adamz24's review
3.0
We throw our money away. Even worse, we use it to contribute to our own mental degradation by consumer culture and our own slow, numb intellectual and emotional deaths. We line the pockets of the rich on a daily basis while letting the poor starve to death.
And I think most of us know on some level that we do this a lot and know on some level that it's real stupid. It's even evil. Spend $40 less a month on shit you don't need and don't even really want and you can give an entire village running water for that month. Since we are now capable of assisting others in not withering, dehydrating to death, dying of curable diseases, this seems to me not far ethically from standing right there in front of the person and not doing anything to ease their suffering. Plus you're doing it with a cup of overpriced shitty coffee in your hand. You're doing it with that fucking tablet in hand that you didn't need to buy just because your laptop was a little too fucking heavy. You're doing it so you can have seemingly five billion goddamn channels on your TV on which you can watch various shows in which people bid on forsaken storage lockers. I think most of us know this.
But we still throw our money away by spending it on shitty overpriced food and beverages and worst of all on various ways of paying to be part of the lowest common denominator. If not on mainstream bullshit than on 'alternative' bullshit. Capitalism's darkest success: convincing outsiders with the potential for free thought they can be good little consumers too! We are told what to do and we do it, genuine sheep that we are. These aren't just the usual suspects doing this. It's plenty of smart folk who should know better, too.
But if you're not going to send those $s someplace that really needs it, if you're okay with pretending that you're not standing around and watching somebody die, at least learn that your $s can be spent on something that has real value.
I spent $5 on Blues for Cannibals. I spend $5 so frequently on utter and complete garbage. A lot of the book doesn't work. A lot of it is not too compelling. When Bowden's prose is not the non-fiction equivalent of McCarthy, it can be embarrassing. But this book contains one of the most majestic essays I've encountered. "Torch Song." It is about violence and desire. It covers Bowden's time covering the sex crimes beat. It is graphic and brutal but it is not exploitative. It is not sensationalistic. It is writing of the finest kind. Brilliant prose communicating real empathy for the victims and confronting the darkest of what humans are capable of. Really confronting it, not shying away from it as we do with soft language and weak minds. It is not "sexual assault" when a woman is raped to death. It is not "molestation" when a five year old has gonorrhea of the mouth after being raped by an adult male. Bowden has given us what we need to read and not what we want to. It is enlightening and it is sublime and it is terrifying.
This is real education. This is what $5 can buy you.
And I think most of us know on some level that we do this a lot and know on some level that it's real stupid. It's even evil. Spend $40 less a month on shit you don't need and don't even really want and you can give an entire village running water for that month. Since we are now capable of assisting others in not withering, dehydrating to death, dying of curable diseases, this seems to me not far ethically from standing right there in front of the person and not doing anything to ease their suffering. Plus you're doing it with a cup of overpriced shitty coffee in your hand. You're doing it with that fucking tablet in hand that you didn't need to buy just because your laptop was a little too fucking heavy. You're doing it so you can have seemingly five billion goddamn channels on your TV on which you can watch various shows in which people bid on forsaken storage lockers. I think most of us know this.
But we still throw our money away by spending it on shitty overpriced food and beverages and worst of all on various ways of paying to be part of the lowest common denominator. If not on mainstream bullshit than on 'alternative' bullshit. Capitalism's darkest success: convincing outsiders with the potential for free thought they can be good little consumers too! We are told what to do and we do it, genuine sheep that we are. These aren't just the usual suspects doing this. It's plenty of smart folk who should know better, too.
But if you're not going to send those $s someplace that really needs it, if you're okay with pretending that you're not standing around and watching somebody die, at least learn that your $s can be spent on something that has real value.
I spent $5 on Blues for Cannibals. I spend $5 so frequently on utter and complete garbage. A lot of the book doesn't work. A lot of it is not too compelling. When Bowden's prose is not the non-fiction equivalent of McCarthy, it can be embarrassing. But this book contains one of the most majestic essays I've encountered. "Torch Song." It is about violence and desire. It covers Bowden's time covering the sex crimes beat. It is graphic and brutal but it is not exploitative. It is not sensationalistic. It is writing of the finest kind. Brilliant prose communicating real empathy for the victims and confronting the darkest of what humans are capable of. Really confronting it, not shying away from it as we do with soft language and weak minds. It is not "sexual assault" when a woman is raped to death. It is not "molestation" when a five year old has gonorrhea of the mouth after being raped by an adult male. Bowden has given us what we need to read and not what we want to. It is enlightening and it is sublime and it is terrifying.
This is real education. This is what $5 can buy you.
More...