Survivor

We’re back into the new season of survivor, and I find it particularly interesting that we are once again being asked to believe in the survival of the fittest as a natural order.  Or at least that is what the show presents itself to be.  However, the show’s conception of ‘fit’ seems to be very much in accordance with the codes and conventions of television:  charm outweighs ‘goodness’ and once again we’re watching characters grapple with their own sense of morality (see baby Hants) only to be cast aside for being somewhat untrustworthy.  And so the show reinforces the notion that he who charms best (see Boston Rob) is somehow most effective at survival – is somehow most fit.  But if all life were a vote for prom king, that may well be true, but life is not engineered by votes – life is never truly democratic in the way that Americans fantasize.  Democracy is not about getting the most votes (or in this case, the least) but about getting your name on the ballot.  These people were, after all, selected by the producers of Survivor for exhibiting strong character traits, and being easily categorized into types (the nerd, the beauty queen, the schemer, coach).  And surely, then, the vote is rigged from the outset.  The survivor will be the one of a limited group, who best conforms to what the show’s particular environment has determined is most telegenic.

Dark Lord Sugar

You're F@$#ed!

Oh the Apprentice is back, and what fun and frivolity this season of dweebs and fantasists has brought me!  This year, Sir Alan is once again unsure of which of his many titles the contestants should call him.  While for the last few seasons, he has been Siralun, this year he elected to be called Lord Sugar.  Surely a knighthood trumps being a peer, but I suppose Sir Alan has a more familiar, friendly appeal whereas Lord Sugar is more ominous and threatening, providing the connotation of his ability to blow up planets using a death star if he so feels.

So, titles notwithstanding, Sir Lord Alan Sugar Supreme Ruler of the distant planet Amstrad is once again commanding minions to sell dog food and biscuits.  However, there is a ridiculous fantasy tied in with this show, that people who can do any sort of selling are therefore magically gifted in business.  We’re already up to episode twelve, and while some episodes have resulted in literally thousands of dollars worth of sales (Lord Sugar’s pre-existent ties to major corporations like Asda playing no part in such sales), most weeks have returns in the far more humbling hundreds of pounds.  And this is how the show is ideological.  Despite the fact that there are t.v. cameras following the contestants, and the fact that the contestants are working in teams, with free cross-London transportation and working flat out for 48 hour periods, their returns are consistently within the 500 – 600 pound range.  And so it fulfils a sort of television fantasy, where we too with our humdrum lives of selling shoes, hobnobs or noddy dogs can feel that with our meagre incomes, our ‘talents’ will one day take us to the offices of Siralun where we too can eat at the trough of plenty.

But lets take a look at the math.  In week 12 the apprenti were set about buying and selling a load of cheap tat – umbrellas, nodding dogs, shitty watches.  Siralun provided two hundred and fifty pounds worth of ‘merchandise’ which the apprenti were tasked to sell and then sniffing out what they considered the hot properties, had to buy up more, and sell that too.  They had two days of farting about with which to turn a profit.  And in the end, the two teams had total assets of about 750.  But wait.  Is this really a miracle of business?  If we look at the numbers, they began with 250 worth of stock given to them.  So really, they generated about 500 in profit, over two days.  In teams of four.  They also spent much of their day pissing about travelling in vans, not paying gas or congestion charge fees.  So really that 500 in profit is more like 460.  They also mysteriously had booths, tables, tents and other stuff to help them sell the merchandise.  As well as pitches on the South bank and Covent garden market, pitches that one must buy a license to have.  So this 460 pound profit is not a real figure either, not reflecting the actual cost of their two days worth of sales.  Adding to their sales ability, they also had the magic of t.v. cameras, which tend to attract attention wherever you set them.  So, they had the additional draw of television and people’s natural curiosity which is piqued whenever there’s the chance of ‘will I be on the telly?’  So even their incredible sales prowess could be attributed not to their innate business acumen but rather to the fact that they’re bringing to their sales pitching their pseudo-celebrity status endowed on them by the very show itself.

So finally we’ve got a figure of roughly  450 pounds earned by a team of supposed business stars, who have the weight of television behind them, siralun’s added generosity, free transportation costs and the costs of licensing their sales venues provided to them.  But how much did they really earn?  Well, 450 pounds split four ways over two days works out to 112.50 per person.  Over the two day span, that works out to earnings of 56.25 per person per day.  Divide that into a 9 hour working day, and you’re left with 6.25 per hour, about what a long time employee at McDonalds gets.  And that’s excluding the publicity and benefit of being on t.v.

