Tag: Post-industrial society

Content and Creativity.

Time spares no one. That continuum ticks on, breath by breath, counting down and counting you out.

Yet family bond endures. It has been that way for centuries: hunting and gathering, agrarian and industrial society.

The very moment we fear that the machine will take over, that’s when we got Social, from Twist to Tweet.

Web Page or Front Page, we still have demand for Content and Creativity.

Story telling. The narrative, personal or institutional. Once upon a time, there was….

We don’ t exist in a vacuum. Instead, weakest or strongest link, we are a part of that chain, of continuity and 4-D universe.

What comes around comes around.

Carrying all that mass around, we search and seek for meaning in the mundane. But we are here, still here, on this New Years Eve. Champagne and confetti. Or we might as well lay down and die….

What is there to celebrate? The fact that we owe our existence to a host of people: food provider, transportation provider, internet provider, medical examiner (not yet).

We connect and we reject. We choose then we return the merchandise. Choices piling on top of other choices.

Sometimes, no choice at all.

That’s when we feel the helplessness of depending on others, when we face our limits.

Go ahead and connect, to link, to post, and to Like.

It’s all virtual, but real nevertheless.

Until we move on to something else, to other platform and play place.

Part of growth, of dying. Of shredding old skin and put on the new. Reinvention the Gaga’s way.

Lips singing and lips kissing, same-sex or hetero-sex.

Finding new combination, exploring alternative mode of existence. But the time continuum ticks on, as it always has.

Santa has left along with 2013. Everything was. Simple past. From here on, we all face new possibilities and potential.

Content-rich or content-poor, all up to you. Suit yourself. Ever since the invention of the zero, we have realized the futility and irony of our being: can’t do with it, and can’t do without it (the zero).

So, what’s left? Back to the cave, and see our shadow? Project ourselves onto others? Disliking someone or disliking ourselves? Kiss and make up, or split? Dilemma by definition is not to be solved. It is to be shared with others who have a heightened sense of empathy. Then we are back to needing others, fellow inmates in this asylum called Earth.

I don’t want to time-travel. In fact, I’d rather stay freeze-framed in time. Being just a boy, looking out to the game called life, where adults hurting each other and pretending to laugh (alcohol induced).  Being just a memory keeper of both the good and the bad times. So I can start my story with “Once upon a time….” all the while making up more sizzling detail to hold your attention. That attention has been split between screen flashes and banner ads, children demand and societal demand. The burden is on us, to keep creating and reinventing ourselves, shaping our narrative and destiny in the process. A guy walks into a bar….a boy born into an aging family….a girl growing up without a Dad….what’s the punch line? Will there be a happy ending. We want in. To be part of the story-telling and narrative written. But first, there must be conflict. Not too far-fetched so the audience can relate, can empathize and connect. We need Content and a bit of creativity. We got enough platform that last for a life time. Post-industrial society has more convenience than any earlier times, but for some reason, we find ourselves wanting. Kids still want to shoot randomly and then themselves.

Man still threw his baby out then jump from the tower (with reason known only to himself). In the absence of terrorist, we have projected onto that mirror, and found ourselves the very horror we have become. Good luck with happy endings.

Repo and Retro

We don’t want the former, and wish to collect the latter.

In our age of mass production, supplysiders push consumption to the  point of writing up bad loans, hence Repo.

Then, and this happened to me once, products came out of the assembly line all look alike: I once mistakenly opened an identical rental car (Taurus) and it even started until I found out my laptop wasn’t in the back seat.  Now, we want Retro because of its obvious scarcity.

On weekend, we see different lifestyles at play: Harley fans, sport cyclists, families on outing, baseball league and of course, retro car owners, parking their souped-up automobiles in Main Street Old Town. Onlookers must have felt a mix of envy and admiration. Nothing feels better than a waxed-up oldie.

In contrast, miles and miles of repo cars are found next to “salvaged” cars in our industrial wasteland. Repo men branded them with chalk. Same steel. But the retros are well-kept while the repos are sold for parts.

What a difference in attitude and emotional investment.

This unchecked attitude can get carried over to how we treat people.

When we love someone or think positively about that person, we treat them (even if they are old or have passed their useful phase) as “retro”.  In contrast, when we found no utility value out of them, they are essentially, in our eyes, repos.

Their values are now up to the bean counters to decide. Fair market value for repo and increased value over time for retro.

We need to retrain and keep that child-like innocence, to look at life anew. To see people’s value and worth. In the age of mass production, we push consumption and adoption (I-phone 5 and new markets like China). But have we developed the ability to tell the difference between people and product? (to make things worse, career coaches often recommend us to “package” ourselves and “reinvent” ourselves, just as they had once failed with the New Coke. Or that discarding habit has spilled over to the inner sanctum of our hearts? The way McNamara used to crunch the numbers during the Vietnam War (ROI means how many casualties on each side etc..).

I will never forget the characters in “Never Let Me Go” by Ishiguro. They were “created” to serve as industrial organ donors (Repo) to preserve Retro (rich people who can afford surgery to replace their failed organs). While waiting to “donate” their body parts, the main character, Ruth, asked “Why did you collect our art works then”. “Just to see you got soul at all” replied the Principal.  There is a line to be crossed over from Retro to Repo. Then the issue looms larger than just a misspell. It’s a cancer growing undetected in our post-industrial society on steroid.