“Going harpoon fishing together and sharing the Samos wine created a deep sense of fellow-feeling. On the boat back, they realised that they knew each other only by their Christian names and, wishing to exchange addresses, discovered to their amazement that they worked in the same factory, the one as technical director, the other as nightwatchman.”
…is usually harboured by individuals [and] is stabilised by the norm. Moreover, it is sustained by institutions:
“Society creates the institutions and organs with which it influences aesthetic value through regulation or evaluation of art works. Among those institutions are art criticism, expertise, artistic training (including art schools and institutions whose goal is the cultivation of passive contemplation), the marketing of art works and its advertising, surveys to determine the most valuable of art, art shows, museums, public libraries, competitions, prizes, academies and frequently, censorship.”
Jan Mukaŕovský
“Semiology [is] the study of signs and signals, the symbols, gestures and messages through which western society sustains, sells, identifies and yet obscures itself by painting or powdering over its raddled, whore-like visage…Barthes’ purpose is to tear away masks and demystify the signs, signals and symbols of the language of mass culture.”
Dennis Potter,
The Times
Change Happens
They Keep Moving The Cheese
Anticipate Change
Get Ready For the Cheese To Move
Monitor Change
Smell The Cheese Often So You
Know When It Is Getting Old
Adapt To Change Quickly
The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese,
The Sooner You can Enjoy New Cheese
Change
Move With The Cheese
Enjoy Change!
Savour The Adventure And Enjoy
The Taste Of New Cheese!
Be Ready To Change Quickly
And Enjoy It Again & Again
They Keep Moving The Cheese
“Who Moved My Cheese?” Dr Spencer Johnson, (1998)
“Life is no straight and easy corridor along
which we travel free and unhampered,
but a maze of passages,
through which we must seek our way,
lost and confused, now and again
checked in a blind alley.But always, if we have faith,
a door will open for us,
not perhaps one that we ourselves
would ever have thought of,
but one that will ultimately
prove good for us.”
A.J. Cronin
“Who Moved My Cheese?” Spencer Johnson (1998)
We do a lot of looking: we look through lenses, telescopes, television tubes… Our looking is perfected every day–but we see less and less. Never has it been more urgent to speak of seeing… we are on-lookers, spectators… “subjects” we are, that look at “objects.” Quickly we stick labels on all that is, labels that stick once–and for all. by these labels we recognize everything but no longer see anything.
Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing
This we know.
All things are connected
like the blood
which unites our family…Whatever befalls the earth
befalls the sons and daughter’s of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life
he is mereley a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web
he does to himself.
-Chief ‘Seattle’
“Only a life lived for others,
is a life worth while.…Try not to become a man of success,
but rather to become a man of value.”
- Einstein
La terre est couverte de gens qui ne méritent pas qu’on leur parle. (“The earth swarms with people who are not worth talking to”).
“Humans rarely smile without having some robust reason to do so.”
First attempt at talking to a computer:
“They can use a pair naira I did not say pair and unleaded notes a panda didn’t know is that have been an UA piece of rock and share the boys training.”
“Today all persons, however humble, know they have had every chance… If they have been labelled ‘dunce’ repeatedly they cannot any longer pretend… Are they not bound to recognise that they have inferior status, not as in the past because they were denied opportunity, but because they are inferior?”
Michael Young, The Rise of Meritocracy (London, 1958).
Steven Heller:
“Advertising is a tool of capitalism, a con that persuades an unwitting public to consume and consume again. Graphic design, by contrast, is an aesthetic and philosophical pursuit that communicates ideas. Advertising is cultural exploitation that transforms creative expression into crass propaganda”.
Creative Review Feb 2005
It requires but a short leap of imagination to make the assumption that “extreme good conduct” and an assortment of virtues must lie behind the acquisition of cupboards full of linen shirts, fleets of yachts, myriad mansions and jewels.
The very concept status symbol, a costly material object that confers respect upon its owner, rests upon the widespread and not improbable notion that the acquisition of the most expensive goods must inevitably demand the greatest of all qualities of character.
For those made most anxious or embittered by the ideals of their own societies, the history of status, even crudely outlined, cannot but reveal a basic and inspiring point; ideals are not set in stone. Status value have long been, and in the future may again be, subject to alteration, through politics.
By waging political battle, different groups may always attempt to transform the honour systems of their communities and win dignity for themselves over the opposition of those with a stake in the prior arrangement. Through a ballet box, a gun, a strike, or sometimes even a book, these factions will strive to redirect their societies’ notions of who is rightfully owed the privileges that accompany ‘high status’.
Gemma and tutor Simon discussing work:
Gemma: “I’m confused”.
Simon: “Good, then we are starting to get somewhere”.
