Before I start my shpiel, let me point this out:

[link]

Right. So. Listen to their opening advert for their website. In it, it states, "You know what this means... We're all journalists now".

Weren't we always? Anyone can sit down and publish just about anything they want in just about any medium they want, any time they want. That's the whole point of free speech in all of North America. Rather, this website is just one of many many others that makes this freedom more convenient.

The rest of the documentary has nothing of any interest to me. You can watch it if you want. I just thought that sentence was a little stupid. Everyone likes to believe that "The Media" is some big elitist machine, inaccessible by anyone it doesn't want, that controls human behavior. And it's a load of horse shit. They're just fuckin' people, for chris's sake!

I do like that quote though. "It starts with you trying to do your job well, and ends with you being labeled an enemy of society."

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And on that note! Revelations about capitalism, materialism, the corporate identity, hierarchies and Wal-Mart!

I don't hate Wal-Mart any more than any other company- which isn't much, surprisingly. I'm actually a fairly capitalistic person, for being an anarchist. I agree with the concept of fair payment for services and goods. And the idea of abstracting the value of things, so that they can be exchanged reliably is a good idea! (Money is, after all, simply the abstracted value of the services you have performed) Which is precisely why I have a problem with the mechanics of our economy. I'm also a fairly philosophical person, sometimes in an extremely romantic, almost spiritual sort of way. Which is, again, why I have a problem with the mechanics of our economy. Let's start on this thing about the corporate identity.

Did you know that, by law, a company is treated as though it were a person? I've known this for a long time, but the full implications never hit me until recently.

Basically, a group of separate individuals work together under a single flag or title or something to achieve their goals. They're a company. The flag is then treated by law as a separate person. But the people under that flag ARE NOT INCLUDED in that designation! So, while the company, and the people therein, are the same thing, they are legally distinguished from one another. The company becomes abstract, and is even referred to as a corporate identity.

SO! CEO Jonnyboy decides they need new merchandise, does some research, and sends a manager to make the orders. Manager Tammy calls up the various managers at other companies and orders their products for purchase. Roy brings the merchandise to the company, and another manager, Todman, uses his access to the company bank account to pay for the goods. Who owns the supplies? CEO Jhonnyboy, as he's the one who wanted them in the first place? Tammy, who was outwardly known to be the individual who requested them? Roy who actually handled the goods directly? Or Todman, as he's the individual who handed the money over for the goods? The answer? NONE OF THEM! because not a single individual within the company is recognized as being part of the corporate identity, only the abstract "person" of the corporation owns those goods! And if anyone within the company were to use those goods without some form of economic explanation for tax purposes, it's considered theft! From the company! Who is technically THEMSELVES!

So here's my question:

Who the fuck is Wal-Mart? Does he drive a convertible? Does he like Jazz Music? Is he a woman? Fact is, Wal-Mart is, literally, me and everyone else in the company. But legally, we aren't recognized as such. Ownership of the goods within Wal-Mart is not represented by all of us, but rather, by NONE of us. In a way, nobody actually owns anything within Wal-Mart. Or any other company of any other type, for that matter.

So what does this matter?

I think it's representative of just how fucked up the philosophy of capitalism has become, and I think it's time we really started distinguishing between the elements of capitalism and materialism, before we get REALLY fucked up. With "anti-capitalist" movements growing in opposition to what are actually materialist elements of North American capitalism, and capitalists ignoring, or not recognizing, the massive philosophical faults our culture represents, we need to untangle ourselves. We need to start looking at REALITY, and stop looking at the contracts. Because the mechanics of money? Has become infinitely arbitrary and weird. To the point where money no longer adequately represents what it was meant to be. It is now a strange object which moves about by abstract, arbitrary rules defined by old men with stupid ideas, who never really understood it on a philosophical level in the first place. Men who probably never even HAD a philosophical level of any sort for the duration of their lives. The way the public interacts with money is even more appalling than the way money interacts with us. People seem to worship it as an abstract thing, don't really understand it's relation to their effort, obscured by the mechanics of wages and legislation. Money has an abstracted value unto itself. Money becomes a method of evaluating actual value of things without logical consideration. An expensive thing is good because it's expensive, not because of it's actual properties. Exclusivity, as manipulated by artists for the last century and a half, and all of human history by nobility, becomes a method of setting up prices arbitrarily. A signature because a method of amplifying price by notoriety with no consideration to the thing itself. Social value becomes equivalent to fiscal value. The depth of your pocket- your value in our culture. And people march through lives seeing nothing but dollar signs.

Not all of us are so far gone, but nearly all of us- with but a slim few strange ones on the outskirts- are heavily impacted by it in the manner we think.

It is only by turning your back on everything, and seeing things with your own eyes, and examining everything with your own vision, and questioning, and scrutinizing, and accepting external knowledge only as you seek it, that you can see the tape we all walk within. The unwritten bullshit people subconsciously demand you to follow. And it is only by seeing these walls, that we are able to cut the tape and march where we are free to be human, free to be people, free to be anything but limited.