- Sep 22, 2013
- 4,956
- 250
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I was thinking the other day of all the great events that transpired so quietly as humanity entered into the new millennium.
Since the 1960s, America was undergoing all kinds of radical sociocultural and political change. Democracy was becoming more populism-oriented than ever before, and Teddy Roosevelt's vision of a Big Brother America presiding as a nation of immigrants was being realized through commerce and networking. Facebook, IBM, NASDAQ, and Wall Street was turning America into a fortune-wheel, and no one wanted to be left behind.
Amidst this flurry of social activity, we endured the horror of 9/11 and woke up to the reality that Western progress was not admired by all.
In the late 1990s, films became much more graphic and expressive, and Woody Allen's Celebrity, Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate, and David Fincher's Fight Club revealed to new age audiences that society was much more curious about the 'boundaries' of populism fervor and uncensored social intrigue. Terrorism continued to linger and haunt all this intrigue (e.g., Boston Marathon bombings of 2013, Black Friday massacre of 300 Sufi-Muslims in an Egyptian mosque in 2017).
Everyday people were not daydreaming about coal mine village romance/sentiment or Ovaltine but rather the sharkish behaviour of a new Starbucks Wall Street 'universe.' People were either obsessed with success or extremely sarcastic about shared wealth. This caused quite a bit of emotional perspiration. It seemed the Devil himself was with us...
Storytelling always soothes the savage beast and calms the haunted mind, and new age films such as World War Z and Syriana and The Darkest Hour captured humanity's interest in cataloguing all this post-WWII social intrigue and dialogue in the public arena. It seemed everyone was tweeting or blogging using their handy-dandy smartphones, and the NSA established a special cyber-security division!
To recount all this 'stark drama,' I spun this recollection-yarn using patriotic American comic book characters (the Justice League of America). This yarn is titled Millennials' Night: Justice and Finance.
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"As the Justice League of America (JLA) organized to deal with this terrible and 'Great Tribulation' involving the mass hysteria and anti-social terrorism created as an emotional backlash to the Information Age and commerce explosion (i.e., Wall Street, NASDAQ), politicians wondered if the new millennium would bring as much pain as it would pleasure. Batman and Wonder Woman (two key superheroes of the JLA) decided to analyse all incidents of graphic urban crime from 1990-2016. Meanwhile, Green Arrow and Catwoman (two more key superheroes of the JLA) decided to analyse congestion of the modern 'grid' (or social and business networks) and how it exposed an underbelly of angst-ridden random terrorism (e.g., Boston Marathon bombing of 2013).
Batman was particularly interested in the flow of assets between Western petroleum companies and OPEC. Batman concluded that the irresolution of the Israel-Palestine problem would magnify in this new age of explosive commerce-based networking. The Trump Administration would have to coordinate commerce with diplomacy in ways no other administration had done. Batman wondered about the influence of 'finance-pirates' and drug-lords who exploited all this capitalism to their greedy advantage. It was ominously 'chic' to be a shark and greatly 'pathetic' to be a turtledove. Batman realized capitalism was turning humanity into scarecrows.
Catwoman was busy investigating how modern urban traffic and commercial networking in the modern media culture was giving way to all kinds of graffiti and vulgarity in the inner-city, as kids frustrated by a lack of access to new age resources such as the Internet expressed their defiance by renouncing the hygiene of network participation, and resorting to lives of crime and drugs. Inner-city single mothers living on Welfare were to Catwoman modern-day 'saints' who were being neglected by this new giant modern 'Machine.' Such a machine had the grip and teeth to simply crush the human skull and render the average labourer/patriot as merely a 'pawn.' Was capitalism conflagration turning America into an invisible lake of fire? Catwoman believed it was, especially when she noticed all the anti-TrumpUSA protesters representing a modern mistrust of basic social governance.
The Justice League of America dealt with the nuclear threat posed by incendiary nation North Korea, a terrible plague emerging in Third Would countries in Africa, a series of attacks on policemen in cities across the USA by a mysterious new crime-gang known as Black Mask, and an ISIS threat to invade the U.S. government's computer networks through hacking (a brand new form of terrorism). The Justice League wondered if all this anti-capitalism trauma would drive humanity towards a religion-less giant 'meat market.' Would those who did not 'keep speed' simply be left behind as 'relics' of a 'slower' human race? Would they be sacrificed by the forces of ambition and noise? The Justice League realized much poetry was required.
An American artist rendered a portrait of a prophetic 'dark city' of subtle bloodlust and inhuman mindless capitalism which he foresaw would come into being if the Justice League of America failed to create necessary idealism in modern civilization. The artist's name was Roger Hewitt, and he wrote in the Washington Post that just as Nazi Germany was a malignancy of the post-Industrialization era, and the Manson Family murders was a malignancy of the populism-rhetoric counter-culture movement of the 1960s, so too was 9/11 a realized malignancy --- of the capitalism-bravado of the new millennium. Hewitt labelled the millennial generation as 'Night's Children.' Hewitt's comments reached the Justice League of America who swore to uphold the basic human optimism necessary to avoid complete 'First World insanity' (e.g., Watergate, Enron, WikiLeaks, etc.). It was a great stand."
