Myth conflates with propoganda; the rampart is also ideological, serving both to reassure the population and to disarm the adversary with a sense of the invincible, the impregnable.
-Paul Virilio, Bunker Archaeology
Well if you aren't talking about Hitler's Atlantic Wall, you could be speaking about any military's show of arms as a necessary means to intimidate. I'm not so much bothered by the choppers and border patrol stuff as the CCTV and information surveillance. I think that there's nothing reassuring about the fact that we are snooped on, or that my library records are scanned. I lived in LA too long to be bothered by choppers in the city...post 1992 LAPD=military.
Its like anything in life, people need to make a stand together and things will change quickly. One person on their own is a start, but it take numbers.
Its like the crazy oil prices. If people stopped buying oil and gas for three days running, citing the obsence prices as their qualm, I bet the prices would drop like a stone.
The same with the government intrusion into privacy, just say no.
Stop paying taxes until things change. Demand that 'peace' officers protect and serve, not harrase and torture.
This is a economic system and currently we are paying for our own chains and shackles.
The next time at the airport, refuse to be searched (felt up). If everyone refused to be searched at airports the airlines would soon reduce 'security' checks and we'd have a bit of self dignity back.
We cannot turn a blind eye to this behaviour anymore, enough is enough.
The way I look at it, what goes around comes around, and the people getting their rights violated by the cops could be anyone of us. So its time to make a stand.
See, zoolander...it's not that I don't agree with the ideas *behind* some of what you post, it's that your arguments for how to get there are completely unformed, as chupacabra points out.
The methods to change the practices that offend you are in place: through elections, letter-writing, working for change, peaceful protest, etc. In fact the no-buying-gas thing could actually work as a form of peaceful protest, but it would have to be exceptionally well-organized, and you haven't given and examples of how you think such an action could be organized. Instead you sound like an anarchist. Ideals are great, figuring out how to implement them is an entirely different animal.
Which could bring this ridiculous thread back to architecture, if you'd like: coming up with the "big idea, the concept, is one thing. Turning that concept into a constructed building is an entirely different set of challenges. A good architect is great at both those things.
zoolander "Everything starts with the individual. Do what you can"
it might also be hyper-individualization that deflates the masses' potential for organized action. chupacabra's fear is everyone else's fear and their distrust of everyone else to act in resonance runs deep side by side with fear of consequence. liberty bell's pretty sight is the sugar coating on a very bitter stupor inducing pill. in reality, america has left you incapacitated to act by creating wretched islands of psychologies too preoccupied with their american dream or their american nightmare.
The American Dream, you have to be asleep to believe it.
I know what your saying noctilucent. There has been a break down of community spirit and bonds, no communication with neighbours generally and even the family unit, that last vestige of tribal roots is also gone is many cases.
Therefore people feel very alone and vunerable, incapable of fighting aganist this massive force of repression that we all feel.
When I say everything starts with the individual, that individual should be a person who has concern for his fellow man, not this selfish, dog eat dog attitude I see all around.
Don't get me wrong, im not advocating the busy body, 'good guy' also approach that is prevalent in todays society. The type of person who wants everyone to think that are 'such a nice guy', when really they are selfish ego's.
So I thought about noctilucent's comment re: sugar-coating on a run this morning and you're right zoolander: change is happening too slowly. I mean, I was protesting to save the rainforest 23 years ago and it didn't do any good. So you know what: Go for it, fight the power, overthrow the system, bring about the revolution. Just don't hurt any innocent people while you do so.
Also, zoolander: are you an architect? I find it hard to justify being an architect sometimes, as we definitely are (for the most part) luxury expenditures for the elite. What are your feelings on that?
But one more thing: given your other human rights concerns, you're totally wrong on abortion, and I'll debate you to the end of time on that one if you'd like. Plus the notion that morning after contraception = abortion is medically incorrect. You're a woman, right? So I'd expect you to learn a bit more about biology.
I have to agree with LB on the morning after thing. I thought about it a lot yesterday, and here's my conclusion.