So, good on you business stars of tomorrow!

 

 

Art versus Entertainment.

There has been a bit of discussion on television of late about the state of Art versus entertainment.  On the Bill Maher show Real Time, Bill stated his position that art should not be publicly funded, that art should not be subsidized, and that if people wanted to buy art, then the value of art should be placed on what people are willing to pay and support from their own finances.  Maher’s argument is that it is up to the individual and private society to set the valuations of art.  But this is a flawed argument because it presumes that societal taste is unbiased.  But here is the major flaw – while entertainment is by its nature populist, changing and catering to audience tastes as demographics demand and aspiring to reach its widest audience (a tv show format changes, those changes being predicated by audience choice and tastes) art must not be influenced by commercial needs.  Art must be differentiated from entertainment precisely because it is NOT predicated by populist sentiment but rather by the vision of the artist as individual.  The fundamental difference between art and entertainment is that art expresses the view of the artist, whereas entertainment reinforces the views of the audience.  And so art prices cannot be set by populism because then it ceases to be art and becomes entertainment!

In order for art to have any meaning, it must be publicly funded.  Art is expensive to produce.  Materials, labour, venues, exhibition and distribution all cost money.  This money must come from somewhere, but if it came entirely from pre-sales, then artists would be forced to construct work that would secure good presale rates.  Their work, then, would by the nature of sales, become repetitive, conventional and safe (look at Hollywood’s reliance on sequels, prequels, remakes and ‘homage’ carbon copies) and if the art world too became subject to market tastes, it too would become ‘safe.’

I’m not saying that Bill’s argument is in the wrong spirit.  I do think that the individual has an obligation to support the arts too, but we don’t support the arts with our money, we support the arts with our participation in arts culture.  Support the arts by consuming art – support the arts by going to museums, theatre, performance art, concerts and lectures.  It is through the consumption of art (that has been financed independently from private investment) that arts cultures flourish.  It is only when public money is spent on art that is not consumed, that is shelved rather than being viewed or exhibited, that art becomes a waste of money.

Welcome to North Korea

Click to watch the film Welcome to North Korea

This documentary, filmed in 2001, is a rare look into the world of North Korea.  And while the documentary has some fascinating footage into the lives of North Koreans, it continues to have a distancing gaze at the people.  Rather than looking into how people have such fervent leader worship, and to what effect that such leader worship is ideological, it continues the line that North Koreans have been brainwashed.

The narration states, with no sense of irony, that the North Koreans believe that Kim Il-Song had magic powers.  It seems strange for us to think of a people who believe their leader has supernatural powers.  When he died, the cult of Kim Jong-il was started, equating the son with the father’s abilities.

But is it really so strange for North Koreans to accept this doctrine as believable?  It’s not without precedent.

So to repeat, North Koreans truly believe that their leader had supernatural powers, and when he died he left for them his only son to lead them through to a righteous life.

But is this really such a fanciful idea and should we really be so quick to condemn North Koreans as ignorant?

It seems to me there is another, larger group on this planet who also believes that their leader had supernatural powers and he too left to us his son to lead us into the correct path.

That group, of course, is Christians.

Of course, Christians don’t just believe that the father had supernatural powers.  They’re quite sure that Jesus’ dad was God, the creator of all life.  And Catholics continue to believe that their spiritual leader, the Pope, is God’s representative on earth.

And while 100 million North Koreans must be wrong, are a billion Christians so firm in their own convictions?

My point is, we are quick to judge North Koreans as having been ‘brainwashed’ for their incredulous beliefs, while refusing to recognize the same belief in a spiritual father who has left his only son to guide a people through life, as being along the same lines as most religious belief systems.

Religions must start somewhere, and while I’m not for a second stating that Kim Jhong-il is ‘like Jesus’, I am arguing that we should have a more nuanced and sympathetic approach to North Koreans, for they are afterall, human, and humans are prone to believe in all kinds of crazy things.

