CRG

@crg2o.bsky.social

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“This sums up the position under a system based on the postulate of the commodity character of labor. It is not for the commodity to decide where it should be offered for sale, to what purpose it should be used, at what price it should be allowed to change hands, and in what manner it should be consumed or destroyed. (…) For how could there be unemployment, Mises asked, but for the fact that the workers are “not willing to work at the wages they could get in the labor market for the particular work they were able and willing to perform?” This makes clear what the employers’ demand for mobility of labor and flexibility of wages really means…”
“Indeed much of the modern arsenal of political theory—the game theories and systems analyses, the scenarios, written for imagined “audiences,” and the careful enumeration of usually three “options”: A, B, C, whereby A and C represent the opposite extremes and B the “logical” middle-of-the-road “solution” of the problem—has its source in this deep-seated aversion. The fallacy of such thinking begins with forcing the choices into mutually exclusive dilemmas; reality never presents us with anything so neat as premises for logical conclusions. The kind of thinking that presents both A and C as undesirable, and therefore settles on B, hardly serves any other purpose than to divert the mind and blunt the judgment for the multitude of real possibilities. What these problem-solvers have in common with down-to-earth liars is the attempt to get rid of facts and the confidence that this should be possible because of the inherent contingency of those facts.” Hannah Arendt
Ser um turista de massa é como participar num jogo de interpretação de papéis em tempo real (LARP), onde o viajante procura realizar o ideal da viagem, porém sem se expor a riscos ou contratempos, quase fugindo da realidade. Isso é feito seguindo uma lista de tarefas predefinidas: capturar uma determinada vista para uma selfie (concluído), tocar um monumento (concluído), experimentar uma iguaria local (concluído), fotografar um museu (concluído). A viagem torna-se burocrática. As intermináveis filas para entrar nos locais mais populares são um exemplo desse processo de burocratização. Depois de concluir com sucesso essas tarefas, carimbam o passaporte e partirão para o próximo destino. Entretanto, para que essa fantasia seja mantida, o local visitado deve ajustar-se à imagem pré-concebida pelo turista; deve oferecer a "experiência" idealizada. As tarefas precisam estar cuidadosamente orquestradas para que o turista possa realizá-las. Se uma experiência nunca existiu, ela precisa ser criada, como foi o caso do desfile do Dia dos Mortos no México (criado porque os turistas esperavam que esta existisse após ter aparecido num filme de James Bond). Dessa forma, as cidades se moldam às vontades do turista, adaptando-se continuamente para atender às expectativas dos guias de viagem, preservando uma ideia do lugar que muito possivelmente nunca tenha realmente existido. Locais arqueológicos lidam melhor com a pressão de permanecerem inalterados, como apresentados nos guias de viagem, o que acaba por protegê-los do desgaste do tempo. Já em locais habitados, em cidades vivas como Lisboa ou Porto, essa exigência entra em conflito com sua natureza de evolução constante, assim como acontece com todos as coisas vivas. Os turistas vão aos seus destinos retirar vivências, sugam vida. Para manter o equilíbrio necessário para que o local não se transforme numa ruína é preciso que exista um influxo de vida maior do que aquele que é retirado. Caso contrário o turismo irá tra…
‘I am amazed that so many thousands of men are desperate, like a bunch of children, to see horses running over and over and men driving on their chariots. If it was the speed of the horses or the skill of the charioteers that captivated them, I might understand it, but it’s the racing colours they cheer on, the racing colours they love and if, on the track, right in the middle of a race, their colour was changed from this one to that one, their support and enthusiasm would switch, and as quick as a flash they would abandon the drivers and horses whom they recognise from far off and whose names they yell aloud. Such is the regard, such is the power of one paltry cheap tunic.’ Pliny the Younger, Letters IX.6
He was joking, I think! But he was joking in the very specific way that MAGA posters joke these days. That is, the joke wraps an extreme idea in a form that allows its taboo implications to be denied if the poster is explicitly confronted with them but that preserves their implicit emotional force. I was just kidding, so you can’t be mad! And if you are mad, it only proves that you’re uptight! At the same time, the joke invites anyone who likes its message to respond as if it were serious, even as its unseriousness allows the response to feel safe. And each time the process is repeated, the thing becomes a little less taboo; what was unsayable becomes a little more sayable, and people become a little bolder about adopting the extreme position outright. Irony, in contemporary politics, is sincerity’s Trojan horse.
Every thing is quiet, peaceful, and against it all there is only the silent protest of statistics; so many go mad, so many gallons are drunk, so many children die of starvation... And such a state of things is obviously what we want; apparently a happy man only feels so because the unhappy bear their burden in silence, but for which happiness would be impossible. It is a general hypnosis. Every happy man should have someone with a little hammer at his door to knock and remind him that there are unhappy people, and that, however happy he may be, life will sooner or later show its claws, and some misfortune will befall him—illness, poverty, loss, and then no one will see or hear him, just as he now neither sees nor hears others. But there is no man with a hammer, and the happy go on living, just a little fluttered with the petty cares of every day, like an aspen-tree in the wind—and everything is all right.'
Ceci n'est pas une guerre e um cachimbo como uma nuvem nuclear