#OccupyEverywhere
Day 1,419, 20:18
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Published in USA 
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by
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by The Libertine
Ramblin’ outa the wild West
Leavin’ the towns I love the best
Thought I’d seen some ups and downs
’Til I come into New York town
People goin’ down to the ground
Buildings goin’ up to the sky
- Bob Dylan "Talkin' New York"
Greetings fellow eReppers
What follows is a hodgepodge of pictures, quotes, and original thoughts put together as a sort of tribute to the #Occupy protests going on around the nation.
All that I ask is that any comments left for this article are kept civil and apolitical.
Enjoy.
___
___
This is a game that moves as you play
-X
___
In the background of everything going at these protests is one undeniable fact: we have built a societal and fiscal structure that relies on uninterrupted growth. We take on student loans because we believe we will easily get jobs and those jobs will pay well enough to someday pay off those loans (and help pay for rent and car insurance and gas and food and medical expenses and electricity and heating oil and, at bare minimum, the cell phone bill).
What happens when youth at home and youth around the world all of the sudden cannot find any jobs, even McDonalds jobs, to pay their way out of debt?
This question/protest is not an indictment of any political party. There is no anger, at least from my own perspective. There is despair. There is confusion. There is sadness. And frustration. But, underneath all of that, there is also hope. Hope for a new way of things.
But hope can't pay the bills.
___
me @ virtual #OccupyWallStreet in NY, eUS
join me
___
What these people are doing is building, for lack of a better word, a church of dissent. It’s not a march, though marches are spinning off of the campground. It’s not even a protest, really. It is a group of people, gathered together, to create a public space seeking meaning in their culture. They are asserting, together, to each other and to themselves, “we matter”.
- Matt Stoller
___
This is worth keeping in mind, but it doesn't matter what % you are in or where you live if your debt burden is insurmountable and if there are no jobs to be had.
___
Of course, there are jobs to be had. Some places have it worse off than others. I personally just found part time employment after a long search.
But many have been unemployed for more than 12 months with no job prospects. Many teachers are being laid off because of budget woes.
And many are taking jobs that they are over-qualified for. A woman on NPR the other day said she used to be the COO of a small tech company. She lost that job and she ended up moving to Florida find a job as a veterinary assistant.
Think about how that crunches up employment.
-100,000 white collar professional are laid off.
-100,000 people with extensive resumes and experience are then looking for new jobs.
-100,000 graduating college seniors are now possibly competing with 100,000 recently laid off professionals that are now desperately looking to take any job with pay + healthcare, no matter how crappy the pay is
-100,000 graduating college seniors are now possibly competing with 100,000 recently laid off professionals who had an easy time finding employment during the late 90s after their college graduations, benefiting simply from being born into the right time and place
-100,000 new graduating seniors next year are now competing with 100,000 from the previous year and with the 100,000 laid off professionals
- And so on. How do you like your odds?
___
We have built a structure that relies on constant, consistent, ceaseless growth. What happens if that is interrupted? What happens if growth is halted indefinitely?
It's been said that perhaps when we think of the 50s boom in the USA we should also keep in mind that it was a result of Germany (and most of Europe) and Japan being blown to bits, giving us easy exportation opportunities.
It's been said that capitalism in general relies on a sort of colonial exploitation. Whether it be slavery, literal resource colonies in Africa (and around the globe), or in situations like the post-WW2 world we can see this to be partially true. In order for one man to gain, another somewhere must lose.
What happens if there is world peace? What happens if all countries have the technology and factories to build what they need? What happens when we run out of "others" to exploit to fuel the growth engine of capitalism?
We're left with only three options. Exploiting each other. Starting a new multi-country war to again create exploitable economic imbalance. Or reverting to a community-based free-help and barter-based economy.
I'm not a fan of any of the options, to be quite honest.
Is this the price of peace? It is scary to think of peace in those terms. But it is something that many have known for ages and eons: war is a very profitable endeavor...for the victors.
___
Wanna practice?
Along the same lines:
___
Finally: I’ve heard a lot of people complain that those currently occupying Zucotti Park are “white college kids” with “dreadlocks” or “safety pins through their noses,” and that this is alienating or disgusting to people who wear button-down shirts and work full-time jobs. Since I’m someone who wears button-down shirts and works a full-time job, this unease is something I’m familiar with. But you know what? You don’t pick protests like you pick restaurants or nightclubs. Nobody wants to read your Yelp review of Occupy Wall Street. The great thing about protest activism is that it becomes meaningful once you stop thinking of yourself as a consumer and start thinking of yourself as a participating citizen. So if you have a problem with all of the ripped jeans and Birkenstocks that you’ve been seeing wandering around Zucotti Park, get your buttoned-down ass on a train or subway, and go there yourself, and start talking to people. Invite your buttoned-down friends. You’ll find, first of all, that the protest begins to look more like something you’re comfortable with. And you’ll find, also, that those people who seem so foreign or naïve to you on television actually want the same things that you want, and that it’s easier to get those things once you get over yourself and start making noise about it.
