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Every aspect of our world is designed in one way or another. From the appliances in our kitchens to the clothes on our backs, every switch and button has been meticulously considered and executed. Design — whether it be in buildings, laptops or can openers — weave through the fabric of our lives.
But things have changed. Today, we live in a throwaway society. We create and consume in abundance, forgoing detail for convenience. The mass production of virtually every product we use has fuelled a capitalist society that cares little for how things are made, only for how much revenue they garner. We gravitate towards products that give us more. The bigger, the better. The more functions, the better. The more we can afford to buy, the better. Gone are the days where good design, rather than cheap design, took centre stage in blueprints and on drawing boards.
In the world of design, there are few who have created as lasting an impact as Dieter Rams. Widely considered as one of the most influential designers of all time, and one of my personal idols, Rams is a visionary like no other. Nearly every product design created by him continues to be considered a classic today. In a society that is in a perpetual state of flux as a result of cultural and technological developments, that’s staying power.
From an early age, Rams was strongly influenced by his grandfather’s role as a carpenter. After training as an architect in Germany in the early 1950s, Rams was recruited by the German electrical products company, Braun, in 1955. Follow the death of Erwin and Artur Braun’s father, Rams was tasked with modernizing the interiors of a company that continued to launch revolutionary products for households across the globe.
Soon, Rams became a star student of the Ulm School of Design and quickly became involved in product design at Braun. Due to his incomparable talent and eye for innovation, he was appointed as the head of design of Braun from 1961 to 1995. Along with the rest of his design team, Dieter Rams became the man responsible for many of the greatest domestic electrical products of the twentieth century.
Braun asserted itself as a leading consumer products company under the expert guidance of Rams. However, in the late 1970s, the designer became increasingly perturbed by the state of the world around him. He began to see his surroundings as “an impenetrable confusion of forms, colours and noises.” Conscious that he was a prominent contributor to that world, he asked himself: is my design good design? He did not want to thoughtlessly feed into a world that was turning design into nothing more than dollar signs. To him, that was dishonest and irresponsible.
Rams wanted to advocate for a purist, almost imperceptible design; products that fit seamlessly into the lives of those who use it. As such, he came up with ten principles for good design. Often referred to as the “ten commandments of good design,” these principles remain as timeless fundaments of design theory and practice today: Good design is innovative. Good design makes a product useful. Good design is aesthetic. Good design makes a product understandable. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is honest. Good design is durable. Good design is consistent to the last detail. Good design is environmentally friendly. Good design is as little design as possible.
If you have used one of Rams’ products, you would have likely been able to check off the boxes beside each of the aforementioned principles. Each and every one of his creations are aesthetically pleasing, user-friendly and exceptionally practical. They are beautiful without being fashionable, and therefore never appear antiquated. There is no use of big buttons or bold colours or abstract lines; nothing detracts from the product’s function, which is clear and self-explanatory. The inherent simplicity of the design makes the product smart as it is able to express its function by making use of the user’s intuition. Perhaps one of the most important principles of the ten is the one that considers the preservation of the environment. Rams made it his primary goal to offer products to consumers that conserved resources and minimized physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product. All ten principles boil down to one thing: less but better. Simplicity allows for products to be elegant, supremely versatile and free of the burden of non-essentials.
Although the current reality is that most companies do not consider good design when pushing out products to the public, there are some that do. Apple is a prime example. Both Steve Jobs, the late Apple co-founder, and Jony Ive, the company’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, were outspoken admirers of Rams’ work. If you compare some of Rams’ creations with Apple’s products, the similarities are astounding. It is fascinating to see the parallel between Braun’s speaker and Apple’s iMac. Thankfully, many newer start-ups and up-and-coming companies are now returning to the seeds that Rams had sowed. Unlike big, corporate giants, these new businesses recognize a gap in the market for carefully considered and expertly crafted products that reduce everything to the basics. Some examples that come to mind include Cereal Magazine, a store in Los Angeles called Formerly Yes and Vitsoe, a shelving company that Rams himself designed for. For these owners, Rams’ tenth principle — less but better — is their motto, and simplicity is their aim. They’ve adopted a new kind of social responsibility: to reduce products to their simplest form, thereby providing consumers with the best product possible.
