trivialisation

I am reproducing an extract of an article i found. Something to ponder about.

When we ask the question: what type of socio-economic system would fill the bill in this moral atmosphere, the answer becomes inescapable:
Capitalism.

It was Marx who first saw that exploitation was a systemic
requirement of capitalism; that market forces had to be fuelled by the
acquisitiveness that took advantage of others. His theory was that the
owner of the means of production was compelled to plough back into his
business establishment a large part of the surplus value secured by
his enterprise if he was to stay in the game, rather than share it
with his workers. And so he believed that as capitalism succeeded, the
rich had to get richer and the poor poorer. We know today that, though
this slogan is demagogically repeated, it is not true of advanced
capitalist countries; e.g., it is falsified in Sweden and other
Scandinavian countries by steeply graded taxes; in much of the rest of
the world by trickle down. Even if the rich became richer and the
distance between rich and poor increased, the poor might not be poorer
but gradually grow richer. So I find it plausible to believe that
despite the exploitation inherent in capitalism, ordinary poverty
(lack of food, shelter and basic health care) may be globally
eliminated in course of time. But if capitalism need not generate or
perpetuate poverty, whence its exploitative character? It remains true
that it is a system based on avarice (euphemistically referred to as
‘free competition’, but one the seven deadly sins of medieval ethics),
though accepted as part of our current culture, would be seen as
culpable by traditionalists. But how is it exploitative? Here I shall point to one ethical feature of capitalism that has received little
explicit recognition: the trivialization of human life that is an
inevitable consequence of capitalist production.

            What is a trivial life, and why is it an unavoidable
outcome of contemporary capitalism? Some everyday examples of trivial
activities and of non-trivial activities may help to make the
distinction vivid. Time spent on TV entertainment or on commercialized
spectator-sports or beauty contests, a concern with gourmet meals at
professionally rated restaurants, the choosing of one’s wardrobe on
the basis of advertised brands, an anxiety to acquire the latest model
car or stylish furniture or designer houses, an active interest in
cosmetics, deodorants or unguents, choosing one’s profession mainly on
the basis of remuneration- these are all plainly trivial. By contrast,
playing with or instructing a child, tending a garden or an animal,
engaging in a community project or acquiring a linguistic or technical
skill, doing artistic or scientific work, farming or fishing or
repairing an artifact, are all non-trivial activities. It is the
difference between reading a book to kill time and reading to extend
one’s understanding or sensibilities, or that of having promiscuous
love-affairs and starting and fostering a marriage. The difference is
that between Bentham’s trivial happiness (pleasure) and Aristotle’s
fulfilling happiness (eudaimonia –flourishing, well-being). Ethics is
the theory of the good life, and a good life cannot be a trivial or
paltry one.

            This topic has not received systematic philosophical
analysis. As a condition it could characterize persons or cultures,
and has the curious ability to destroy either painlessly. Wars,
famines, conflicts also destroy persons and countries but do so with
so much distress that they cannot be ignored. By contrast
trivialization whittles away the worth of a culture, emasculating it
while its human components live a life of chocolates, pop music and
literary distraction. When intelligent and learned persons embrace a
life of trivia it is called ‘decadence’, and has been given
considerable literary attention though it is a relatively minor
phenomenon. When the man-in-the-street lives a correspondingly trivial
life it is called ‘vulgarity’, and has had some sociological scrutiny.
Neither form of triviality has received the explicit philosophical
examination it deserves, though some philosophers (like Wittgenstein)
have been disturbed by its prevalence in the great people and
institutions of their time. This is a phenomenon that calls for
full-scale analysis as it takes many shapes each with its own
characteristic injury to our nature. In general it diminishes us by
turning us inwards, concerned with our own satisfactions instead of
engaging creatively with the common good.

            Why is triviality a consequence of capitalism? Because
capitalism must grow if it is to stay alive, and this depends on the
creation of wants. A normal person will satisfy his basic needs first,
and then turn to matters that he values, such as the development of
friendships or the creation of beauty or the understanding of nature.
But these things are non-competitive and so of no use to capitalism
that needs us to want things that only it can provide – and at a
price. And so it creates wants that are artificial, and are begotten
by propaganda (advertising) that appeals to what is the least human or
rational in our nature – our sensory satisfactions. You will notice
that most of the trivial activities mentioned above are generated by
commercial advertising; who would buy and use deodorants or want
branded garments or admire tail-finned cars unless the TV or the
magazines persuaded us that they enhanced our well-being? Thus does
capitalism flourish while we are diminished.