- reader mail @ The Dish
___
lol
___
In academic papers and a popular book, American Mania, Whybrow argues, in effect, that human beings are neurologically ill-designed to be modern Americans. The human brain evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in an environment defined by scarcity. It was not designed, at least originally, for an environment of extreme abundance. “Human beings are wandering around with brains that are fabulously limited,” he says cheerfully. “We’ve got the core of the average lizard.” Wrapped around this reptilian core, he explains, is a mammalian layer (associated with maternal concern and social interaction), and around that is wrapped a third layer, which enables feats of memory and the capacity for abstract thought. “The only problem,” he says, “is our passions are still driven by the lizard core. We are set up to acquire as much as we can of things we perceive as scarce, particularly sex, safety, and food.” ...
The richest society the world has ever seen has grown rich by devising better and better ways to give people what they want. The effect on the brain of lots of instant gratification is something like the effect on the right hand of cutting off the left: the more the lizard core is used the more dominant it becomes. “What we’re doing is minimizing the use of the part of the brain that lizards don’t have,” says Whybrow. “We’ve created physiological dysfunction. We have lost the ability to self-regulate, at all levels of the society. The $5 million you get paid at Goldman Sachs if you do whatever they ask you to do—that is the chocolate cake upgraded.”
...
Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for short-term rewards.
What happens when a society loses its ability to self-regulate, and insists on sacrificing its long-term interest for short-term rewards? How does the story end? “We could regulate ourselves if we chose to think about it,” Whybrow says. “But it does not appear that is what we are going to do.” Apart from that remote possibility, Whybrow imagines two outcomes. The first he illustrates with a true story, which might be called the parable of the pheasant. Last spring, on sabbatical from the University of Oxford, he was surprised to discover that he was able to rent an apartment inside Blenheim Palace, the Churchill family home. The previous winter at Blenheim had been harsh, and the pheasant hunters had been efficient; as a result, just a single pheasant had survived in the palace gardens. This bird had gained total control of a newly seeded field. Its intake of food, normally regulated by its environment, was now entirely unregulate
The other possible outcome was only slightly more hopeful: to hit bottom. To realize what has happened to us—because we have no other choice. “If we refuse to regulate ourselves, the only regulators are our environment,” says Whybrow, “and the way that environment deprives us.” For meaningful change to occur, in other words, we need the environment to administer the necessary level of pain.
- Micheal Lewis (the Moneyball guy) in "California and Bust"
___
Some closing thoughts:
First, again, please keep any comments civil. I don't mind criticism of the subject matter of the article, if you feel compelled to share that, but I really don't want to see petty back-and-forth arguing between commenters. There are plenty of shitty internet forums set up for that purpose. Keep it there.
Second, whether looked at through the lens of OWS or not, the future of the economy and of the world scares me each and every night. Not in a "omg government debt rah rah NOBAMA" way. What worries me most is that we are finally approaching the point that many science fiction writers have predicted and feared for decades: the point at which machines take the jobs of people at a macro scale. It's not science fiction anymore. A quote I keep hearing is a variation of "If your job is easy to explain, then it will eventually be replaced." It's true, to an extent. And it's scary. I don't see the trend of machines taking human jobs reversing any time soon, perhaps ever.
Lastly, I still have limitless hope. I have hope in humanity's capacity to be human. To bond, to love, to share. To find a way to get by, even if it means completely reworking current societal norms of ways of living and earning and providing and raising families. We'll go back to basics. We'll remember to love each other. We'll adapt. We'll survive.
___
Banksy's flower thrower and my current avi. Feel free to use it if you'd like to join #OccupyEverywhere
Best of luck to all those struggling to get by and to those who know people that are struggling. If you are getting by just fine, please stop and think if there is anything you can do to help those in need, whether it be by donating food/goods, by volunteering, by donating excess money, or by simply sharing a smile with a complete stranger who is in desperate need of having at least just one happy moment in a day of sorrow.
Together we'll get by.
