facebook, and virtual friendship

Just like how mail became email, how shopping became e-shopping, now iwe are being introducd to the e-friendship. Cybersex and cyber porn have been around since a decade, but it is the revolution of facebook that have made deeper frisndhips to be established and maintained on the ner, sharing your whole life easy with your friends, who might only exist on the web pages. With facebook, you can share your thoughts, interests, discussions, private videos, with few clicks.

The question is, is this a good thing? Does this facebook revolution or the facebook age build something? Well, it certainly establishes a culture on its own. Facebook imposes its own lifestyle on you, by letting you organize and simplify interactions with people you know, and you don’t really know. But what is hidden from our eyes in facebook is the word Virtual, yes it is, what you assume in facebook as a friendship, is what you yourself assume, not what really is.

facebook and other social networking websites transformed the society into a virtual network that exist in terms of bits and bytes on some server somewhere in this world, this global society is virtual. We have come to the age that the whole social relationship is diluted into a virtual concept of relationships, it is not really there, but it is somehow there. It is a form of social relation with very low consternation, with very low reality, and very low value. People can’t really value friendship on the chat, simply because it is only few text charecters and emoticons.

This age is the age where facebook is the company that out capital many century old industrial giant has become powerful, so powerful, not only in terms of cash, in term of influence,on global culture. What this global culture is offering the global consumer market? Mass production of everything, a counterfeit of everything; this mass production has gotten into our food in fast food restaurants long time ago, has gotten into our ears with this hip and cool music, and now what more? Into our hearts, our humanity itself, our ability to make friends, how? Ask facebook.

When friendship and dating becomes few clicks and winks, when social connection are made in a virtual reality, when the real friendship seize to exist, and it is replaced by few messages and text symbols that portrays a corrupted image of friendship, love, and social groups., when friendship becomes a matter of a mouse clicks,when humanity reaches to a point of total simulation of what a perfect life should be, when music becomes remixes and covers, i would rather say, what happened to humanity?

Some see it as a form of development, some see it as a death to classic values, and I see it as a big cloud on the son, it is a dark gray cloud that shades real life into a faded image of the beautiful life that we know. Will it go away? Will it stay? I don’t really know, but history has shown us that we humans are a self contradicting by nature, and in the words of the old philosopher Hegel, the process of human thinking and development is a process of contradictions of extremes that debates its way to truth, so could this extreme virtual life presented its facebook be the beginning of the end of this contradiction to modernity lead by this postmodern age?

Blind deaf hamsters

Blind deaf hamsters
Eagerly waiting for their masters
To feed them deceit
*
Eagerly praying for masters
To teach them crime
And destroy their fleet
*
Blind deaf hamsters
Useless scared peasants
On the darkness they breed
*
Blind deaf hamsters
Drunk with illusion
Lost in the seas
*
Blind deaf hamsters
Are nobody else
But the people we are
The once human
The once free
Ripped of passion
Deprived of dreams
Walking talking in sleep
*
Nothing now
No more
Nothing but hamsters
This useless are we

living in a flat, a place to eat, a place where you sit in front of a big box, to see moving pictures and sound, and make you imagine, so that you laugh and cry, and make friends and enemies, all in imagination, in total deceit, then you go to a gym so you run without really running, and you walk without really walking, and then you go to a fast food joint, and you eat food which is not really food, you get taste that remind you of the taste of the food, it is junk, it is the age of junk, because even the jokes of the people are junk, as junk as the fashion and the punky hair styles. Hip is the word, the great value, that has no real value.

money lost its value, because money buys nothing but plastic gadgets that give you more deciet, or it can offer you a junk type of love that has a down payment, and monthly fee, even knowledge is not a light anymore, it is the key by which you open the money safe, it is a potential money.

we are blind deaf hamsters, in the eyes of the truth, but we might not see that, because we dont really know how to see.

Crysis: Postmodernsim

The time has come, to distinguish one of the most captivating, enslaving, and pessimistic forces, a depressive and invisible ghost that haunts our lives. The time has come to realize the facts once more, to rebuild the trust we humans once had in the word “reality”. The time has come to unleash the human potential and experience life for the first time as it has never been before, to explode the boundaries of our pleasure, and reach out to unexplored horizons of sensation and feelings that once more give us optimism, that once give us the will to live, that once more make this overwhelming force of passion blow into our faces and take us on its wild ride, to experience the forbidden feelings and values by the current post modern society.