The film can be watched online at the Internet Archives

http://www.archive.org/details/WelcometoNorthKorea

 

Mind Control Episode 2: Race Edition

 

In this episode I look at the question of race.  There are claims that this is now a post-racial society, a claim that is pure nonsense.  Because we have been a racist society, we cannot ever move beyond a question of race.  Film and media too often uses the stereotype as a shorthand for creating texture to a character, but casting characters with certain iconographies, media ‘fleshes out’ a character very quickly.  However, the stereotype is so prevelant within the collective unconscious, that as soon as any character exhibits qualities of a type, it immediately evokes our racist past.

If we take reality television as a very easy example, a show like Jersey Shore has selected characters that fit snugly into an established racial type – the ‘guido,’ and any challenging to that type is immediately countered with the supporting casts’ flak.  For example, in the ‘guido’ type, men are supposed to exhibit agressive masculinity in contrast to women as objects.  If any of the men exhibit characteristics of femininity (delicacy, taste in clothing, consideration for others) they are immediately berated as ‘unmanly’ or as exhibiting homosexual tendencies.  This then, serves to reinforce the known stereotype as being racially (shared by all with Italian American heritage) driven.

Such typing is far more insidious with African American characters who are still positioned in very limited roles:

The Uncle Tom:  An educated paternal figure a la Bill Cosby, Bernie Mac or the dad on Fresh Prince

The Buck:   the agressive sexually active young man – 50 Cent, most rappers.

The Step-and-Fetchit:    A stupid side kick, generally useless but often played for comic value, often portrayed as lazy and conniving.  D.J. Jazzy Jeff played this role on the Fresh Prince, but this character while used less, is still a main figure of much black entertainment programming.  (Chris Rock show had an interesting reversal of this, with Chris’ white friend playing the side kick.)

The Mammie:  (who has often morphed into the Sassy Aunt or, the loving, wisecracking elder woman) Tracy Jordan’s wife on 30 Rock.

The Promiscuous woman.  While much white entertainment plays to the idea that women are sexual objects, the narratives generally demonstrate the women as desirable but sexually unavailable (think of Rachel on friends – sexy, but always slightly out of Ross’ reach, and while often dating never constructed as promiscuous).  The beautiful black female roles are usually shown as not only sexually desirable, but also sexually available, their promiscuity being a part of their sexualized figuration.

And that’s it.  In 50 years of ‘progress’ black characters are still easily slotted into these five figures.  Three men, two women.

Redacting History: Removing ‘Niggers’ from our past.

There has been a lot in the news lately about two major incidences of changing language of past texts.  The first is the Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn Nigger fiasco, and the second involves the music by Mark Knopfler’s Dire Straits song ‘Money for Nothing’ which has the word faggot.  Both works have been censored recently, and the offending term removed.  The argument is that we are in a post-racial world and such out dated pejoratives are discriminatory and offensive to contemporary sensibilities – they have no place in contemporary society.  A noble sentiment indeed, but what is the significance of removing these terms from historical works.  Aren’t we in danger of forgetting about our racist and homophobic past?  Don’t we have an obligation to keep these works, offensive terms and all, in our collective imaginations so that we do NOT forget that we have until very recently been hateful bigots who promoted ideologies of racial segregation, forced labour, beatings and rapes?  Our past was brutal and as shameful as it may be to us in our contemporary ‘post racial’ enlightenment, don’t we have an obligation to always remember that past, scars and all?  By removing the language of oppression from our historical texts, we are refashioning history into a new model wherein violent and brutal oppression did not exist.

The argument has been made that it is difficult to teach Huckleberry Finn, because it is hurtful for students to hear the word nigger.  That may be true, but language is potent, and sometimes hurtful but it can only be made less hurtful when appropriate measures are used to make amends for that hurtfulness.  And amends can only be made when one is aware of the potency of language.

However, the alternative – removing the offending word – also removes the requisite need for making amends.  Removing the hurtful term negates our society’s need to apologise for past transgressions.  But surely we have an obligation to continue to acknowledge and grieve the sins of our past.  Of course, this raises the question of ‘white man’s burden,’ and many argue that we’ve atoned for our sins and that we are in a post racial society.