It is not abortion if you do not know you have conceived, just as it is not a miscarriage if you didn't know you were pregnant. These kinds of miscarriages happen all the time, and we women think they are just typical mentrual flow. Because the morning after pill is taken immedeatly after intercourse, it can't be known if one has actually conceived. The chances of conceiving are actually quite slim, and I actually believe that many time the MAP is taken when conception hasn't actually occured.
I believe that conception is the point whereafter any attempts to stop birth is abortion. Now someone mentioned 'after birth abortion' in another thread which was a new term to me. Thats totally crazy, and how is that not murder?
LB,
Innocent people are getting hurt now more than ever, thats my objection to this whole system.
Yeah im an architect, debating with myself possibly some of the moral dilemas we all face. I admire Walter Segal and his approach to architecture and design.
Zoolander, your definition makes it seem that you believe the use of birth control and condoms are also abortion. Is this true? How do you feel about vasectomies and tube-tying?
I agree that partial birth abortion, and after birth abortion are not cool. And for the record, I would never get an abortion.
Her arguments won't convince you, nor will mine. But Sarah's arguments at 6:03 actually are factual and based in science. Abortion is one possible outcome of a pregnancy. The MAP prevents implantation in the uterine lining of a fertilized egg. If no implantation happens, no pregnancy happens, therefore no abortion can happen.
If you "believe" that "life" begins at conception, we will never, ever agree on this issue. I don't "believe" "life" begins at conception.
On the other stuff: and I'm just gonna go off on a rant here to get out a lot of crap I've been thinking about. Yes, innocent people are getting hurt. The middle class is suffering, the poor are being trampled on, civil AND human rights are severely endangered (including the rights of pregnant women, sorry, but I have to get that in there), the rich are getting richer and are pretty well insulated from any of the problems the rest of the world faces. Those are my clients, sometimes, and sometimes their sense of privilege infuriates me, though I DO choose to work for overall nice people. We have turned down jobs from people we felt were too obnoxious to work for.
But speaking of the problems of the rest of the world, let me say why I think so many people, myself included, get complacent and hope for change to occur, even if slowly. Check this out, which I yanked from Jezebel:
One out of every five children don't live past the age of five in Afghanistan, and war isn't the only reason that the country has one of the world's highest child mortality rates. A new study has linked the problem to Afghan mothers' lack of autonomy and education: Afghan and Japanese researchers found that 79 percent of Afghan mothers need permission from the head of their household to bring a child to the doctor, and they may need a male relative to accompany them to the clinic. Seventy-one percent of the mothers surveyed have not attended at least a year of school, and 18 percent had their first child before they turned 16. link
This kind of human rights tragedy is beyond disgusting. By comparison, here in the US, we are in paradise, even if I can't walk into any drugstore and not be judged by the pharmacist for buying contraception or wear a face mask in a protest march. I'm SO legally protected in essentially anything I want to do. And I feel like things happening around the world are totally beyond my ability to change. So I feel helpless, paralyzed, and scared, so I focus on where I *can* do good work: raising my kid well, working in my neighborhood, picking up litter when I go for runs, supporting candidates i think are less fucked up than the others (and occasionally candidates I actually believe in. I know you think the entire election system is rigged, and I do think the 2000 election was a sham, but I am fairly certain that local elections are for the most part still fair.), writing letters to companies that use horrid advertising techniques and to politicians I think make idiotic statements. And supporting my family, which is the biggest responsibility I have, while doing these things.
If you're young, zoolander, which I expect you are (and are you a woman? You posted something once that made me think so.), you should absolutely be active and angry. If you don't have a kid to support, why *not* go off and fight the good fight, devote your life to activist causes. I asked a professor recently how does an older mentor tell a student gently and without being condescending that they should go ahead and relish all the angst they are going through in youth because that's part of the process. And that IS how people discover who they are and define their worldviews. So I don't want to sound condescending when i say that young people SHOULD be as agitated as you are. As for people who hang onto that fighting spirit into their 40s, well, good for them doing so! I still have similar ideals to those I had in my youth - I mean I'm not a freakin' republican yet - but everything has gotten tempered for me with a desire to be gentle. I desire a world where everyone treats one another with graciousness and respect, even their enemies. Remember the few days after 9-11? People were, in my experience walking the streets of Philly, quieter, more reserved, more concerned with fellow people. I flew on a plane the first day after 9-11 that planes were back in the air, and the atmosphere in the airports was one of the most calm, careful, considerate experience I've ever had. Everyone was just being nice to one another.