The time has come to define the frustration we have with the post-modern society. Frustration that resides in every small corner of our lives, it is the sensation that haunts almost everything that we do, it is the frustration that is fragmented over multiple sides of our life, and hide its identity as a single source of frustration.

One might wonder why are we concerned with defining the frustration from the thing, before defining the thing itself, the answer lies in the fact the postmodernism is not an entity that could be easily highlighted as danger, it is not that clear crime that we do ourselves every day, it is still a crime though. Postmodernism is a sort of a huge complex system that we reside in its midst, and thus it is impossible for us to see its danger, infact, it is so difficult to see it in the first place.

We are making an important step that will unify humanity once again, which interestingly happens to be based on pragmatism, and Theodor Adorno’s postmodern memorylessness. This first step is the fact that all humans are facing the same problem and because of shared interests we are uniting against that. The problem is Postmodernism, and the symptom is the frustration we mentioned above. Our unity is not based on a higher noble value that lies hidden somewhere, not because of some other egalitarian romantic dream, and not because of any other meta-narrative, it is the fact that this frustration that resides in us, will bring our unity because it is a sign of a common danger that looms over us.

The frustration is born out of despair and angst that widely exists in most of us these days. The despair is the subconscious accumulation of the lack of satisfaction born from the substitution of reality with a simulated or a hyper reality. Frustration might not be so clear and easy to realize, for the large number of negative sensations dwelling inside our subconscious needs time to reach to the point to be labeled as a clear despair. The angst on the other hand is the product of the existentialist nature of the modern world; this was inherited to a certain extent in the post modern world. With these two, slowly overtaking us, slowly conquering the beauty of passion and romance, slowly erasing the humanism from humans, will result in the humanless human, a perfect example for that is the office employee, the boring, fat, lifeless, job oriented mid aged man, whose existence is not significant to anyone not even himself.

It is a very important step to realize the harm that we are getting by the post-modern condition. And perhaps a very few of us could realize this harm, or in other words, could label this array of social tendencies as a ‘harm’ because almost all of us has been part of the system since our childhood. It is some kind of a Plato’s cave metaphor once again, but the one who exits the cave here is not whom he has the intellect, it is whom who has been raised on principles not influenced or not contaminated by postmodernism.

The harm of postmodernism relates to all the negative traits we have learned due to the information revolution. It is the harm of pornography, meaningless musical video clips, fast food, disoriented mass media, drugs, techno music. It is the morbid cultural waves that have been around since the end of the 60’s. The harm of the postmodernism doesn’t end here, it starts here. Post-modernism generates what Jean Baudrillard and Albert Borgmann refer to as Hypperreality. The latter concept refers to the process in which information technology simulates reality to the point that it becomes reality itself, and real reality loses its location in our conscious and becomes blurred together in one unit with illusion. Baudrillard refer to that as the simulacrum.

When the purpose of information technology shifts from providing information, to the provision of the means of acquiring information, it is attacking our own brain faculties, infact it is putting our most important faculty -that defines us as humans, the reasoning faculty- in danger.

The post modern danger as a form of psychological instability has been generated by the transformation of the most basic concepts of life. Loytard referred to the transformation of knowledge into a form of a commodity, and the knower is no longer someone to be trained, yet he is the consumer. Fredric Jameson and Baudrillard highlight the fact that in postmodernism, cultural and symbolic icons have became one of the most important commodities. If it has been a luxury in the romantic age, and it has been a source of entertainment in the modern age (pre postmodern), now it is a need, a basic and an important need. Musical albums, Movies and TV series have become a significant part of our lives, and a giant industry, and what does this symbolism and cultural commodities provide, Information? No! It provides templates of perception itself, it teach us how to look at things, rather than being a thing in itself, it provide the fuel for hyperrealism.

