Results tagged “values” from Uncivil Society
A rather nasty whomp on the head has of necessity kept things low key for me the past couple of weeks, but in my ongoing effort to get back to normal I did make it down to Tribeca for a few hours tonight to watch Lost at the showing sponsored by Slate. A most interesting event on several levels, not least of all for the way it exemplified the social theme pervasive in the show itself.
(spoilers ahoy)
As for the already notorious last episode of Lost, I could not help but compare it with the recently aired series finale of Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to the classic UK sci-fi drama Life on Mars. Both Lost and its UK cousins use mysteries connected to time travel to explore notions of purgatory, redemption, fate, freedom, self-awareness and personal meaning.
Lost appears to differ from the UK series in that it seems to make the physical world--real time before death--the realm of time travel and mysticism, but even that could be a swerve. It's equally arguable that the silent wreckage montage at the end of Lost is a not so subtle hint that even the main timeline was a collective fiction--everyone died, then came to self-realization through a shared mythic adventure as well as a more mundane form of purgatory. Think of it as Dante Wii with ascending levels and a side of suburbia.
Either way, what particulalry stands out for me is the subtle yet significant shift that both Lost and the UK series make in regard to personal meaning. Theirs is a distinctly social vision of salvation--we not only find meaning in overcoming our faults, believing in God, etc. etc., but in creating a communal reality with others.
Holographic realities and the social soul are themes that resound throughout human religion, philosophy and art--sure, Egyptians did this through pyramids and Christians, cathedrals, but even though we're pouring our millions into TV and movies at the core it's all the same thing. The individualistic turn of the past few centuries was a bit of swerve; shows such as Lost and Ashes to Ashes indicate that, as McLuhan predicted, the age of hyper-connectivity is retrieving a more tribal vision of the self.
UPDATE: Is Michael Jackson's charity a fake?
Originally posted on JustMeans:
I had at least three posts I was considering to put up today, but when I ducked into the nearest library while on a research quest the guards were heatedly discussing Michael Jackson. Their somber intonations that this is a historic day got me curious, so instead of jumping right to JustMeans--a great site, but like your typical social business hub admittedly not the best place to catch the latest celebrity gossip--I hit the usual suspects to discover that Michael Jackson had just died.
Since we live a culture pretty much defined by the cult of personality (Josef Stalin, social innovator!), I've decided to set aside my thoughts on The Philanthropist, American Apparel and social censorship for a day when most of us aren't fervently Twittering "Michael Jackson is dead" just in case someone hasn't noticed the other 50,000 tweets about the news.
Instead, I want to offer a few brief memorial reflections about Michael Jackson and social enterprise.
Jackson, as this book documents, was quite active in charity, at one point breaking the Guinness record for most charities supported by a pop star. And whatever one thinks of his various activities at Neverland Ranch, it's pretty clear that he saw his life there as a way of giving back to the community. Jackson also was involved in high profile benefit singles--and therein lies another less well known controversy.
As Jackson testified in a business-related trial, the donation of proceeds from the sale of a charity song did not mean, for Jackson, donating all of the profits. The money from the sale of CDs went to charity, but Jackson retained the song's copyright & personally kept the royalties. This caused a bit of dustup when the news media learned that a any time "We Are the World" or the 9/11 charity song "What More Can I Give?" get played on the radio, the proceeds go to not to charity but to the copyright holders, including Jackson himself.
The dustup over Jackson's alleged charitable profiteering provides an instructive example about social business for those of us in the social enterprise community. In our world, as in the music industry more generally, the idea of getting some personal returns from a charitable enterprise is not inherently problematic----musicians need to earn a living just like anyone else, even professional nonprofiteers. Besides Michael Jackson, John Lennon had some rather pointed things to say about this, astutely observing how various promoters & benefit workers profit from charitable work but expect musicians to give all their labor for free. Nonetheless, there's a popular impression that a charitable benefit should be wholly outside the realm of exchange, to the point that no one in the endeavor--not even the grunts--should get paid.
The fact that this expectation exists does not, of course, mean that we have abide by it, but for those of us who don't have the luxury of being international superstars this perspective can pose some difficult problems, from loss of needed donor support to the occasional legislative crackdown.
But more about that another day. For now, a moment of silence for a man who, like so many of us, gave as much as he felt that he could.
In my work I hear a lot about how for-profit/nonprofit cause marketing partnerships. The emphasis is usually on the positive--doing well by doing good, changing the way we do business, and so forth. What we don't see enough of are detailed reviews of how such projects actually work in practice, warts and all.
I especially want to emphasize those last three words. I've read plenty of rah-rah case studies where the critical analysis echoes the oh-so-clever answer every law student gives when a firm inquires as to one's greatest weakness: "I work too hard." But, like people, joint ventures are much more complex, and they'll never reach their potential if we pretend that even their weaknesses are above average.
