20th of February 2016

...One of the culture jamming ideas I had was to replace underground advertising with my own 'subverts'.  The pieces of cardboard proved to be easily removed and one quiet afternoon I broke social convention, stood up and took out an advert to use as a size template and took it home.

Below is a picture of my subvert - a two page plea for the people of London to wake up and smell the conspiracy.  I still have it at home because sadly, or gratefully, I didn't complete this idea. 

Reading this again I admire my passion and the second page especially still rings true, I do ultimately believe in the power of humanity to rise above our oppressors and find some balance and inner peace worthy of our spirits.  

However, I did cringe a little as well.  I'm not saying that anything I said is not true.  The fact that we walk around with personal recording devices (AKA smartphones) monitoring everything from our snapchat updates to the way we sleep, or that money is slowly being phased out and replaced with easy-to-use contactless cards, is proof that although we haven't had chips inserted into our brains we simply carry them around in our pockets instead.*

The part about entire continents needing to rise up is also not so far off the mark either.  To submit a petition to the European Commission one needs a committee of 7 people from 7 different countries, gain a million signatures, with each country needing to reach their own quota of signatures, within a year and then create a plausible legal case.  Oh and that's only if they deem it appropriate to grace their desks in the first place.  Although I prefer the UK in the EU (that human rights court does come in handy) these hoops are a mammoth ask for most mortals to even consider.

The part where I say that we are all constantly being entertained to stop us from actually thinking is also spot on.  Nowadays however, instead of mass media doing this job we self-distract, taking any spare moment to compulsively flick through our phones or read a shitty free newspaper.

The part that made me cringe was my certainty.  The older I get the less certain I become.  Living in a post-modern era - where everyone's opinion is valid - I would hesitate to present this information so bluntly.  Nowadays I'd offer hypothesis', and muse over possibilities.  Is this a good thing though?  Ultimately nothing is certain yet, as Alan Watts puts it when discussing philosophy:


"In all my writing and lecturing I exaggerate. Because if I don’t exaggerate no one will listen.  Because all philosophers who take a moderate tone of voice and say 'on the one hand this and on the one hand that, and after all we should realise that all points of view should be taken into consideration', one reveres them for their calmness and their fair-mindedness but after you’ve listened to it all have they stimulated you? Have they given you a new idea? No.  Therefore to teach philosophy in any way you have to make outrageous statements but with the warning to your listeners that you’re only doing this for effect, to get a point across, to provoke thought.”
Alan Watts, Time in the Future Lecture, 

*Its interesting that the government gave up on bringing in ID cards.  Was this around the same time that smartphones came on the market?...