“As girls come of age sexually, the culture gives them impossibly contradictory messages.... Somehow girls are supposed to be innocent and seductive, virginal and experienced, all at the same time. As they quickly learn, this is tricky. Females have long been divided into virgins and whores, of course. What is new is that girls are now supposed to embody both within themselves. This is symbolic of the central contradiction of the culture--we must work hard and produce and achieve success and yet, at the same time, we are encouraged to live impulsively, spend a lot of money, and be constantly and immediately gratified. This tension is reflected in our attitudes toward many things, including sex and eating. Girls are promised fulfillment both through being thin and through eating rich foods, just as they are promised fulfillment through being innocent and virginal and through wild and impulsive sex.... The emphasis for girls and women is always on being desirable, not on experiencing desire.... advertisers can't conceive of a kind of power that isn't manipulative and exploitive or a way that women can be actively sexual without being like traditional men.... A young woman seems to have only two choices: She can bury her sexual self, be a 'good girl,' give in to what Carol Gilligan terms 'the tyranny of nice and kind' (and numb the pain by overeating or starving or cutting herself or drinking heavily). Or she can become a rebel--flaunt her sexuality, seduce inappropriate partners, smoke, drink flamboyantly, use other drugs. Both of these responses are self-destructive, but they begin as an attempt to survive, not to self-destruct.”
—Jean Kilbourne, “The More You Subtract, the More You Add”: Cutting Girls Down to Size
“When Black women who are significantly lighter than Harriet Tubman and Nina Simone, for example, are cast to portray them, again the message is received that 1) dark skinned Black female actors cannot even be cast for roles portraying women who look like them 2) Hollywood and society at large cannot bear to see dark skin on screen, even when the portrayal is historically accurate.”
—gradientlair (check out her blog. Her writing is amazing!)
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. ”
—Noam ChomskyTechnology is not the enemy. Greed is the enemy.
“Television” is not turning our children’s brains to mush. It’s the cheap formulaic fodder and faux-news pushed onto television by corporations trying to sell ad slots that’s turning our children’s brains to mush.
“Video games” are not devoid of moral message. It’s sequel upon sequel of bland FPSes rolled out by companies that only care about pacifying their white male poser demographic that are devoid of moral message.
“The internet” is not stifling creativity and communication. With access to the internet, people are communicating and sharing their creations more easily than ever. But allowing those in power to choose what we see and say on the internet will turn it into one more mouthpiece for the approved media message.
“Transhumanism” is not a tool for making the rich richer and the poor obsolete. Transhumanism, if abused, could be that tool. But it doesn’t have to be. It can be a tool for empowerment.
Stop blaming “technology” as if getting rid of wires and gadgets will miraculously fix the flaws of humankind. The flaw isn’t in tech. The flaw is in thinking. If that can be fixed, everything we create might end up serving a higher purpose. If it can’t, we’ll eventually use it to destroy ourselves.
Simple as that.
