foremost out of these qualities must be this one: discipline. Not only physical and mental discipline, not only the ability to know how to steer and balance one's thoughts and desires, and appetites, but knowing how to be true to one's conscience. Spiritual discipline is a dedication to a truth that is in balance with everything, rather than in competition with it. In essence, it is simply knowing what reality is, and being part of it. And we are far from the signposts to that road right now.
Postscript: Some of the signs that fundamental changes are upon us
- Consensus amongst economic experts, 'recovery is a hoax'
- Gold hits all-time record high
The dollar slipped sharply in Asian trade after UK newspaper the Independent said Gulf Arab states were in secret discussions to end the use of dollars in oil trading.
Rich Dad, Bankrupt Dad
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