There is a segregation growing between the presumed supporters and detractors of the ‘Occupation’ movement that has spread across the Western World and beyond in the last eight weeks. While in the beginning, the discussion was slow, weak and pitiful, public discourse has come to assume a discourse on the matter. Opinions are split straight through various groups of friends and families from all sorts of class backgrounds.
However, there is still the question as to what the driving force, motivation and endgame of the action is or will be. It would seem that this is the driving force behind the debate as well. The restricted publicity obtained by OWS, or even our very own Occupy Dame Street, leads you to believe that the participants have no clue what they are talking about. The parameters are set cleverly surrounding the isolated freak that has gathered the attention of the crowd by somehow managing to place his ideological foot firmly up his own ass and has then pulled it from his mouth. Make no mistake about it then, there are people out there who are simply caught up in the flux of empathetic activism. That being said, I really do not know one person who has not at one time or another. However, there exists, somewhere out in that maelstrom of heated hyperbole and graphic designs, groups of highly dedicated and intelligent folk. People who have researched their hatred, people who have worked in the industry itself and people who are simply tired and enraged by current fiscal weather conditions.
Moreover, what can be found personally curious, and at some points enraging, is the idea that a group or individual could find this activism corruptive, disgusting, counter-productive, or even pathetic. In terms of a pessimistic segregation of opinion, I find it increasingly difficult to see how people can view this action as empirically wrong? In the U.S. people are inherently divided as almost a direct result of their adolescent historical narrative coupled with their bewildering reliance on a strictly partisan political system. This can be seen as a simplistic reason as to why debate across the pond often seeps into the cracks of nearly every single mundane little opinion, operation or semantic of life. Given this idea, it is easy to see how their national discussions can sometimes slip hard and fast into perceptive obscurity. In this sense, the OWS movement was never going to be able to avoid the partisan divide, let alone even hope for a bi-partisan following (although there does exist an intersection). In Ireland, however, it is reasonably uncommon for something of this nature to cause even a blip on controversy’s scale. For all intents and purposes, we seem to be always caught between action and apathy.
We catch on late, usually after the bandwagon has cruised by, even if at an alarmingly slow speed. Nevertheless, we are on this wagon for good or ill. My opinion certainly wasn’t asked for, but here it is anyway. This movement, although misguided in places, is a good thing. Holistically benevolent in its desires and homeopathic in its achievements. A small drop of this highly diluted substance can, and will, alter things over the course of time. Sure, to some it may seem like a whitewash of ‘Useless Idiots’ and bullshit, but the people who think this generally have more in common with misinformed protestors than they thought. The majority of ‘nay-sayers’ and fiscal whore-mongers either retain sub-prime information on the situation at hand, or are delightfully blinded by the “inherent beauties of the free market”. As the bonuses stack up it must be very hard to stand behind the mountain range of veritably shocking evidence that weighs against the financial services industry. In one respect, it would be admissible to point out the large scale monetary corruptions at the heart of academic business and economics. Even within some Business Ethics courses, the department heads have been found to be holding various positions that would espouse even the simplest definitions of a conflict of interest. These positions, for the most part, never end up on their C.V.’s but hide in obscurity as they are called ‘advisors’ and ‘consultants.’ But then there is an “internal logic” to this system; a descriptive morality for a poorly regulated market that lets the key players either set the parameters or petition the governmental powers to tweak the necessary boarders, all the while the margins grow thinner and thinner and eventually their customers begin to fall off the financial service’s bandwagon of unrestricted and inexplicable profit. Similarly, the misinformed occupier will be astute in his/her proclamation that all banks are bad. When asked why the Occupy Dame Street (ODS) movement had taken residence outside the Central Bank a man responded, “Well…because it’s a bank…” This ambiguously broad response perpetuates the infuriating reaction to the protest as a whole and, in most respects, can be recognised as the same brand of over-generalised reactionary nonsense illustrated by those that would see the protest as “pathetic.”