If Post-modernism was some kind of a disease, the symptoms of this disease is blurriness and vagueness, that creates tendency to shallowness. Interestingly its philosophy is of the same blurriness and lack of clarity, yet it is a deeply organized and sophisticated, perhaps it is the first doctrine that plays with the way thoughts are thought, rather than thoughts itself, it plays with the way languages work rather than words itself, with symbols rather than concepts, it deals with subconscious rather than conscious.

It is a system that regulates the division of the society and the decline of the personal level of realization and intellect, it is a danger on humanity, it is a virus that resides on technology, and kills its mother: civilization.

The Modern Faith

Behold!

We have reached to a point in the progress of the average human common sence, that many people can easily realize the fraud and deceit of religion. It is one of the simplest tasks that u can assign to your brain, to prove the deception of religion. And for me I consider it an act of childishness and lack of maturity, to even try to prove that, because it is like 1+1=2, and I really don’t need a whole crap of Richard Dawkins for that.

Now how would you feel, dear atheist, if I tell you that you are currently living in a bigger system of fraud and deception that is stronger than the good old religion, to the point that it is even very difficult to at least realize this fraud system.

Presenting: Postmodernism.

I am not refering to any sort of conspiracy theory, I am explaining a view that shows a hidden religion tied to the information age, the tool that harms us more than we think fellow atheist, more than any religion do, it is the system of new kind of faith that keep you like a sheep in a herd, more ever than that poor ancient religion that tried hard to!!

Postmodernism, is the definition given to explain the nature of culture in the last 25 years, or more precisely, the characteristics of the “information age” culture.
In layman language there has been so many new concept going on now a days, such as "hip" and "cool", and artist like"Madonna", TV programs such as "FRIENDS", and fast food franchise such as "McDonald's", these terms and cultural artifact are not just arbitrarily existing, they are representing a deeper structure of the postmodern society.

This terms such as "hot" and "pimpin" in its new usage is part of the language of postmodernism, it is the product to the era of “no point” or the age of pointlessness, in simple philosophical words it is:

• The age where a meta-narrative or a mass philosophy which explains everything seems to have no longer any respect
• The age where the society is fragmented into small groups of people, and although a spoken “language” exist for the whole society, it is very difficult to explains your thoughts to a person outside your fragment.
• It is the age where art doesn’t relate its form to its content, and most of the times it doesn’t have content at all. in other words, it is the age where art has no point, or shows a form that has not relation of it is content or idea.
  
• It is the age of no originality, and no value, the value of everything is transformed into a “dead” value of cash, anything how stupid and pointless it is, just like "jackass", would be great as long as it sells. It is a complex system that brings feed on the pointlessness and vagueness of people, and binds multiple fragments of society together, it provide the consumer base for the modern capitalist machine.
  

The need:
This Post modern condition is needed by capitalism itself, and its principles serves an important purpose as in no reference point provided by no meta-narrative, which means there is no way to provide absolute judgment, no way to judge as "right" or "wrong" because those are relative words after the dead of the meta-narrative.

The contemporary capitalist society, needs a huge consumer base that totally lacks any rigid personality features, that seeks refuge in its consumer value.

The need is to create people who say “I spend thus I am!”

The basic features:
A society without a personality, is what seeks refuge in consumption, a society that spends to find purpose in its life, in the end, a society that values nothing as a thing, is a society that Denys its rights, it is the labor that needs no wage, although it thinks it is living a decent life!

What am I talking about? YOU, you work a lot, no time to have a social relationship, at least a real social relations and true friendship, your love life is probably fake, you spend your money in the mall, you get drunk just to think you are happy, you go loud clubbings, you spend money on vacations you don’t really enjoy, you buy gadgets you don’t really need, you watch MTV, you basically give your money back in return of valueless stuff.

Capitalism in the age of facebook, needs a fragmented society, this is like having a society with over 200 different group of people who speaks the different languages,,who seem to speak the same but there is no way that one group understand exactly what the other is trying to say. Thus there is no way to spread consciousness and awareness, and this is the basic principle, to divide and conquer.