Granted, here on archinect I'm often far more belligerent than i should be. Sorry, everyone.
do i love you?
do you love me
do you love you?
do i love me?
how can i correct you?
how can you correct me?
where do i find you in me?
where me in you?
that us, chimps picking at each other's abstract flees
maybe america has swallowed up so much land, people and their fates that its the only nation to have an acute sensibility of an imminent self destruction beyond the temporary workings of it daily life, a destruction equivalent to god who equals armageddon. as if, in this newer XXXXL world, religious sensibilities untethered from their origin of individuals' fates, rose into the atmosphere and created a homogeneous crust of national ominous presentiment threatening to shatter and obliterate the nation underneath it. well, it seems so from the disaster flicks. as if people are waiting for god's dead corpse to fall out of the sky and crush them to pre-historical bio-paste.
which is to say, going back to the obama greek imagery and the notion that america is a funny sorta democracy: america is far more jewish (and by jewish, i also mean christian and islamic) than greek. there are some greeks amongst the jews who call for some sort of sacrifice, an alliance to another god to ward off the pissed-off god, but the jews know that god's wrath is unavoidable for their god is a childlike Big Foot who smites and flattens.
Police State
Unbelievable.
-Paul Virilio, Bunker Archaeology
Well if you aren't talking about Hitler's Atlantic Wall, you could be speaking about any military's show of arms as a necessary means to intimidate. I'm not so much bothered by the choppers and border patrol stuff as the CCTV and information surveillance. I think that there's nothing reassuring about the fact that we are snooped on, or that my library records are scanned. I lived in LA too long to be bothered by choppers in the city...post 1992 LAPD=military.
Another example of police brutality.
Peace officer?? Protect and serve?? Some chance.
Time to stand up to all this invasion of privacy and brutality.
zoolander, how exactly do you propose we "stand up" to this?
Civil Disobedience - Thoreau
An introduction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau)
Its like anything in life, people need to make a stand together and things will change quickly. One person on their own is a start, but it take numbers.
Its like the crazy oil prices. If people stopped buying oil and gas for three days running, citing the obsence prices as their qualm, I bet the prices would drop like a stone.
The same with the government intrusion into privacy, just say no.
The 1976 movie NETWORK is well worth watching.
"I've had enough and im not taking it anymore"
And how will not buying gas prevent police officers from violating civil rights? Again, how exactly, and in your own words?
Stop paying taxes until things change. Demand that 'peace' officers protect and serve, not harrase and torture.
This is a economic system and currently we are paying for our own chains and shackles.
The next time at the airport, refuse to be searched (felt up). If everyone refused to be searched at airports the airlines would soon reduce 'security' checks and we'd have a bit of self dignity back.
We cannot turn a blind eye to this behaviour anymore, enough is enough.
The way I look at it, what goes around comes around, and the people getting their rights violated by the cops could be anyone of us. So its time to make a stand.
Stop paying taxes = lose my house...no thanks.
If everyone stopped paying taxes, no houses would be lost.
ummm. good luck with that.
Lets not forget that its the citizens who bankroll this whole system, we are the ones that have the power.
See, zoolander...it's not that I don't agree with the ideas *behind* some of what you post, it's that your arguments for how to get there are completely unformed, as chupacabra points out.
The methods to change the practices that offend you are in place: through elections, letter-writing, working for change, peaceful protest, etc. In fact the no-buying-gas thing could actually work as a form of peaceful protest, but it would have to be exceptionally well-organized, and you haven't given and examples of how you think such an action could be organized. Instead you sound like an anarchist. Ideals are great, figuring out how to implement them is an entirely different animal.
Which could bring this ridiculous thread back to architecture, if you'd like: coming up with the "big idea, the concept, is one thing. Turning that concept into a constructed building is an entirely different set of challenges. A good architect is great at both those things.
Elections: Sham.
Stalin said: It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes.
We've seen Bush get elected through this sham.
