Buy Nothing!

Today I'm using the blog to promote something which I think is worthwhile and important - Buy Nothing Day, which is this coming Saturday (29th November - Happy Birthday, Pixie!)

But before that, have a look at this video:
(Hope this works, I've never posted a video before)



Better yet, don't just watch it, steal it from me and spread it around. It's from a website called Bonfire of the Brands. Go check them out. I found it on The Idler, check that out too!

I'm not going to plug Buy Nothing Day for it's anti-capitalist, anti-work ethic. Nor am I looking at it from the environmental perspective. Other people have already done that far better than me. There's a list of them on the right under the heading Kick-Arse Politics.

What I'm proposing is that we use Buy Nothing Day as a way of proving to ourselves and the world of high-brand media marketing that we can and will take control of our own lives.

Advertising

I've nothing against advertising as a thing in itself. In order to get your message across you've got to tell people about it. There are even ads on this blog, and I wouldn't dream of suggesting that anyone abuse the system by clicking them on and then off again! But we are surrounded by it and saturated by it and we barely ever realise just how much we are being controlled.

I understand that it's fairly normal for marketing to be taught as a subject in American schools. I'm impressed, if it's true, and I would like to suggest that we all make a study of marketing and branding techniques. (In fact, I'm using one right now by emboldening the words, Buy Nothing Day every time they appear.)
Why? - So we can become good marketers? No! - So we can defend ourselves against them.

Here are some examples:

Catch 'em young: A recent study in Chicago showed that pre-school children believed things tasted better when they came wrapped in the McDonalds label. That's anything at all - carrots, milk, apples, anything. That's pre-schoolers, 3-5 year olds. That's the power of branding!

Repetition: the vast majority of advertising works on the simple process of repetition. If you tell someone something often enough, they will believe you!

Make it emotive: Nike don't sell shoes, they don't even sell sports shoes. They sell dreams! Watch a Nike ad someday (if you don't feel too dirty). They won't tell you how good their shoes are, how long they will last or the wonderful stuff of which they are made. They show you what you dream of being - a sporting hero. Buy Nike shoes and YOU will score that goal, live in that house, drive that car, shag that appalling mindless bimbo with the bleached hair and tits like halves of grapefruits.

Space creation: Supermarkets are full of psychological tricks and controls. The newest in my local one is a Christmas Santa-and-his-Elves floor painting. It's bright, cartoonish and kids want to play on it for hours. Funnily enough it's right down the aisle of Christmas chocolates.

Smells: Supermarkets do this as well. Bread is a real biggie. Who doesn't love the smell of newly-baked bread? And doesn't it set off your saliva glands and make you feel hungry. Oh to hell with it, let's get an extra loaf. In fact I feel really good now, let's splurge on something else!

AAARGH!

I could go on with this for an awful lot longer - there are psychological tricks around every corner in every shopping centre, every time you turn on the telly, listen to the radio or look at Yahoo/Google/MySpace/Blogger. Please feel free to seek them out. We could create a new hobby - fnord spotting.

The question I'm asking is this: When we go out into the civilised world to buy (say) apples, whose will are we doing? Are we buying them because we want to or because the marketer says we should? And if we do how do we know our choice of apples is our choice?

How much more does this question apply to a pair of Ugg boots, an iPod, or a Renault Laguna?


Buy Nothing!

Buy Nothing Day is a way of - at least temporarily - taking control of our lives and our rampant bloody consumerism. My dad honestly believes that we buy ten times more stuff than we did when he was 25 (about 40 years ago). He may be right.

I read a lovely saying the other day;
The only things which like permanent growth are corporations, goverments and tumours. Damn right!

Our consumerism went too far 50 years ago and it's still getting worse, primarily because we're being influenced by very clever, very evil people who want us to buy stuff. Buying stuff we don't want or need is good for the economy.

Fuck the economy.

Consumerism is directly responsible for all of the environmental disasters we're going through right now. It is destructive to the planet and, worse, destructive to the human soul.

Do your will. Not mine, not the government's, and certainly not McDonalds'!
Just make sure it really is yours, and I'll try to do the same.

Love,
Seán

We Are One!