Maintenance:
Now that we have fragmented the society, we need to maintain this fragment; we need to always remind the people subconsciously to forget about a meta-narrative, and to stay in the small scale groups. How? Simple. Hip hop, MTV, little bit of HOLLYWOOD does that? A little bit of art that has a form that appeals, and yet, the point has no relation to it, or… there is no point at all. Yes, when raihana sings umbrella , ela, ela, eh, eh, she totally has no intention to explain any point by this stupid poetry, and yet, she still use the art form of her sexy ass, to explain this no point? So the form is sexiness, and there is no point, or the point is that she will put you under her umberla, ela, and still she shows her sexy body to explain that? Yes this is cool, this is what this term cool means, and this term, no one will understand outside this small group who watches MTV, here we go again, a fragmented society.

And though shalt sleep!
Now to finish this cycle, we have to lock it, tranquilize all people, by denying originality. In the po mo society, originality is forbidden. If you want to be cool, and stick to the trend, distort classic art, you will be welcomed, else, you wanna have your own intellect to guide you, you are a geek, and you have to perish. Easy and simple. Creativity is the source of awakenss tfor he human mind , and a creative work of art, such as beethovens, spreads a message to all humanity, to think on their own. This is forbidden now! Who listens to beethoven? Those who try to be "uncool" and emvrace their geekness, are doing a forbidden act and deserve punishment! Just like how unbelievers in catholic tradition were burned at the stakes, the ones who try to break the system of post modernism, will be burned at the stakes of the social life! What is worse than being labeled as a geek in a post-modern high school and be frowned up on by all, what’s worse than no social life, and humiliation. Exactly the same impact of public torture and execution, with very cool terms.

And now, even love is turned into a meaningless cycle of clicks and winks in facebook. This is the misery of humanity in theis age, this is how love is in the age of postmodernism, the age of facebook. This is how we became valueless people, and people without a clear goal or target, and if we had it is very personal, actually, our porpose is to work, and consume, your value, your respect in the society, depends on how much you make money, and how do you consume it, think about it, if you have a ferrari, if you have a brandnew phone, people will respect you. This is the charecter of the new faith, that keeps the industry and under the control of the new clergy and bourgeoisie together. Yes did i say bourgeoisie, they are the capital owners, did i say clergy? yes they are the faith guardians, the media people, the actors, the cool people, they are the philosphers that guards Postmodernism. So, don't we need another 14th of july?

The post modern reflection

Principles and value in the modern age is a victim of a couple of correlated forces. The lack of confidence and the lack of interest. The quality of machine production in modern age has made man lose confidence in his abilities. Not only that, man lost the interest in creativity and original art for the simple fact that it has no more value as compared to the hair accurate machine mass production. Man starts the idea that he needs to find a new exciting unexplored field, in pointless realms. This is the age of pointlessness. Anything that has no value, no point, has become a source of excitement, once it is used as a raw material to produce.

This phenomenon is very poisoned, we don’t really realize that we are actually masking originality with pointlessness just to make exciting, in other words, we are actually impotenting originality, and producing an ugly child, that looks somehow different and better than nothing. This is the value of postmodern creativity.

What this has in its stores for us? What this has For our greatest gift of thinking? This has made us lose the passion in creativity and imagination. More, it has burdened the process of reflection. Reflection in the current age had became a pointless boring process. Reflection would rather end up in this infinite cycle or round paths of thinking that has creativity pushing it up, and lack of confideness- lack of intrest couple, pushing it down. Ideas will go up, just to go down to reach square one again.

We start with a problem that we have the solution for, so passionate that we can solve it, and then the big wall of I don’t know and I don’t care bash it. Push is back to the starting point.

“I hate office
I feel I am enslaved here
Workers should have rights
Maybe that will affect my status in my job
I really don’t know if protesting is right
Maybe I shouldn’t care about those matters and focus on work
Back to work
I am stressed
I hate office!”
....

There goes a simple example of the “postmodern loop”. This phenomenon makes ideas spin around it, it is like the couple forces phenomenon in physics that causes cyclones, two opposing forces that end up spinning. The victim of this cyclone is one thing: our innocent passion.

The story of man

When man woke up for the very first time, the very first time in history, the very first morning, the first time man saw life from the eyes of a human, not an animal, he was so shocked with the new window he is looking through! the human vision he had! for the first time it was used...it must have been such a surreal experience. A crazy wild ride into this very new field he has never been too, with a wild crazy horse called reason. That man had all the capabilities that we have today, although he was so primitive and weak, he had all the passion, all that will and greed, but he had nothing in his hands, he was totally naked, all he had inherited from his ancestor, was just abilities of death, sex, and the ability to eat.

