That's right - the paperback version of Nothing Sacred comes out this week, and I want you and everyone you know to get it.



It's a book about Judaism, but not about that Judaism. Neither is it about the 'hip' Judaism making the rounds these days, even though it might be fueled by a similar impulse.

What Nothing Sacred does, particularly for non-Jews, is share the core, revolutionary, and decidedly ANTI-religious reasons why Judaism was invented (yes, invented) in the first place. And then it looks a bit at how Judaism got so confused with religion and literal interpretations, and finally offers a way out.

Of course, it ain't just Judaism that's gotten its mythology so confused with history. Look at that Mel Gibson movie's massive success for a hint on how people these days are concretizing the allegories of our greatest religions.

I make the case that Judaism was really intended as a form of media literacy. Out with the heiroglyphs (literally, "priestly writing") and in with the aleph bet. Judaism asks, "what would a world of literate people look and act like?" Of course, over time, being a literate person got replaced with being a literal person. Which is why folks like Jesus came around to say, "it's the core ideas that matter, silly, not their particular implementations at any moment in historical time." But that didn't go over so well.

Today, as literal interpretations of Holy Doctrine threaten the very survival of our species, I think we need to take a look at the underlying intentions of our religions, and judge for ourselves whether they are still serving those purposes. And, if they're not, we should probably look at what to do about it.

I meant my book as a way to begin that conversation. Of course, fundamentalist Jews saw it as some form of holocaust denial, or the further assassination of God by a socialist, yoga-practicing secular humanist. But it isn't that at all. And, hopefully, the way-less-expensive paperback edition will make these ideas and their historical foundations more accessible to the kinds of people who are more open to the idea that religion may be more valuable as a recognized social construction than as Truth Piped In From On High.

6:03 PM | link | 8 comments

 

I just wrote This Article about Rock the Vote's extension into the world of cell phones, and whether this effort really does expand the spirit of democracy, or simply reduce the electoral process even further towards an American Idol consumer survey...

8:43 AM | link | 3 comments

 

Nice new interview with me at JiveMagazine.com.

They brought me back to the early years - at least the early years for me, circa 1992, when I was writing Cyberia and thinking about the possibilities for rave culture and reality hacking. Coincidentally, I've assigned Cyberia (along with Grant Morrison's Invisibles) as the reading for this week in my NYU class. It's the first time I've actually assigned that book, and I meant it as a way of sharing a document (and the enthusiasm) of that earlier time.

But the more I think about it, the less I see Cyberia as a weird fluke to be apologized for, and the more I see it as an accurate chronicle of a state of being, and a mindset of possibility. It feels particularly relevant right now, as so much of our culture (America, at least) further calcifies.

Meanwhile, I'm actually in SF right now - the birthplace of Cyberia, and the location where most of the book takes place - having just done a talk last night at a good, progressive reform Jewish synagogue called Emanu El. A Smart, open-minded crowd showed up, intrigued by the possibility of a Judaism without sacred idols - a path of questions rather than answers. It was one of an increasing number of audiences I've been encountering who are more interested in figuring out how to get past the need for a belief system to hang onto, and onward toward making the world a better place. And they were asking me the same sorts of questions I ask myself - which is always a good sign. (Yes, there was one fellow there from one of those Jewish fundamentalist groups - he had even adopted the fake Yiddish/Israeli accent that they encourage their followers to use - but even he was happy to engage in dialogue.)

So while all certainly isn't right with the world, from my perspective right now, the psychic weather is clearing again - eyes and minds seem a lot more willing to open up. At least mine is.

 


10:30 AM | link | 15 comments

 

I wrote this essay on contract for Time magazine - but then lost touch with them. (I know, you'd think Time would be a big target.) I figure after a year of no contact, the piece becomes mine again; especially if they never paid for it. So I'll share it here.
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"A hundred pennies make a dollar," my father would say, encouraging me to surrender the coin in my hand to a narrow slot in the head of a porcelain pig. It was all for the promise of a transubstantiation of loose change to cash, metal to paper, that confounded my understanding of both economics and material reality. Still, his authority earned my confidence and, like so many other children my age, I made the sacrifice, dreaming of the day that piggy would finally be smashed open, and I would be rich. A postponement of joy for some future, but existentially uncertain, pay-off.

It was a useful belief to have internalized by adulthood, when an entirely new cast of parent figures, from the fund manager on CNBC to the stockbroker at the bank, tried to convince us that the only sensible thing to do with our money was to invest. A "buy and hold" strategy graced with "compounded yields" would turn meager monthly contributions into millions by the time we'd need it. They showed us the pie charts to prove it.