Case in point: the breaking controversy of the Knight Foundation/MTV Young Creators' Award. The Knight Foundation's News Challenge program has produced a heap o' fantastic work--in fact, in the interests of full disclosure, I personally know and recommended one of the winning teams in a different (i.e., non-MTV-related) grant program.
However, the Knight/MTV partnership has generated a considerable amount of unhappiness among the young people who worked for it. Like Willy Loman, the correspondents in the Knight/MTV community journalist program worked unto exhaustion, long hours (allegedly) without pay--and what's worse, it's pay they were contractually obligated to receive. Since the experience seems to have spawned some disillusionment, attention must be paid.
The lesson now has become so relevant to the news we were covering - and our experience with MTV at the intersection of our nation’s financial crisis, the meltdown of traditional news media - and how the innocent idealism of youth that helped change a nation’s course - was exploited. What happened would wake us all up - on the Street Team, to the Real World.
EricaAmerica has the inside scoop; Gawker is looking for more.
The U.S. Postal Service has temporarily shut down its annual Operation Santa Claus, in which individuals "adopt" children who write letters to the North Pole, after a postal worker recognized one gift giver as a registered sex offender.
"This is a program that we have promoted for 100 years that is very near and dear to the Postal Service," said Sue Brennan, a spokeswoman for the program. "Everyone wants to believe in Santa. For us to stop this, we feel we are doing the right thing."
At first, the Postal Service said the program would not resume until next year because the problem could not be fixed quickly. Later on, it said it planned to reopen the Manhattan program on Saturday, with procedural changes. It doesn't know about other cities.
Under the fixes, the program will acquire an anonymity that might drain it of some of its warmth. Names and addresses will be blacked out and letters will be numbered. Instead of sending gifts directly, gift-givers will need to take wrapped presents to the post office and provide the recipient's number. The post office will then send them out.
The idea of personally delivering gifts to children in the city's poorest corners -- a step that many program participants most enjoyed -- is now completely unthinkable.
This transformation of personal gift-giving into a black box is but one example of how questions of privacy affect the way groups implement the ideal of open connectivity. Human connections become mere abstractions, if they aren't prohibited completely. Yet if we open the system without making considerable expenditures of time and money to screen out untrustworthy givers, we run a real risk of equally, if not even more inhumane acts. It's a classic tragic choice.
Turn the kaleidoscope, and a local mall transforms from a commodified conformist culture-free zone into a nexus of community:
Both Birnbrey and Susan Wachter, professor with University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Real Estate Department, warn the social and economic impact of empty stores can be devastating.
"One of the biggest consequences [of store and mall closings] is the loss of a sense of community," Birnbrey said. "I am a big believer that malls are an essential part of Americana. A mall is a place where people gather and socialize."
Birnbey is an industry rep, but his point is nonetheless valid--malls are social spaces, and a well-designed mall builds on our tendency to connect. A number of malls, however, are designed as if their sole function is to line up a strip of stores, and my thoroughly uninformed guess would be that these are the most vulnerable.
Susan Wachter has done lots of interesting work on real estate, economics and society, such as this 2005 article on The American Mortgage in Historical and International Context.
"So many years, so many changes, with Fortuna wending through them like Theseus' thread."
That's what I wrote back in February when Cafe La Fortuna closed its doors for the last time. Ten months later, I still regularly find myself about to suggest another trip uptown for coffee and community, only to remember that it is gone. Today, it's on my mind because Newsday has posted a nice commemorative photo gallery.
Every so often I hear a sincere nonprofiteer going on about how for-profits are corrosive while nonprofits propagate social values. At times like that I think about Fortuna . . . and the contractor who saw his work on homes as a way to build community . . and the auto mechanic whose passion for learning--and personal library--rivaled that of the professors and grad students who flocked to chat with him at his garage.
Social values are not a zero sum game. By recognizing the organic connections among all forms of personal identity, we don't diminish nonprofits--rather, we come closer to understanding what they mean.
The more you buy, the more you believe--Macy's offers a mercantile symbol of metrics and meaning.
henry chavarria,babyboy,dollarsandsense,hip hop,art,cute,sex symbol,fashion,designer,thug life,money,clothing,, originally uploaded by babyboy_designs.
Ludacris as curator of his own hip-hop museum:
But then came "I Do It for Hip Hop," a self-consciously lo-fi celebration of precapitalist creativity that on Ludacris's new album, features his fellow millionaires Jay-Z and Nas.
"I don't do it for the money/I do it from the heart," Ludacris rapped. "The van Gogh flow/Luda do it 'cause it's art."