Unfortunately, that wild first look into the world has left him so fast; he couldn’t grasp a single thought that raged his mind at that moment. He ended up being a huge ship with a blind deaf captain; a prisoner trapped inside his huge big castle. Only one thing that could free him, thinking; and on that morning he first got this faculty, he had just finished test deriving for the very first time: logic.

Such a new experience, the first time he learn about logic, and all he had learned before this morning was nothing but sex and blood, all he remembers of his past life were visions of hell, in his little all too animal mind. The very first poem in history would go in his mind without a language, as mere innocent words that knew no religion, knew no tradition, and knew no faith

Here I am
Finally here
I can touch
I can tell
I see blood
I tell the smell
All I have
Fire and death
I all I know
Memories of hell
Here I am
Hail darkness
Your son is finally set free
The wild pig
The bull
Master of the nights
I am the moon

He have seen all on his very first moment, he have had the greatest visions, of heaven and beyond, he saw the sun and looked straight to it and at that time he didn’t know that truth hurts, he didn’t know that power brings paranoia with it, he was so innocent and naive, with all the words he heard, that shook him up and made him stand up on his feet! And all of a sudden… he forgot it all. He had no words to speak it of, he had no words to write this great poem of thoughts.

On and on he started to mimic those voiceless voices, those boundless lights! The sheer and cunning strike that shook him inspired him every day. And since then, every night he started to have dreams, and all of the dreams he gets, all the visions he gets are just one faded picture of that very shocking scene.

***

And on and on, that poor man faced disappointment after despair, death and savageness generation after generation, all this world has given him so far. This nature was very cruel to him, she hated him, and she doesn’t want him to live. He has just realized that his forefathers – the pig and the bull, were nothing but fools. On and on he went to find a master that could save him, someone that could help him, and with all this torture that he got so far, this man was willing to give in everything just to find a shelter, so weak he was, so desperate for a change. And yet still, within this dark burning sea, there was one small thin thread of hope that always guided him even through total black darkness; and it was that faded memories of that first morning, that first light he saw. That very first ride of reason he had where he totally knew everything in only one single moment, but he could never grasp anything of that.

On and on this man began to hate nature and its natural beauty, and natural evil. On and one this man started to fight against all the many forces of nature, and he believed so strongly, that he shall respect himself more, and give up all to only one worthy master: a true God.

Too afraid of nature he was, to think that he is almighty, and all strong, he is convinced that this nature is bullying him, so he looked for one brute master, who has all the evil and goodness, and had only one advantage over that prostituted nature: justice. He badly needed justice, because he still remember that very first moment, when he first woke up, he saw heaven in his eyes, and all he knew was hell. He held reason in his hand, and all he knew was total drunkenness. He was so happy to find that one fair brute master, -- as he thought, and he assumed that this master will need absolute arrogance to save him, and so he gave him the best gifts of nature, to prove his obedience, he gave up the freedom of pleasure, definitely, the best of all he had in his hell like life.

And then that same poem came once again to his mind, but now it had more words, and this time he was so strong scolding nature, because he had his god on his side, he was no longer afraid of the prostitute, this time he went and broke the stones that enslaved him, he burned the temples, and built only one sacred place.

Once again
Here I am
I can finally see
I am more than the moon
I am more than the stars
I am the man
The slave of the good
And a warrior against the bad
I am the mighty slave
I have one invisible almighty
To whom I gave all
He is all
And all is he
Hail nature
Your master is here
I am his image
Till eternity I will rule

So happy and content he was. He finally thought that he is free form all the hell that he had, and deep within himself, he was actually fooling his god. He made a sacred deal with him, to give him all his best jewels of pleasure, and totally submit, and get security in return. So greedy he was, so hypocrite. And this is why he cries every time he pray to his god, this is why he thought of the original sin, this was the original sin that he always thought of, this was what he thought in his quest to remember that very first day, that he infact has fooled and disobeyed god. This was not exactly what has happened, he just made up so many parts of the story, to cover this scary and dangerous fact: that he actually was lying to his god. He didn’t love him, he just wanted peace.

