Social Identities--a growing problem?

I think it was Neil Postman who first alerted me to the fact that although more people are texting and sms-ing and emailing than ever before, what they are writing about is becoming less and less. Or, to put it another way, as we move towards becoming a global village, we all start to live in that same village: that is, we live, breathe, and talk about the same things. If, for example, a political leader is shot in France, then wherever we live in the world that will be in our newspapers, on our radios and TVs, and in our Facebook statuses within a few hours.

This doesn't just mean that our personal identities are being swallowed up by our social identities; it means something even more serious. For media to become mass media, information must always be dumbed down; mass in this area means in practice the lowest common denominator. So more and more of us are learning less and less.

I was struck by this phenomenon recently when I heard high school students singing the lyrics of Rihanna's S&M single. The students also had watched the S&M video countless times. But, when asked, they didn't know what S&M meant. And they certainly hadn't heard of the Marquis De Sade or Masoch.

If you don't know where it's from, how can you know where it's going?

Yes, we're all becoming citizens of the global village; but in the process we're all losing our individual roots. If you don't know about De Sade and Masoch, then presumably you'll think S&M is perfectly normal adult behaviour: and before too long it probably will be. Without roots, everything is on the surface, superficial, without depth, and ephemeral. There is no context because there is no history; and without context there is ultimately no point of comparison; and without comparison there is no ethical basis on which to build.

morning moaning

morning moaning

I was awoken this morning
by a low moaning;
it was coming from the bathroom.

My toothbrush was crying
because it was lonely
without your toothbrush beside it.

Facebook threat to Mxit

I've noticed a new trend among Facebook users that in time could reduce Mxit's dominance in the message market. Many users are now using Facebook's email facility as a replacement for regular sms. The reasons I think are twofold: 1, almost everyone is on Facebook now, so no need to organise a Mxit account; & 2, using o.facebook means that a Facebook message is now only around 1cent in cost - ie, as inexpensive as Mxit.

posted from Bloggeroid

The rain falls

The rain falls on mosque & church alike. This is important to understand, for politics & religion are both nasty products of human culture but the fear of the lord is truly the beginning of wisdom. Why? Because it is obvious that we humans did not create the cosmos we were born into, & therefore to be aware of a power or energy greater than ourselves is normal, right, proper, & keeps us in the correct perspective: we are not gods, nor should we imagine ourselves so.

posted from Bloggeroid

Easter 2011

Music represents the aspirations of a people. Bach, Handel, Telemann, Corelli, Vivaldi, Mozart: proof that the human race was worth saving. Their music was to reflect the glory of God. But now? Easter 2011? Jadakiss? Hip hop, rap, kwaito? Goth? Music that reflects the condition of fallen man. Romans 1, my friends, Romans 1.

posted from Bloggeroid

Worth saving?

Bach, Handel, Telemann, Corelli, Vivaldi, Mozart: proof that the human race was worth saving. But now? Hip hop, rap, kwaito? Goth?

posted from Bloggeroid

Naked

My lips are naked
without yours to cover them;
my bones like ice
without your fire to warm them,
my soul shabby and shapeless
in the wardrobe of these days.

But in the places where your tongue
danced and played,
memories still remain;
my heart dresses itself in those memories
again and again and again.

posted from Bloggeroid

Cool Reading

cool reading
I never thought I'd say it, but I'm starting to prefer epubs to books. Why? Because epubs are extremely portable, so small that I can carry hundreds of them in my pocket, and now intensely readable even on a cellphone. Pdfs are horrible on a phone (too big in too many ways) but epubs seem to me to be the future of publishing (in exciting avenues of ways). As an author and reader I'm ready to roll with the new wave.

Firefox 4 ppa

Firefox 4 ppa



I've been using the Firefox 4 beta for a while now and like it a lot--it's fast and a great improvement on Fox 3xxx although I won't say it's better than Chromium. It's now out of beta, so if you want to add the ppa to your system, fire up a terminal and type in the following:
   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install firefox ubufox

and you'll be in business.
  
  

Does contemporary r&b promote racist stereotypes?

Does contemporary r&b promote racist stereotypes?

Quote:

'… a single, menacing question surrounds public articulations of Black sexual desire: How, given the ways that racism and racist oppression manifest in sexual violation, can Black people speak of the erotic? What many [ ] authors and editors repeatedly foreground is the undeniable relationship between the erotic and racist oppression. This connection does not mean that one must take pleasure from acts of racist and sexual abuse, but that Black erotica is concerned with and shaped by Black peoples’ memories, experiences, and narratives of racism. Because sexual violence historically has been a key mode through which bodies are racially marked and subjugated, then the realms of sexual intimacy, bodily pleasure, and love are important places where the struggles over recognition and affirmation

emerge .' Felice Blake , University of California, Santa Barbara , in From Margin to Centerfold: The (Mis)Recognition of Pleasure and Danger in Contemporary Black Erotic Fiction , page 3

Reflection:

Does the portrayed connection between sex and violence prevalent throughout contemporary hip-hop, rap, and even much r'n'b derive from a history of racism, and is this connection actually encoded into the core myth of the Middle Passage? Or, to express it differently, is historical racism so much a part of African-American models of identity that it has shaped what is seen as 'normal' black sexuality?

Reading books on a cellphone

Have you ever tried reading a pdf book on a cellphone? It's truly an off-putting and frustrating experience: you are always trying to adjust the size of the text, scrolling from side-to-side and so on. Yet I have persisted; one of the things I want to do is read books on a cellphone-- there are often situations when I am waiting for someone or something or even when I'm so into a book that I 'can't put it down'.

Well, one of my cellphones is an android phone and, although pdf's are still a pain, I have discovered epub files and some really cool readers for them (one is even called Cool Reader). The problem is that most books are in pdf format. Enter Calibre, a linux program that does a good job of converting from pdf to epub format! I downloaded and installed Calibre via synaptic and have been converting my pdf books and reading them comfortably on my phone since then. Pretty cool.