I refer to this phenomenon as oppositionism. Imagine if I told you I had a new website that was “nothing like Digg”. Well, you would have no idea what it was. Saying what you are not does not tell me what you are.

You can see this phenomenon in effect wherever our generation expresses themselves. The best example is Che Guevara T-shirts. The wearers think, “I am nothing like the Bush administration,” but fail to define what they are. So they try to name the opposite, but they don’t really understand politics/economics, so they choose some scrappy revolutionary — the kind of guy who would stand up and FIGHT!!!

The fact that he believes your body and mind do not belong to you (communism) is irrelevant — the point is that he FIGHTS!

It’s like any story where “the rebels” are rebelling, but it’s never really clear what the plan is after the empire is destroyed (Star Wars). I hate the dominant paradigms, too… but I’m the guy asking, what would we build next?

Maybe we should figure that out before we load our guns.

— jakoblodwick

——-

As a American abroad I can not agree with this more. I see it every day in the people I meet. The less clever simply say, ‘Fuck America’, without knowing why or what they’d rather see in our place. The educated among them say things like ‘your brand has been damaged’. But the amazing thing is that most of my fellow Americans just nod their head in agreement and basically agree that we are a based people, simply because they can’t think of a reason otherwise and it’s awkward to pick a fight with a local in a bar. It’s way cooler to be “EURO”; complete with black frame glasses and a man-scarf, sipping on red wine while psuedo-intellectualing about economic theories that were proven wrong a hundred years ago, than to be an awkard ignorant American. Nobody wants to be uncool…