Like churchgoers making weekly donations for the promise of a good afterlife, we contributed to our IRA accounts in preparation for an even more certain judgment day: retirement.

Yes, in America today, the 401K-plan has become our new path to salvation. The most compellingly mysterious portal awaiting us is no longer the transition to death, but to retirement. The afterlife now begins at 65 (or, if we're lucky, even earlier) and lasts as long as our cardiologists can manage. And the pearly gates of that Elysian golfing community will not be opened by St. Peter's keys but by a well-administrated Keogh plan. Have you prepared for that day of reckoning?

So instead of tithing to the church, we tithe to brokerage houses. We're still donating our money to the elderly: It's all going some old person in the future who will just happen to have our name. And it's even a charitable act, reducing the burden that we would otherwise pose on society, or on our children.

As the stock market took its downturn, we were told that our contributions weren't merely saving us - they were saving the economy. The continued investment by us "little guys" wasn't simply filling in the lowest levels of the pyramid scheme - it was a patriotic gesture of faith in the American Way.

Like the devout believers who prepare for ultimate judgment by postponing current joy, we denied ourselves those digital TV's and aboveground swimming pools in order to put a few more dollars into Tyco, WorldCom, and Lucent - the retirement account darlings of the 20th Century. And now that these once-blessed issues are worth pennies to the dollar invested, we are being told that we have been punished for our greed.

Unlike the greedy profiteers and corporate chieftains who actually made money on those stocks, we were not acting irresponsibly. No, putting money into retirement accounts felt like spending on insurance. It was a disciplined, impulse-denying, and entirely responsible place to invest one's earnings. It seemed even more adult and accountable than putting money into a savings account. Buying stocks meant we were willing to surrender liquidity, day-to-day price stability, and peace of mind to the painful realities of the "long haul."

We were the pious, no more self-interested in our savings than anyone else who hopes to be saved. And our disillusionment at the way our high priests looted the coffers is proportional to the faith we put in them to guarantee our passage into the great beyond.

But that's where we went wrong. Our fear, guilt, and, occasionally, even jealousy over the way the elderly are separated from workaday reality has led us to think about the "golden years" as something that takes place in another realm. It's as if retirement day were judgment day, when everything we have done up until then - and nothing we have yet to do - will determine the entirety of our fate. As a result, the object of the game is to make a pile and then drop out as quickly as possible. That's why those who most felt the market drop were workers who thought they had already won "early retirement." Now they'll have to remain productive and participating members of society a little while longer.

And while the fate of our immortal souls may be determined by a process forever out of our control, the rules governing our speculative marketplace are of entirely human design. Our ultimate salvation may rest with God, alone, but the rules governing savings have been written - and violated - by mankind. It is up to us to enact the regulation, oversight, and judgment necessary to insure that the correct rewards and punishments are doled out to the correct people.

As for those corporate criminals who get away with a slap on the wrist and a villa on Paradise Island to live out their own waning years? Don't worry. They're the ones who the real Judgment Day was meant for.



6:00 AM | link | 6 comments

 

I wrote this piece a couple of months ago; it ran in NY Press this week:

http://www.nypress.com/17/7/news&columns;/rotation.cfm

Reading the Consumer Mind
The age of neuromarketing has dawned.


By now, most of us in the appropriately concerned corners have heard at least something about Emory University’s neuromarketing research center, the BrightHouse Institute for Thought Sciences. The latest innovation in a never-ending quest to decode consumer behaviors, the institute uses Emory University Hospital’s Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) equipment to scan the brains of human subjects on behalf of corporate clients such as Coca-Cola, K-mart and Home Depot.


Of course, this goes against the grain for any of us still old enough, or conscious enough, to recognize the difference between marketing and culture. We are already living in a world where the colors of wallpaper, the textures of carpet and the scents pumped through ventilation systems are concocted to alter our mood, change our gait and make us bring more items to the checkout line. Our children recognize McDonald’s and Nike logos before they can read, and our teens are suffering from more advertising-related psychological diseases every year–from diabetes and anorexia to attention deficit disorder and alcoholism.


So, yes, the thought of a once-respected university surrendering its MRI equipment, psychiatrists and addiction experts to an advertising agency in order for them to mine deep into our pre-conscious neural patterns and speak directly to our reptilian brains is disconcerting, to say the least. It represents both the decline of American academic integrity and the rather unlimited reach of marketing into the most private realms of human thought and emotion. If this stuff works, the bottom line of the corporate balance sheet could very well become the arbiter of reality–or at least the way we perceive it.


