capitalism | ZETEO

view of Alberto Burri’s Cretto di Gibellina, Sicily

Smithson, Tuymans; Art & Explication

September 6, 2016 by William Eaton

Beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. — Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray I Robert Smithson’s Mirrors and Shelly Sand (images above) is a long, low, floor-lying crest of sand (approximately 30 feet by 5 feet), which is divided in equal parts by 50 double-sided mirrors.[1] Division and reflection—reflection in the sense of light, images, and ideas being thrown back without being absorbed—are central concepts here. As regards division, […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiLL • Tags: art, beauty, capitalism, cultural criticism, intellectuals, Oscar Wilde

Look Rich or go Bankrupt Trying

May 8, 2016 by William Eaton

I’m not the only person who finds 50 Cent a fascinating figure. His landmark album, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, is one of the top ten best selling albums in rap history, and is perhaps the only rap album ever to have a feature film made of it. While living in Belize during the summer of 2005, I stumbled upon a middle-schooler’s yearbook in a house I was doing construction on. Nearly every child’s yearbook quote was either a line from Get Rich or Die […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: art, capitalism, politics

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Consumers, Apprentices, Failed Universities

April 3, 2016 by Ed Mooney

I have no complaints about living in Maine. I find good music, good restaurants, good friends in the small city of Portland. I’ve taught inland and upstate in Bangor – just this side of Old Town, home of the classic canvas canoes I grew up with and rigged for sailing in a tidal river that opens on Buzzards Bay. That inlet-laced coast reminds me of the Maine Coast. There’s an older, slower, pace to life here. All this nostalgia […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, Uncategorized, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, education, literature, reading, technology, writing

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Power to Intrude, Illustration by Ben Jennings, Prospect Magazine, February 2016

Privacy and Power

March 28, 2016 by William Eaton

Two weeks ago I wrote about the relationship between privacy and power, and how may of today’s spokespeople for the oppressed focus more on stopping surveillance in the name of privacy than daring to call for surveillance of oppressors, or imagine ways that surveillance could be used to create a world devoid of oppression. Since then, I have been thinking a lot about our current obsession with privacy. In The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiR • Tags: books, capitalism, civil rights, crime, criminals, ethics, literature, New York City, philosophy, politics, reading, social justice, technology, women, writing

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Whig primary, 1848 - An Available Candidate, The One Qualification for a Whig President

Trump, de Tocqueville, Democracy, Materialism

March 14, 2016 by William Eaton

Many people in Europe believe without saying, or say without believing, that one of the great advantages of universal suffrage is that it calls men worthy of the people’s confidence to take charge of public affairs. The people do not know how to govern themselves, but, it is said, they always want the State to thrive, and they but rarely fail to choose for leaders people who both share this desire and are the most fit to wield political power. […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, corruption, de Tocqueville, democracy, Donald Trump, New York Times, Presidential campaigns, Socrates, United States of America, Yeats

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Technology in the Age of Inequality

March 13, 2016 by William Eaton

Last week, I attended the Technology, Privacy, and the Future of Education symposium at NYU’s Media, Culture, and Communication department. One panelist, NYU Sociology’s Richard Arum, addressed the impact of technology on education-as-vocation—a subject on which I recommend Sugata Mitra’s self-organized, child-driven pedagogy. The other panelists focused primarily on digital technology’s impact on educational administration. Debates arose around the development of online-only curricula, apps that send parents reports on how late their children arrive to class, and the ethical implications […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: capitalism, civil rights, crime, death, education, ethics, History, New York City, politics, science, social justice, technology

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Airplanes, environment, capital, giving up!

February 23, 2016 by William Eaton

A.k.a., Littlering There is a strain of environmental thinking that proposes (with more than a little sense) that we need to learn how to do more with less. Or perhaps we need (yet again?) to discover how less is more. Fewer human beings always seems like a good place to start. There is of course the problem that biggering (as Dr. Seuss called it) has come to seem essential to our economic “growth” and “health,” and to the health […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: airplanes, Bob Dylan, capitalism, climate change, economic crisis, England, environmentalism, global warming, technology

from Amazon site for African Mask Wall Decor World Peace Wise Man Bamboo Root Mask Bali Mask

“Independent” analysis; class warfare (think tanks)

February 2, 2016 by William Eaton

A follow-up to a previous discussion of how experts, and the media that aids and abets them, and the class interests that pay these experts’ salaries—they’re in the mask-making business. A January 26 New York Times story reported that “according to an independent analysis” the proposed trade pact between North American countries, the United States in particular, and Pacific rim nations “would increase incomes, exports and growth in the United States . . . and would not cost overall […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: academia, Barack Obama, capitalism, class warfare, corporations, journalism, New York Times, Paul Krugman, trade pact, Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

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Brains, Literature, Disposable Selves

January 10, 2016 by Ed Mooney

The Self is Disposable, Isn’t It? Not for most of us for most of the time. But its reality can be brought into question. There are exotic cases of apparent persons who seem to lack a self. Bureaucracies and the structures capitalism seem to deflate any rich sense of self. And the splendor of brain science swallows our better judgment about the reality of selves. My previous Zeteo post, 01.03.2016, followed the incredible story of a girl of many disguises, […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, literature, love, philosophy, reading, science, theater