Happy #Occupying,
CRoy
Leavin’ the towns I love the best
Thought I’d seen some ups and downs
’Til I come into New York town
People goin’ down to the ground
Buildings goin’ up to the sky
- Bob Dylan "Talkin' New York"
Greetings fellow eReppers
What follows is a hodgepodge of pictures, quotes, and original thoughts put together as a sort of tribute to the #Occupy protests going on around the nation.
All that I ask is that any comments left for this article are kept civil and apolitical.
Enjoy.
___
___
This is a game that moves as you play
-X
___
In the background of everything going at these protests is one undeniable fact: we have built a societal and fiscal structure that relies on uninterrupted growth. We take on student loans because we believe we will easily get jobs and those jobs will pay well enough to someday pay off those loans (and help pay for rent and car insurance and gas and food and medical expenses and electricity and heating oil and, at bare minimum, the cell phone bill).
What happens when youth at home and youth around the world all of the sudden cannot find any jobs, even McDonalds jobs, to pay their way out of debt?
This question/protest is not an indictment of any political party. There is no anger, at least from my own perspective. There is despair. There is confusion. There is sadness. And frustration. But, underneath all of that, there is also hope. Hope for a new way of things.
But hope can't pay the bills.
___
me @ virtual #OccupyWallStreet in NY, eUS
join me
___
What these people are doing is building, for lack of a better word, a church of dissent. It’s not a march, though marches are spinning off of the campground. It’s not even a protest, really. It is a group of people, gathered together, to create a public space seeking meaning in their culture. They are asserting, together, to each other and to themselves, “we matter”.
- Matt Stoller
___
This is worth keeping in mind, but it doesn't matter what % you are in or where you live if your debt burden is insurmountable and if there are no jobs to be had.
___
Of course, there are jobs to be had. Some places have it worse off than others. I personally just found part time employment after a long search.
But many have been unemployed for more than 12 months with no job prospects. Many teachers are being laid off because of budget woes.
And many are taking jobs that they are over-qualified for. A woman on NPR the other day said she used to be the COO of a small tech company. She lost that job and she ended up moving to Florida find a job as a veterinary assistant.
Think about how that crunches up employment.
-100,000 white collar professional are laid off.
-100,000 people with extensive resumes and experience are then looking for new jobs.
-100,000 graduating college seniors are now possibly competing with 100,000 recently laid off professionals that are now desperately looking to take any job with pay + healthcare, no matter how crappy the pay is
-100,000 graduating college seniors are now possibly competing with 100,000 recently laid off professionals who had an easy time finding employment during the late 90s after their college graduations, benefiting simply from being born into the right time and place
-100,000 new graduating seniors next year are now competing with 100,000 from the previous year and with the 100,000 laid off professionals
- And so on. How do you like your odds?
___
We have built a structure that relies on constant, consistent, ceaseless growth. What happens if that is interrupted? What happens if growth is halted indefinitely?
It's been said that perhaps when we think of the 50s boom in the USA we should also keep in mind that it was a result of Germany (and most of Europe) and Japan being blown to bits, giving us easy exportation opportunities.
It's been said that capitalism in general relies on a sort of colonial exploitation. Whether it be slavery, literal resource colonies in Africa (and around the globe), or in situations like the post-WW2 world we can see this to be partially true. In order for one man to gain, another somewhere must lose.
What happens if there is world peace? What happens if all countries have the technology and factories to build what they need? What happens when we run out of "others" to exploit to fuel the growth engine of capitalism?
We're left with only three options. Exploiting each other. Starting a new multi-country war to again create exploitable economic imbalance. Or reverting to a community-based free-help and barter-based economy.
I'm not a fan of any of the options, to be quite honest.
Is this the price of peace? It is scary to think of peace in those terms. But it is something that many have known for ages and eons: war is a very profitable endeavor...for the victors.
___
Wanna practice?
Along the same lines:
___
Finally: I’ve heard a lot of people complain that those currently occupying Zucotti Park are “white college kids” with “dreadlocks” or “safety pins through their noses,” and that this is alienating or disgusting to people who wear button-down shirts and work full-time jobs. Since I’m someone who wears button-down shirts and works a full-time job, this unease is something I’m familiar with. But you know what? You don’t pick protests like you pick restaurants or nightclubs. Nobody wants to read your Yelp review of Occupy Wall Street. The great thing about protest activism is that it becomes meaningful once you stop thinking of yourself as a consumer and start thinking of yourself as a participating citizen. So if you have a problem with all of the ripped jeans and Birkenstocks that you’ve been seeing wandering around Zucotti Park, get your buttoned-down ass on a train or subway, and go there yourself, and start talking to people. Invite your buttoned-down friends. You’ll find, first of all, that the protest begins to look more like something you’re comfortable with. And you’ll find, also, that those people who seem so foreign or naïve to you on television actually want the same things that you want, and that it’s easier to get those things once you get over yourself and start making noise about it.
