HS101: The Charon Chp7 readings mentioned individualism, but it's still a hazy concept to me. I can accept that individualism has some roots in undiscerning meritocracy (Recent meritocracy debate in Spore about what constitutes merit) and materialistic culture. I can visualize it as having (but not necessarily) some links to moral subjectivism. I think it can be partly characterized as a reduced sense of owing something to society (meritocracy can encourage the idea that my success is based on my work and talent alone, not the influence or contributions of my society), as well as a sense of belonging to, and having pride in one's society. Still, I feel there's quite a lot I don't understand about this concept...
HS102: Reading all this conspiracy theory material about the power of discourse makes me think that the way the government shapes its language and discourse to its own ends is kinda cool, in a sick and twisted way.
HS103: Capitalism. I have a lot of unresolved thoughts about this, whether or not it is greatly responsible for social inequality, or whether or not it has evolved to encompass things once considered as externalities (factors that are ignored by market forces e.g. environment, social costs... They are not externalities if they become factored in). However, I think I can safely conclude that Capitalism has generated a lot more production volume, and has taken that production volume and applied it to the mass production of an unreasonably large pile of non-essential crap. Luxury cars, mp3s, clothes... I'm not saying I don't like these things but seriously, A LOT of these things are produced. We don't even use half of them. Think of all the commercially dominant Ipods being bought off the shelves. Now think of all the mountain-high piles of 'inferior' mp3s (cough c r e a t i v e cough*) left unsold. Hmm... I guess I'm being a bit biased but I'm sure there's some truth in this statement...
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