Week 7: Culture Jam

After reading the beginning to the book "Culture Jam" by Lasn, I found that I do agree in almost all respects with his views on advertisements, corporations, and societies general disconnection with nature. However, it is with these sorts of topics, which I start to find myself spiraling into the same sort of general social pessimism every time I am confronted with the dark facts of the world around us. The nature of our current society, and the cogs which turn the wheels within corporate AmericaTM, are working below the surface yet surround us, strangling our ability to manage our lives without influence at all turns, and it is this knowledge which breeds my pessimism.


However, I did think that Lasn made a number of quality points in the space of nearly 40 pages, his view on our disconnection from nature, surfing the television as a means of brain numbing, and the general fact that our everyday lives are managed by strangers (to an extent.) I think the best way in which he presented his point, other that the quote where he discussed the Earth as kin rather than an item to be used, was the quote, "When you cut off arterial blood to an organ, the organ dies. When you cut the flow of nature into people's lives, their spirit dies."