On and on he went with this cycle of peace and fear, on and on he went on to give something that his god didn’t really want! Just to purify his sins, just to wash away the filth that he have inherited from nature, it wasn’t that good solution in the end, he still live in fear. But that very same visions of the very first day still haunted his mind, still gave him hope to go on in this life, enduring they heavy burden of one tyrant master.

***

And now, he finally was so sure, that his god was a fool. He is so sure, that his god believed him and trusted his hypocrites deeds! All of a sudden he betrayed him, stood up, and killed God! Yes he did, he killed the god he eternally feared, he removed a big stone from his back, and he have grasped one more of that moments where he first woke up, it was unspoken words that told him he is strong! He has reason that could kill fear. He stood up, and got back his evil from god, he got back the Jewells that he once wasted for this stupid tyrant, and when the pure true evil met the hypocrite false goodness, when they both marriage something unexpected happened!

The human was finally born, he had finally been able to speak of all the visions he saw on his first day, he have finally found out that he is actually god, that he couldn’t get in his shoes thought those days of ignorance.

Once more
Here I am
The human
I killed your god
I am the master of all
Past present and beyond
Stand before my feet
No chains of faith exist anymore
No cry no pray no slaves
No god no prophets
I killed them all
Hail heavens
For God and his angles tremble before me!

Yes he made heavens tremble before him, and now he has all the power to mimic back those great words, and those great musical voices, that beauty he once saw. He got back his Jewells; he got back his filthy sex, he celebrated his triumph, but now he has a new fear. It is the feel of the dizzy heights he has reached; it is the sight of the summit from the throne of god that he had never seen! Are you for real! Did I kill him! That’s to much to do! Too much to fear! I am the loner, the master.

***

On and on he wanted to create something to conquer his new fear, and today no god could take fear away, no religions is there for him nor any creed. It is a bigger stone he has put on his shoulder this time! But he has bigger arms and a better breed. On and on he created a new army of his own. He crated machines, he started his quest and he thought with that he could secure himself from the unknown source of fear, perhaps the revenge of the once almighty one? Now he have fortressed himself with machines, and walls of steel. He made his machines so strong so perfect, that overpasses his own abilities, own facilities. His new machines now can work more than him, build more than him, heal more than him, and kill more than him. He is too busy preparing for that unknown evil, too busy to realize that his slaves have over passed his own power!

Guess what he is jealous of his steel! The man hates his machines that he badly need, so powerful they had became that he thinks that he can no longer be the master anymore.

Machines machines!!
How mighty are my slaves!
Machines machines!!
They kill the talk they breed
Machines machines!!
I fear them
They are mighty
They are great
I won’t follow them
I am no slave for steam!
My babyies
Are my new fiends
I create the world of questions
The land of void
The land where no machines can be reach
None can be
None can speak
None know
None shall see
None should rule but me
For that I burn the books
Hail humanity
I will kill the light
And raze

What else is left for him? But to fight his own self, to dig in his dream to find a new field. He has over consumed his visions, and there is nothing more for him to explore, he decide on one thing, to raze the lights, and start up a new creed. He has decided to fight his own beauty, to kill his own art, to burn his own castle, for that will bring him pride. He goes on killing himself, fighting himself, enslaving himself, defying those old established rules of beauty and love. He doesn’t want to be a sub human of this machines, that where built by him once using knowledge, and thus he goes finding a shelter in his darkest thoughts, and goalless dreams. He goes own finding shelter in the art with no beauty, and he goes on insulting art itself.

He is in the state of denial for his basic principals, just to be distinguished, just to be superior once more not on darkness, not on nature, not on existance,this time his goal is own machines. On and on, he goes on a quest and this time kill the passion, and kill the products of the fathers, all crush before that man of steel! that he have became, he denies his own love, he denies his own emotions, and he knows well that these are the only source of joy in his dark sad life. With that he finds his pride, with that he satisfies his jealousy, by killing all these he thinks that he is the master of all, once again.

And now, will the time for him to wake up once again, and appreciate that dream he had already seized, or is there a small little word he had totally forgot, form this prefect very first vision, on very small word that caused him his crazy unconscious deeds?

Will he go back? Yes he will, yes he should!!