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homebrew

Posted at 2025-09-20 03:02:26(1 wk ago) (Bowie General / Images Vol. 40)

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I was tempted to skip this one. It hasn't aged well as the kid say. But as always this is how the article first appeared and is unaltered by me.

*Images*: Part 40

Yes, Bowie called Up The Hill Backwards an "odd piece of music." I
agree, few wouldn't, that it is unusual. According to Bowie, "on first
hearing it conveys a cynical, shrugged off attitude," sort of, "there's
nothing we can do about it." He stated that it is "the epitome of
indifference." By the end however he insists that, "it makes a
commitment." He wanted to "block in the song" at both ends using what he
calls , the high energy Fripp, quasi Bo Diddley sound as bookends. It
has "more power than it would seem at first as a commitment. But by the
end it has a strong commitment, disguised as indifference."

I have to take Bowie's word about the strong commitment, what I do know
however is that once again this song contains, one, if not the best,
lines he has ever written. More on that in a minute. " The vacuum
created by the arrival of freedom, and the possibilities it seems to
offer." I take that literally, and when I do I see an amazing amount of
insight, and I am in awe of it. Freedom did arrive. It did. We saw its
arrival in the form of the various "movements," such as the "women's
movement," as well as "revolutions," such as the "sexual revolution."
The, "possibilities they seemed to offer" were quite appealing, through
them we would attain "NEW FREEDOMS, we would be "LIBERATED," we would
have more "RIGHTS." We forgot to consider the fact though, that mankind
should not be let loose, especially armed with the bulk of its "wisdom,"
because knowledge is dangerous in the hands of mankind. The fall of the
Roman Empire, the greatest empire there ever was, can be attributed to
one major factor, the breakdown of the family unit. Now it is the family
unit that is the "foundation" of our society, if it is destroyed I do
not have to tell you that society will collapse. The so called "sexual
revolution" was supposed to "free us, and it did. It was because of the
sexual revolution that sex is no longer taboo. It advocated "free love,"
which in reality meant that it was now morally acceptable to go out and
fuck everything, and anything, you wanted to at will, without any sort
of a commitment to that person. In addition it allowed the homosexual
community to "come out of the closet," The whole of society was
effected, it changed dramatically as a result of the sexual revolution.
This is because it also redefined what was morally acceptable to us.
What we saw on television, in the movies, heard on the radio, read, and
the general attitudes towards sex, and what was permissible, all
changed. We became more promiscuous. What is the value of something that
is just "given" away? Is it really worth that much to anyone? Then,
what is the value of "free" sex? How much respect does a person have for
you who is unwilling to make any type of a commitment? Zero, on both
counts.

Unfortunately, the acceptance of this sexual freedom mainly served to
desensitize society. What was once shocking pornography, was now
available for the "liberated family" to watch on prime time television.
We could all learn "new" words now. With our values now lowered, it made
it much easier to accept other examples of a degrading society. Drive by
shootings, serial killing, high school massacres, rape, children packing
9 mm hand guns, gang violence and the behaviour of celebrities. The
sexual revolution was hampered however by its biproducts. AIDS, Herpes
Syndrome 2, Clyamidia and a few other nasty little diseases. The lack of
commitment led to millions upon millions of "one parent families" where
it is a struggle for them to make ends meet. They drain the social
welfare system, but the major damage is done to the children of these
families. Kids are meant to be raised by adults, that way they learn how
to cope with life, and how to behave. The difference between what is
right, and what is wrong, stem from the teachings of parents, they need
role models, a boy needs his father, a girl, her mother. It wasn't just
the sexual revolution that destroyed many families, in fact, the
"women's movement" did more.

Liberation. Women's Liberation freed women so they could now go and be a
slave for a corporation, doing a work fifty hour work week. This is
instead of doing the useless job of loving and raising your own child at
home, to prepare them for life. Being at home is a disgrace to a woman's
self worth, according to the "freedom fighters," your worth is really
determined by the corporate ladder, and how far you get. You can now
prove your worth as well, on a piece of construction machinery, on an
oil rig, or as a prestigious handler of roofing tar. You can even drive
a truck to get far away from home, or go and shoot someone by joining
the Army. Thank God for Liberation. Especially thankful for the women's
movement are the baby sitters, for the simple reason of the hard cash
they get paid for raising other people's children. You drop little Joey
off at the sitters at 7:30 AM. Little Joey is fed, and then placed in
front of the television for a few hours. Joey receives the benefit of
having his attitudes formed at a young age by the shows he watches, and
this prepares him for later life. Later, Joey is picked up at five, by
two parents who are too tired from work to give him much attention. When
he is old enough to go to school on his own, Joey can come home to an
empty house everyday, where there is no one to set guidelines, or rules
he must obey. Joey sets his own values, helped along by his television
education, and the wisdom of friends his own age. Skipping school, shop
lifting, car theft, break and enters, drug dealing, and involvement in
gangs are great options for Joey with all this free time on his hands.
If Joey is lucky enough, well, chances are good, to come from a single
parent family he also gets the benefit of one less role model, so he can
pick his own. Joey can choose from Kurt Cobain, Liam Gallagher, Tupac
Shakur, Notorious, Lee Harvey Oswald, Osama Bin Laden, Cindy Crawford,
Tinkerbell, Timothy McVeigh, or Jason from the movie Halloween. So, many
wonder possibilities. If he wanted to Joey could even succeed in getting
sixteen years to life from copying one of these role models, in a
Federal Penitentiary. Now, do not misinterpret me here. I see nothing
wrong at all with women who wish to pursue a career outside of the home.
I do see a problem however when women who choose to stay home are called
slaves to men, or demeaned by the insinuation that raising a child full
time is a waste of time, compared to working for a corporation.

