Modernism and Drugs...Lets shake it up.

In the 60's and 70's drugs were a keen interest amoungst people and many artist used it. Through pop culture many pop artist were Explicitly on Herion a lot. Many artist died from too much use. At this time people used to develop screen test which were videos watching people as they took drugs and seeing the affects and usually adding music to it. If you took herion you are numb and not worried about the past or the future. It removes the pain and pleasure when on it and when they come off it everything tastes horrible or they become very cold. Therefore people become addicted becasue they have to keep taking it to take away the feeling of being in pain or being cold. Which makes it harder to come off it. LSD controls different parts of the brain, it turns off perception and short term memory. This Links to Tom Wolfe book about being on LSD. This time is most usually known as the hippy movement- magic bus and flowers etc. LSD also cause haulisinations and creating the feeling that there is a back smoke hovering around.
Gonzo journalism- Driving 100mph on a straight road in the dark.

Albert Camus

THE OUTSIDER/ THE STRANGER: (1942)
The story is divided into two parts: Before and after the murder. The main character Meursault or Mr. M as we called him. Is the first person narrative for the book. Attending his mothers funeral he shows no emotion and does not wish to see the body- but smokes and drinks milk. After he carries on with life as if nothing has happened. He has a sexual relationship with a girl maria.
He ends up helping a friend Raymond by writting a letter to his Girlfriend who is suspected of infidelity so that Raymond can sleep and beat her one last time. When this is carried out Meursault again appears to show no emotion about this incident. The main incident of the book is where he Kills an arab for no apparent reason after being at a beach house. He shows the reader no reason or emotion to why he killed him just saying that the 'sun' was too bright to see.
In the second part of the book he explains his arrest and his time in prison. Thinking is sentence will be light he is then shocked when he realises he has been sentenced to death. The universe is irrational!!

In the seminar from this we discussed that he exist via sensory and he is unaware of human existence. It is hard to gather that he has no emotional response to anything that happens around him. 'Human life has no meaning'.
The character shocks the reader with the bluntless of the character however this bluntness makes us start to believe that there is nothing wrong with this. The character clearly knows what is going on but he lives for the present day. He is someone that see's rather than feel's. He does not think of the future therefore he does not dread it and he does not regret anything because he does not think about the past.

Those in the story who did not understand the character can replicate the socety that has been and is around today. The society view is to keep everyone in line. People try to get rid of those that they don't undertsand- therefore never excepting anything different or learning to live with such people. For society keeping everyone in one straight similar line will keep the world in order. I don't think so.

living in the present day, dont think about the past or worry about the future. live for the day, live for the present

Back on it...HCJ continues...

LECTURE ONE: ECONOMICS

I must admit I am not a fan of Economics and probably never will, but this lecture was very interesting and gave me some interesting facts I did not know before. I enjoyed the idea around the I.O.Y which was used as an example and other theories we covered. I stil have no interest in it, but here is what I gathered from the lecture.

(Money can’t buy poverty) thinking back to Adam Smith people respond positive to pleasure and Smith believed that people were easy to read. Utility is something that everyone has and it goes up and down throughout the day. People have the power to maximise their utility. Link back to JL Mills he thought that it was like a temperature you could measure. We can measure it by price. Looking at how much people are willing to spend. Utilitarianism is a reaction against the Kant system (the difference between the right and wrong). There is an ethical reaction to this theory. ‘The runaway train’ all people are going to die- there is a lever- if you pull it, the train will go another way and the people won’t die. However there is deaf track worker on the line, therefore he would die. Save lots of people or save the deaf Track worker. NHS- how much money you are worth to live- How expensive depends on the situation.
J.N.K get rid of pointless things
Population grows children rates and the increasing number of people. Doubling food resources will increase number of babies which will eventually cause a economic crises ‘rapidly grow’.
Marx thinks that when wages go up there will be bigger families which is the effect of the free market. In the 19th century they predicted that there would be overconsumption therefore would not be able to absorb profit.
Marx ‘eliminate profit’ he diagnosed but did not discover the solution for the problem.
1848- Gold rush in California and the mass migration,
Money- what is the function of money and the means of exchange.
Gold is universally accepted. It was though that gold would last forever and that there was a unlimited amount. People used to be able to swap a £10 note and get £1 of gold from the bank.
World currency in other words gold coins clarified in 1928
Credit creation ratio: the bank creates the money from the money we have and then creates artificial money. For example the I.O.Y theory.