Ideology of Power

Note: An individual who advocates a position for no other reason than that his immediate neighbour does so is no better than an automaton.

A ‘modern’ life, steeped in so many distractions, is one which stays unfulfilled because it is unfocused. From the moment we enter into the world, we are beset by distractions of all kinds, sourced from technological marvels that steal the better part of life and vitality; and we think we make sense of it, but only superficially. Worthless information is processed in billions upon billions of man-hours – the wasted potential of a stagnating society bent on self-gratification. Those hours fill a void created by boredom. Here is a loveless world, where love has less meaning because life has less meaning to individuals. Ultimately, our ability to feel love - romantic love between people as well as love of doing things (which I call craftsmanship) - is ruined.

The deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile as a result of police shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota respectively has violently refocused the scrutiny of the press upon the issue of police brutality. The inflammatory nature of the situation has been greatly exacerbated by its racial element: both dead men were black, and both deaths have been broadcasted across social media as irrefutable truth of white supremacist elements in government. Activists emphasize the uncanny similarities of both situations in which white police officers 'murder' black men in situations that could ostensibly be construed as misunderstandings. Indeed it seems a 'race war' is brewing, with armed, white police officers apparently abusing the authority invested into them by the state to kill innocent civilians. Nowhere is the backlash of the situation more apparent than in Dallas, where two snipers had engaged in a shootout with officers, killing five and injuring many more; the race issu...

An 800-page report and $7 million later, the House Select Committee on Benghazi has found no new evidence on the circumstances of the attack: more importantly for the Republicans, they are no closer to indicting Hillary Clinton or diminishing her presidential prospects. This is telling, given that this has amounted to being, according to David M. Herszenhorn, perhaps one of the most 'bitterly partisan congressional investigations in history'. The committee was led by South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy, who among other things accused Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State, and the Obama Administration of purposefully withholding evidence and stymieing earlier investigations into the culpability of the Defense Department, Central Intelligence Agency and State Department in their failure to protect the personnel stationed at the outpost. Taken in its entirety however, the report does precious little to substantiate accusations of negligence on the part of Clinton; it presents ...

Despite the bluster of the Republican presidential nominee, it seems quite unlikely that recent poll results on the popularity and support of his campaign can universally be discounted. The recent ABC/Washington Post Poll brought matters to a head, showing an immense 12% lead for Hillary over Trump. Of course, poll results vary (probably a result of both sample bias or political maneuver, but in what proportion is anyone's guess), yet there seems to be a consensus no matter which poll one looks at: Clinton is firmly in the lead. Of course, with about a hundred days left till the start of the primaries, there is hardly any certainty about the results; the volatility of recent events attests to that fact. From the Orlando shooting to Brexit, to the resulting fallout in the financial markets where more than $2 trillion in equities was wiped out, the last few weeks has been spectacularly chaotic. Politics is a vast public undertaking, relying on mass communication to  galvanize  ...

Britain’s commitment to leaving the European Union (EU) was concretized today, legitimized by the democratic process. Having put the decision of whether to Leave or Remain to a referendum, the voting of which was held yesterday on the 23 rd of June, British Prime Minister David Cameron inadvertently opened the path to a British ‘secession’ from the EU; now the shockwaves of that decision are rocking the economies the world over, with Cameron announcing his resignation. A few minutes after the US markets opened, the DOW dropped 500 points, although the descent was arrested. The DOW Futures went down 700 points, and bank stocks have almost universally been adversely affected. There is no point in disputing the seriousness or the monumental nature of the ‘Brexit’. All the fears that accompanied the ‘Grexit’ scare attend to the current crisis as well, and perhaps even more, given Britain’s ostensibly more pivotal role on the international stage, at least in relation to Greece. There are fe...

A large part of politics is concerned with advertising. It might seem slightly distasteful that candidates making a bid for leadership positions in society, supposedly people with firm moral fiber and incorruptible characters, could be involved in self-promotion. Yet it is a truism. The endeavor is steeped in accusations ranging from the extreme of racist or misogynistic, through hypocrisy, to lighter imputations of disingenuousness and lying. Self-promotion becomes self aggrandizement: promises to fix all the ills afflicting society from poverty to fundamentalism are made regardless of the capacity to fulfill them, made only to pander to the electorate. Grandiloquence must be held together by a minimum of coherence, but the good politician knows to control his rhetoric and avoid becoming entrapped in inflexible vows – in other words lying, but painting it in other ways.  That advertisement glosses over the truth or that it involves fabricating white lies and manipulating the prese...

The tragic event of the Orlando shooting, currently making waves around the world, poses grave but crucial questions to any person living in a heterogeneous society. Given that countries have been subject to the powerful trend of globalization since the 1970s and the corresponding large movements of people, technology and culture across borders, no country can ignore the implications of cultural and ethnic schisms. And that is exactly the issue afflicting America, that melting pot of cultures which has become polarized between the strengthening voice of radical reactionaries and the weakening moderate faction. The backlash is particularly marked against Muslims by virtue of the heightening fears of terrorism: the Orlando shooting, carried out by professed Islamic Fundamentalist (though it is not clear if he had official connections with ISIS) Omar Mateen, is the 'deadliest mass shooting in US history', according to Frank Bruni, and it constitutes 'attacks on freedom itself...

The past weeks have been eventful in the way of celebrity deaths. Two in particular catch the headlines: Muhammad Ali’s death presumably from the medical complications of old age and Christina Grimmie’s murder by a ‘fan’ after a concert in Orlando. The latter is this article’s principal consideration, but both are important in scoping out the nature of fame and its relation to the media.

Ideology of power is run by Yann, whose interest lays primarily in philosophy. To state an important axiom: the impulse to survive is inextricable from the compulsion (psychological or physiological) to dominate, to assert or to impose. Such urges which have guided Humanity have been vilified and celebrated at different junctures throughout history, sometimes both simultaneously. Regardless of good or evil (or in spite of such insipid characterisations), and leaving simple value judgements to news pundits, Yann attempts to illustrate in broad strokes the topography of power and competition.