On the end of the OUGHTS and Isaac Hayes' Walk on By

http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2009/12/past-decade-world-western
http://www.newstatesman.com/television/2009/12/business-culture-cultural
2 sides of the same coin. The vacuum pushed to its extreme, soon any movement will be radical.
Reminds me of the question that I asked of our renowned international relations theorist at OWU, Sean Kay, after reading that field's silly excuse for theory. I: "This seems to be saying the same one dimensional western ideas with huge arguments over slight variations/differences. Do the Chinese have their own theory? Because maybe we should read some of that.." and in reply I got a bemused expression- "Chinese international theory? I don't know, but I do know that Merscheimer's book is a bestseller in translated form." Haha the idea of Chinese international political theory built on a different set of assumptions had not even occurred to him, or even that they would have different assumptions. I mean why would they not build off the great literature our western university professors had written? They might have been taking us seriously before, but with the collapse of the "western consensus" they're gonna have to come to the conclusion that we in the west have no idea what we are talking about let alone what we are doing and what is happening in the world. Then maybe we might have a true global dialogue, not a one direction thing at the moment where we right fucking tons with minimal thought and the developing world either writes little, reads us, and goes hmmm interesting or writes variations on the text FUCK THEM THEY FUCKED US OVER. oh well...what is sure is the 00's will be symbolized by our fascination with staged reality (reality tv), melting-everything into formula blandness mainstream culture (Transformers 2, american idol, 2012 etc), socialpolitical problem denial (republicans, global warming deniers, bankers/business), the pseudo-social/the lowest common denominator (fav books on facebook-twilight, kanye west hating on taylor swift, etc) etetetetetec whatever.

Now for the good news. I have been listening to the Isaac Hayes song Walk on By off Hot buttered soul at work over and over again for the last week. Fucking incREDible. The sort of art that makes you reconsider the merits of Scientology because the artist is one (thought about it and no). It is genius of the sort that you just don't hear anymore...15 minutes long, orchestra sound, the everything thrown into one song- an ambition that no one has anymore....maybe a type of artistry beyond our ability even/or if we tried we would sound foolish (an idea for another day). And, in my recent memory, the horn section after the second verse is a musical moment without peer. Do yourself a favor and listen to this with surround sound and just lie there for a second and dont check your email, dont read the newspaper, dont do anything and just listen to it.
http://22tracks.nl/#/originals/2/