System of the down

Advertising always advertises advertising

I.

There is something about yourself that you don't know. Something that you will deny even exists, until it's too late to do anything about it. It's the only reason you get up in the morning. The only reason you suffer the shitty boss, the blood, the sweat and the tears. This is because you want people to know how good, attractive, generous, funny, wild and clever you really are. Fear or revere me, but please, think I'm special. We share an addiction. We're approval junkies. We're all in it for the slap on the back and the gold watch. The hip-hip-hoo-fucking rah. Look at the clever boy with the badge, polishing his trophy. Shine on you crazy diamond, because we're just monkeys wrapped in suits, begging for the approval of others.... - Jake Green

II.

The Matrix is a system. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it. -Morpheous 

III.

Marshall McLuhan was right: Narcissus didn’t see himself in the water.  Sure, he saw the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Thats a given. But he mistook his image for something other than his own. He didn’t think it was himself. He just thought it was beautiful. And he dies, lost in this beauty. His epic mistake was not that he was self-absorbed, but rather that he didn’t realize he was self-absorbed in his own image.  

McLuhan’s suggestion seems to be that if Narcissus had realized that it was his own image in the water, that he was lost in his own reflection, he could’ve managed his situation a little better and moved out of the way. If he’d known that he was fascinated with himself he could’ve saved himself from his mythic mistake. One is tempted to say that we are Narcissus and media technology is our reflection in the pond.

 Learn from Narcissus: The content is a distraction. The medium carries a message- because the medium is the message. Like a light bulb that enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. The light bulb is a medium without any content. A light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence.

Likewise, the message of a newscast about a heinous crime may be less about the individual news story itself — the content — and more about what the system wants.

IV.

“Fuck your system N. I’m well aware of the game.”

Sure you are Flavor flav. You can’t fight the power until you know who is the powers that be. Schools in session.

First, start with a single individual, and eliminate value words like “purpose” and “unintended consequences.” If a guy cheats on his girlfriend in a way that likely could get him caught, one might say, “well, he wants to get caught.”

Now add a few more individuals. I want an ipad, but I can’t afford the $10,000 it would cost to have it made in America AND generate to Apple the same supposed profit of $200/ipad, so then the ipad has to be made in China with cheaper labor. So while one can say, “the consumer wants an ipad,” and “Apple wants $200 in profit per ipad” the sum of those wants is... “the system”.

 “The system wants cheap Chinese labor.”  The system doesn’t want it because it’s awesome, it wants it because it added up the wants. This is the aggregate outcome.

To be clear, the fact that you, the savvy global ipad consumer doesn’t “want” cheap Chinese labor is irrelevant. All of their choices (read:actions) want cheap Chinese labor. You can say the same about renewable energies, porn, and better primetime programming, or just something that everyone says they “want,” yet all of their choices sum up to the system’s want: the system wants to protect the oil industry. The CEO of BP isn’t to blame, you are. The system wants Two broke girls to be a smash hit. CBS isn’t to blame, you are. 

 If the system wants cheap female labor, how would we change the system? Only by wanting different things. Simply, if the majority of women wanted to work less, that would be the game. But the majority of women do want to work less, but they also want to buy X, Y, Z aspirational products, and they want X,Y,Z way more then they want to work less. If you sum up those “wants,” and add in the wants of Nordstrom’s, Nine West, Amazon, Whole Foods, Visa and Mastercard, etc, and throw in what the media wants, then it is technically correct to say: the system wants women to become batteries. Cheaper, longer hour batteries.

V.

So Neo, the final twist to this otherwise simple addition is that what you want is often taught to you by that very system.  For example, in running through the above, what you didn’t say was, “maybe I don’t want an ipad.”  That thought cannot occur to you…. because the system wants it.  And while you “argue” about which tablet is the best, which party you will vote for, which craigslist ad is surely all about you:  the system proceeds unmolested because the system wants all the above. No, I’m not saying the illuminati run anything. Unless by illuminati you mean the reflection in the pool of water. Which then means the principalities and powers are legion.

Everything you want is selected, interviewed, packaged, framed, edited, bought, by many people who aren’t you, doing these things for their reasons irrespective of what your intent may be. But the direction of all wants added together is the direction we are going. 

N.