Oh really?  Do we really no longer benefit from a past history of violence?  Is there no such thing as the inherited benefits of whiteness?  The truth is that families that benefited economically from slavery passed that wealth down through generations, and white society continues to out earn and out spend all other racial groups in America.  It is not coincidental that while only 15% of habitual drug users are black and 77% are white, African Americans are four times more likely to be arrested on drug charges.  It is not coincidental that it was predominantly the poorest of the black neighbourhoods in New Orleans that were most devastated by Hurricane Katrina and it is because of the simple fact that poor neighbourhoods are in more volatile areas, and tend to be over represented by racial minorities.

But to get back to Twain and Huck, what is the harm in changing a word in a novel?  Well – it changes the meaning of the text, for one thing.

To begin, it changes the unequal relationships between dominant white and subjugated black, to a capitalist inequality of rich ownership and poor subject.  It denies that race is even a contributing factor to the relationship, and instead changes it to one of haves and have-nots.  Of course Huck is a member of the poor whites, and even the poor whites expressed dominance over the blacks.  But changing ‘nigger’ to ‘slave’ changes the history of racial oppression in America to a history of economic inequality.

Secondly, in Huck Finn, Jim is Huck’s friend.  And yet, even their close, familial relationship is still tainted by the inherent prejudice in Huck’s language.  Even though he loves Jim, he can only refer to him in a pejorative way, always reminding the reader of the inherent racial barrier between them.  And while Huck is a child and Jim an adult, Huck’s language positions him above Jim – they cannot escape their racial identities and their racist society, even when alone on a raft.

But also, I’m a firm believer in the adage ‘those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.’  So we are obliged to remember what we have been capable of doing, lest we do it again.

But are we really in a post Racial world?  While our cartoonish images of Blackness have been diminished (although not removed entirely – reality television and rap music continue to predominantly present the spectacle of blacks as volatile, violent, sexually promiscuous and lazy), we have continued the use of the stereotype to construct other races.

 

The image of Kim Jhong-Il continues to use the archetypes of the Attack the Jap propaganda of the second world war.  ‘See the crazy tiny Asian man with the penchant for violence,’ the ads scream.

The image of the Islamic in contemporary media, is often reduced to a cartoonish scimitar wielding madman intent on violence.

 

Are these really the hallmarks of a post racial world?

We have a duty to remember the sins of our fathers and continue to address and keep striving to remedy our continued inequalities.  And yes, these terms are hurtful, they were hurtful when originally used.  But to remove the offending terms is to begin to erase our history of violence and is a means of promoting the lie that we are currently beyond prejudice.

 

So here we are, in our post racial world, and yet surrounded by the stereotyped image of otherness and so totally blind to these images as racially driven and promoting ideologies of hatred, fear and intollerance.  The lesson learned?  We can’t publish the word ‘nigger’ as it appeared in racist texts because it’s offensive, but to depict Arabs as crazed ‘rag heads’ is perfectly acceptable.

Post-racist my lily white ass.

Food for Thought Cont’d

I was asked to clarify my position about western food.  Accused of being overly pessimistic about Canadian attitudes toward food and amidst claims of my being ‘ignorant’ of the slow food movement or the within 100 miles movement, I feel the need to explain myself better.

The slow food movement is a political response to the culture of consumption in the west.  The argument is that food production and consumption should be re-directed to a localized position.  Using a FABIS approach (Fresh and Best In Season) consumption should be limited to whatever is locally produced and using as much organic / free range produce as possible.  And while I applaud such ‘G-Local’ approaches, this is a movement that is perpetuated by a particular well educated middle class segment of the population.  My point is that this is a movement in opposition to the mainstream, which is to consume factory/mass produced product.

There is no slow food movement in Taiwan.  In Taiwan, food production and consumption is almost entirely a local thing.  This is not to say there aren’t supermarkets in Taiwan – of course there are, and most long term / non perishable items are purchased from supermarkets.  However, the vast majority of people in Taiwan buy their food for daily consumption exclusively from local markets.  The difference is, that there is no need for a localization movement, because food production and consumption has never been anything but local.  Meat is puchased from butchers who are supplied by local producers, vegetables is purchased from market stalls that have production supplied directly from growers and virtually all consumption is from locally sourced produce.