Happy birthday to me.
Happy birthday to me.
Happy birthday dear meeee.

Happy birthday to meeeee eeeeeee
eeeeee eeeeeeee eeeeeee eeee eee!

Well okay, it's not actually my birthday, that's in two months - cards and really good red wine always welcome - but it is The Dionysian's first anniversary.
I've been writing this nonsense for a whole year! My goodness, I feel a review coming on. How very clichéd and self-referential.
Navel- gazing, anybody?

"What do you think of the show so far?"
"Rubbish!"

I have noticed one thing, which is the fact that I've slowed down rather a lot. It might be because I've got other projects on as well as this or that I'm busier as a househusband than I was as a University Groundsman but mostly, I think, it's because I don't like repeating myself.

That could be a bad idea. I've noticed that many writers, particularly ones on witchcraft, base a whole career on self-repetition by producing a series of books which - in content at least - tend to be updates of previous books. Boring but useful. I'm just not sure I've got the patience.

I've also managed to offend a few people, although surprisingly nowhere near as many as I'd expected. Perhaps the ones who would be offended have stayed away (which would be very sensible) or perhaps most readers are too polite to say anything. I can't believe that most people agree with me. That's highly unlikely.
I really pissed-off the guy from the BNP, though. I consider that a plus!

I've also changed the status to "adult" so I can post pictures of people who have genitalia without Google feeling the need to cancel me.

Let's have a look then.

Using the magic of "tabbed browsing" I can look at the things I've written about over the past year. There's been quite a lot, actually.
There is a fair bit of social politics involving stuff like disabilities, vegetarianism, surveillance culture, drinking, environmentalism, generosity and honesty.
There's some stuff about art, music, film and poetry. There's also deeper stuff about Will and Identity. There's been a SubGenius rant.
There's a lot about love, sexuality, affection and nudity! I like nudity, okay?

The most popular by a long measure (in terms of response) has been the one where I called Jesus a Pagan. In fact the comments were four times longer than the articles.
It certainly seemed to hit the right chord (A Major!), and I'm getting feedback still after slightly more than three months. I even met, a couple of weeks ago, a very nice young fellow called Simon who is a church minister and used that post as the basis of a sermon. I don't actually know what he said - for all I know he could have vilified me as Satan incarnate - but I'm still rather chuffed!

One of the great things about writing a blog is getting the comments, including the ones which tell me I'm wrong. They validate my existence and prove that I'm not ranting into a vacuum. There's not much more pointless than intellectual masturbation, so huge thanks to everybody who has commented and I'll do my best comment on your own blogs (I will, Jake, honest!).

Look to the Future

So what's in store for The Dionysian over the next year?
Errm. . . Dunno actually! I never really plan these things, I just respond to stuff which affects me in some way. I do have some vague ideas about fnords and radio advertising and probably more stuff about nudism and sexuality. I'll definitely be plugging WNBR again next year, and likely one or two other projects and events.

In the end, though, what is the Dionysian for?

Am I saving the world? No, but I'm trying!
Am I giving people something interesting to read and talk about? It would appear so. Phew!
Am I helping my friends do the same? Hope so!
(Note: All the blogs bar two under the heading, "A Rather Good Read" are personal friends. One is my wife! The exceptions are Qelqoth and Ms. Coco LaVerne - and I'm bound to meet Ms. LaVerne's PA, Paul Harfleet sooner or later)

Upon final analysis, The Dionysian is no more than this: A self-created platform for a middle-aged dilettante to ask questions and express his opinions about the world he lives in. No more or less than that, really.
I hope it gives you, dear reader, pleasure and interest in its perusal.
If it does then I'm happy too.
If it doesn't, sorry but there's a whole internet out there to explore. Go find something that does!

And now, because it's my "birthday", I'm going to decorate the post with lovely naked people.
Because I can!

Love,
Seán

P.S. The photos are by the following people (from top down). Please check them out on their Flickr photostreams:

phheww, siberfi, DGHdeeo, spinneyhead, SunCat

If you object to my pinching your picture, please tell me and I'll remove it.

A Touchy Subject

Please excuse the title, it's a pun worthy of a hairdresser's shop I admit but, for some reason, the best I could come up with.