- reader mail @ The Dish
___
lol
___
In academic papers and a popular book, American Mania, Whybrow argues, in effect, that human beings are neurologically ill-designed to be modern Americans. The human brain evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in an environment defined by scarcity. It was not designed, at least originally, for an environment of extreme abundance. “Human beings are wandering around with brains that are fabulously limited,” he says cheerfully. “We’ve got the core of the average lizard.” Wrapped around this reptilian core, he explains, is a mammalian layer (associated with maternal concern and social interaction), and around that is wrapped a third layer, which enables feats of memory and the capacity for abstract thought. “The only problem,” he says, “is our passions are still driven by the lizard core. We are set up to acquire as much as we can of things we perceive as scarce, particularly sex, safety, and food.” ...
The richest society the world has ever seen has grown rich by devising better and better ways to give people what they want. The effect on the brain of lots of instant gratification is something like the effect on the right hand of cutting off the left: the more the lizard core is used the more dominant it becomes. “What we’re doing is minimizing the use of the part of the brain that lizards don’t have,” says Whybrow. “We’ve created physiological dysfunction. We have lost the ability to self-regulate, at all levels of the society. The $5 million you get paid at Goldman Sachs if you do whatever they ask you to do—that is the chocolate cake upgraded.”
...
Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for short-term rewards.
What happens when a society loses its ability to self-regulate, and insists on sacrificing its long-term interest for short-term rewards? How does the story end? “We could regulate ourselves if we chose to think about it,” Whybrow says. “But it does not appear that is what we are going to do.” Apart from that remote possibility, Whybrow imagines two outcomes. The first he illustrates with a true story, which might be called the parable of the pheasant. Last spring, on sabbatical from the University of Oxford, he was surprised to discover that he was able to rent an apartment inside Blenheim Palace, the Churchill family home. The previous winter at Blenheim had been harsh, and the pheasant hunters had been efficient; as a result, just a single pheasant had survived in the palace gardens. This bird had gained total control of a newly seeded field. Its intake of food, normally regulated by its environment, was now entirely unregulate
😛it could eat all it wanted, and it did. The pheasant grew so large that, when other birds challenged it for seed, it would simply frighten them away. The fat pheasant became a tourist attraction and even acquired a name: Henry. “Henry was the biggest pheasant anyone had ever seen,” says Whybrow. “Even after he got fat, he just ate and ate.” It didn’t take long before Henry was obese. He could still eat as much as he wanted, but he could no longer fly. Then one day he was gone: a fox ate him.
The other possible outcome was only slightly more hopeful: to hit bottom. To realize what has happened to us—because we have no other choice. “If we refuse to regulate ourselves, the only regulators are our environment,” says Whybrow, “and the way that environment deprives us.” For meaningful change to occur, in other words, we need the environment to administer the necessary level of pain.
- Micheal Lewis (the Moneyball guy) in "California and Bust"
___
Some closing thoughts:
First, again, please keep any comments civil. I don't mind criticism of the subject matter of the article, if you feel compelled to share that, but I really don't want to see petty back-and-forth arguing between commenters. There are plenty of shitty internet forums set up for that purpose. Keep it there.
Second, whether looked at through the lens of OWS or not, the future of the economy and of the world scares me each and every night. Not in a "omg government debt rah rah NOBAMA" way. What worries me most is that we are finally approaching the point that many science fiction writers have predicted and feared for decades: the point at which machines take the jobs of people at a macro scale. It's not science fiction anymore. A quote I keep hearing is a variation of "If your job is easy to explain, then it will eventually be replaced." It's true, to an extent. And it's scary. I don't see the trend of machines taking human jobs reversing any time soon, perhaps ever.
Lastly, I still have limitless hope. I have hope in humanity's capacity to be human. To bond, to love, to share. To find a way to get by, even if it means completely reworking current societal norms of ways of living and earning and providing and raising families. We'll go back to basics. We'll remember to love each other. We'll adapt. We'll survive.
___
Banksy's flower thrower and my current avi. Feel free to use it if you'd like to join #OccupyEverywhere
Best of luck to all those struggling to get by and to those who know people that are struggling. If you are getting by just fine, please stop and think if there is anything you can do to help those in need, whether it be by donating food/goods, by volunteering, by donating excess money, or by simply sharing a smile with a complete stranger who is in desperate need of having at least just one happy moment in a day of sorrow.