I have no choice but pay taxes, but yet I don't know where that money goes. I am funding unjust wars? Am I funding the police state.
Peaceful protest is great. However when police provocateurs posing as protestors start a riot we have problems.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/08/23/police-montebello.html
The mass media is also a big problem and propaganda machine.
Everything starts with the individual. Do what you can.
Heres what a peaceful protest get you in todays police state:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfISlq1gzK8&eurl=http://parallelnormal.com/page/2/
zoolander "Everything starts with the individual. Do what you can"
it might also be hyper-individualization that deflates the masses' potential for organized action. chupacabra's fear is everyone else's fear and their distrust of everyone else to act in resonance runs deep side by side with fear of consequence. liberty bell's pretty sight is the sugar coating on a very bitter stupor inducing pill. in reality, america has left you incapacitated to act by creating wretched islands of psychologies too preoccupied with their american dream or their american nightmare.
and i'm only half kidding
The American Dream, you have to be asleep to believe it.
I know what your saying noctilucent. There has been a break down of community spirit and bonds, no communication with neighbours generally and even the family unit, that last vestige of tribal roots is also gone is many cases.
Therefore people feel very alone and vunerable, incapable of fighting aganist this massive force of repression that we all feel.
When I say everything starts with the individual, that individual should be a person who has concern for his fellow man, not this selfish, dog eat dog attitude I see all around.
Its time to regain some compassion.
and altruism can be another form of selfishness :)
Don't get me wrong, im not advocating the busy body, 'good guy' also approach that is prevalent in todays society. The type of person who wants everyone to think that are 'such a nice guy', when really they are selfish ego's.
the crow pecking away, absentmindedly, at the dead chimp eyeballs
So I thought about noctilucent's comment re: sugar-coating on a run this morning and you're right zoolander: change is happening too slowly. I mean, I was protesting to save the rainforest 23 years ago and it didn't do any good. So you know what: Go for it, fight the power, overthrow the system, bring about the revolution. Just don't hurt any innocent people while you do so.
Also, zoolander: are you an architect? I find it hard to justify being an architect sometimes, as we definitely are (for the most part) luxury expenditures for the elite. What are your feelings on that?
But one more thing: given your other human rights concerns, you're totally wrong on abortion, and I'll debate you to the end of time on that one if you'd like. Plus the notion that morning after contraception = abortion is medically incorrect. You're a woman, right? So I'd expect you to learn a bit more about biology.
I have to agree with LB on the morning after thing. I thought about it a lot yesterday, and here's my conclusion.
It is not abortion if you do not know you have conceived, just as it is not a miscarriage if you didn't know you were pregnant. These kinds of miscarriages happen all the time, and we women think they are just typical mentrual flow. Because the morning after pill is taken immedeatly after intercourse, it can't be known if one has actually conceived. The chances of conceiving are actually quite slim, and I actually believe that many time the MAP is taken when conception hasn't actually occured.
SH, your arguments are not very convincing.
I believe that conception is the point whereafter any attempts to stop birth is abortion. Now someone mentioned 'after birth abortion' in another thread which was a new term to me. Thats totally crazy, and how is that not murder?
LB,
Innocent people are getting hurt now more than ever, thats my objection to this whole system.
Yeah im an architect, debating with myself possibly some of the moral dilemas we all face. I admire Walter Segal and his approach to architecture and design.
Zoolander, your definition makes it seem that you believe the use of birth control and condoms are also abortion. Is this true? How do you feel about vasectomies and tube-tying?
I agree that partial birth abortion, and after birth abortion are not cool. And for the record, I would never get an abortion.
Condoms and the pill are Ok in my book, as are other methods to stop conception
Her arguments won't convince you, nor will mine. But Sarah's arguments at 6:03 actually are factual and based in science. Abortion is one possible outcome of a pregnancy. The MAP prevents implantation in the uterine lining of a fertilized egg. If no implantation happens, no pregnancy happens, therefore no abortion can happen.
If you "believe" that "life" begins at conception, we will never, ever agree on this issue. I don't "believe" "life" begins at conception.