These revolutions have also freed fifty four percent of the population
from their wedding vows. The freedom from having to honour our
commitments has certainly had an effect on society. Just ask those who
saw the Roman Empire collapse. If the truth be known, what we have
attained through these freedoms is, as Bowie said, "a vacuum." They have
succeeded in forcing us to accept the things which we would not have
been willing to accept before, probably due to a higher code of ethics.
Since the scope of what we are expected to accept now has broadened, it
has given licence to society to test these new boundaries, by going over
them. Artists push at these boundaries consistently, seeing how far they
can go over the line of decency before someone objects. Radio
personalities, I use the term for politeness only, such as Howard Stern
are no different. It is practised in every facet of the entertainment
industry. You see though, the more they push, the more we accept, and
along the way society becomes desensitized. As time goes on, it takes
more and more to get a reaction from people due to the loss of our
senses. This explains why television shows have to continually find new
ways to "SHOCK" the viewing audience in order to attract them. It used
to be that the quality of a show, the writing, acting and such, was
sufficient to hold the attention of viewers. The quality of music a
radio station played was what determined a listening audience. Now we
have to see a person stick their head in a box of tarantulas, eat pig
entrails, or suffer on an island without food before we tune in.
Cartoons for our children, such as Bugs Bunny, are no longer exciting
enough. Nowadays we must have some character, who is a mutant version
of Bart Simpson, tell us to, "FUCK OFF SHITHEAD!"

By being desensitized to those things that used to violate our code of
ethics, has lead us to the acceptance of the ills of our society. What
used to shock us, is now seen as "routine," oh, another one, no big
deal. I am referring to drive by shootings, high school massacres,
children murdering other children, crooked politicians, war, genocide
and the rest of it. We have become "used" to it. We have become, as what
Bowie said this song displays so well, a society of "indifference." Our
attitude toward things is, "WHAT EVER," more often than not. They
crossed a monkey with a jellyfish using their genes. Oh, and spinach
with a pig too. Don't believe me, neither did I? Go look it up and you
will see that I am being straight. They are genetically altering
whatever they can. Why? It is because we have not imposed any
restrictions on them, they are free to do what they want. Will they
clone a human? You bet they will, we won't stop them. Do you know that
almost ninety percent of cloning attempts fail? So, what do we do with
the ones that fail, and are born anyway, accept it? The next generation,
our children, have been exposed to this "freedom" since birth. The
violence from television, the movies, Play Station, never mind the
goings on in the world. What is it going to take to "shock" them into
reality the future. History has proven that we can't allow society, and
its leaders, to go unchecked, they need to be regulated, restrictions in
the form of a code of ethics must be imposed. Instead however, we are
removing any ethical boundaries in the name of "FREEDOM." Because of the
vacuum of indifference we choose to live in, and giving society the
freedom to do what ever it pleases, we are just begging for trouble.
We'll get it too.

They told us freedom would come through our advances in technology, Yes,
technology would set us free. At one point it was envisioned that our
average work week would be 28 hours, and we would retire by age 38
because most of our work would become automated, mostly through the
computer. Instead, we have been enslaved by technology. It has not
improved us as humans, it has destroyed our standard of living. Yes,
things are easier with the microwave and cell phones, but society and
the family unit overall has been decimated by our technological
advances. Television was one of those advances. The average American
watches NINE YEARS of TV in a 65 year life span. The television is so
valued that 99% of homes have at least one, and 66% have three or more.
The percentage of families that regularly watch television while eating
dinner is also 66 % and this is why parents spend two or three minutes a
day in meaningful conversation with their children. The breakdown of the
family unit starts early in life. Seventy percent, (70%), of all day
care facilities have televisions, so by the time a child reaches the
ages of four to six the TV has become so ingrained in them that 54% of
them will choose TV over spending time with their fathers. As babies
children are dumped in front of it at the daycare, and exposed to it at
home for almost seven hours a day, and this would explain the fact that
it is natural for a child to spend 1500 hours a year glued to the
television set, and 900 at school. My generation did not have a lot to
choose from on television, we only had twelve channels, but now there
are hundreds. This is the TV/Internet generation. Seventeen percent can
name three justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, yet 59% can name The
Three Stooges. Oh, just wait. The brokerage and investment firm, Merrill
Lynch, commissioned a study on the state of education and published it
in a book titled, The Book of Knowledge: Investing in the Growing
Education and Training Industry. The results on the study you could say
were rather alarming. Among the findings were that 43 percent of fourth
grade students could not pass a basic reading test. Nearly HALF of all
High School GRADUATES were unable to perform mathematical calculations
at a grade seven level, and one third of seventeen year olds could not
locate France on a world map.

