poptimists | ARGH! (Reply)

From:

awesomewells.livejournal.com

My opinion is that the song is about how, not just the elders, but mostly the society and the power structures that are inscribed in it, and reflect on its cultural industry, economic system, and ways of education(in libraries for example), are all used as mechanisms to manipulate and supress the idea that one has for his/herself, in order to make the person fit into a stereotype ( a role, if you want, created by the system) that only serves to help it sustain itself. So, "libraries gave us power", huh? But what kind of power is that? A library (in Newport), built with coal-miners' money but filled with books written by bourgeois intellectuals (at that time there was no other form of discourse) serving only as a "knowledge" gateway into the realm of the upper class - teaching people the sort of knowledge that will only create a false conciousness. The inscription on the library (Knowledge is power) means tha anyone MAY get his share of power, but only if he incorporates that particular knowledge (and its conditions) ... "Then work came and made us free" I love the irony of the manics! Why should anyone need to work in order to be free?! Any marxist you may read, will point that a dominating system (such as capitalism) needs to create false conditions of life, in order to then come as a "saviour", impose its rules, and give you "deliverence" from misery... the misery of survival, which the dominant oligarchy created in the first place. Just like in Auschwitch,one of those workhouses/purgatories-built-on-earth, where nazis exploited the jews until their death, because they needed cheap working hands ... Then the third line comes, and its not surprising that after the first two it makes the most obvious remark: "what price now for a shallow piece of dignity". Dignity, that is lost through all these filters of modern society. And what dignity can one have when one has no option but to being forced( no sorry, "tought") into living a life that is simply undermining his/her liberty? As for the title of the song, i think it confirms all these thoughts. Throughout the song, which is filled with ironic lyrics ("we only want to get drunk"), the only words that are not in this frame of thought, is where James sings "i wish i had a bottle.." and "a design for life". Instead, these lyrics may be seen as complaints about the situation. At first, the title didn't mean that much to me (no, i think its not a reference to Joy Division, or a mockering of a Ford ad). That was until i found out about Alfred Adler, a socialist-psychologist that wrote in the 30's-40's, who spoke of a "Design for Life", that everyone creates individually, and gives a person his "purpose" in life. Adler believed that, as children, everyone forms a set of beliefs, about the world, about oneself, and about ones position in that world, and in the social relations that exist in it. And that those beliefs guide a person in his life, as the base of his reasoning for his actions. I hope i am making some sense by now?! To make it a bit more clear, you can see that by controlling those aspects of life, which many people see as obvious, as another "law of nature" and given, (working conditions, educational system) those who hold power can form ones' image-of-self. Literally by ordering what you can or can't do (and by assigning signs that tell you that on buildings, making it explicit) they drive people (people who have lost control over their own lives) into alienation and loss of self-awareness. It is they who are the authors that "draw" the "design for life" instead of the real subjects. That is the state, that the manics suggest, the working-class finds itself in,today, and the reason why this song is meant to expose this lie - that we live in a classless society.