                    The rhetoric of advertising subdues our critical
faculties so that we function as zombies in relation to the concocted
enthusiasms of our time, the trivialized victims of an unethical
system. Here I return to MacIntyre who sees Trotsky and St. Benedict
as possible saviours in the dark times (shining India!) enveloping us.
Here I return to MacIntyre who sees Trotsky and St. Benedict
as possible saviours in the dark times (shining India!) enveloping us.
We can discard Trotsky as irrelevant to our non-Marxist political
times. But Benedict lived in desperate times, the Dark Ages of early
medievalism. Our times are very different but just as dark. Benedict
couldn’t change his period, and obviously we have no chance against
the market forces – not even today when they are in some disarray.
What Benedict targeted were the monasteries of his day that he
transformed into counter-culture groups and so, ultimately, saved
European civilization. We have our own forms of counter-culture in
ashrams and sangams, and there may be hope in other sorts of communes,
even in some pretty crazy ones. My hope is that someone in our
educational institutions or seminaries may one day pluck up the
courage to turn his back on the business world, and experiment with
genuine research, scholarship and reflection, and a life-style that is
eudaimonistic.

Out on Dole??

very interesting story and a perspective of what well intended social security measures can lead to.

a great book i picked up, thanks to my cousin,Theodeore Dalrymple’s “Life at the Bottom” again talks about the same issues.

maybe lessons for us to consider if ever we get down to similar levels of social security..what are the odds on that?

Bombay terror attacks – another game show for TV channels??

a sad day, when the terrorists have held the country to ransom..

what is downright appalling is that our television media is making a spectacle out of this chilling incident. whether it is shoving micrphones into the face of released hostages or hounding unfortunate parents of a child who were lucky to escape displays an amazing lack of basic courtesy..

to hear some of the statements made makes u wonder if u have suddenly stepped into another planet.. i have heard the word ” interesting” multiple times.. a lady reporter mentions although this is not the first terror attack, this one has really stuck home because it has been in a five star hotel.. maybe she is worried about going to the celebratory parties once they have cashed in the TRP’s..

the downright ridiculous is the minute by minute explanation of what the NSG and the other  guys are doing. it only makes me shudder to think if this has actually caused any of the deaths.. i hate to think that a terrorist pulled the trigger on a NSG guard or a hostage after figuring out what was happening on TV..

and not one word asking viewers to keep restraint, to stay away from the affected areas. nothing on information that could be useful to the general public. leave that to the boring regional/smaller channels, the national ones cant waste time on any of that, they need to help the nation with their assinine speculation and interpretation of events, their wondrous ability to spread mis-information and their prowess to prattle gibberish for hours on end..

a few years ago, as soon as the Tsumani stuck, i recall very eminent TV personality and reporter repeatedly saying “death, damage & destruction” with almost a glint in the eye; you could feel his anticipation for the news to come in so he can do his spiel.. sadly, this attitude seems to have become all pervasive now

and while they are busy making a gameshow of a tragedy, an annual catastrophe is wrecking havoc in our southern states.. but havent we had enough floods for the year?? the viewers are probably bored with a lot of water…

once bitten twice shy

last week i got invited to a cocktail party to celebrate a engagement. Cocktails and curiosity are too heady a combination for me to resist; also not the one to let go of any party invitation easily, so i made my way to the Grand Emperor.

i am pretty good with mojitos, margeritas and the not so infrequent glass of scotch although i prefer my indigenous planters punch, call it seaman tendencies. that day i had to drive back, so i sat sipping a beer and watching people, something that i havent done in a long time.

hors de vours, canapes, tapas’ were being passed around, and i was keener than ever.
the food was interesting, but more interesting to me was that everyone around seemed to be a chef too. tortiglioni, casereccia, promodoro and some other more unpronouncable names filled the air, everyone knew how many minutes cooking required for al dente and blue cheese. no one seemed surprised about the coconut sprinked on the bruschetta though. maybe they all knew about the malayalee settlement on the italian coast, what intrigues me is the influence our kinsmen would have had over italian mammas in picking ingredients

dont mistake me, i love food and new tastes and i am very experimentative in eating, as long as someone does the cooking. From my eating experience, most of the italian has been fresh food, made with local ingredients.The essence of their food, if you ask me is its simplicity. and somehow in indianising it, we seem to missing that very essential theme.

what also i have never been able to do very well is forget the our old tastes, there have been many that have bitten the dust in this world. i am pretty sure our own indigenous and very south indian murukkus, varieties of sundal, bajjis and pakodas can give any finger food a run for their money, not to mention the slightly exotic parrupu vadai and kothu parotas. Also sure, there are enough and more from items that qualify from each nook and crany of our country.
Maybe, they are very low on the popularity charts on snob value.

the culinary invasion is changing India, the normally taste wise fastidious indians are to outdo each other in eating bad alien food. but it just might be a start and we might get discerning soon, but can we keep the flag for our own delicacies flying high??