Dieter Rams’ design ethos extends far beyond design — it is a philosophy that also applies to life. With so many new products being offered to us, it has become almost second nature to want more and to buy more. Abundance has become a sign of wealth; new versions of appliances, phones and clothes are readily available at a moment’s notice. We feed into this mindless cycle of producing more, buying more and, as a result, throwing away more. This produces both environmental noise and visual noise, exerting very real and tangible effects on our lives. Rarely does anything in our lives remain permanent anymore.
Consumers have been programmed to jump at the sight of a sale sign, and to scope out deals in order to buy as much as they can. It is therefore unsurprising to me that friends of mine would widen their eyes or even chastise me when I purchase an item of clothing that is more than what they would consider as “a steal.” Buying less clothes but buying better clothes is a way in which I’ve adopted Rams’ principles into my life. Instead of spending a certain amount of money on many articles of clothing, consider spending the same amount (or perhaps saving even more) to invest in one high-quality piece. This will not only ensure that you will love whatever it is you buy, it will also lead to less clutter in your closet and save you time in the mornings when getting ready, reducing the burden of choice.
Buying less and buying better should extend into every part of our lives as consumers. The next time you buy a top, cooking knives or perhaps even a couch, remember Dieter Rams’ ten principles. Good design should be so simple, fluid and considered that they almost camouflage into your surroundings. They should make you feel a deep, lasting satisfaction at the mere thought of owning them. It is not only our responsibility to ourselves, but also our responsibility to society to refrain from perpetuating a harmful consumer mindset that focuses on abundance. In truth, simplicity is something we should adopt into every facet of our busy lives. Less is more, and less is always better.
Photo Credit: Abisag Tüllman
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My first reaction to seeing the words “shopping cart” on Mosaic was to post a joke about it on Twitter. After my tweet got three likes and my sense of humour was externally affirmed for the day, I glanced over the words again and felt nauseous.
The words “shopping cart” might seem small and meaningless and the intent behind it was probably harmless, meant to turn an administrative process into something familiar. Unfortunately, it speaks to a larger reality of university education: the normalization of seeing universities as businesses and our degrees as products.
These words now serve as a reality check. It makes me ask over and over again: what’s university? Is it a place where knowledge is advanced, where society is challenged? Is it a hub of innovation? The answer is obviously yes, but there’s more to it than that. Being in our undergraduate degrees, many of us will not get to participate in that culture. Many students leave undergrad, either find a job or go to a professional degree, without having ever interacted with the culture of knowledge-advancement that is the essence of the university as a concept.
To undergrads, university is sold as an experience, as the best four years of your life — a fact that I sincerely hope is not true. Degrees are framed as skill-giving products, and those that don’t offer hard professional skills feel the need to justify their existence by teaching “soft” skills, or by shaping their products into something innovative and cool that can then be sold as “elite”. Admittedly, a lot of this has to do with university programs just trying to survive as funding decreases for any non-STEM field that involves even a bit of critical thinking.
It makes me ask over and over again: what’s university? Is it a place where knowledge is advanced, where society is challenged? Is it a hub of innovation?
“Shopping” equates a process as significant to our life and career trajectories as academics with trivial everyday undertakings. Things you put in your “shopping cart” usually include: groceries, clothes from online stores, highly acclaimed books from Amazon you’ve been pretending to want to read for a few months. This language positions the university as the seller of knowledge, and you, the buyer.
Universities already use ads to sell their undergraduate programs — a tactic I’ve found ethically questionable for some time. While advertising is understandable, ads playing in movie theatres for our Engineering program directly following that guy from The Source explaining some cool new tech product makes it a lot harder to think of my education as a genuinely enlightening experience.
The student-as-consumer narrative creates a feeling of disconnect between me and my education that cheapens the whole experience, which is unfortunate, because it’s anything but cheap.
But the problems faced by our public education system won’t disappear if McMaster decides to change a few words on Mosaic, or stop playing ads in movie theatres. In a way, I am thankful for the language used on Mosaic. The idealized view of a university education as the creator and disseminator of knowledge in the public interest is seriously endangered by rising tuition fees, degree inflation, and a rocky job market that leaves many graduates unemployed for frightening periods of time.
