Girl Talk

... At Harvard, sophomore year, (then) President Lawrence Summers joined a debate on the side of economics... opposite morality... a packed house... an entire school... the kingdom of liberaldom... against... against his environment policy of dumping pollution into 3rd world countries... against his many over-grandized public blunders... against Cornell West leaving to Princeton... hoping... against hope whatever he says is bad enough... will cause enough offense... make enough newspapers... that he too would go the way of Dr. West... but it didn't come... none of it... came to pass... instead, out came polished... out came a very well-spoken... and gracious... and tactful... and taller than expected... a man who stepped up at a very critical time in this his university career and nailed it...
... and after an hour of wondering through fields looking for greener grass the answer inevitably ended up at the fence... the boring plain old paint chipped white fence... all of us sat on it and had a great view of economists and moralists united together holding hands and singing kumbai-ya... dratted fence always turns up at the most inconvenient times... in the last 5 minutes of every romantic comedy... in the last 5 minutes of our bartering with a curbside salesman in Florence... in the last 5 minutes of this far too reasonable debate... the loopholes get found... they meet in the middle... and that's all it was...

... blah blah blah handshake...

... SURE, both of them are nothing more than systems... YA, they depend on the values put into them... time... family... money... COURSE, they are not evil unless the values are evil... garbage in, garbage... my computer science teacher (who happened to make art out of old computer monitors and he asked us if we had any old ones that we could give to him) would say... in application... economics is just a faster way to what you want... a value superhighway... morality detouring towards flower smelling and unending talk about feelings before settling in on a course of action... economics not evil... another form of morality... an analysis... scientific... only when abused does it hurt... economics don't kill people, people kill people...

... and I believed him... I left and thought that all was right with the world now that people like Larry Summers are looking out for us... are taller than expected and run around and making good speeches... I was fooled... fooled by life on the easy street... 'economics saves us'... fooled by life in the fast lane... 'economics makes it easier'... fooled because the superhighway to getting what you want runs right through and over all the things you don't know you need... and definitely don't know you want... and bulldozes over a few innocent bystanders as well on its way to getting built...

... Somewhere along the line some dehumanizing decision-making think-tank gets designed specifically and for the sole purpose of making money... money as the ONLY value... all else filters down from it anyways right?... so what if some people are expendable if they go against the bottom line...

... And then you compete for market share...

... Everyone crowded on this superhighway just means we're all going equally slow... so control it... limit it... regulate it... make it cater only to a small few...

... And suddenly...

... Every time the song 'happy birthday' is played... Warner Bros. gets paid money... they own the copyright... they... yes... own... yes... 'happy birthday'... who owns?... them... they do... and how?... do you blame them?... on Mickey's birthday it was his present... because it's their job... to take everything of value and figure out a way to make money from it... somebody, somewhere in that place... their job... and nothing else... is money... a lot of people actually... every person... maybe... for a lot of money... and most especially... don't care about the consequences... don't care about anything... money as an ultimate... brainstorm... every possible way to make it... if you can... get away with it... no worries... on the highest pedestal... the Benjamins... all of them... tell'em... like you told me... cash rules everything around me... dollar bills and nothing else... and everything else is expendable...

... The last revolution was fought against control, on the side of freedom... Landowners controlled the money system... they controlled the taxes... the land... they controlled the church... the actions... movement around the land... the words... the ideas... and as they hammered out their world in hopes for money and power the choice was to play along or fight back... and France did... America did... people did... constantly fight back... through the years... and continue to fight... against that control... slavery is easy... the price of liberty is eternal vigilance...

... And now that the Vatican has released it's grip on censorship a new form has taken it's shape... Copyrights... Patents... sure it's a valuable part of our economic system... the guarantee you gain credit for your work and ideas... but abused so terribly that they have become one of the greatest forms of control... Whereas a person once owned their works for 14 years it is now their lifetime plus 70 years... and even more for companies... And while people from Walt Disney stole all their great ideas from the past... you can't borrow from them in the future... and while all our favorite bands leeched their sound from the past... the band 'Girl Talk' would owe roughly $200,000 a song for creating something that none of the bands he stood upon could ever dream of making... and while 4 companies together might collectively own the knowledge to cure cancer, their patents prevent any form of unified study... this system of control is tightening to choke out creativity and innovation... we no longer stand on the shoulders of giants... the giant crushes us under it's feet... our ideas are stuck... people hoard up a pile of gold and sit on it's wealth... dragons sitting on a pile of gold... and while they protect and keep they begin to slow human advancement... they concentrate more and more of the wealth away to themselves... content in their power...
... On the opposite side is freedom... the value... the awe... inspired from any number of idealists looking for a cause... above nothing else... empty... sure... but powerful... like anything that big enough it means nothing until there are a thousand other words surrounding it... raw freedom... never... but control over everything we see?... just as never...
... Isn't there some sort of fence we could meet on here?... isn't that what rational people do?... talk and debate and kumbaya?... this time maybe not... when all of the power seems to be on the side of the control... why would they want to meet?...