While i wandered around looking for something to eat, there were a few more-middle aged people than me trying to figure out what the fuss was all about. you could tell they would have given an arm and a leg for bajji, sojji and some filter coffee. but thats a different discussion, and a different occasion. afterall, it was an engagement party remember?

ipl a real good perspective

really well written, Mr. Haigh

chew on this

there was a slow Food Festival in the vicinity, very appetising smells floated from the food stalls. Melbourne certainly does things in style.

the seminar was about supporting local food & produce, communities coming together to make it happen and enjoying the experience. a move away from the mass produced, frozen fare normally found on the supermarket shelves. wasnt an alien concept, have realised how big the food movement is in Australia. Eyes opened, courtesy an earlier pick from one of my book hunts - Bruce Elder’s “Remember when“

There is this whole different approach to food in the developed world, something that has not gotten around in India.  Only, Our food issues are very different and rightly so, i cant imagine our issues of availability of  healthy clean food for all being superseded by anything else.  but, shouldnt we be wary of issues that might haunt us for the next 30 yrs..

Walk down the aisle with your shopping cart in your local Foodworld. Surely you would have seen the bright orange California oranges on their shelves.. ask the store guy about its freshness  and you get queer looks, “it comes from the US right? how can it not be fresh?” Drive past the mall and you would mistake the queue to be the one for the movies, it is actually people queueing up to get into Mac. 

are we turning a blind eye to what the West has been saying all these days and embracing their discards with open arms.  lets hope we have better sense than that..

panic stations as yet?? am i hyper ventilating? neither, but surely deserves some serious thought.. while you are at that, check out ”Chew on this“. some real food for thought.. let me know what you think

for a few TRP’s more…

The Sydney test might be a watershed for technological assistance in umpiring, hopefully some better onfield behaviour and some more grace in defeat. one thing i dont see changing quickly is the petty and utterly disgraceful attitude of the Indian television in particular.

the front runners are obviously the so called expert panels of the 24*7 news channels..there has hardly been any moderate and remotely sensible reaction to the umpiring fiasco. some of them have to be heard to be believed – a bowler was asked to kick an umpire in his run-up by one such expert.Coming from someone who has played the game at the highest level and is recognised as such, it only reinforces to the millions watching that it is nothing short of barbarism out in the middle.You also wont find the experts wasting a lot of time giving the opposition credit too- cant remember Brad Hogg, Hussey and Hayden being mentioned except in connection with the racism episode..

The umpires are biased – the channels tell us. Re-running tapes of incorrect decisions made by Bucknor is the way to re-jog everyones memory about the damage he has caused over the years, but it is also strangely silent on the occasions that Indians have benefited.  also, no mention of the correct ones he has made in tough circumstances? obviously not, that will be tarnishing the evidence.Meanwhile, a fine man is heading off into oblivion after good service to the game.

dont get me wrong, I am not defending the bloomers made by the umpires in the sydney test, but cant help feeling that the television stations might be fervently praying for a dozen every time, anything that adds a few notches to the TRP..

these channels have perfected the ability to whip up the audience to a frenzy for a percieved slight or even in the case of a geniune error.. if it doesnt work – they always throw in an emotive interview with a players relative or publish a poll’s result that justifies the outrage.this media outcry feeds itself anyway, they are also wary of letting it die.. even when the issue seemed settled atleast temporarily, one channel had a poll for absolving bhajji before the appeal ran its course..

unfortunately this is also what makes India a cricketing superpower and its ability to hold the cricketing world to ransom

where does this leave the spectator??  Fed on a larger than life cricket they dont know any better, for even when at the ground, the television cameras attract more attention. monkey chants are a direct effect more than anything else..

the real impact sank in when i realised that you cannot have a chat with a player from an opposing team in a 3rd division league match in bangalore without being stared or sledged at. even Neville Cardus could not have imagined this impact when he said that camera & experts will one day become a subsitute for the spectators own assessment of the game.

one only hopes that the media has the sense not to kill the goose that lays the proverbial golden egg..

t20 – playing the devils advocate

Watching the current T20 tournament has left me with some mixed feelings. while it has captured the fancy of everyone in general, the college night canteen, normally the haunt for lonely night owls has in the last few days resembled one of the packed buses typically shown on “Sights of India” documentaries in the western world. A list of these ‘typical’ standard indian sights could be an interesting exercise, but more on that later.