While we must continue to think of the university as the place for groundbreaking and socially challenging research, reminders of the state that our education system currently finds itself in might not be such a bad thing. Language like “shopping cart,” as uncomfortable as it makes me feel, serves as a much-needed wake up call.
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Last week, a video about body image appeared on my Twitter feed. “Fact: 97 percent of women have an ‘I hate my body moment’ every day” begins the clip. “That’s a lot of women looking in the mirror, wanting to change something.” The film goes on to call for women to love themselves, a message that I can get behind. Here is the issue: the video was an ad for Special K cereal.
In the past few years I’ve noticed a rise of “corporate feminism”—the use of feminist rhetoric in an attempt at marketing. Despite the potentially positive messages contained within this media, it should not be mistaken for legitimate feminist activism.
One of the most well known examples of corporate feminism is the Dove “Real Beauty TM” campaign. In one video, the ad tackles the way women view themselves. Sketched by an artist, women can see that they are more beautiful than they had previously thought. The video is moving, and as a woman who has struggled with my body image, it had an effect on me. So what exactly is the problem?
The short answer is that corporate feminism doesn’t care about you or me, it only cares about our money. This marketing may be powerful, but in the end it is still an ad, with the end goal not being self-acceptance, but purchases. Dove would be very displeased at the prospect of universal self-acceptance because satisfaction does not sell beauty products. For example, the company is owned by Unilever, which also sells “Fair and Lovely,” a skin-bleaching cream, which capitalizes on white supremacy in the beauty industry. Our ability to love our bodies without the assistance of cosmetics and soaps is Unilever’s worst-case scenario. If we were to whole-heartedly love our bodies, then why would we need shampoo to help manage our split ends?
At this point you may be thinking that it is not news that corporations aren’t perfect. Maybe if the ads are not entirely sincere, then at least they are promoting discussion. Perhaps some change can come out of questionable content if consumers take a moment to think about feminist issues when purchasing breakfast cereal, or a bar of soap. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The problem lies with corporate feminism’s lack of diversity—not just in its media, which mostly features white, able-bodied women—but in its choice of topics. Bonafide feminism is as diverse as its membership; it encompasses everything from conception, to race, to occupation. Corporate feminism instead focuses solely on ideas that can make money, mostly sanitized messages about body image. These are concepts which everyone can comfortably support, but do not address the root of the problem. While great change can come from diverse feminist dialogue, corporate feminism instead fosters a conversational monoculture, one which is not intended to produce anything other than sales.
Furthermore, corporate feminism often misses the point or leads us astray when it comes to meaningful social change. The Dove “Real Beauty TM” video focused on acceptance through appearance, not holistic self-love. The advertisement for Special K cereal had women throwing off the bonds of the patriarchy through physical fitness, which is not an option for many women with disabilities, nor should it be the sole path to self-acceptance. Both campaigns put the onus on women to change, not questioning the societal structures that make us feel the way we do about our bodies. Corporate feminism’s “solution”—through the magic of retail therapy—is also inaccessible to those who cannot buy their way in. It reduces a movement that is meant to be inclusive to one that is only available to those with disposable income.
At its core, corporate feminism is emotional manipulation wielded to divest you from your cash. Somewhere during the production of the ad for Special K, someone in marketing turned around and said, “The majority of women feel badly about themselves. How can we use this to sell cereal?” I don’t believe that self-acceptance is going to come tucked in with my breakfast food, and neither should you.
Photo Credit: Harry Carr
By: Grace Kennedy
Naomi Klein’s new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, was released last week, fittingly right before a crowd of 300,000 rallied to draw attention to climate change in New York City. In response to Klein’s book, Globe and Mail editorialist Margaret Wente disparaged it as a case of “childish form of magical thinking.” Wente is a predictable member of the camp that quickly condemns grassroots movements. For example, she frowns upon Aboriginal protests against pipelines and hydroelectric dams and Greenpeace initiatives, as folks who just don’t understand the imperativeness and functioning of the global economy – as if the literal economy, and not the earth, is our lifeline. Wente charges Klein with ignoring the presumption that China and other developing nations are unwilling and unlikely to be harnessed into emissions agreements, and that therefore, Klein and other activists “should do themselves a favor and grow up.”
