• 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.

                • RoundSparrow@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  Or CNN or MSNBC or NPR or …

                  Or QAnon memes from some nameless “Q” they don’t even know, they flock as hard as they can, making Q flags. You name HDTV networks, I see most people staring into smartphones and flocking from signal to signal.