Generation Bubble
Archive for August, 2009
A Life Best Ordinary: Social Reproduction of the Status Quo
Within the context of democracy, our indifference can be made to seem like dignified political participation, while those inflamed with the passion to address problems are seen as dangerous maniacs who want to “punish” us with change. Usually, in consumer capitalist society, change is only perceived as nonthreatening and natural if it is belched up by the market under the guise of healthy competition, as something new and improved to beat existing options. The only permissible revolutions are commercial ones.
All This Useless Duty: The Publish or Perish Imperative and Value Erosion in Higher Education
The perception that higher education has become an increasingly elaborate and costly hustle is perhaps to be expected in era when no one’s ever quite sure if her pension is perched on a Ponzi scheme that’s ready to blow. In an economy in which few actual things are made, and in which more experiences, services and social relations are monetized, value calculations begin to admit more variables, and people become more suspicious.
Super-Surprise Me: Boston University Pimps Students to McDonalds Guerrilla Marketing Campaign
This upping of the ante represented by McDonalds’ latest ad (and by guerrilla marketing generally) exacts a terrible price, one well beyond that of a venti McSpresso. It induces a form of epistemological vertigo that comes when we can no longer trust our own experiences, when we innocently sign up for a course and are made complicit in a spectacle that will earn millions for the company advertised, while we walk away with only crap-ass swag and lattè-foam moustaches for our trouble.
Arabian Bites: It's Rich Eat Rich in the Saudi Kingdom
Such Olympian rifts among the super-rich seem like they’ll become the new normal, giving the lie to the incredible esprit de coeur and sense of shared purpose writer David Rothkopf credits them with in his depressing, dispiriting paean to plutocracy, Superclass. Yes, it appears that those “differently sheltered” populating tent cities and Hoovervilles across this great nation who are otherwise occupied with stirring watery pots of squirrel soup over fires fueled by shredded 401K-earnings and Social Security statements can look forward to a little old-fashioned skullduggery among the sheikhs of Araby.
Lax Americana: Higher Education and Innovation Stagnation
There’s no way to demonstrate positively that the mind which can move from Moliere to microchips designs better microchips than the mind which concerns itself solely with microchips. This could, at best, be demonstrated over a long period of time, with sustained attention and infinite patience (maybe something along the lines of Michael Apted’s Up series), as a generation liberated from liberal-arts curricula show themselves easily buffaloed by tasks that do not perfectly conform to their limited repertoire of technical aptitudes. But until such time as one can assess that critical appreciation of just this number of Botticellis or that number Bach fugues equals this optimal number on a creativity index, suspicion of disutility will continue plague humanities.
Tweet Nothings: Twitterrhea and Monetized Friendship
Twitter foments the fantasy of our vast influence, our endless relevance to everyone, and enlists more or less meaningless numbers to sustain it. Following people and being followed doesn’t signify any kind of commitment, any reciprocal responsibility — it’s just an effortless way to give and receive empty recognition. It’s a devalued currency, hyperinflated. But we can use that number nonetheless as a focal point, a kind of mandala for our self-worship.
No Preservatives: Whole Foods and the Right-Wing Prescription for Health Care
The genius of a health-savings plan is that it dodges the politically explosive charge of rationing by foisting the rationing on the covered individuals. A $2,500 deductible is a king’s ransom in a country where the saving’s rate is a negative percentage, and in which consumer debt is the economy’s life’s blood. Notice how Mackey refers to employees’ “own health-care dollars” as if they have any such thing. Where do these health-care dollars come from anyway, if not from employees’ pay? What Mackey proposes essentially amounts to a surreptitious clawback of his workers’ wages in the form of premium defrayment.
Bubble Living: DC by a Nose for Cocaine Use
One wonders how bad things really are if can still find money for an eight-ball. At any rate, cocaine is not necessary a drug associated with economic downturns. Smack, certainly. Crack, definitely. But blow retains too much of an uptown aura really to be associated with hard times. One thinks of all the 80s cocaine glam: Delorean car tires, shitters in some Manhattan or Miami nightclub, the backseat of a BMW 500 series — all mis en scènes for a drug that defined a decade. If crystal meth is the poor man’s cocaine, then cocaine remains the rich man’s cocaine.
Confidence Games: Keynes and the Casino Economy
At a certain point, development itself will seem to consist in contriving more and more elaborate means for manipulation and control of others: that economic growth lies in the production of new media forms and techniques, and the use of these purposely to create financial bubbles.
Et in Academia Ego: The Humanities, Consilience and the Cash Nexus
Students’ professed love of art, literature or language does not oblige instructors to limit themselves to only the sort of teaching that leaves this love undiminished (whatever sort of teaching that might be). After all, this seeming innocence conceals within it all kinds of assumptions — perhaps consciously made, perhaps not — which betray privilege, security, affluence and other similar advantages necessary for the cultivation of this love. To call students’ attention to these implications is not to murder love, but is simply to establish the fact that their love does not really proceed from any ineffable affinity or oogy vibe. This is what humanities instructors mean when they talk about “challenging students’ assumptions” — an incredibly valuable service by any measure.
Anton Steinpilz
Rob Horning
Ylajali Hansen
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