What Wente seems to be feeding on is the apparently impervious claim that if we stop extracting oil or decrease our demand in the global economy, it will be found or demanded elsewhere. Right. But Canada is geographically a large country with substantial resources, a population that for the most part lives comfortably within first-world conditions, i.e. a socio-environmental situation where we can afford to reduce our footprint. Trucking on with the rest of the world is not a better alternative. We are talking about the economy here. It’s not a person, it’s not alive – we know it’s not as free a market to support any neoliberal arguments, and it’s not on its way there either. It is altered in un-free ways now via the world’s largest oligopolistic corporations, trade bloc agreements, nationalism movements in some countries, etc. So what’s the harm in altering it in more ways, ways that benefit the earth – our real lifeline?
Last week, in an interview with the National Post, Klein said that her lifestyle has changed and that she only flies “one-tenth as how much” she used to. She also argued that the “environmental movement has overstressed the consumer side of it.” It’s easy to agree that change needs to come in the form of legislation shaping corporate practices that are admittedly a major part of the solution, but I disagree that the consumer side is overplayed. Sure, I get that each plastic bag I don’t take home from Fortinos isn’t making a big difference; consumers don’t have as much effect on matters as we are feigned to believe. However, unless we – consumers – change our lifestyles to adapt to a world that uses less fossil fuel, and grow to enjoy taking public transit, riding bikes, shopping local and not buying out-of-season produce – we are going to be poor accompaniments to the fight against climate change. We are not going to elect governments that create the necessary policies if we don’t like how our lives will be altered. I think everyone makes the mistake of reducing situations in order to find an easy answer, but to reiterate a point from Canadian author, John Ralston Saul, in these cases, which revolve around ethics, there is no easy answer.
Saul writes about the imperative of individual compromise in relation to ethical choices, in this case, becoming environmentally conscious. Don’t think that green activists absolutely love cycling to work during torrential downpours. Fresh berries in the winter are nice – but could we substitute some fruit preservative from the summer?
A mindful attitude with the freedom to do what we should and not what we always want, while evolving our sustainable philosophies and techniques, will make us better citizens of the earth.
Economics is an ideology, and to borrow another point from Saul, “it is promoted as if it were civilization’s first item of importance…[requiring] common false sense, because it is built on inevitabilities and demands passivity”.
I reiterated this to a friend over a pint last night and he replied that climate change is another ideology just the same. Fine, call it that, call it whatever you want. But the image of polar ice caps melting is inarguable evidence of a phenomenon that needs more ingenuity from people like Klein and less ignorance from the Wentes of this world.
Photo credit: Peter Dean
Cassandra Jeffery
The Silhouette
There are very few places, if any, that are completely untouched by the rapid modernization that has come to overwhelm much of the globe.
North American culture, for example, is largely based on a capitalist system that reinforces the spread of globalization. We’ve become not only fully immersed within a globalized, cultural context but we’ve also grown numb to the ramifications of capitalist ventures and the intrusiveness of globalization. For us, living in Canada, we’re exposed and all too familiar with the consistent influx of McDonalds or Starbucks.
Speaking for the general population at McMaster, I can say that all of us have access to a modern form of communication. Most of us lay claim to a cell phone or laptop, both of which can access various media and communication outlets.
We have, practically, instant and constant access to the Internet. Google has made it possible to see a street level view of a German city while sitting in a lecture hall here at McMaster. Although I’m still astounded at the speed in which technology is accelerating our ability to connect with the rest of the world, I have certainly taken for granted some of the benefits that come along side of globalization.
Globalization discourages cultural and national ignorance. With the world literally at our fingertips we, as global citizens living in Canada, have the ability to discover diverse perspectives while enjoying the comforts of home. Although I can’t speak for everyone, I certainly can’t claim ignorance when I can easily research something on the Internet. Borders have become less tangible as we move fluidly through the globe’s nations and cultures portrayed on our computer screens.
