Portrait of Slavoj Žižek by Luca Del Baldo (his other work is amazing, too)

Look what you’re missing if you’re not at Occupy Wall Street! This occurred on Sunday.

I’m going to NYC in a little over a week and I cannot wait to see what’s going on in Zuccotti Park with my own eyes. How awesome would it be to see Slavoj Žižek just show up and speak?

Via AlterNet:

The latest in a long parade of intellectuals, celebrities, pop stars and all types of creative people to visit the occupation down at Liberty Plaza was Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Zizek. 

Zizek addressed the crowd through the “People’s Mic,” standing above the crowd and limiting his words to short phrases that were easily repeated by the crowd. “The problem is the system,” he told the protesters.

“Carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after, when we will have to return to normal life. Will there be any changes then? I don’t want you to remember these days you know, like ‘oh, we were young, it was beautiful.’ Remember that our basic message is ‘We are allowed to think about alternatives.’”

It’s a holiday today, right? If you live in the NY metro area (or you’re near the train lines in NJ or CT), today is probably a great day to go and show your support.

Can you imagine being a Berliner who stayed home when the wall fell? Don’t be a lazy idiot, this is fucking history in the making. Go support Occupy Wall Street today!

And if you are not convinced, then READ THIS and I’ll bet at least a few of you who were on the fence will go after that…
 

 
Part II is after the jump…

 
Steve Jobs 1955-2011.

A fine reminder of Steve Jobs’ passion, enthusiasm, vision and thought, from his key note speech during the introduction of the Apple IIc at the Moscone Center, in April, 1984.
 

 
You can grab a larger version here.

Previously on Dangerous Minds
George Carlin on why we should Occupy Wall Street

Via Redditor minus000

 
In the video below shot a few days before the 1968 Democratic National Convention, radical prankster Abbie Hoffman discusses guerrilla theater, drugs, sex and the role of humor as a tool for shaking up the status quo. Dissidence with a touch of Dada.

While the shit is hitting the fan it’s always good to have a sense of the absurd to keep things in perspective.

“Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger.”

Much of the tone of the current Occupy Wall Street movement, with it’s colorful signs, face paint, freak flags, costumes and optimism in the face of so much opposition, can be traced to the Sixties provocations and theater of Hoffman, Jerry Ruben, The MC5, Ed Sanders, Paul Krassner, Allen Ginsberg, Dana Beal and the Youth International Party.

While Abbie showed us that political activism could have a playful side and that yippie tactics could be an effective means to grab headlines, releasing word viruses that could fuck with the status quo, he was also wise in his grasp of political realities:

Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit. When all today’s isms have become yesterday’s ancient philosophy, there will still be reactionaries and there will still be revolutionaries. No amount of rationalization can avoid the moment of choice each of us brings to our situation here on the planet. I still believe in the fundamental injustice of the profit system and do not accept the proposition there will be rich and poor for all eternity.

Become an internationalist and learn to respect all life. Make war on machines. And in particular the sterile machines of corporate death and the robots that guard them.

Being a revolutionary isn’t just about talking a good game, it’s also about showing the world what freedom loving human beings are capable of: a robust passion for life and a deep respect for humanity and the earth we stand on.

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”
― John Lennon

When people discount the role the Sixties play in contemporary attitudes about politics, sex, the environment and human rights, I say open your gawdammed eyes and take a look around. The press, pundits and people in general are comparing the OWS movement to the radical uprisings of the Sixties for good reason - they arise out of the same basic impulse toward justice and freedom….and something innate in all humans: the desire to fuck with authority.

With their limited frames of reference, I keep hearing people referring to the OWS protesters as hippies. Well, I guess we’re all hippies now. Pass the patchouli. Yippee!
 

 
So I’ve been trying to sum up how I feel about Occupy Wall Street and the media coverage (or non-coverage) of the demonstrations the last few days, when I found this clip and realised that one of the most brilliant poets of the last hundred years had already summed it up perfectly. Of course.

I was gonna say that the oldstream media has been over for me since 2000, when I saw some peaceful protests badly misreported on TV and in the papers. I wanted to mention how my obsession with this summer’s “Murdochgate” sprang from a desire to see the established news channels I detest so much crumble, to lose all respect with their audience through their refusal to cover a story with such huge significance. I’ve been struggling to express how we don’t need validation through a mainstream that has always ignored us or deliberately misrepresented us, that people shouldn’t worry too much, the message is getting out there loud and clear.

But fuck it. Gil Scott Heron beat me to the punch (hard) thirty years ago. 

This incredible recording of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (as a spoken monologue with no music and some ad libs) is from 1982. It was performed at the Black Wax Club in Washington DC, as part of a documentary film on Scott Heron called Black Wax. His voice is a thing of rich, easy-going beauty but his words are like dynamite. Yeah, the times and technology may have changed, but this is still so prescient and just so damn relevant it’s amazing.

Gil Scott Heron died only four short months ago, and it’s a real pity he can’t be around now to see the people of his home town out on their streets and taking direct action, how he can’t be there himself to rally the crowds with this incredible monologue and share his no doubt sharp-as-a-pin insights into politics and society. It’s true - sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone. But we DO still have this recording, and I hope that everyone, including all the people involved with the protests in New York, gets to hear it.

Because the revolution will NOT be televised.

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE LIVE.
 

You see, a lot of time people see battles and skirmishes on TV and they say
“aha the revolution is being televised”. Nah.
The results of the revolution are being televised.