Therein lies my concern with this line of thought: Does this stuff work? As an analyst of the persuasion business, I have always been less impressed by new marketing technologies than I am by the ways in which they are sold. Just as much effort goes into rationalizing the process of choosing a new color for a cola can as that which goes into actually picking the color. The process is the product. For in their relentless effort to get into the mind of the consumer and to compete for attention in an increasingly crowded media space, corporations will do and pay pretty much anything to gain an edge. They race from one advertising agency to another as each promises a yet more direct avenue toward the emotional control knob at the center of human decision-making. Touting a product has nothing to do with it. No one advertises about "brand attributes" anymore. This is the age of for loftier concepts such as "brand relationship" and "brand experience." Today, marketing takes place inside our heads.


The simple craft of describing what a product does and taking some nice pictures of it has been replaced by the voodoo of emotional logic and cognitive imprinting. Of course, the more mysterious a marketing strategy, the more that can be charged for it, and the longer before the client figures out it’s just the same old thing–advertising–with a new three-ring binder of market research or scientific studies backing it up.


That’s why, oddly enough, the current spate of protest against Emory University’s pathetic sell-out of psychiatry to the highest bidder actually aids BrightHouse in its efforts to gain some credibility for its as-yet unproven research methodology. (Does it really take a brain scan to prove that an adolescent boy might respond sexually to Britney Spears? Or that the taste of candy corn reminds someone of Halloween?) Ralph Nader’s advertising watchdog group, Commercial Alert (commercialalert.org), sent a letter to the government’s Office for Human Research Protections requesting an investigation of the BrightHouse Institute on public health grounds. The letter certainly makes sense, and any effort to curtail the reach of marketers into our lives and the lives of our children should be supported.


What bothers me, though, is that such protests seem to take BrightHouse’s specious claims at face value. The underlying assumption is that neuromarketing will actually work–or that it will work better than simply playing an ad in front of a thousand kids and seeing whether it makes them cry, "I want that!"


Commercial Alert’s letter is quick to cite Forbes magazine, which has called neuromarketing the pursuit of "a buy button inside the skull." Indeed, in a 2002 press release, BrightHouse claimed it would use science "to identify patterns of brain activity that reveal how a consumer is actually evaluating a product, object or advertisement…to help marketers better create products and services and to design more effective marketing campaigns."


BrightHouse has since adjusted its website, adding an ethics section that completely contradicts the press release by claiming the institute won’t use its technologies "to help companies modify the physical properties of products, design advertising campaigns, or determine likes and dislikes for ads/products."


The point here is not whether BrightHouse researchers will apply their technologies to packaging or ad campaigns. (Of course they will; they’re an advertising agency.) BrightHouse’s real victory here has been to sell the underlying assumption that its "NeurostrategiesTM" is such a powerful tool to begin with. The protest, and their reaction, has allowed them to behave as though they had the next weapon of mass destruction in their possession. This may prove to have been the biggest marketing coup of all.


A decade or so from now, I suspect we will regard neuromarketing researchers and their techniques the way we regard phrenologists or blood-letters today. And we’ll realize that the only people who ended up being hypnotized by their wares were the daft corporate executives who paid for them.

10:39 AM | link | 9 comments

 

I'm less afraid of my growing dependence on technology than I am of technology's growing dependence on me.

11:24 AM | link | 18 comments

 

Heavy, actually. We finally moved to Brooklyn, and are almost moved in to our place. It took five months to get it fixed up (meaning painted) and we should have a working kitchen before the end of February. Sorry for the radio silence, but it's been hard to get connected (and hard to find a place for a good shower).

In fact, we went to stay up at my mom's house for shelter without plaster dust, and the recent snows demolished her roof just a few hours after we got there. The insurance company sent workmen to cut open the walls and ceilings and install giant heater/fans. Her place is looking worse than ours.

Work still proceeds - and I'll post some specifics and thoughts, shortly. The NYU Class is going well, as is the new Frontline documentary, Club ZeroG (a graphic novel), PsychicTV rehearsals, and some little talks I've been doing here and there. I'll get details on all that posted, shortly, too.

In the meantime, I'll contemplate being a resident of the outer boroughs for the first time, and experience what it's like to sleep off the grid (Manhattan) for a few nights.

If you're bored, check out the discussion on the Rushkoff Class board. Next week, we're doing McLuhan.

8:51 PM | link | 9 comments