The responsibility to inform oneself as accurately as possible before endeavouring on such a worthy cause has not taken solid roots yet among some of the protestors. Yet, what is there is an idea that what they are doing is right; that there is something holistically and vehemently correct about their desires. Understandably, some are so blinded by the news of bailouts, crashes, austerity measures, E.U. emergency meetings, Moody’s/S&P’s ratings, and the figurative collapse of the Eurozone that it can seem like a relentless snuff film. This snow-blindness seems to cause an instinctual reaction; a collective and overtly negative reaction to a problem that can come across as being too complex for them to bother their time with. But Goddamnit, I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore! The majority of this media consumption is fortunate for people and some of us only see the reflection of this crumbling result of corporate greed and financial instability as just that: a reflection across screens, tabloids and broadsheets. A mirror image of the destructive force wielded by man’s own insatiable thirst for more at the cost of stability. And of course, this reflection blinds the left side of this hypothetical segregation to the almost hyperbolic amount of information that can be accessed on the subject. Just as the bonuses, incentives and thirst for monetary ascension blind the other side of this divide, so too does the blistering bewilderment of financial cacophony tarnish the will power of those who would speak out against the fiscal inequality at hand.
Nonetheless, this is the excavation of an inequality. The numbers and percentages may be exaggerated and hyperbolised for slogans and posters but the fact remains that this is the negative externality of the antics across the financial sector over the last 20 years. We were sold the idea that money could literally be created in an exponential fashion because we were sold the initial ideological product that the markets were sound and stable. As it turns out, this was and is not the case. An entire civilisation has been cognitively colonised to perceive capitalism and its affiliates as an ideological constant; unbiased and concrete. However, while the ideal may be an inhuman system bereft of the capability to directly harm, it simultaneously offers a playground for some of the most dangerous and inevitable human attributes: arrogance and greed. Thus, this is an esoteric colonial power that seems to require purging. I support the Occupation wholeheartedly, but this will be a segregation that is fore-grounded on the streets and won in perception. The ideology is the coloniser perpetuated by those who have sought to wreak their thirst for cash on global finances. It is wrapped in hypocrisies, oxymoronic economic languages and cognitive paradoxes that are in some ways set up to distract the public from the darker side of this perception. But ideologies can change, and change they will.
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Over the past several weeks a movement has targeted “the hearts and minds” of an entire culture while systematically refraining from stimulating the grotesque urges of the mass media’s pantomime. Riots have broken out in select cities but either as the result of unjustified police brutality or continuing complex austerity measures in Europe. Certainly, there is an ideologue handle from all angles: The “1%” wish to handle their image throughout the corporately owned or controlled media facets, in the face of the conscientiously well-behaved “99%”. All the while the internet, bloggers, independent (pinch-of-salt required) media enclaves, and thus the public are perpetually framing and reframing the movement and its immediate ramifications. Therefore, this is a movement that is being proportionally fought in the war room of perceptive ideologies. The immediacy with which conclusions are drawn within discussions on the subject is thus endemic of this process of perpetual reframing. There is no positive dialogue about what the ‘endgame’ is or even could be. Is this a movement to overthrow capitalism (for want of a hyperbole)? Or is this a movement to reform the twisted mores of a socially inept and ethically bankrupt economic system?
Moreover, what are the benefits of having such a leaderless movement? Realistically, it can only be a matter of time before the Occupation becomes subject to social arbitrage. Someone, or some power, will take advantage of this gathering and push it towards a focused agenda. However, the faculties of such an assumption have yet to be realised. What is sure is that this is a move forward in a search for something alternative to the waning offers of systemic capitalism. The ‘Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ seems to be more and more illogical as this existential quandary grips the Western World. Through literature, art, film and media, postmodernism is losing its relevance as people unwittingly or knowingly search for a ‘New Sincerity’ in a broader schema. Hence, the never-ending rabbit hole that is the research and analytic consumption of what went so drastically wrong over the last 15 to 20 years within the financial world has thrown the public away from merely accepting the theoretical ideologies of monetary value within this system. The nonsensical trail of hedge-funds, CDOs, CBOs, CMOs, derivatives, lobbying, credit default swaps, and a whole host of other tricky regulatory loopholes has left the holistic imprint upon society that there was really no other point to this hypothetical law other than greed and illogical growth. Sustainability was then forsaken so as to promote a massive and unreasonable boom in consumption, production and speculation. From here, it will be important to drive for a sustainable sincerity across all platforms of this debate so as to successfully drive an honest and reasonable rebirth of socially driven democracy.
All these things are questions for another day.
There is no real need or want for a segregated class or ideological war. There is no real need to put so much faith in such a ridiculous premise as the one the financial services industry has created itself to be. Yet, there will be a need to closely watch how this movement is handled. It will be forever in danger of slipping into obscurity or being abstracted from its goals, and perhaps this is why it must eventually settle down to drawing out actual goals. For now though, they are as mad as hell, and they are beginning to not take this shit anymore.
Jake O’Brien
jcobbryan 