The Management of Feelings

soundtrack

Feelings by Morris Albert

art

Standard Loneliness Package by Charles Yu

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by Charlie Kaufman

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

commerce

Affective Labour, Pret a Manger and the political economy of post-recession England by Paul Myerscough

AKB48 member’s ‘penance’ shows flaws in idol culture

Private Dancer by Tina Turner

Beautiful Agony by Richard Lawrence and Lauren Olney

science

Humors

Oxytocin increases trust in humans by Michael Kosfeld, Markus Heinrichs, Paul J. Zak, Urs Fischbacher and Ernst Fehr

Professional sociopath Rush Limbaugh admits to OxyContin use

Scientology by Lawrence Wright:

To advance such lofty goals, Hubbard developed a “technology” to attain spiritual freedom and discover oneself as an immortal being. “Scientology works 100 percent of the time when it is properly applied to a person who sincerely desires to improve his life,” a church publication declares. This guarantee rests on the assumption that through rigorous research, Hubbard had uncovered a perfect understanding of human nature. One must not stray from the path he has laid down or question his methods. Scientology is exact. Scientology is certain. Step by step one can ascend toward clarity and power, becoming more oneself—but, paradoxically, also more like Hubbard. Scientology is the geography of his mind. Perhaps no individual in history has taken such copious internal soundings and described with so much logic and minute detail the inner workings of his own mentality. The method Hubbard put forward created a road map toward his own ideal self. Hubbard’s habits, his imagination, his goals and wishes—his character, in other words—became both the basis and the destination of Scientology.

Technologies of Self by Michel Foucault:

My objective for more than twenty-five years has been to sketch out a history of the different ways in our culture that humans develop knowledge about themselves: economics, biology, psychiatry, medicine, and penology. The main point is not to accept this knowledge at face value but to analyze these so-called sciences as very specific “truth games” related to specific techniques that human beings use to understand themselves.

As a context, we must understand that there are four major types of these “technologies,” each a matrix of practical reason: (I) technologies of production, which permit us to produce, transform, or manipulate things; (2) technologies of sign systems, which permit us to use signs, meanings, symbols, or signification; (3) technologies of power, which determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject; (4) technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform I themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality.

Science and History of Treating Depression

An antidepressant like Paxil or Prozac, these new studies suggest, is most likely not acting as a passive signal-strengthener. It does not, as previously suspected, simply increase serotonin or send more current down a brain’s mood-maintaining wire. Rather, it appears to change the wiring itself.

Do we need a House of Lords?

Perhaps, this could be the future of the GOP:

Yet though the role of the House of Lords was historically conservative and reactionary, and thus an easy target for criticism, the argument in our previous book, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, suggests that it may have also played a useful role: in the sense that the House of Lords had the veto power against very radical redistributive programs may have made British elites more secure that the new democracy would not threaten their interests too much, and thus more accommodating to democratization at first and the rise of the Labour Party later.

prevously and elsewhere

a rage for rigor

TO THE HYPHENATED POETS

Richer than mother’s milk
is half-and-half
Friends of two minds,
redouble your craft.

Our shelves our hives, our selves
a royal jelly,
may we at Benares and Boston,
Philly and Delhi

Continue reading →

The best laws inspire the law-abiding.

Jack Shafer on the limits of gun-control legislation:

As Noel Perrin wrote in Giving Up the Gun: Japan’s Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879, cultures can change their violent ways, but building such a cultural consensus takes more effort and persuasion that just passing new gun-control laws.

Yes, but passing new gun-control legislation does a great deal to advance that cultural consensus. By defining guns – and some more than others – as dangerous and problematic, we impact cultural norms as well as individual behavior. Laws not only exist to punish law-breakers but to inspire the law-abiding; they provide a template for how we want to live.

Chestbursters vs. Engineers

Like many, I found the sequence in which the new Ripley gives herself a Caesarian to be the best and truest to form. The magic of the original Alien movie was largely the alien in all its unsubtle sexuality. That is, the species will or drive for self-preservation programmed into all life.

Yes, the movie Prometheus is about creation, but, like its predecessors, its strongest when the creation being interrogated is literal, carnal. The Engineers are decorative, alabaster figures carved into the exterior of a vessel for serving up black goo. Its strongest theological argument is ontological.

Mad Men 2013

About 15 years ago I saw Tyler Brule, then just two years into Wallpaper, give a presentation that would forever change my understanding of art and commerce. He explained how Wallpaper was cajoling its clients into letting the magazine’s art team redo their ads so that these would play better as facing pages to the editorial.

I wonder if, say for the final season of Mad Men, AMC’s clients could be talked into having their creative redone to match the time period depicted in the series. (For example, the early 1970s.) Would it make those spots all the more talked about, noticed, viral?

Tapas are a delicious and nutritious reason to distrust Libertarians.

Spanish tapas are said to have been invented in the 13th century when the Spanish king Alfonso X The Wise required that all bars serve a plate of cold cuts along with every glass of wine. (The word “tapas” means “covers” as in a small plate of food which covers the glass of alcohol with which it is consumed.)

Alfonso’s alleged goal was public health: preventing the over-intoxication of workers who might otherwise go drinking on an empty stomach – and/or preventing insects from entering cups, etc. In other words, the evolution of one of the world’s best foods (cf. El Bulli) might be traced back to a law which regulates the consumption of drugs. (i.e., Alfonsocare.)

Whether apocryphal or not, the fact that this story endures suggests it has resonated for many generations of Spaniards. That the story is older than the Council of Trent makes it not unlike religious teachings: it is true enough.

In Spain, at least, laws that regulate commerce have fostered innovation and improved public health. Libertarians are right to point out the idiocy of laws that impede innovation in the marketplace. But they’re foolish to insist that all laws do so.

The new co-viewing. Same as the old.

Television sets often determine the layout of the furniture in communal rooms. Their position in the typical American home is a clear testament to their social function, a purpose that can be traced back to the origins of theater and other communal rituals.

Television programmers have always been involved in family and/or group dynamics. Successful programmers must not only persuade individual viewers to watch a show, they must also win over the viewer’s family and/or co-habitants. (This network often extends to peers and friends but it’s unlikely to exclude the home.)

This inherently social context is not solely a function of the linearity of traditional television – the fact that it is distributed at set times with an emphasis on those times when most viewers are available (i.e., “prime time.”)

Non-linear or video on demand is also, in its own way, a very social practice. In order for a “web video” to become popular, it must be shared by its viewers. Thus, even though such programs are often consumed by a solitary individual on a personal device (computer, tablet, smart phone), they are still dependent on group dynamics for their success.

Thus, whether programming a linear or non-linear channel, the programmer must consider the social role of the experience – how it will be presented by one viewer to another, how it will impact their relationships, how it will be used – for it to reach its maximal audience.