The Visceral Society
This is a series of essays on the social theory of human rights with specific application to the period of modernity. It is an inherently interdisciplinary text with roots in sociology, political science, economics, linguistics, biology, psychology, economics, and history. Human rights have decayed over the course of modernity, which in turn degrades the human condition.
Some of this book's contents come from articles posted to Fragmented Zen, the author's personal website, during the course of her study of social and critical theory in the Fall of 2007. This book contains additional material, linking those articles and giving more context and detail. The purpose of this book is to translate the critical theory of society and human rights into purposeful, reconstructive action.
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This is a draft manuscript. Final publication is expected in 2008.
Excerpt: "Sowing seeds of dissatisfaction"
As supplies of goods and labor increase proportionate with industrialization, whether by discoveries of new production techniques, or by exporting our market for cheap labor, we are forced to create demand for new products by advertising - creating dissatisfaction. Analogous with Smith’s creation of disadvantageous trade relations, advertising is self-defeating. People have a finite capability for need, governed by their personal ability to be socially productive in a capitalist economy, and governed by their society’s ability to produce for a person in a socialist one.
In order to create this dissatisfaction, however, advertising is traditionally used. This typically exists voluntarily (i.e. through a social contract,) in that a person will willingly sub ject herself or himself to advertisement in exchange for lower financial cost for a good or service rendered. Attention is a finite resource, however, arguably the only finite resource over which a person has direct control. In the economy of attention, then, giving attention to an element of a cognitive domain is analogous to transfer of a monetary instrument. By this understanding, involuntary advertising is theft. This form of theft is already being addressed politically, in the form of no-call lists and spam legislation, which carry in some jurisdictions heavy fines and imprisonment. This definition, though, should be extended to include any form of advertising extant within a cognitive domain, but outside a social contract. When I read an article on a website that’s subsidized by advertising, I voluntarily subject myself to that website’s advertising in exchange for not having to transfer other financial instruments to that website in exchange for the viewing of their content. When I’m driving in a city and see the names of stores emblazoned high above the freeway, this is also voluntary, in that my cognitive domain is intersecting with the cognitive domains of others who are transacting business in the locations by which I’m driving. If I choose to listen to a radio program or watch a television show which advertising interrupts, the same voluntary notion applies.