 

But here in the west, we have become so completely dependent on mass production and consumption on such a mass scale, that finding locally sourced food has become a challenge, even when we live within 30 miles from farming communitites.  That we even need a slow food movement is a distressing sign that consumption has gone too far on a mass scale.  We need more than a slow food movement, we need to completely rethink how our food is channeled to us through several large corporations (corporate farms, corporate distribution channels, corporate trading and then corporate supermarkets) before landing on our plates, and also re-think our natural inclination to assume that the massification of food production is cheaper than the alternative (sold directly from farmer to consumer).  We’re being sold a lie that massification and corporatization is fundamental to our economy and that this is a somehow more ‘natural’ order of things than when a farmer sells directly to a local distributor.  We don’t need a slow food movement, we need a complete re-evaluation of how we consume.

Food for Thought

Well, this last year has been a mighty strange one, but never did I imagine such culture shock at returning to Canada.

The most shocking thing to me about contemporary North American society is its peculiar attitude to food.  I’ve been out of Canada for the last 8 years, living four and a half years in England, and then three in South East Asia.  My first port of call back in Canada was a large supermarket chain.  At some point in the last few years, small supermarkets have become a thing of the past, and now all grocery shopping is done is buildings about the size of a football arena.   But the most appalling thing about this attitude toward food, is the packaging of it all.  Food in the West seems to me to be something so heavily processed that it no longer actually resembles food.

Having spent the last eight years buying my meat exclusively from butchers, and fruit andveg from farmers markets and green grocers where things do not come pre-washed, pre-picked, trimmed and packaged, I find the amount of food waste in the west grossly offensive.  When we have gotten to a point where only boneless-skinless chicken breasts are available, and kidneys, liver, tripe and heart cannot be purchased, I’m left wondering why and how North Americans have become so terrified of food in its raw state, and yet ironically at the same time so much of this commercially processed product is being marketed as ‘natural.’  ‘Natural’ but completely divorced from its natural state.

So, here is my first film in a series of video blogs about ideology in contemporary life.

In Good Company

Quick quiz, what does this list signify?

China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, USA, Yemen, Sudan, Vietnam, Syria.

Got it yet?

These are the countries with the highest number of executions in 2009.  Of these eight countries, only one is currently classed as a country of the first world. North Korea fails to appear on the list, as they don`t disclose their number of executions and therefore cannot be counted. But, if we presume that North Korea similarly participates in executions and similarly belongs on this list, than where does the US fit in its relation to the so-called Axis of Evil?

And while Syria, Yemen and Sudan continue to practice female genital mutilation and clitoridectomies, America still executed more of its citizens than those three countries combined.

Here is the list in full, courtesy of Amnesty International.

China > 1000

Iran > 388

Iraq > 120

Saudi Arabia > 69

USA – 52

Yemen > 30

Sudan > 30

Vietnam > 9

Syria > 8

The US is the only country with a stable enough infrastructure to provide an accurate and verifiable list. The rest of these countries are still working on providing clean water to their citizens.

So why does America continue such practice which even countries like Burundi and Togo – a country that in the not too distant past practiced cannibalism – consider to be inhumane?

I frankly don`t know, I`ve yet to encounter a credible argument for it. But what is most appealing (er. surely appalling) about America`s particular affinity to this form of barbarism is that it is, of the countries which practice capital punishment, both the most creative and experimental in its ways of killing people. From hangings, to injections, to electrocutions and now firing squads, America is frankly medieval in the prosecution of its criminal class.

The land of the free – coincidentally the country with the world`s highest active prison population both in total and per capita. 0.75 percent of its population or roughly 2.3 million of its citizens, is currently housed in prisons, eclipsing China`s meager 1.6 million – seems to be completely at a loss as to what to do with its offenders.

And so it has really devised only one of two solutions. Either lock them up for such crimes as writing bad checks or using drugs, or execute.

According to the New York Times, April 23, 2008, (America) `has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.)`

So what could possibly account for such high incarceration and execution rates? One possible answer is democracy. In a country in which judges are often elected officials, rather than government appointed civil servants, tough sentencing tends to be driven by popular sentiment rather than an impartial system designed to perform a task regardless of public opinion. So, lets just hope the Great American public doesn`t get a taste for firing squads and stonings.

The Ideology of Tarot

A very good friend of mine, in trying to unravel some of my rather tangled thoughts about love, life and moving, suggested we consult her Tarot cards.  Not being spiritual in the least, I of course first objected but then she stated to me that she doesn`t believe in it either.  This was puzzling to me, and so I asked her what`s the point?  And she said, it never hurts to have a second opinion.

