Friday 15 May 2009

We can only think about thinking about thinking.

One of the more interesting aspects of the economic crisis is where things are evolving culturally.  As things go down, things go up.  And what is rising?  Satire.  Utopian Ideals.  Nihilism.  Nostalgia.  We all turn a different way and these ideological basepoints are pure emotion, feeling translated into culture, media, things, a mirror.

In the visual arts world, there is a lag time between when things are made and when they are exhibited.  It often lacks the real-time saturation we are accustomed to.  It is the now to the viewer, and, the past to the creator.  Some things transcend a sense of time, others are reflective of it, and, the best do both.  

In the realm of economic discourse, the time lag of evolving ideological basepoints can be even slower.  Of late, on the economics front, there has been a scramble of newly published books addressing the economic crisis.  The reflection necessary for a dialogue is unavailable whilst we are in the midst.  It is nearly impossible to transcend the now without the risk of becoming a horoscope writer.  One can address things with universals that seem applicable to these times, but, these universals may shift, or be in flux as they stand behind the veil of the present.

We can only think about thinking about thinking.

1 comment:

IDoNotExist said...

I wonder if this is real.

Event: happens.
Ideas: vomit forth.
Time: passes.
Hind Sight: values the guesses that were right.

Or in many cases, it values the guesses that we wish were right.

If anyone was really watching, this crisis should have been perfectly obvious. I knew, for example, that things didn't make sense. But I was constantly told this is how things have always been.

But they hadn't.

I think it is rather like dreams. We see the human-sized frog. We know it doesn't make sense. But it is clearly there so we accept that everything we knew about reality was wrong.

We do this when we are awake. Just as easily.

And we are just as readily able to accept all kinds of things that don't make sense, just because everyone else around us tells us it does.

And they only tell us it does because they don't want to appear like it doesn't make sense to them either.

We collectively brainwash ourselves.