Back in September I wrote a piece called Temple Tarts, and towards the end I suggested ways in which we could improve our attitudes to sex as a society. One of these was to promote nudism and the other to be more open to touch. The response from a couple of friends on Facebook was especially interesting.

Right or Wrong?

One of those friends has an uncle who was a schoolteacher who was falsely accused of child molestation. The case was proven to be total bullshit and thrown out of court, but not until after his life had been ruined. Many people who didn't know either him or his accusers were willing to believe entirely without proof and acted like vigilantes.

In yet another fit of synchronicity, I'm also working in a film at the moment about an innocent man who is accused of the inappropriate touching of a child. It ruins his life too.

Also, back in the early '90s a friend of mine was accused of child abuse. Again it was wrong and proven to be so, but many people believed it. In his case it was because he was male and a known Pagan. Most Pagans over 30 will have some recollection of the Rochdale and Orkney debacles and this was in their wake.

I have no answers here. I still believe that to touch a person who doesn't want you to, sexually or otherwise, is wrong but that the world will be a far better place if we allow more people to touch us. We really need to be open to intimacy and less distant from each other.
At the same time there is this amazing and ludicrous paranoia that anyone (or any man particularly) who is affectionate to a child is doing something sinister.

It's strange: When I was small teachers were distant, dominant dragons. You weren't supposed to like them, you were supposed to obey them. Now my children (aged 7 and 9) often hug their teachers or dinnertime staff. To my mind this is better. There is still some discipline, but the teachers are considered more as human beings in their own right.

Obviously this will happen less and less as they get older and develop personal space, but at the moment it's good and gives the children a sense of security.

In The Beginning

Not long ago I used to think that the primary human sense was sight. I got that one wrong!
Sight is exceptionally important to us. It's how we interact with the world, it's our advanced warning system, it's how we recognise each other. But it's not our first sense.
The first experiences of a newborn baby come through the skin during birth and the moments immediately after. The child doesn't see mum, she feels mum. She feels warmth and comfort.

Our skin is the largest sense-organ we have and we can't turn it off, like we can shut our eyes, and through it we experience everything around us. In other words we need to touch and be touched to fully experience the world as a whole and not just each other.

So why this paranoia over something we need so much? I think it's down to sex.

Touchy, Feely

To touch someone in certain ways is highly intimate and pleasurable, and to be touched like that is much the same. The point of crossover comes in the use of an unwilling person to acquire that pleasure. No longer loving or sexual it becomes a matter of power and dominance.
This is what makes it wrong, the imposition of one's will upon another without their consent. It is, in the words of Granny Weatherwax, "Treating people as things".
Such acts, quite rightly, upset and disgust people. But that's not the problem here. The problem comes in the willingness to believe the worst immediately.

Sex is a natural obsession. Once we've got ourselves sorted out with food and shelter our minds tend to turn that way. Advertisers know this - sex sells, and the manipulation of sexuality for profit is an amazingly effective way of making money. Newspapers know this very well.

Sensationalism feeds the human hunger for stimulation. We are incredibly intelligent beings, we've had to be to survive, but when it's no longer needed for survival that thirst for information can easily be perverted to sell magazines. It's just a more modern form of gossip.

Put the two together and what have you got? You've got a willingness to believe in the most unrealistic nonsense if it's novel enough. Sad but true and I don't think there's a cure. Misquoting William de Worde this time, "A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on". This is no consolation to my friend's uncle, I know, but it appears to be what happens.

What Do We Do Now?

Well, one thing we shouldn't do is worry too much. The sensationalist newspapers notwithstanding, our society is not populated by rampant child-abusing maniacs. Sexual crimes are very rare in comparison with other crimes, and other crimes are going down.
Here's a link to the official figures.

What we need to do is be affectionate with our friends and loving with our children. We need to do our own will, in other words that which we truly believe to be right, rather than to have our wills controlled by the media.
It's the hundred-monkey syndrome again. If enough people behave in a certain way (eg. considering what the truth might be before believing in the guilt of an innocent schoolteacher), eventually the behaviour of the whole society will change.
We can make our society a better place by starting with ourselves.

Love,
Seán