On the other stuff: and I'm just gonna go off on a rant here to get out a lot of crap I've been thinking about. Yes, innocent people are getting hurt. The middle class is suffering, the poor are being trampled on, civil AND human rights are severely endangered (including the rights of pregnant women, sorry, but I have to get that in there), the rich are getting richer and are pretty well insulated from any of the problems the rest of the world faces. Those are my clients, sometimes, and sometimes their sense of privilege infuriates me, though I DO choose to work for overall nice people. We have turned down jobs from people we felt were too obnoxious to work for.
But speaking of the problems of the rest of the world, let me say why I think so many people, myself included, get complacent and hope for change to occur, even if slowly. Check this out, which I yanked from Jezebel:
One out of every five children don't live past the age of five in Afghanistan, and war isn't the only reason that the country has one of the world's highest child mortality rates. A new study has linked the problem to Afghan mothers' lack of autonomy and education: Afghan and Japanese researchers found that 79 percent of Afghan mothers need permission from the head of their household to bring a child to the doctor, and they may need a male relative to accompany them to the clinic. Seventy-one percent of the mothers surveyed have not attended at least a year of school, and 18 percent had their first child before they turned 16. link
This kind of human rights tragedy is beyond disgusting. By comparison, here in the US, we are in paradise, even if I can't walk into any drugstore and not be judged by the pharmacist for buying contraception or wear a face mask in a protest march. I'm SO legally protected in essentially anything I want to do. And I feel like things happening around the world are totally beyond my ability to change. So I feel helpless, paralyzed, and scared, so I focus on where I *can* do good work: raising my kid well, working in my neighborhood, picking up litter when I go for runs, supporting candidates i think are less fucked up than the others (and occasionally candidates I actually believe in. I know you think the entire election system is rigged, and I do think the 2000 election was a sham, but I am fairly certain that local elections are for the most part still fair.), writing letters to companies that use horrid advertising techniques and to politicians I think make idiotic statements. And supporting my family, which is the biggest responsibility I have, while doing these things.
If you're young, zoolander, which I expect you are (and are you a woman? You posted something once that made me think so.), you should absolutely be active and angry. If you don't have a kid to support, why *not* go off and fight the good fight, devote your life to activist causes. I asked a professor recently how does an older mentor tell a student gently and without being condescending that they should go ahead and relish all the angst they are going through in youth because that's part of the process. And that IS how people discover who they are and define their worldviews. So I don't want to sound condescending when i say that young people SHOULD be as agitated as you are. As for people who hang onto that fighting spirit into their 40s, well, good for them doing so! I still have similar ideals to those I had in my youth - I mean I'm not a freakin' republican yet - but everything has gotten tempered for me with a desire to be gentle. I desire a world where everyone treats one another with graciousness and respect, even their enemies. Remember the few days after 9-11? People were, in my experience walking the streets of Philly, quieter, more reserved, more concerned with fellow people. I flew on a plane the first day after 9-11 that planes were back in the air, and the atmosphere in the airports was one of the most calm, careful, considerate experience I've ever had. Everyone was just being nice to one another.
Granted, here on archinect I'm often far more belligerent than i should be. Sorry, everyone.
Join or form your own Cop Watch groups.
do i love you?
do you love me
do you love you?
do i love me?
how can i correct you?
how can you correct me?
where do i find you in me?
where me in you?
that us, chimps picking at each other's abstract flees
maybe america has swallowed up so much land, people and their fates that its the only nation to have an acute sensibility of an imminent self destruction beyond the temporary workings of it daily life, a destruction equivalent to god who equals armageddon. as if, in this newer XXXXL world, religious sensibilities untethered from their origin of individuals' fates, rose into the atmosphere and created a homogeneous crust of national ominous presentiment threatening to shatter and obliterate the nation underneath it. well, it seems so from the disaster flicks. as if people are waiting for god's dead corpse to fall out of the sky and crush them to pre-historical bio-paste.
which is to say, going back to the obama greek imagery and the notion that america is a funny sorta democracy: america is far more jewish (and by jewish, i also mean christian and islamic) than greek. there are some greeks amongst the jews who call for some sort of sacrifice, an alliance to another god to ward off the pissed-off god, but the jews know that god's wrath is unavoidable for their god is a childlike Big Foot who smites and flattens.
god is ded
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