An Ongoing Media Virus by Bobby Campbell
Soundtrack: The Complicated History of the Concept of the Soul
by The Mr. T Experience
"ALL YE SUCKERS WHO ARE GONNA GET TRIMMED, STEP THIS WAY FOR THE BIG SWINDLE!"
- Groucho Marx as Mr. Hammer in "The Cocoanuts"
Over these last few years the 2012 media virus has proven to be very formidable indeed, the millenarist plot has taken on a great many twists and turns, for the most part abandoned and dismissed by it's early adopters, it has evolved into a kind of fundamentalist, new age, lowest common denominator, main-stream of complete and utter bullshit! Not to say that it wasn't always bullshit, but now it's bullshit that's rapidly becoming a household name!
A media virus consists of a protective & sticky outer shell, which contains within it a memetic code. The adhesive shell becomes attached to a host medium and thence it's memetic programming gets injected therein.
"The virus code mixes and competes for control with the cell's own genes, and, if victorious, it permanently alters the way the cell functions and reproduces. A particularly virulent strain will transform the host cell into a factory that replicates the virus."
Douglas Rushkoff, Media Virus
The outer shell of a media virus is the "surface issue" or "face value" of the news event, idea, or whatever form the Trojan horse happens to take. The programming within the shell is the implication of the resultant dialectic, the worms in the can, to mix a metaphor!
It seems apparent that "The Eschaton" makes for an exceptionally sticky outer shell, but what manner of programming dwells within?
Who's kidding who here!?
As some of ye brave and bold readers may yet recall;
Joseph Campbell and/or Henry Morton Robinson
report of Finnegans Wake Book III,
Chapter 4: HCE & ALP- Their Bed of Trial. (Starting on pg 555)
The characters have woken from the dream &
“It is the morning after the night of the winter solstice”
I can still find no indication of this in the text myself, but it provides an impetus to imaginate...
More interesting though is this excerpt from the audio book version of Terence Mckenna's "True Hallucinations", which ellucidates the McKenna Brothers' experiences in the Amazon Jungle at La Chorrera, the inspiration for novelty theory, timewave zero, and by extension much of the 2012 media virus. (the entire audio book is freely available for your listening pleasure, here.)
6 comments:
You're a true inspiration, Bobby, nice one.
ONE DAY I'ma buy you a drink.
Great stuff, Bob!
Someone I know read Pinchbeck, and became an instant convert - immune to my suggestion of it as not the end of the world, but merely the end of a cycle in the Mayan Calendar (December 31st in the Gregorian, for instance).
The Singularity People seem to fancy it, too - although Event Horizon and Absolute Elsewhere and all that Black Hole stuff does have some poetic wordage.
I have lived through anticipating 1984 (Whooo, spooky, in the UK we had Big Sister instead of Big Brother) - the Millenium (or the Anti-Climax, as I prefer to call it) - shortly followed by 2001 (and how wrong Kubrick had got the space travel), and so on.
We live in Blade Runner, and (it seems to me) will continue to inhabit that mixture of sci-tech and ugliness, human quirk and desperation, street smarts and odd secrets that PKD enjoyed describing - old and new mingled.
Meanwhile, 26 Jan 09 (Gregorian) sees the beginning of the Chinese Year 4707, etc.
The Jewish Calendar says we will enter the year 5770 on 19 Sept 2009
People get fascinated (rabbit in headlight fascinated) by numbers.
...*and* if you write the December 21st date in the Euro/UK fashion...i.e. 21/12...
...You get the title of a Rush record! I'll have to listen to it again for 'clues' ;-)
Siriusly, though, I don't put a lot of stock in the whole 2012 thing. As Bogus pointed out--it could just be the start of another Mayan long count. I'd like for something positive to happen--but who knows?
There's a forum on the subject
http://2012forum.com/forum/index.php
They didn't have that back in the year 1000 (in fact most people had no clue what year it was back then).
Hell indeed, it makes me feel like shitting porcupines (head last) when I read about all the mofo-jumbo that 2012 creates in the newagey world nowadays One would start to really hate words like peace and harmony when used extensively in a way that removes all its meaning.
On that day (a blue Monday no less) I think I'll crack open a bottle of Jameson's and watch Bunuel's "L'age d'or"for the sake of it until the creature from Planet Arous comes knocking at my door.
douglas rushkoff, i like you.. i really like you. now send me all your books for free...wait i'm on the wrong blog, anyway please forward him this message or maybe i'll do it.
anyway two things, i don't think the metaphor is mixed, just erm...premature?
and i'm not sure about this word Dialectic i know it in certain contexts, but i'm not entirely sure what it means in this one.
Fergus, Good Sir! And thence the next round's on me, Tally-Ho!
Right On, Bogus! I think you've got something there w/ the PKD style mixture of the old & the new.
Pinchbeck's 2012 book turned my stomach more than it fed my imagination, though to the credit of the 2012 media virus' durability, (and I'll get into this more so soon enough) the Mayan calendar's "end" date corresponds to an actual astrological event, mind bogglingly calculated, and associated w/ a mythological narrative. (The "precision of the equinoxes" being one of the soldiers hidden w/in the wooden horse...)
That's my favorite RUSH album, Purple Gooroo! (well, maybe the different stages triple live album more so actually...)
I owe you a package still, I remember! Sorry as ever for the delay, frick!
Much agree about the mofo-jumbo, Borsky, strange that my reaction would be to add to it, luckily I am immune to irony, USA! USA! USA!
Hello there then, HomingBohm!
1.) I'm intending there to mix the Trogan horse w/ opening a can of worms.
2.) The art or practice of arriving towards truth by the exchange of logical arguments.
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