The Puppets

droid

Well-known member
I read the actual thread. The sentiment is clear, despite the disavowal, and it betrays a misunderstanding of the issues, the history of the people involved, the general historical and contemporary contexts around activism and the unpredictability and chaotic nature of social and political dynamics.
 
Last edited:

luka

Well-known member
I don't doubt any of these peoples sincerity. Not even that German blonde Mr Tea posted about. But it's like Question Time. The spectacle has a range of slots open for different viewpoints. There are lots of young girls around the world campaigning for various things. Most don't become incorporated into the spectacle.
 

droid

Well-known member
There's loads of people unjustly imprisoned, so why Mandela? There's loads of non-violent freedom fighters, why Gandhi?

There's no machine selecting these people for a specific aim, there's a confluence of chaotic factors which lead to the alignment of certain conditions and the emergence and amplification of certain phenomena based on initial, exceptional variables.
 
I don't know if I see it as puppetry but there's a strange and patronising deference at play, a professed faith in the purity of a child that's doing a lot psychic work for us.
 
There's many middle-aged men who insult her, creepy misogyny. But i also know middle aged men that only RT and engage with her climate change content and little else, their endorsement of Greta seems to be enough. She's a rockstar! What does this say? It might just be about 'im not one of them' thing
 
  • Like
Reactions: sus

sufi

lala
There's many middle-aged men who insult her, creepy misogyny. But i also know middle aged men that only RT and engage with her climate change content and little else, their endorsement of Greta seems to be enough. She's a rockstar! What does this say? It might just be about 'im not one of them' thing
I wish that Greta and her handlers could have just returned to Europe by plane, made a compromise.
is it really necessary or useful or fair to expect total ideological puriity to be lived out by the champions of a cause? It's a set up to fail - they get exposed as less than superhuman and so then they get CANCELLED

that set piece is so crucial to the culture wars, it would be helpful to get ourselves past it
 

sufi

lala
as for the spectacle machine, the confluence, the random particles etc
sometimes its possible to steer the cyborg

dissensus has as good an opportunity as many and better than very many more
 

droid

Well-known member
I wish that Greta and her handlers could have just returned to Europe by plane, made a compromise.
is it really necessary or useful or fair to expect total ideological puriity to be lived out by the champions of a cause? It's a set up to fail - they get exposed as less than superhuman and so then they get CANCELLED

that set piece is so crucial to the culture wars, it would be helpful to get ourselves past it

I think that's a misreading. She's far from the first. There's a movement within climate activism to refuse to fly and contribute as little as possible to the crisis based solely on personal principles.
 

sufi

lala
I think that's a misreading. She's far from the first. There's a movement within climate activism to refuse to fly and contribute as little as possible to the crisis based solely on personal principles.
sure, i realise that, flygskam and so on, but i still think that sort of lifestyle purity is unrealistic and leading us astray
 

sufi

lala
even here in dissensusland we're constantly caught out by how to respond to our heroes getting cancelled, what should we do about michael etc
it's one of our biggest unresolved issues
 

droid

Well-known member
sure, i realise that, flygskam and so on, but i still think that sort of lifestyle purity is unrealistic and leading us astray

I mean prior to that, climate journalists, climatologists, people who are intimately involved. I dont think its any more unrealistic than a being vegan or religiously observant. Hundreds of millions of people live under various self imposed strictures and we don't consider those to be purity tests.
 

sufi

lala
I mean prior to that, climate journalists, climatologists, people who are intimately involved. I dont think its any more unrealistic than a being vegan or religiously observant. Hundreds of millions of people live under various self imposed strictures and we don't consider them purity tests.
yes as i said i'm aware about that, and i support it and am with it in many ways :)
but it also involves compromises, in the real world, and noone is infallible not even greta
 

droid

Well-known member
I guess Im saying that I dont think she would compromise, no more than you'd get a vegan to eat a burger.

I think the publicity benefits have outweighed the potential dangers anyway.
 

sufi

lala
I guess Im saying that I dont think she would compromise, no more than you'd get a vegan to eat a burger.

I think the publicity benefits have outweighed the potential dangers anyway.
of course and respect to her for being an amazing role model and exercising her principles

but it feels almost like a gladiatorial spectacle of public figures rising and falling on publicity rather than performance.
 
What qualities do puppets have that allow the public to drop their guard? Fall under the spell? What brings about deference and what are they concealing? There’s something about moral simplicity that allows for the smooth functioning of the show, and that can be amorality too (simply not there).

With Greta it feels partly about our need for moral purity and clarity when taking lectures from anyone, and we need lectured now. Our collective guilt, because of our complicity and inaction in the face of our biggest ever problem has us deferring to children, anyone else would be too easy to deflate by pointing out their contradictions, and our own contradictions in the process.

The royal family are puppets as well as puppet masters, here there’s a bland, simple charitable morality masking the most obscene and archaic inequality. Any puppet who goes off script (Diana, Harry, Philip) has their strings cut sharpish.

Boris is a great amoral puppet because of class deference, the old boy aphorisms and bumbling speech combined with ruddy can-do body language and a ruffled teddy-bear demeanour, masking (or at least buffering) an insane hunger for power, his own and his masters’.

Holly and Phil on ITV good morning, excellent puppets! With their slickly delivered homeliness, practiced off-the-cuffness, down to earth and upbeat and in control, everything will be fine no matter what, our deference here is to they’re just like us authenticity.

The illusion of authenticity is key for many puppets, real life, plain speaking, no bullshit, the illusion that you’re not being marketed to. This is influencer marketing. Love Island contestants are a good example here, as puppets on the show itself, being very willingly manipulated before our eyes, and then afterwards used as brand ambassadors for anything and everything. The morality being played with here is the most basic script of love rats and true friends and ‘being yourself’ etc. Here our deference is about sex and beauty and youth, and what it masks is a brutally exploitative machine that feeds some of our ugliest, desires and is literally killing contestants.

All of these puppets are mostly very aware of their strings, they might even love them, show you other ways to pull them. They can be very willing shells, vessels, conduits.

This is hilariously exposed in brass eye’s drugs episode, where we get to peak behind the curtain and see Conservative MPs, noel edmonds etc collaborating with the machine, playing the game. And this trades on moral simplicity too, “it’s a fucking disgrace”
 

droid

Well-known member
There are puppets, in fact, we are all puppets, but rather than being indicative of some mastery, manipulation and higher power this points only to universal absurdity and impotence, as we are puppets without puppeteers.

The illusion of will imposed by consciousness mirrored by the illusion of control over the chaos of history. The themes of the Teatro Grottesco expressed fractally on macro and micro scales.

As within, so without.
 
Top