In a more literal sense, globalization encourages travel. As I learn about these fascinating places in the world I begin to yearn for the physical experience. Traveling puts your world, your culture, and your experiences into a different perspective. Taking yourself out of what is subjectively normal and placing yourself into a whirlwind of new customs, cultural practices, and ideologies can be overwhelming, challenging, yet eminently enriching.
Globalization has also walked hand-in-hand with industrialization and modernization. Although I cringe to see yet another corporate conglomerate plant its roots in our already capitalist weeded soil, there are benefits to bringing industrialization and modernization into the metaphorical garden. Influencing economic stability, national capital, and employment, industrialization maintains a level of prosperity.
And, I’m sure we’d be reluctant to give up our vehicles, cell-phones, and central heating in return for a “simpler” lifestyle. Globalization has encouraged industrialization and modernization across the globe, which has, in some ways, beneficially impacted national economic, political and social standing. However, what is to be said against globalization, industrialization, and modernization?
As globalizations encourages a surge of eager travellers, typically the wealthy and middle-class populations of the world, the more traditional areas of the world and the predominantly poverty stricken global citizens are vulnerable in that they become fetisized by world travellers and exploited by money hungry industrial ventures. The land and the people of these un-familiar areas of the world are worked down and forcibly pushed into the path of globalization.
Being sucked into the vortex of capitalism in the name of modernization, we are to assume that this development is natural—an unexplainable, self governing force that simply exists. However, it was Karl Marx who pointed out that our fixation with commodities, and all of the elements that are attributed with consumerism, is a product of our society that we, the global citizens, perpetuated. The spread of industrialization and capitalist ideologies in a country such as Cambodia, for example, creates a social constructed hierarchy of the oppressed worker and the commodity consumer.
There’s something romantically simplistic about the areas of the world that seem to have withheld from aspects of globalization. When I was travelling through Croatia this past June I was surprised to see that the country did not have the typical western icons of globalization.
There were no franchises of McDonalds or Burger King, there were no large western corporations, and although Croatia is a modernized, industrialized country, I couldn’t help but feel pleasure in the fact that this small country, in relation to the rest of Europe, was able to fight off a metaphorical, iconic representation of globalization. On the contrary, Croatia recently joined the European Union and no doubt will this membership into the EU bring beneficial national growth, however with such improvements must come the inescapable spread of globalization.
Switching my focus to Southeast Asia, I fear for the beautiful yet still mysterious country of Laos. Nestled in between Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia the country, from what I have seen on television and in research, is left for the most part untouched by industrialization. The country remains frozen in time, unchanged from a century ago.
Yet, it seems globalization is inevitable. Industrialization and modernization will eventually make its way to Laos. Tourists will choose Laos as their next exotic travel destination, the country and her people will imminently change as outside influence becomes more prevalent and capitalist ideologies flourish.
The pessimism I have for the globalized world is troubling although I hold little faith in the world`s ability to alter our chosen path. If the spread of modernization and industrialization is inevitable all I can do is explore and understand these untouched areas of the world before they become generic viagra soft consumed.
We tend to take the good in globalization and seem to forget about the bad and at the end of the day we are left wondering, do the ends really justify the means?
Aelya Salman / The Silhouette
McMaster frequently plays host to a number of incredibly talented speakers, and this was shown on March 8 when Human Rights and Equity Services welcomed the multi-hyphenated activist speaker Kim Crosby to McMaster, in what proved to be several hours of engaging with some difficult but crucial topics.
Crosby refers to herself as a “daughter of the diaspora.” Her multi-hyphenated identity comes not only from her heritage – she is Arawak, West African, Indian, and Dutch – but also from her professional titles as an artist, activist, consultant, facilitator, and educator.
Crosby facilitated a workshop on anti-racism and later delivered a keynote address in Convocation Hall, summarizing the workshop content and discussing the power of women.
The topics covered included rape, masculinity, the dismantling of debilitating institutions, and solidarity amongst the marginalized. She reminded the audience of the importance of undoing internalized behaviours that arise from years of problematic ideologies.
Crosby's aim was to draw attention to the various ways that oppression can arise, and how multiple oppressions come together to create a more inclusive picture of any one individual.
A key topic touched on during the workshop was the dismissal of activist efforts within certain spaces, particularly academic spheres. The university, Crosby rightfully pointed out, is an institution that often operates on us without our consent.
