HOW CAPITALISM MAKES US OBEY
We can't prevent mass tourism from presenting a post-card images or a historical museum rendering homage to elites and leaving out rebels or a view of the past that emphasizes individual action and leaves out the masses ("Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon"), economic interests and underlying forces. We might recognize those aims — but don't.
We don't see either what should jump out at us as strange: long, wide, straight streets that lead to voids that are much to vast for traffic, a panel about soldiers executing officers by firing squad, a salon at the heart of a monument considered the apex of high culture whose ceiling is decorated by an orgy.
The omissions uncovered here some of the innumerable ways in which we are encouraged not to think. Take another way: ads especially those that hover over great cities or take up a huge wall, with images that do much more than promote a brand.
Richard Nahem, Eye Prefer Paris, 2020
Union Square in Manhattan, 2025 / Elisabeth Rawson
They glamorize irrationality...
 |
| At the Châtelet crossroad in central Paris, June 2022 |
Isolation...
 |
At the top of the Hotel Lutetia in Paris's 7th district, 2015. |
And voids.
The Opéra
Psychologists and anthropologists have shown that all aspects of cults and primal societies combine to reinforce each other. That is true for more complex society too, a multitude of facets buttressing the economic organization, that is, its leaders. Habits and beliefs are adopted spontaneously, including by those who suffer from them: take the underclass insult in Old Regime France, your father was a valet!" Most historians omit such social systems because the economic approach has been so effectively erased.
# # #
Old Regime acceptance of hierarchy changed when the economy did: "What gave you all that wealth? You took the trouble to be born." The same may be happening with us.
Take a huge panel on a métro wall that since 2024 recalls the victorious combat for the eight-hour day:
The métro station is part of the extension of the métro line that connects Orly international airport in the south with the stadium in working-class Saint-Denis in the north. It was built for the 2024 Olympics. Thousands of soccer fans pass it at every game.
Dark colors express that fight...
Bright ones celebrate a victory that improves lives now.
It was commissioned by the Socialist government of working-class Saint-Denis — woken up from its sleep? — and coincides with more protests than there have ever been before. Take three, arbitrarily chosen, that took place over the weekend of November 29-30, 2025, a date that was also arbitrarily chosen:
Pro-Palestine demonstrations in Paris, London, Geneva, Lisbon, Dublin, Rome...
 |
Status Coup News, Saturday, November 29, 2025 / zoom |
Al Jazeera, Sunday November 30, 2025 / zoom
In Manilla, demands that the President resign because of graft.
Local dramas are the immediate reason for all, but globalized capitalism is the underlying reason for those and innumerable others: It destroys an entire society to build beach-front properties for billionaires in Gaza, takes corruption to unimagined levels, blows away the most deeply held beliefs and most important social ties:
 |
| Harald Wolff |
The demonstrations are step toward unified worldwide resistance.
# # #
Understanding how so many aspects of society
blind us helps that fight.
 |
| Harald Wolff |
It is why these blooks were written.
* * *
If you find their ideas useful
pass them on.
No comments:
Post a Comment