My First Munich Concert

A little weird, but most of weirdness was probably due to the setting: three large recording studio halls in the office building a major German broadcasting company. Along with indie hip-hop, pop, and sad-bastard music (not my term), coat checking, ear-plug dispensers, and wurst were apart of the offerings.

Beer? Surely beer was to be kept on the outside and not in the studio halls with parquet flooring and delicate acoustical wall installations. I would be wrong. In a combination of perhaps strong social responsibility and a stronger Bavarian beer culture, Helles and Pilz were indeed plentiful inside the studio halls. I even caught an ephemeral whiff or two of hops' botanical cousin.

But the "laid-back" lifestyle that Bavarians' proudly claim came with a few twists. Dress code is what I would label Business Concert: smart, conservative, and polished all too well. The clean shaven outnumbered the growthers. Dancing was limited to the first 2-5 rows of people. Average age, to be conservative 30, but probably closer to 35. Even at the midnight shows, there were a few silver heads in the audience. Party on!

By far the highlight of the festival was Dan le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip. With a bottle of goon in his left hand (which he shared a couple times with a tall blond in the audience by pouring some in her outstretched wine glass) and a mic in another, Scroobious Pip performed for an audience willing to get down.

From what I can tell, Dan le Sac is the beat maker/vocalist and Scroobius Pip is the MC. Pip is something of a MC Moses with a long, antediluvian-style beard and even has his own "Thall Shall Nots", directing that "Thou shall Always Kill" (He is advocating killing in a metaphorical sense, not literal.).

After one particularly somber song concluded a few concert-goers let out a few "Whoos." Pip responded, "You must be fans of teenage suicide," which was a theme in the song.

Their album can be downloaded on iTunes. Here are a couple of his videos: The Beat that my Heart Skipped and Letter from God (for the Radiohead fans).

Neoconservatives: the power of myth

In a few weeks, the Neoconservative administration will end, leaving behind a chaotic domestic and foreign state of affairs. In particular, its economic and foreign policy has wrecked havoc on millions of lives. I won't discuss the economic side (which the NeoCon philosophy and solution to all problems are free markets, free markets, and more free markets), but a good introduction to NeoCon going-ons and how it lead to the current financial meltdown can be found here.

In foreign affairs, what has been the single most dangerous characteristic of NeoCon thought is the ends justify almost any means. That is, they are so sure that their agenda and goals are on the side of righteousness, that the most any means are justified. Sounds a bit of the ole Al Qaeda.

Specifically, both have wielded a powerful, but dangerous combination of fear and religion to gain influence through narratives which exaggerate or contradict the truth in order to progress their respective agendas. The importance of these ancient and fundamental components of human psychology (fear and religion), is explained in A History of Civilizations:

Dictating a society's attitudes, guiding its choice, confirming it prejudices and directing its actions, this very much a fact of civilization. Far more than the accidents or the historical and social circumstance of a period, it derives from the distant past, from ancient beliefs, fears and anxieties which are almost unconscious—an immense contamination whose germs are lost to memory but transmitted from generation to generation. A society’s reaction to the events of the day, to the pressures upon it, to the decisions it must face, are less a matter of logic or even self-interests than the response to an unexpressed and often inexpressible compulsion arising from the collective unconscious.

I submit the NeoCons and Al Qaeda have been two of the most effective groups directing the collective unconscious of their respective societies. In the age of instantaneous, omnipresent media, moreover, reactions to the events of the day can be shaped and formed, even superseding the immense contamination of germs lost to memory if desired.

In 3 one-hour segments, Adam Curtis’ The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear explores the history of both the NeoCons and Al Qaeda. His insight show how both groups parallel each other in fundamental ways.

In watching The Power of Nightmares, I was astonished at my ignorance of the history of radical Islam. Why is this history ignored in the constant babble of news media? To progress on "the war on terror" sans brute force it is a history we must be familiar with. Without it, it will be impossible to make policy decisions based on sound facts, rather than provocative narratives.

The Power of Nightmares can be seen on Google Video.

Second First Post

I started this blog last year and let it wallow into oblivion. Its back. I promise to post at least once a week, partially in proxy of communicating with friends and family back in the US, which I am terrible at. The second-first post is political, but most of the topics will be lighter in nature including music, health, science, anyone who would like to guest blog. So without further ado...