This answer amused me, and I thought I`d give it a try.

To begin, she told me to keep my problem in mind.  Think about the problem, and ask the cards a question.  So I did.  She had me draw out five cards, and then place them in a particular configuration.  In turn, she turned each card over, and then consulted her guide book (she`s not an oracle afterall) about what the cards may mean, and then asked me to think about what that means to me, in relation to my problem.  So far not very supernatural.

So the cards had vaguley mystical – ish drawings of old trees being caressed by nymph like people, and wizened men holding sticks and such.  All terribly suggestive things.

They way it worked was quite simple.

Ask the cards a question.  Draw out a set number of cards.  One card represents `the problem,`  One card represents what you don`t know.  One card represents what you do know, one card is a solution, one card is a resolution.

The card`s all relate to different things, death, pride, courage, anxiety, etc, and depending on what position the cards may be in, the reading changes.

And I tell you what, they really helped me sort out my thoughts.  I`ve become a believer.

Rubbish, I hear you yelling at your screens.

Fuck off Rob, don`t tell me you`re a convert to mysticism, and what the hell has this got to do with Ideology?

Everything. . .

You see, I realized that what the tarot is NOT doing is tapping into a mystical spirit world.  What it is doing, is tapping into the sub-conscious, in a way that is highly controlled and directed.  What tarot is, despite its mask of spiritualism, is rudimentary psychoanalysis.

They are essentially Rorschach cards, that are highly suggestive, but when encountered, done so in such a way that the subject relates such things as `love` `selfhood` `anxiety` to the problem that is asked – generally something that has been `on your mind`.

So where is the ideology?  Well, it is an ideology of mysticism, its an ideology of distraction.

While psychoanalysis (except for Jung) is divorced of mysticism and relates entirely to human thought processes and an understanding of the culture of the mind- the psychoanalyst `reads` a person`s anxieties, thoughts and disorders as manifestations of unresolved issues that may be causing the subject to manifest dis-ease; mysticism, conversely, presents to solve the same problems through some form of spiritual or divine intervention.

And that`s precisely what Tarot presents itself as doing.  Rather than openly acknowledging it as a form of isolating certain aspects of the subconscious and questioning why those thoughts are present, Tarot professes to have spirit guides or ghosts or ghoulies or psychic waves influencing the messages the cards spell out.

But that is all bullshit.

For some reason, Tarot masks its human element (what does this picture mean to you – how does it make you feel in relation to the problem at hand.  If we were to see this image as symbollic of what you don`t understand about yourself, what do you think about that) and substitutes that for a supernatural element (`the cards know all`).

So here`s how it works:

Reader;  Ask the cards a question.

Will I find love?

Pick a card.  That card is the problem.  Oh, you picked a card about nature.  See, there is an old tree.  Hmm, what do you think about that?

Uhhhhh, It makes me feel that love is timeless.  um, but the tree is healthy, its still alive.

well, it says in the book that the tree represents wisdom.

Hmm, Maybe I worry that I`m not wise enough to find true love?

Hmm, why do you say that?

I don`t know, because it hasn`t happened yet, or love is difficult, and I fear I`m not wise enough.

Why do you say that?

I`ve made some bad decisions regarding love.

So that makes you scared?

Shouldn`t it?

Do you see where I`m going here?  That`s pure psychonalysis.  It`s asking the question what does this symbolically loaded thing, which could mean anything and everything, mean to you?  And why do you think that way?

But back to ideology.  I can` t help but ask why we as a society, in the 21st century, with sophisticated understanding of nature, technology, the world, the mind and culture, still feel the need to fall back on a supernatural world that is more knowledgable or more special than the one in which we live?

Personally, I find the mind a fascinating, wonderful, terrible thing.  Surely, our own world is special enough that we don`t need to make up things as magic, psychic powers and religion.

And yet we still do.

In this age of knowledge, where scientific study has shown us how our world is made, how things are interconnected, a good 80 Percent of us, still think that it was made by a floating giant magic man of some kind.

Instead of believing in the certainty of slow, progressive evolution, there are large vocal populations that insist we were scraped together out of clay and mud through magic.

It baffles me that we in the 21st century, fall back on the supernatural to answer the hard questions, and yet rely on the science and technology to provide our entertainment.

Surely we`ve got things backwards somewhere.