====
Since the 1960s, America was undergoing all kinds of radical sociocultural and political change. Democracy was becoming more populism-oriented than ever before, and Teddy Roosevelt's vision of a Big Brother America presiding as a nation of immigrants was being realized through commerce and networking. Facebook, IBM, NASDAQ, and Wall Street was turning America into a fortune-wheel, and no one wanted to be left behind.
Amidst this flurry of social activity, we endured the horror of 9/11 and woke up to the reality that Western progress was not admired by all.
In the late 1990s, films became much more graphic and expressive, and Woody Allen's Celebrity, Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate, and David Fincher's Fight Club revealed to new age audiences that society was much more curious about the 'boundaries' of populism fervor and uncensored social intrigue. Terrorism continued to linger and haunt all this intrigue (e.g., Boston Marathon bombings of 2013, Black Friday massacre of 300 Sufi-Muslims in an Egyptian mosque in 2017).
Everyday people were not daydreaming about coal mine village romance/sentiment or Ovaltine but rather the sharkish behaviour of a new Starbucks Wall Street 'universe.' People were either obsessed with success or extremely sarcastic about shared wealth. This caused quite a bit of emotional perspiration. It seemed the Devil himself was with us...
Storytelling always soothes the savage beast and calms the haunted mind, and new age films such as World War Z and Syriana and The Darkest Hour captured humanity's interest in cataloguing all this post-WWII social intrigue and dialogue in the public arena. It seemed everyone was tweeting or blogging using their handy-dandy smartphones, and the NSA established a special cyber-security division!
To recount all this 'stark drama,' I spun this recollection-yarn using patriotic American comic book characters (the Justice League of America). This yarn is titled Millennials' Night: Justice and Finance.
====
"As the Justice League of America (JLA) organized to deal with this terrible and 'Great Tribulation' involving the mass hysteria and anti-social terrorism created as an emotional backlash to the Information Age and commerce explosion (i.e., Wall Street, NASDAQ), politicians wondered if the new millennium would bring as much pain as it would pleasure. Batman and Wonder Woman (two key superheroes of the JLA) decided to analyse all incidents of graphic urban crime from 1990-2016. Meanwhile, Green Arrow and Catwoman (two more key superheroes of the JLA) decided to analyse congestion of the modern 'grid' (or social and business networks) and how it exposed an underbelly of angst-ridden random terrorism (e.g., Boston Marathon bombing of 2013).
Batman was particularly interested in the flow of assets between Western petroleum companies and OPEC. Batman concluded that the irresolution of the Israel-Palestine problem would magnify in this new age of explosive commerce-based networking. The Trump Administration would have to coordinate commerce with diplomacy in ways no other administration had done. Batman wondered about the influence of 'finance-pirates' and drug-lords who exploited all this capitalism to their greedy advantage. It was ominously 'chic' to be a shark and greatly 'pathetic' to be a turtledove. Batman realized capitalism was turning humanity into scarecrows.
Catwoman was busy investigating how modern urban traffic and commercial networking in the modern media culture was giving way to all kinds of graffiti and vulgarity in the inner-city, as kids frustrated by a lack of access to new age resources such as the Internet expressed their defiance by renouncing the hygiene of network participation, and resorting to lives of crime and drugs. Inner-city single mothers living on Welfare were to Catwoman modern-day 'saints' who were being neglected by this new giant modern 'Machine.' Such a machine had the grip and teeth to simply crush the human skull and render the average labourer/patriot as merely a 'pawn.' Was capitalism conflagration turning America into an invisible lake of fire? Catwoman believed it was, especially when she noticed all the anti-TrumpUSA protesters representing a modern mistrust of basic social governance.
The Justice League of America dealt with the nuclear threat posed by incendiary nation North Korea, a terrible plague emerging in Third Would countries in Africa, a series of attacks on policemen in cities across the USA by a mysterious new crime-gang known as Black Mask, and an ISIS threat to invade the U.S. government's computer networks through hacking (a brand new form of terrorism). The Justice League wondered if all this anti-capitalism trauma would drive humanity towards a religion-less giant 'meat market.' Would those who did not 'keep speed' simply be left behind as 'relics' of a 'slower' human race? Would they be sacrificed by the forces of ambition and noise? The Justice League realized much poetry was required.
An American artist rendered a portrait of a prophetic 'dark city' of subtle bloodlust and inhuman mindless capitalism which he foresaw would come into being if the Justice League of America failed to create necessary idealism in modern civilization. The artist's name was Roger Hewitt, and he wrote in the Washington Post that just as Nazi Germany was a malignancy of the post-Industrialization era, and the Manson Family murders was a malignancy of the populism-rhetoric counter-culture movement of the 1960s, so too was 9/11 a realized malignancy --- of the capitalism-bravado of the new millennium. Hewitt labelled the millennial generation as 'Night's Children.' Hewitt's comments reached the Justice League of America who swore to uphold the basic human optimism necessary to avoid complete 'First World insanity' (e.g., Watergate, Enron, WikiLeaks, etc.). It was a great stand."
====