Then, quite unexpectedly, all those faux-naïf rhymes came true. A cavalcade of guests emerged to take the stage for a few moments each, a showcase of New York hip-hop history with a devoted fan as curator. It turned this show on its ear.
L L Cool J's "Rock the Bells" was invigorating, and Jadakiss's "We Gon Make It" sounded like rolling thunder. When Jim Jones and Juelz Santana emerged to perform "Pop Champagne," the flamboyant hip-hop anthem of the moment, Ludacris felt comfortable enough to put art back aside for a second: "I made the Forbes list, yeah, I know you seen it/Eight figures so if I say it, you know I mean it."
For more about Dollars & Scholars, check out BabyBoy's Myspace.
At a time when we speak more of lengthening life than a life well lived, here's a reminder of how death can bring immortality.
Head over to Gothamist for more on the story of this marker and those who gave their lives so others could vote.
If you're in NYC, fly, don't walk, to the Mad cover art exhibit today at the Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art. I went to the opening reception last night (I'm a MoCCA trustee), and I have to say seeing these covers in there full-size original painted form was stunning. The historic Mad #30 Alfred, the J. Fred Muggs original fingerpaint, Nixon & Agnew as The Sting--cool stuff. Also great: the opportunity to chat with Nick Meglin, Dick DeBartolo and others from the past and present usual gang of idiots.
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of these covers will go to the original artists and their families.
Factory, by Alexander Blok
11/24/1903
Translated from the Russian by me
In a neighboring building the windows are yellowed.
In the evening--in the evening
Ponderous bolts screech,
People approach the gates.
And the gates are locked shut
But on the wall--but on the wall
A motionless someone, someone in the dark
Counts people in silence.
I hear everything from my height:
With a brazen voice he commands
The crowd gathering beneath
To bend their worn out spines.
They enter and disperse,
They pile the sacks on their spines.
While in yellowed windows there's laughter,
About how they put one over on these poor souls.
"Day time holding back, night time paying back."
Wonderful--one of the most impressive integrations of religion, marketing and design that I've ever seen. The designers explain:
Above, the first image from Google's GeoEye satellite--Kutztown University. It's just a few miles from where I grew up in PA Dutch Country. Nearby you can find the Kutztown Folk Festival, Renninger's Farmer's Market and scads of Amish farms. That this area, best known for its natives' resistance to technology, would be the first subject of this cutting-edge satellite photo is one of history's wonderful little inside jokes.
For years I've read about how the free market is amoral. Profit is its only value.
But as sexblogger Audacia Ray has learned, this isn't exactly true. Teaching people about diverse aspects of sexual identity is apparently too hot for the web, as evidenced by the cancellation of her Paypal, iTunes and Google Checkout accounts.
Sex in the Public Square recounts the story so far and makes a key point: by cutting off the most accessible means of revenue generation by a microenterprise, these virtuous vendors help create a web environment in which the only sustainable sex-related presence is raw corporate porn.
For years, we've heard about the near-mystical virtues of a "free market," and we keep on finding out that it's not that free; the Internet was sold to us as an "information superhighway," only to discover how easily toll booths and road blocks can be built, rendering it as mobile as the 405 near West Hollywood on a Friday afternoon. The smaller our public space becomes, the more restricted the channels for distribution come, the more we're reduced to passive listeners with no voice of our own.
Mark Federman has a useful roundup on McLuhan on art.
As for the post's political point, I'm utterly ignorant of the issues in Canadian politics, but one response that comes to mind is to wonder whether government-subsidized art is truly a counter-environment or a mediated co-option of a counter-environment by the Emperor. The radical goes numb, the way The Rite of Spring has gone from riot-inducing to sleep-inducing at major metropolitan symphonies. Just asking!
The book above: Federman's McLuhan for Managers, which is excellent. Buy it, read it, live it.
Media communities are buzzing about this group's success in getting Scholastic to withdraw the Bratz line from in-school book fairs.
Here's the organization's slightly edited mission:
CCFC's mission is to reclaim childhood from corporate marketers. A marketing-driven media culture sells children on behaviors and values driven by the need to promote profit rather than the public good. The commercialization of childhood is the link between many of the most serious problems facing children, and society, today. When children adopt the values that dominate commercial culture . . . the health of democracy and sustainability of our planet are threatened.
Much better, it seems, to go back to a more innocent time before kids were corrupted by corporate values.
Like in this old children's book:
Tera Patrick's Mistress Couture runway show approaches the event horizon for do-gooding, sex and design.
An animated series--starting with an Oscar-nominated short--that adapts recordings of Dublin children recounting Bible stories. Here's the one that started it all: the beheading of John the Baptist.
