• RoundSparrow@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    The Great Seal means science, anti-superstition. It means “keep learning”, and they stopped learning.

    A paradox of democracy is that you have to actually understand it and have faith in it. All The People must be educated. Instead, people here are now clamoring for a King, they want a Strong Man as a leader. They have abandoned understanding and education in favor of entertainment. Trump was a Realty TV star, how much more symbolic can you be than that?

    They walk around with a Dollar Bill in their pocket and not one of them can explain why there is a Pyramid in Africa on it. Or why it is so critical to have an education that can interpret such things. The dollar bills are everywhere, so you know the effort was made, but it doesn’t bother anybody that they have no clue why a Pyramid on the Nile River was put there. They don’t even know that it is a reference to a Climate Change event 12,000 years ago.

    Ignorance land, Brave New World.

    • culprit@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      You seem very focused on symbolism. I’m more interested in material reality, stuff like that poor people purposely were excluded from representation in the Constitution from the beginning. That tells me a lot more than a pyramid.

      • RoundSparrow@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        You seem very focused on symbolism.

        I am focused on understanding, interpretation of any and all media. Including the media you are reading right here, and Fox News media, and The Great Seal media, and The Bible media, and all the other media that people chase around and follow. The “left vs. right” chaos that we live in media that was posted on this very community via Lemmy media system.

        That tells me a lot more than a pyramid.

        As i said, go ask Americans why there is a Pyramid on the Dollar Bill and what it means. They pass these pieces of paper around every day, and they can’t give you any kind of interpretation that isn’t nonsense.

        The Founding Fathers died long ago, at what point in their life did they not realize that their educated failed them about why there is a pyramid on the Dollar Bill and what it means?

        Are they Africans, do the follow Islam like Egypt? They don’t even know clue one about the meaning. That is how ignorant and blind they have become in 2023.

        • culprit@lemmy.mlOP
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          1 year ago

          If people understood the dollar pyramid, how would that change anything about the world or the USA in your perspective?

          Personally, I think the Labor Theory of Value is more important understanding to impart on people to educate them.

          • RoundSparrow@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Because it says Front vs. Back, not Left vs. Right.

            As i gave as an example several times, Donald Trump doing a photo opportunity with The Bible is actually covered in the Bible itself, verse Matthew 6:5

            People are chasing media signals, blindly, they seem entirely unable to grasp the meaning of the words and symbols. Like cats chasing a laser pointer. Flocking from meme to meme.

            “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

            • culprit@lemmy.mlOP
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              1 year ago

              What about the world or USA will change if people were thinking front/back vs left/right? I just don’t understand how that small change would do much of anything. My understanding is much more based in many/few, as that is the material reality of ownership of the resources of the USA (and most everywhere).

              Few own what many need.

              This legal ownership is protected via the threat of state violence, to the point of people dying due to lack of resources.

              I don’t care about Dems/Repubs etc. They are both economic liberals of varying degrees. They both support the status quo of the Few Owning what Many Need.

              • RoundSparrow@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                What about the world or USA will change if people were thinking front/back vs left/right?

                Because it demonstrates how faulty their education is on media signals. The Dollar Bill is only as good as your faith in it, and they can’t even be bothered to go to the library and read what the Pyramid means. They have entirely flunked their civics lesson. They are blind as a bat about how influential memes and symbols are on their brain!

                My understanding is much more based in many/few, as that is the material reality of ownership of the resources of the USA (and most everywhere).

                Once they can stop blindly flocking from meme to meme, they can actually learn how to freely think and operate their own brain. Then they can see what you are saying in verse “1 John 3:17” of the Bible, they can see that Fox News is full of garbage memes and messages. Their brain can actually see that they are caged by media symbols they do not grasp, they will become (more) free thinkers.

                “Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture’s being drained by laughter?” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

                • culprit@lemmy.mlOP
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                  1 year ago

                  You really should read a summary of Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_realism#Mark_Fisher

                  Because that is what you are referring to above.

                  “widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it”

                  Fisher proposes that within a capitalist framework there is no space to conceive of alternative forms of social structures, adding that younger generations are not even concerned with recognizing alternatives. He proposes that the 2008 financial crisis compounded this position. Rather than catalyzing a desire to seek alternatives for the existing model, the crisis reinforced the notion that modifications must be made within the existing system. The crash confirmed within the populace the necessity of capitalism rather than shake it loose from its foundations.

                  Capitalist realism as I understand it cannot be confined to art or to the quasi-propagandistic way in which advertising functions. It is more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action.

                  Fisher argues that “capitalist realism has successfully installed a ‘business ontology’ in which it is simply obvious that everything in society, including healthcare and education, should be run as a business”

                  • RoundSparrow@lemmy.ml
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                    1 year ago

                    I’m well aware of these concepts, and how 2023 is all based on the teachings of Edward Bernays. It’s a worldwide system, every nation uses Edward Bernays style advertising these days.

                    My point is that you can show them your document until you are blue in the face, I can’t even get them to notice how blind they are to a dollar bill right in front of them every day. I can’t even get them to notice that verse Matthew 6:5 in The Bible says that Donald Trump should not be standing in the street for a camera. It’s a 2000 year old book, can’t they read it right by now?

                    They throw around words, they will talk to you, they will argue with you - but they do not comprehend how thinking freely works. They will turn on Fox News HDTV and Elon Musk Twitter and suck down memes into their brain with no self-awareness how it changes their behavior.