noticed the uproar when “marco” came out. an R-rated movie which was advertised from the beginning as extremely violent and not meant for children. but anyway, it made people fume. the reason: it’s a bad example to the children! the prophets of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt/disinformation) have listeners galore. and once again, they had to blame everybody else instead of themselves.

they say “the current generation is doomed”. and the reason: movies, drugs, social media, mobile phones. but oh no, it’s not the neglect, the lack of love, the lack of honesty, the comparison, emotional manipulation, and the lack of understanding. and it’s definitely not them judging and loathing the younger generation.

think about this: how about, just, how about you consider parenting your own children instead of asking everybody else (the government, the creators, the bureaucracy, the police, the teachers) to take care of them for you? you can’t monitor what your children consume, you can’t sit down and have a conversation with your children, you can’t listen to them, you can’t teach them how stuff works, and your children don’t feel safe sharing their thoughts with you. but yeah, mobile phones are the problem. everything should be censored, artists must be wound up, because “oh, think of the children!”

plus asking the government to censor and regulate everything is another disaster waiting to happen. sooner or later, everybody would require age verification to browse the internet. oh wait, that’s actually happening now.

and if you think censorship and banning is the solution, then how about we start banning alcohol and cigarettes? well, that would result in less taxes, so, no can do, eh? how about banning all phones and computers? ban the world wide web too. hell, you could go so far as make children walk around blindfolded, so they wouldn’t be exposed to “this dark world”.

on the other hand, artists clearly have a social responsibility as well. but when more profit is goal #1, that’s when we get recycled storylines, more brutal action scenes and completely deranged crap.

well, my aim is to not make “entertainment” more “family-friendly” or “inclusive” or whatever, because my question is: why do we need an unending morphine line of entertainment? why do we need to be satiated all the time? this is a crisis all of us face, including me.

“How many adventure films does it take to compensate for a lack of adventure? How many superhero movies must one watch, to compensate for the atrophied expression of one’s greatness? How much pornography to meet the need for intimacy? How much entertainment to substitute for missing play? It takes an infinite amount. That’s good news for economic growth, but bad news for the planet.”

- Charles Eisenstein