7 May 2009

Receiving messages via Twitter has become more reliable than email. I don’t have to sift through any Twitter spam to see if I’ve missed something legitimate, and it’s easy to block those who attempt to abuse the system. These days I am receiving 150-200 email spam each day, which no longer lends itself to sifting. I ignore it and hope I haven’t missed anything.

Photo by Margaret Bourke-Whike

I can’t help but think we’ve brought this upon ourselves. No one likes spam, but neither do we (Americans) like paying for stuff. We’d rather let advertisers pay for everything and willingly subject ourselves to their commercials and propagandist garbage. Our websites, streets, highways, public benches, buses and their stops, mailboxes, t-shirts, etc., are filled with advertisements — that is to say both our personal and public spaces we willingly deface and degrade. And we seem to like it this way — we certainly aren’t doing anything to stop it. We probably couldn’t imagine a world without such an economic support.

Photo by Tony de Marco

I wonder, if The Over-Production of Everything (i.e., industrial revolution) never took a strong footing in the world, maybe we woudn’t have needed to plaster every conceivable property with an advertisement. Industry can be good, but our skies are without limit and without moderation. If it were otherwise, we wouldn’t have masses of excess stuff we need to get rid of. Supply and demand. Spend money to make money.

It’s hard to say things like this without sounding like a complete hypocrite. I benefit greatly from these things. If it weren’t for advertising and mass-production techniques, I mightn’t have the luxury of sitting in this particular chair, using this computer, reading many of the books and eating much of the food I do, all under the roof of this house we live in (oh, and the airplanes we’ll by flying in next month to visit our west coast).

Nonetheless, it overwhelms me, and I yearn for something different and more honest. This life or the next.