Together we'll get by.
Happy #Occupying,
CRoy
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~hyuu~
~hyuu~ ❤❤
I'm moving to eNew York, are you?
There is always need for people with high human capital. The problem is that the technology moves a lot more faster than we can predict.
You can choose the X occupation because it seems promising. 10 years pass, and there is not as much need for X as there was before. But how could you have predicted it? It is impossible.
Besides this, the US is experiencing the movement of jobs abroad, since the people in the 3rd world countries are willing to do it for cheaper. Whereas you see a bleak future in the US, the emerging economies are experiencing unprecedented increase in their welfare.
Perhaps one should disentangle the problems created by technological change, and US losing its status as the hegemon.
very cool
Oprah!
I'm actually pretty dead serious about taxing the church, any religion.
That bugs me for some reason.
You know what, who is paying for these folks to strike?
Follow the money, find the true "reason" for this.
The truth is always unsettling.
EXCELLENT
Save the planet, start WW III.
For a bit more eRep writing about OWS, check Phoenix Quinn's latest dispatch http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/ten-thousand-miles-the-state-of-the-sfp-1878712/1/20
Talk about TL😉R. LOL Holy lotsa words Batman!
nice article. I wish I could attend some of these things.
btw, it's an IRC channel now... well, at least until my BNC disconnects.
Arrested Development really was funny though... too bad.
I read the title, face palmed and decided to comment as to how ridiculous this is to bring to eRepublik.
Yeah im with SVV, just keep erep as erep and keep the crazy RL shit out of here. go the forums and rage or not rage about it. This is not the place to go off, and please future commenters, not need to rage against me, its true, irrelevant to erep and lets move on.
Many still see this movement as irrelevant to eRep. Whether that remains true, after the numbers double, triple or more remains to be seen.
My original reason for joining the game was to join a social community with the stated purpose to "create a virtual new world". The game's even more recent motto of "What if the financial crisis REALLY goes bad?" refers to the game, but...
My point is that a great many of the good and decent people this game attract become interested in major current events that seem to closely parallel the crazy, imagined, events in this virtual world. Accept that some might be moved to write about this, under "Category: Social interactions and entertainment. I don't find it a "distraction" but an "enhancement" to my daily "personal social growth program".
Thanks for the fresh perspective Alpha!
Old things.
changed my avatar oh yeah
I read it all. Going out for a puff. Brb.
VOTED!! Logic tells that this "regime" has eaten it self ..to be precise it has come to end of its "life".IT IS IMMPORTANT to put it down to sleep with great determination and unity of us "sheep" whatever the cost is and find a new and immproved one that is working not only for those "up there" but for all of us..You dont have to be a rocket scientis to see this..Become a rebel !! 😉
Only the truth is revolutionary.
We will have to choose some measure of a steady-state economy. Before it is a forced decision, with plenty of unpleasantness.
If I wrote a retort to this it would be reported and I would probably get a FP.
I'm 99% sure I voted this.
And so the American Century ends.
i love that Baksy images, they're so powerful!
@Jon Malcolm - reported for sneakily avoiding an FP or more, which can be interpreted as a system exploit.
These protests are the legacy of a generation that wants everything handed to them and someone else to pay the bill. Watching the news you see them holding signs saying "No More Bank Bailouts" while they demand their college loans to be forgiven. They can blame Wall Street, they can blame successful people, but if they want to know who had truly caused their hard times. They only have to look in the mirror.
Many companies would rather hire 100K college kids than those with work experience so they can mold them and pay them even less, rather than pay a bit more for an older worker who will jump ship and has their way of doing things somewhat set from experience. IOW, it isn't what you know, but how little you'll accept for doing it.
Some good news is that economists are predicting that more jobs will be coming back to the US as China's economy heats up and creates inflation, along with the factors of wastage due to poor workmanship and transportation expenses. Too bad that's many years down the road, however.
Great article bro.
Living in NY and seeing the mess that is going on here, its really getting bad bro. Recently I had a bunch of friends join the military just to get away from RL the way it is right now. It truly sucks
There are some Americans out there that are too choosy. There are jobs out there, most don't require you to have a certificate or a degree.
And let AT&T take T-Mobile so thousands of jobs will be funneled back to the US.
Blame companies outsourcing manpower outside of the US.
No to Cain's 9-9-9. It is a ticket to 6-6-6.
I think what most people don't get about outsourcing labor is that when a job doesn't go to someone here it probably goes to someone that needs it more. Perhaps you should consider that when asking who's more greedy; the companies outsourcing labor or the workers demanding their jobs back.