Comments on: The Cockroach Test

By: mary

mary — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:20:55 +0000

de Botton has written this to the Medialens editors. An opportunity to flog his book ( now a snip at £4.94) perhaps?

A Week At The Airport – email from Alain de Botton
Posted by The Editors on September 24, 2009, 10:11 am

Dear David,
Many thanks indeed for your thoughtful piece about authorial independence under the strictures of advanced capitalism. I thought you might now be curious to take a look at my book, which is released today on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Week-at-Airport-Alain-Botton/dp/1846683599
As you will see, and as I have mentioned before, this is not a book about climate change and its relationship to the airline industry. Then again, nor is the essay blind to the environmental, managerial, financial and political issues that surround the airport.
With good wishes,
Alain

By: mary

mary — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:33:04 +0000

His name is Alain de Botton. The name was clearly spelt in the article which I consider to be illuminating, and Mulga’a comment too. De Botton comes from a family of Sephardic Jews with origins in Spain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_de_Botton

I paraphrase de Botton from my experience of Heathrow (or Thiefrow as it used to be called because of the large number of thefts by baggage handlers) -

‘There is something deeply depressing about standing in a cloudless dawn at the end of 27LR, as Heathrow’s northern runway is known to pilots, breathing in the toxic fumes from the aircraft and the traffic, and observing through the haze, the panorama of dirty concrete and stained tarmac and above a sequence of planes stretching in an endless line, each visible as a single diamond, lined up at different heights, on their final approach.” He observed, further, “there is no one, however lonely or isolated, however pessimistic about the human race, however preoccupied with the payroll, who does not in the end expect that someone significant will come to meet him at arrivals, commonly called a terminal experience.’

He writes total crap and Edward Bernays would have been proud of him.

By: Yusuf Shahanar

Yusuf Shahanar — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:13:38 +0000

The one thing that’s missing in this piece is any analysis of what Alain de Botton actually wrote. Does anyone know? Can we get a copy of this book? Before accusing him of selling out or not selling out, we need facts. Come on Medialens, don’t be lazy – in teh way the Murdoch press is! Go out and do some proper reporting.

By: Mulga Mumblebrain

Mulga Mumblebrain — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 06:33:50 +0000

I just watched the excellent Peter Cook and Dudley Moore original ‘Bedazzled’, and was much taken by Peter Cook (the Devil)’s observation that he had not created much mischief since the Middle Ages, save for the invention of advertising. If there is a clearer manifestation of the innate immorality and destructiveness of market capitalism than the nature and methods of advertising, then I am unaware of it. The manipulation of people’s deepest psychological impulses, without conscience, for no other purpose than selling things of dubious utility, in order to make money, is base, morally and spiritually. Moreover the depths to which these creatures have stooped in manipulating people’s insecurities, and the manner in which they increasingly target children, prematurely sexualising them and robbing them of their childhood, in order to convert them from kids to consumers, is wickedness of the direst kind. And yet, as they prey on society and children in particular, selling junk food that poisons their growing bodies and manipulating their developing psyches in a manner that no mere child molester could ever achieve, they regard themselves as geniuses, and reward themselves hugely, from that private tax on consumption that their fees represent. To make matters worse, Rightwing politicians ferociously defend these psychic predators, even when their victims are children, knowing full well that the indoctrination in greed and self-interest that relentless advertising entails, is the market capitalist economy, and its parasite controllers’, (the employers of our political caste)surest defence against the danger of an awakened public.

By: sk

sk — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:25:49 +0000

Although most of the time these writing deals go off smoothly, with the most salient facts remaining "hidden in plain sight" as they were meant to be, that's not always the case. Not sure why most people assume that "artists" and even more so, writers are likely to be more principled than ordinary members of society. The author of another article published today at DV lionizes the French Algerian writer Albert Camus and quotes from his airy philosophy to make his case against racism, all the while ignoring evidence of Camus's deep complicity in maintenance of a viciously racist colonial enterprise, one that serves as a role model to Israeli advocates of apartheid and ethnic cleansing today (debate and links in comments sections here which unfortunately elicited only denial and tantrums from the author).

By: Don Hawkins

Don Hawkins — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:09:23 +0000

Come on these people only control banks, policy, media, business how hard could it be to start a new way of thinking. A little secret the Earth is already on the job. Strange day’s ahead and it must drive these people of great influence mad well madder than they already were. Black cars, black suits, black hearts. There is more at play than meets the eye.

The Bilderberg Group, Bilderberg conference, or Bilderberg Club is an unofficial, annual, invitation-only conference of around 130 guests, most of whom are persons of great influence in the fields of politics, business, and banking.

List of Bilderberg participants

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke leaving the 2008 Bilderberg ConferenceThe steering committee does not publish a list of attendees, though some participants have publicly discussed their attendance. Historically, attendee lists have been weighted towards politicians, bankers, and directors of large businesses.

By: Michael Dawson

Michael Dawson — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:12:51 +0000

Botton is a beautiful writer, but a narrow personalist through and through. It’s not surprising he chewed on these arms. I’m sure he’ll put out a precious little piece about the deep meaning of taking bourgeois vacations.