Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I don't know how many of you have been following the EU rulings on Microsoft's allegedly monopolistic business practices. I didn't really understand the concept of “anti-trust” (basically where the government allows an open market, but then steps in to “penalize” to stop monopolies from happening), so I've been doing some reading on it.

One of the things that it's based on is the evidence that you need at least ten solid companies in a given market in order to ensure enough competition to keep the economy favouring the consumer — with less than ten companies, you fairly quickly have one company (or a small number of companies) gain dominance, and then enough market share to snowball into a monopoly… and when that happens, the consumer is the disadvantaged party, as they no longer have an influence on pricing, options, and so on (the monopoly or pseudo-monopoly holds it).

OK, that's pretty obvious and I assume it makes sense to everyone.

Now apply it to democracy.

When you have two or three political parties, when you think about them as “businesses” who “sell” ideas to the voters (their consumers in effect), you realize something scary. Over the past few hundred years, we've come up with some solid and workable models of democracy, but then watched them devolve into pseudo-monopolies which are fundamentally unable to offer competition, “difference” in belief, or service to the consumer/voter.

To be clear — because we've allowed it to degrade into a monopoly or pseudo-monopoly (where there are choices, but they're tightly clustered, and the majority of power players are overlapping — politics in virtually every Western nation), it doesn't work any more… Well, government works for government, I suppose… but government does not work for the people under the model of democracy we've allowed to happen.

Of course, Italians may disagree with me.

PS. Just as a general reminder, if you spam on IAM (posting promotions for various things in unrelated forums, mass-broadcasting ads or promotions via IM, or even just posting entry after entry to stay on the front page), you will get blocked and/or removed from those functions/forums (or IAM).

I've been thinking a bit about heroes this morning, partially on account of having watched part of 1978's Superman again. The trend in modern films is of course the anti-hero, so instead of watching stories about good versus evil, we watch stories about different factions of evil battling for control of hell — aptly echoed in modern American politics in this upcoming election. I almost think that modern story telling and modern politics deserve each other (and maybe created each other).

The scene in Superman when Jonathan Kent dies always makes me sad… Maybe I'm crazy or behind the times, but I really believe in working hard, doing the right thing, and helping others. Why do so few people seem to believe in truth, justice, and the American* way? The idea has almost become farcical — you'd have to be some kind of “silly idealist” to behave like that (or even a “hippy” or whatever derisive term is in vogue)… Of course, Superman was always painted as a nerdy Dudley-Do-Right type character, so maybe I'm just blabbing about nothing.

In any case, when I'm watching a movie or otherwise being told a piece of mythology, I want to look up to my heroes — I don't want to relate to them or identify with them, or think they're “cool” because they're bad-ass in some way. I want them to represent goodness. I want them to be good. That's the whole point, at least from my point of view — the purpose of storytelling should be to guide humanity to goodness, not just carnal entertainment (not that there's not space for a little lust — the Bible's got tons of sex in it of course).

In my own weird way, I suppose that's why I've kept slogging at BME the way I do instead of running it like a “real business” like I probably should… because I believe that body modification can help people find that good in their lives and I feel I have a duty to help on account of having been at the right time at the right place to start the site (and having been helped by it myself).

“0 truant muse, what shall be thy
amends for thy neglect of truth
in beauty dy'd?”

The sad thing is that if you look at the mythologies of dying cultures — examine the artwork and literature of the Roman empire (given the technology of the time, a far more successful empire politically than what we have now), you see the same trends and themes playing out… Basically for most of human history storytelling has been about “goodness” — but when societies collapse and become corrupt and disillusioned, they start churning out artwork that upholds depravity as worthy of great tales — perhaps an attempt to justify the decay in the society itself. The Nazis were right to point out the dangers in degenerate art, but I'm not entirely convinced they understood the issues either since their own end product was fundamentally unsustainable.

What people don't “get” is that “goodness” comes from inside people, a single person at a time — it's why American Transcendentalism was such a pure and beautiful movement. Goodness not an artificial construct or an “addition” to truth. “Evil” is a mistake, a lie. “Good” is the natural state. So why so much evil? Maybe it's as simple as original sin. Humans are fucked up, but luckily we're smart enough to overcome that. Why do human babies cry so much more than puppies wimper? Because humans have designed a life of misery, and it takes babies a few years to build up the tolerance. The Inuit believe that if a child cries, it is universally the parents' fault, but maybe that's a primitive idea? Well, God's calling and I've got an Ark to build. See y'all after the flood.

Vade retro, Earthgirl! I know you don't really exist.

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