Posts Tagged ‘capitalism’

Rage against the X-Factor

The latest batch of manufactured X-Factor pop-a-nonnies are trundling inevitably closer to the turgid, overcooked and overhyped grande finale. I’ve been lucky enough to avoid a lot of television recently, so have escaped the show’s grasping and vampiric embrace of my brain. Yes. I have not been sucked in.

I thought I might expound on my disbelief at the 2009 crop of finalists – seriously, I just don’t get Jedward, but I’ve realised it’s useless. Anybody who has not joined the cult cannot understand its inner workings. It’s probably like how, to Scientologists, it’s completely awesome that they have little aliens living inside them but to anybody else, it’s insane.

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Not a good look, but it suits him.

Western capitalism is a well-maintained perpetual motion machine. Its various cogs and gears are oiled regularly with the blood and tears of the workforce. However, the machine requires maintenance, and parts must be replaced or cleaned.

And then there are parts that don’t do anything at all: the gall bladders of machinery. They might not be moving parts or they might perform an auxiliary role in the whole system, but their mere presence at a reduced or non-existent level of functionality means other parts must work harder and faster to compensate.

Freegans are the ultimate example of this. They smugly condemn us rat-racers as crazy. These people freely admit to finding nourishment in the discarded produce of society.

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