Conversations With Ben #5: King Canute Vs. The 80s

Hard as it may be to believe, I edit theses conversations before posting them here. You may well be wishing I'd edit them even more, but as with everything else that goes on this blog, the reader I have in mind is always myself. That anyone else bothers to read it, or better yet comment on it, is a constant source of wonder for me.

Anyway, Ben was recommending I watched the Night Stalker documentary on Netflix and I was explaining to him that Louise won't watch stuff inspired by true murderers since she saw the movie Zodiac and it really freaked her out. Although she did watch David Tennant playing Dennis Nilsen...

Ben: Des was good.

Rol: Des was good because it wasn't about catching him, but about his general attitude towards being caught. A different angle. I quite liked White House Farm too, but then I'm happy with anything set in the golden days of the 80s before technology ruined the earth.

Oh, the 80s where electricity still hadn't been invented. And those people who needed two different prescriptions for their eyes can get stuffed because bifocals hadn't been invented yet.

We had VHS and Betamax. And National Health glasses. That was enough.

You guys were still super hyped about the wheel back then, huh?

And let's be clear. It's not technology that's ruined the earth. It's the way capitalism has utilised technology that has ruined the earth.

Blaming capitalism for everything is an excuse. Human beings invented capitalism. It's us who are to blame.

No. You, I and most of the population have fuck all in common with those that profited during the mercantile switch period, from feudalism in to capitalism.

You, I and most of the population had no choice but to engage with this system.

It is not to blame as though nothing is solvable, it is to show that as an economic, social and cultural system, it does nothing but destroys in the favour of an absolute minimum group.

You're like King Canute telling the sea not to come in... 

It abuses the very essence of human nature. And I'm not talking about the neoliberal idea of human nature that was propagated since the 1970s of humans as solo creatures and Individualism. The human nature of fulfillment through labouring for your own need.

Pissing in the wind...

I know you're winding me up and this is the one way I bite every time.

And I hate it.

Because I'm pretty sure you're further left leaning than you admit in here.

I admire your principles. I just don't have any fight left.

Well, a big part of my job is arguing about these things.

"Stop bringing your work home..."

Took me ages to find this, but it seemed appropriate...

(You have to listen past the singing to the talky bit that starts mid-way through... I'm not sure Ben did, so he probably missed the point of my directing him to this song... but such is the nature of our communication.)