The technological boom started in the early seventies, however the mid
seventies was when the turning point was. The home computer was no
longer the writings of science fiction, it was a reality. I found an
interesting coincidence that along with the technological boom the
marriage rate has fallen nearly 30% since 1970, and the divorce rate has
increased about 40%. The divorce rate has quadrupled from 4.3 million in
1970 to 18.3 million in 1996. Another interesting fact is that 81% of
those divorced cited that the problems in their marriages were ALL DUE
TO A LACK OF COMMUNICATION! They felt they got no "emotional support." I
know that this will be difficult to believe, it was for me anyway, but I
assure you it is true. I know that because I went to a lot of different
sources, and read quite a bit in order to make sure that this wasn't one
man's theory. It isn't. We live in the so called "Information Age," and
therefore you would think that communication has improved along with the
volume of information that is now available at our fingertips. If you
think that however you would be completely mistaken. The technology
which delivers this information to us, the Internet and the television
mainly, have in part had a devastating effect on inter personal
communication. Bowie said a VACUUM. Listen to this. The internet could
be the ultimate isolating technology, that further reduces our
participation in communities even more than did automobiles and
television before it," said this study. The Society at Stanford
performed this study, and it was recently updated, on the effects of the
Internet on society. A report issued from the The Stanford Institute
for the Quantitative Study of Society on February 16th, 2000, had this
to say,. "As Internet use grows, Americans report they spend less time
with friends and family, shopping in stores or watching television, and
more time working for their employers at home - without cutting back
their hours in the office. As it turned out , one of the "KEY" findings
of the study was this, "the more hours people use the Internet, the less
time they spend in contact with real human beings," said Stanford
Professor Norman Nie, Director of SIQSS and principal investigator along
with his co-investigator Professor Lutz Erbring of the Free University
of Berlin. The University of Detroit did a study on communication
between parents and children and found that they spend a total of 14.5
minutes a day talking to each other. This 14.5 minute statistic is
misleading however. You see the study went further and evaluated the
content of the conversations, only to discover that most of that time is
squandered on chit-chat like "What's for supper?" and "Have you finished
your homework?" The study found that the duration of meaningful
communication lasted an average of two minutes.

What the future holds because of online shopping, banking and the
ability to obtain services and communicate, is the fact that we will
never have to go out very much anymore. This will further reduce the
need for human interaction. In a very short time "Smart Cards" will
allow us to "download money" without ever leaving home, and with
Egovernment becoming available as well, things such as licence
renewals, applications for permits, passports and other government
services will all be on line. Smart Card readers which hook up to your
home computer for on line shopping are now a reality. Some companies who
offer them are unable to keep up with the demand. In the developed
nations every government has a branch of it solely devoted to the
introduction and implementation of ecommerce, with Britain, Canada and
the United States leading the way. The US has fifty five pilot projects
devoted to the development of Smart Cards which will contain all of the
plastic cards you now carry all put on to one card. This card is also
an "electronic purse," which you download money on to. Every piece of
technology required for us to become a cashless society has now been
developed and the equipment is made, all that is left to do really is
to "turn it on." Soon names such as Visa Cash and OneSmart will be
household names. Hitachi makes a telephone that lets you insert your
Smart Card into it and this enables you to down load money to your card
at home. A cashless society is closer than most realize, if they wanted
to it could be implemented in months, rather than years. The next
technological advance that has come to pass is the implantable chip.
This chip, about the size of a grain of rice carries all of the
information contained on your Smart Card, and is implanted just under
your skin. It is also able to do all of the financial transactions that
your Smart Card is capable of. This chip is not something of the future,
it has not only already been developed, you can buy one at a cost of
around $200.00. The next implantable chip will have technology included
in it to be able to transmit information such as your vital signs if you
are injured. The most interesting feature however is that the chip
contains Global Positioning System technology. This allows them to
"track" you and know exactly where you are, within three feet, anywhere
in the world. This chip is expected to be available within the next
twelve to fourteen months. Because these chips carry all of a person's
ID, and are implanted, it makes them almost tamper proof in the fact
that it would be extremely difficult to alter ones identity. Since this
is the case it would be in the best interests of the government to make
them mandatory, for reasons of national security. This idea is beyond
the "discussion" phase, it has actually moved as far as the "testing"
phase. The results could be rather fascinating. Bowie had society
figured out quite well, and in one line. There is more however, in Up
The Hill Backwards. Really.

alADiNsaNE

To.....yeah, yeah..........

*BACK TO THE INDEX <index.htm>*

--

""I don't begrudge any artist for finding an audience"
- David Bowie abt. 1987

dag97	Posted at 2025-09-22 21:27:01(1 wk ago) (Bowie General / Images Vol. 40)
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