She was quick to remind her audience, however, that change is more than possible.
In her own words, these systems, including schools and financial institutions, for example, were created, but as members of these systems have the ability to un-create them. She illustrated this by explaining, for instance, that we undo capitalism every day in the gestures we perform for others out of good will.
“You don't give your friend a bill, asking them to pay for what you did for them, do you?” Crosby asked her chuckling audience.
The breadth of topics and their various nuances cannot possibly be covered in one sitting, and that was most visible when Crosby seemed to run out of breath or looked as if she had more to say but couldn’t due to time constraints.
While this workshop along with others like it are not the be-all-end-all of activist discourses, they provide the necessary catalyst for real changes to occur on campuses nation-wide, including and especially McMaster.
After all, difference begins with education and what better place to begin our education than on campus?
By Chris Erl
There is a spectre haunting campus - the spectre of identity politics. All the powers of old McMaster have entered into an oligarchic alliance to exorcize this spectre: traditionalist, reactionary, and conservative politicians. All right, slight hyperbole - but that is one of my specialties.
As of late, conversations have picked up on campus concerning, in particular, the issue of feminism. Thanks to a growing number of venues in which these discussions can occur freely, such as the Feminist Alliance of McMaster, the Occupy movement and the MSU’s new Ad-Hoc Committee, the conversations that happened within are beginning to be heard in larger society - a massive credit to the strength and enthusiasm of the aforementioned group’s dedicated members.
Much can be said for the force of movements aligned with identity, which have helped reduce oppression in modernity. That being said, I wanted to highlight a gap in the conversation.
There is little discussion about the overarching oppression in society faced by all people, albeit in different ways. We live under an economic system that, by its very nature, exploits us. Capitalism was built and continues to operate on a system of exclusive property ownership, alienating workers from what they produce, and extracting considerably more labour from us than what would need to be done to survive.
Since our economic system prides itself on inequality (in Canada, the richest 10 per cent control just under 60 per cent of the wealth), distinctions amongst members of the lower classes become an important factor of social control in order to stave off revolution. “Well, I may be a poor man, but at least I’m not a poor woman.” “Well, I may be a poor woman, but at least I’m not a poor racialized woman.” “Well, I may be a poor racialized woman, but at least I’m not a poor, racialized trans* person,” and so on. So long as people believe themselves to be temporarily displaced millionaires or privileged in some way, revolt is thwarted for another day.
Distinctions between groups are an important marker of one’s success, but they also serve other purposes, such as keeping those of us in the bottom ninety percent fighting amongst ourselves rather than fighting those in power. Most basically, though, the system of oppression just exploits people at different levels, very notably paying women considerably less than men for the same kind of work.
A project to remedy the problems facing a particular group without any recognition of the larger system of oppression that weaves through individual distinctions is simply a well meaning, but misguided, liberal one. A female-identifying feminist who does not recognize that capitalism as an economic force benefits from their oppression and the oppression of their LGBT, racialized, disabled, indigenous, marginalized comrades, will not get very far in alleviating the problems facing those who identify as female.
Simply applauding when women, LGBT-identifying individuals or racialized people are in positions of power is not good enough. Margaret Thatcher was a woman and arguably did more to perpetuate exploitation than most modern British Prime Ministers. The Republican Party, one not known for its eagerness to challenge oppression, notably had Mia Love, a female Haitian-American, and Richard Tisei, an openly gay man, among their candidates in the recent congressional elections.
Imagine there is a fungus destroying trees in a forest. The blight is the same, but appears to impact different species of trees in different ways. To stop the harm being done to the forest, we cannot simply focus on getting rid of the fungus from only birch or only poplar trees. You could care for all the pine trees and ensure that the blight is removed from those trees you see, but if you do not address the infected leaves on the trees that are beside those you saved, they’ll become infected once more.
Do not let identity get in the way of fighting larger injustice. Recognize that solidarity means working together with marginalized groups to fight your collective oppression. Being a feminist without acknowledging that you live under an economic system weighted against you is a huge detriment to your cause.
Oppressed people of the world, unite! Don’t focus solely on your identity, work on getting rid of those chains.
