I was downtown on the weekend and noticed the following sign posted:
The small print at the bottom of the sheet said it was put there by the local Occupy movement.
That alone is funny because who has the right to put up signs on behalf of a movement that has no leadership, no organization, no spokesperson. And yet there is this need for authority that is intense. That is the thing that most worries me as we head into 2012.
We live in a society that craves authority. You can see this in the cult of Obama. Not Obama himself who is just another politician but in the crazy cult of hope and change that built up around him. And you can see it in the Occupy movement that didn't seek to change anything itself so much as it demands that others do so. I see it in the way that Bill Gates was treated as a brilliant visionary a few years ago and Steve Jobs is now even though neither man made even a single significant contribution to the development of the new technology that made them both so rich—their genius was in marketing not technology.
But "marketing" doesn't have the power and authority that so many seem to need. No one asks the head of marketing for his views on world peace or personal fulfillment. A great creator of new technology who reshaped the way we live and behave, on the other hand hand, is just the ticket so we imagine that that is what Gates and Jobs were.
That we would desire authority is, in one sense, not surprising. We have been demolishing authorities for several decades now. And yet the destruction of authority and the deep need for it in our time seem even more closely related than that. In Britain, for example, we see a generation whose only collective achievement so far is the ability to pass out, face down in their own vomit and yet feel incredibly comfortable attacking and hating authority while, at the very same time, embracing the leadership of celebrities. The rest of us are not far behind.
The similarity between this sort of thing and the Weimar Republic or France in the dying days of the Third Republic is chilling.
By the way: Blogger's built in spell check doesn't know "Weimar". That is also scary.
Notice the incredible sense of authority behind this. The person or persons who put up this sign has no doubt whatsoever about their ability to declare judgment on others. The signs, by the way, were around the group of office buildings where the largest investment firms, banks and chartered accountancy firms have their local offices.You're not pulling your weightShape up orShip out
The small print at the bottom of the sheet said it was put there by the local Occupy movement.
That alone is funny because who has the right to put up signs on behalf of a movement that has no leadership, no organization, no spokesperson. And yet there is this need for authority that is intense. That is the thing that most worries me as we head into 2012.
We live in a society that craves authority. You can see this in the cult of Obama. Not Obama himself who is just another politician but in the crazy cult of hope and change that built up around him. And you can see it in the Occupy movement that didn't seek to change anything itself so much as it demands that others do so. I see it in the way that Bill Gates was treated as a brilliant visionary a few years ago and Steve Jobs is now even though neither man made even a single significant contribution to the development of the new technology that made them both so rich—their genius was in marketing not technology.
But "marketing" doesn't have the power and authority that so many seem to need. No one asks the head of marketing for his views on world peace or personal fulfillment. A great creator of new technology who reshaped the way we live and behave, on the other hand hand, is just the ticket so we imagine that that is what Gates and Jobs were.
That we would desire authority is, in one sense, not surprising. We have been demolishing authorities for several decades now. And yet the destruction of authority and the deep need for it in our time seem even more closely related than that. In Britain, for example, we see a generation whose only collective achievement so far is the ability to pass out, face down in their own vomit and yet feel incredibly comfortable attacking and hating authority while, at the very same time, embracing the leadership of celebrities. The rest of us are not far behind.
The similarity between this sort of thing and the Weimar Republic or France in the dying days of the Third Republic is chilling.
By the way: Blogger's built in spell check doesn't know "Weimar". That is also scary.
No comments:
Post a Comment