The first revolution is when you change your mind about how you look at things, and see there might be another way to look at it that you have not been shown.
What you see later on is the results of that, but that revolution, that change that takes place will not be televised.

After the jump “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (Black Wax monologue) transcribed, plus footage from the fantastic Gil Scott Heron “Black Wax” documentary/live film.

 
They first met through a love of theater, at a production of The Flies. It drew them together, this collective experience towards a creative good. And then, of course, their love of literature and writing, and during the war through the Resistance, and endless conversations in the cafes, which later became famous through association with their names. Jean-Paul Sartre was the leader. Albert Camus the talented writer, a leader in waiting.

Though close, there were early signs of division - Sartre knew Camus was the better writer, something he would never acknowledge publicly - and when the war finished, it wasn’t long for their friendship to fail.

Against the background of Cold War tensions and the threat of nuclear war between East and West, Sartre took the side of the Soviet Union, while Camus said he was on “the side of life”.

“I’m against a new war. To revolt today means to revolt against war.”

But it was Sartre’s blind acceptance of Russia’s concentration camps that proved too much for Camus. He wanted Sartre to denounce them, in the same way they had once denounced the German concentration camps. Sartre refused.

This led Camus to question the idea of rebellion and revolution, in particular the value of the Russian revolution, this at a time when writers on the Left held it up as the socialist dream.

In The Rebel Camus wrote:

‘In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself.

“In contemplating the results in an act of rebellion we shall have to ask ourselves each time if it remains faithful to its first noble promise or whether it forgets its purpose and plunges into a mire of tyranny and servitude.

“In Absurdist experience suffering is individual, but from the moment that a movement of rebellion begins, suffering is seen as a collective experience, as the experience of everyone. Therefore the first step towards a mind overwhelmed by the absurdity of things is to realize that this feeling, this strangeness is shared by all men, and the entire human race suffers from a division between itself and the rest of the world.”

Camus’ intention with The Rebel was to change accepted ideas about rebellion, with a new concept of questioning revolutionary action. For many it was too abstract and too damaging to the communist cause.

Sartre, therefore, decided something had to be done to redress Camus’ apparent attack on Soviet Communism, and by implication all communist belief, and he organized a damning and high-handed response. It proved to be a devastating blow to Camus.

While Sartre could separate the world of ideas from his personal friendship, Camus could not. He believed friendship was essential, and depended on his friends like the strong camaraderie shared by a theater company. Camus believed friendship united people together in the struggle for a better world. He therefore saw Sartre’s actions as the worst kind of betrayal, and it finished their friendship.

This is a short but fascinating extract examining the friendship between Camus and Sartre.
 

 
David Simon, creator of The Wire and Treme, gives a sobering assessment of the future of America in these powerful clips from a 2007 talk at Loyola College.

Simon feels we’re headed for separate Americas, where the “haves” exploit the “have-nots,” and where human beings will lose their value. He faults “raw, unencumbered Capitalism” for making our country numb to the plight of the most vulnerable among us. America makes the wrong choices every time, he says, and unless we change, Simon predicts “we are doomed.”

The man is a genius, and as a writer and journalist, he’s explored the very darkest corners of our fraying “civilization”—trust me, this is really worth listening to… Keep in mind as you watch that this was recorded a year before the world economy did a belly-flop on concrete.
 

 
More of David Simon on the end of the American empire after the jump…

 
Noam Chomsky sends a “strong message of support” to the organizers of the Occupy Wall Street protests:

“Anyone with eyes open knows that the gangsterism of Wall Street — financial institutions generally — has caused severe damage to the people of the United States (and the world). And should also know that it has been doing so increasingly for over 30 years, as their power in the economy has radically increased, and with it their political power. That has set in motion a vicious cycle that has concentrated immense wealth, and with it political power, in a tiny sector of the population, a fraction of 1%, while the rest increasingly become what is sometimes called “a precariat” — seeking to survive in a precarious existence. They also carry out these ugly activities with almost complete impunity — not only too big to fail, but also “too big to jail.”

The courageous and honorable protests underway in Wall Street should serve to bring this calamity to public attention, and to lead to dedicated efforts to overcome it and set the society on a more healthy course.”

Professor Chomsky, along with John Pilger, Michael Albert, Johann Hari and Robert McChesney. will be appearing at the Rebellious Media conference in London on October 8th and 9th. Tickets can be purchased at www.radicalmediaconference.org

 
Oh that this were true…

Utah-based maverick filmmaker Trent Harris, who we recently covered on Dangerous Minds when we posted about his cult film The Beaver Trilogy, shot this forthright interview with psychedelic guru Timothy Leary in 1978, still railing against the powers that be even after his time spent in federal prison.
 

 
NBC-Universal Entertainment’s Lauren Zalaznick, head of cable’s Bravo network, delivered this brilliant, thought-provoking talk at TED Women on the ways television mirrors our national psyche. In it, she discusses the findings of an unusual study that correlated five decades’ worth of data about what we were watching with what was going on around us in a larger societal sense.

Zalaznick is someone who obviously must think a hell of a lot about these matters, yet the peanut gallery on YouTube has been unkind to her thesis, as if she was presenting it as hard science, which she’s not. Yes, there’s a fair amount of educated conjecture going on here, but there are a lot of valid directions she opens up that research like this could take. I, for one, found this talk fascinating (It would make a great book, too).