By Edward Lovo
Rumour has it that hip-hop is not dead, that it’s been buried alive, and if one presses their ears against the ground they can hear the sounds from the underground. Hip-hop emerged in its spirit as an art form; its voice was an artistic expression of marginalized people. At its present state hip-hop has lost that spirit for another - the spirit of capitalism. Its voice is sweetened with the honey of bourgeois consciousness.
Hip-hop’s transformation into a commodity reflects an almost invisible but very powerful force in the system imposed by advanced industrial society. Industrial society imposes a technological order, a rationality that seems sensible - where the individual worker disappears from socially necessary but arduous labour in its mechanization - where individual enterprises are integrated into corporations to boost productivity and effectiveness - where free competition among unequally equipped economic subjects is regulated. All of this reflects the rationality behind technological progress, which has the promise of rendering individual autonomy possible. “The technological processes of mechanization and standardization might release individual energy into a yet uncharted realm of freedom beyond necessity.” However, with the advancement of this technological rationality comes a price.
Theorist Herbert Marcuse says, “Independence of thought, autonomy, and the right to political opposition are deprived of their basic critical function in a society which seems increasingly capable of satisfying the needs of the individuals through the way in which it is organized. Such a society may justly demand acceptance of its principles and institutions, and reduce the opposition to the discussion and promotion of alternative policies within the status quo. In this respect, it seems to make little difference whether the increasing satisfaction of needs is accomplished by an authoritarian or a non-authoritarian system.”
Non-conformity with the system, then, appears to go against rationality. Conformity is encouraged and develops a pattern of thought that rejects aspirations and ideas that do not conform with technological rationality — a pattern of thought which is essentially uncritical.
The art form of hip-hop was a vehicle for communicating the ideas, the emotions, and the aspirations of marginalized people which were repressed and stifled by the everyday reality — through hip-hop, people found an outlet where one’s voice discovered the expression it hungered for. Hip-hop held up a mirror to the social reality of urban life, not refracting its light but reflecting its rotten core which reality has numbed us to in our daily lives.
Hip-hop set itself against society, pushing the concealed realities of racism, black poverty, and urban ills past the bounds of sanity into absurdity. The rationality of the higher classes that everything is in working and established order was refuted by the ideals espoused by hip-hop.
Rappers such as Sticky Fingaz of Onyx expresses, in a single lyric, a poignantly distorted perception of reality: “They call me nigga so much, startin’ to think it’s my name.” Infused into his experience as a human is a sense of rupture from humanity — and though this isn’t a colonial situation, Theorist Frantz Fanon’s description of dehumanization of the colonized by the colonist is pertinent here. The oppressor (white people) has distinguished him/herself from the oppressed (black people) who bestialize the latter, which so much media in the ‘90s can testify to. This is what Sticky Fingaz conveys with this lyric. Regrettably, articulation of the black experience in America is entirely lost in the millennium’s hip-hop.
Rapper A.G. paints a frighteningly vivid picture of poor urban areas — ghettos — in the song “Runaway Slave,” not to mention the powerful symbolism invoked by the song title. A.G. is “livin’ in the slums with the bums” where at every corner can be found a crack vial, drug dealers, crack-heads; where “babies are having babies” and “juveniles act wild.” These are ugly truths that hip-hop used to convey about poor urban areas mainly populated by people of colour, truths which have been substituted for dreams of riches that no one but a very few will be able to attain.
Hip-hop of the millennium has substituted the spirit of art with the spirit of capitalism. In songs such as J. Cole’s “Dollar and a Dream III,” Jay-Z’s “So Ambitious,” Lil Wayne’s “Make it Rain,” and Rick Ross’s “B.M.F. (Blowin’ Money Fast)” resentment at poor socioeconomic conditions, the wish for social conditions to be different in urban areas for the betterment of the community transforms into individualistic dreams of prosperity.
This ideology of prosperity that has taken a hold of hip-hop stems from the slow systematic transformation of social reality that advanced, industrial society has incurred on it. Few show interest in hip-hop that does not obsess with prosperity or materialism. Hip-hop has been killed, and capitalism wedded to a technological rationality is the culprit, annihilating all opposition to it.