i am probably one of the unfortunate ones, the excitement has rubbed off enough, cant help let not-so-flattering thoughts passing through my head. And it is not as if i havent tried -  i am unabashed totally egalitarian cricket watcher who can watch a street match for hours – but T20 still hasnt touched home.

the biggest letdown has been that while some of the cricket has been good viewing and spectacular,there have been more than the normal share of ugly hoicks and dismal batting from otherwise very good batsmen and very unattractive defensive bowling, like talented spinners bowling low full tosses and quicks bowling slow off breaks. While there have been some very good wicket taking spells, it cant be denied that most of the wickets were given away by rash strokes by batters and not due to skilful bowling. only fielding has been top draw compared to other versions.. 

The T20 makes cricket pretty uni-dimensional and therefore poorer. Cricket is one game played in the mind as much as in the field and not sure if this version has been able to do justice to that very unique aspect. It will never see something like a Michael Artherton keeping Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock at bay for a 10 hrs just by sheer will to draw a game, or a Steve waugh playing a characteristic stodgy yet match winning 200 against a bumper barrage from a ravaging Ambrose and Co…

also remains to be seen how it will equip the players of tomorrow to play the other versions of the game. lets not forget that the players of today have been brought up playing cricket the normal way, so in a sense it is their adaptability that is being put to the test. someone fed on t20 diet might be a different animal, probably a bits n pieces player who can strike the ball a long distance, bowl 4 niggardly overs n dis-appear.  if this happens, cricket will surely be the loser.

while it is important to entertain, dropping the level of the game to the lowest common denominator is not without its dangers. while it has caught the fancy world-over right now, what is to say that this attraction will stand the test of time? the fundamental question here i guess is cricket solely to titillate the senses? where do we go when our senses will have enough of slam-bang? 5-5,10-10? or directly a shoot/bowl out?

i am sure there are enough people thinking the same way, only hope that some of them are amongst those managing the game today. it is upto them to evolve a balance between the various versions.While cricket is not without its failings, it has in it something for everyone. while tweaking it to suit one group of interests, caution must be used to preserve its essential character so it still has a special place in our lives. 

Kurkure express???

it had all the signs of an uneventful train ride when i landed at the bangalore railway station to catch the weekend commuter to chennai.The platform was chaotic as usual, with the usual suspects, young yuppie IT workers returning home, the odd mama mami going back after visiting their offsprings, a couple of  bemused NRI in shorts wondering if the train journey will be better than their platform experience..

as is my wont, i settled myself down on the kerb and was indulging in my favourite people watching pastime, much to the annoyance of maddy – who felt that i wasnt listening to her college stories, which i wasnt- when the crackling speaker announced the departure of Kurkure Special express.

Being habitually derided by Maddy for lending a deaf ear, i didnt give it much thought, till i spotted the departure information on display   “Bangalore Nagercoil Kurkure Special Express leaving Bangalore at 6 PM from platform no 5.” My mind conjured up nightmarish visions of the entire route littered with Kurkure covers. While i was wondering if that was the reason, i was told quite authoritatively by Maddy that Railways is making money by letting corporates sponsor train names for a some time. She generally knows a lot of important info like this.

Visions of Fair and Lovely express, Sunsilk express, Pears mail, KFC express sprang to mind, a far cry from impressive names like Amrapalli, Andhra Kesari, August Kranti, Ganga kaveri, Garib Rath, Godhan, GrandTrunk, Ispat, Sadbhavana, Sashya Shyamala, Matsyagandha Expresses

u may call it blatant commercialisation, a gross dilution of the naming tradition followed so well so far, but pretty harmless if u ask me.Railways can use some additional money, it makes for good food for thought for idle brains like me.

it should test the marketers’ acumen in full.

which train can a LIC pick?? would banks want to join the wagon, which routes will they pick? i am not sure the watch companies will be very keen, given our railway record.will the cell phone companies find a route where the network doesnt drop between stations?? what about automobile companies – will they make trains vehicles for their campaigns? liquor companies might be left in the lurch here – cant imagine them sponsoring something they are prohibited in. airconditioning companies may have it easier, with only a handful options to choose from

more logistical problems.would fair and lovely passenger run along the Chennai-Madurai or Jammu- Delhi route? should tata tea express to darjeeling  or to ooty/conoor? sunsilk express will need to aviod places like Tirupati for obvious reasons. 

where will this lead next? are carriages and platforms next in line? will we have a airtel express arriving in tatanagar on a hutch platform??

i will wait and watch, and just stick to people watching till then