Random Musings

The zeitgeist today is overflowing with violence. The mood of the world is kill and destroy. There is anger in every peace talk and violence in every protest.

The pacifists are talking about permanently silencing the nationalists and the warmongers are calling peacemakers terrorists.

We live in a world today where humans have more luxury and peace than they have ever had and ironically all we can think about is war. And it’s not just the content. It’s in every walk of life.

Take marketing for example. The word ‘campaign’, if you read, has its root in military parlance. And it is used in that context where your ‘Target’ group has to be ‘hit hard’ with a message. You may use carpet bombing or sniper strategies.  So marketing continues to approach people like in a war. Only this war is that of narrative. And like any other war, the people that are actually making it happen are the ones that belong to neither side. They are simply generating wealth by finding out the most impactful ways for lords to earn more money.  

When in doubt, earn money. That is the motto. It is very similar to the body’s tendency to accumulate fat for a rainy day. Blind insecurity making people run like moths to a light. Any light. Even a flame.

Money is a notional piece that has been created in the consensual reality so that things can be equated. How else would you draw a parallel between the value of a one sac of rice and one pair of shoes? Too many variables would be involved. The need of the receiver, the quality of the rice and the shoe and zillion other possibilities. Money in this case serves as a beautiful tool that helps bring it all on one page. Further years of civilization has made money more and more sophisticated. It has now reached a point where it is free of physical form. A lot like God. And in that spirit, it has also become more mysterious and more powerful. So much so that money in itself is enough.  

Art is dead. It is not art until it makes money and something is art when it makes money. The richer you are, the more beautiful you are, the more talented you are, the funnier you are. Art is democratized and as more people like something, more money an artist earns, and the more money an artist earns, the more he/she is liked by the people. This gets into a never ending spiral and what it results in is that everything gets valuated in terms of money.

Oh, he is a brilliant writer! – How much does he make? Oh, that film is gorgeous! Really? How much did it earn? With this, opinion becomes measurable and that measure too, is money. And it’s money because money represents value that people perceive in something. It’s a token of what people really want. But do people always know what is best for them as a group? The founding principle of democracy say yes, they do! But practically, we know, they don’t! This is because those adept at war of the narrative can easily persuade public opinion. And today, when someone has more money, by default he/she is seen as more successful and hence more aspirational and hence more like a role model.

May be this is because the population of humans has grown so much that those who control money and those who can afford to see money as a means to an end are an increasingly small fraction. So small now in comparison to the vast population that they practically don’t exist.

Art is now gibberish. It is beyond Kitsch. If it exists, it has drowned in the ocean of content now floating on the internet like thermocol pieces in the Arabian sea.