One of the things that fascinates me about conspiracy theories is how the idea of mass false consciousness is all cool and wonderful when it’s in a movie or a book, when it encompasses a huge magical, mystical, or hypertechnological organization or force that nobody knows about. But of course, when you present someone with arguably real cases of false consciousness, the standard reaction is annoyance, backlash, and insistence on the rational, sensible wisdom of the consumer. People will defend freedom of choice even when the choices are more limited, more demonstrably unhealthy that other alternatives, and more costly than …
Month: December 2004
One of the things I’ve occasionally wondered about myself…
One of the things I’ve occasionally wondered about myself has finally turned up in an article on gay marriage. Actually, no, it’s in a review of a same-sex wedding planner book. The issue is this: Maybe we only think we want same-sex marriage. Perhaps all we really want are same-sex weddings. I don’t necessarily fault gays in North America for accepting the essentially right-wing value system that governs social relationships in that society: after, I’m not anti-marriage, and I don’t think gays necessarily would have to be either. But it does signal that gay culture is vying to escape the …
A Quiet Saturday
That’s exactly what was called for today, and the only real interruption was a trip to school to participate in a preparatory meeting for the winter camp I’m working at in January. Lime’s been sick and just kind of sleeping all day, and while sometimes it’s nice to curl up with her, I can’t pass a whole day sleeping, especially when I’m not really feeling too sick anymore. So what have I done? I’ve found something on which to spend my over-overtime made teaching at a high school last semester. It was a killer-bad knot in my schedule and I …
Oh, It’s Such a Perfect Day…. I Wish It Were Over.
It’s a perfect day because it’s the last day of classes for all but my writing class. The writing class’s worst work is finished as well, and we’re just going to meet next week for a few free-writing sessions. They’ll hand in their essays today, their course portfolios next Friday, and they have two more classes. But my conversation classes are meeting for the last time today. From Monday on, it’s just exams that are left to be done. Not to give the impression I hate my work, but having been so sick all semester has been a drain, and …
Mood In A Pill
Dan asked this for the next Friday Five: Dr. Feelgood has unlocked the primal secrets of mood altering drugs and can now induce any emotion or mental state with no undesired side effects, so he’s trolling the internet to find which drugs to make first. Which five moods/emotions/mental-states would you most want to have available in pill form, and when would you tend to use them? Note that these aren’t necessarily the moods/etc. that you most enjoy, just the ones that you most want to have available on-demand. This, of course, is the kind of question that is very, very …