I reckon cruise ships are so enormous to make people feel that they are not really on a boat out on sea. They are like townships or small villages, with their own man-made and controlled micro-climates, not too dissimilar from the mobile cities in Mortal Engines.
Shopping malls are also designed to warp our sense of reality and time – notice the absence of clocks anywhere – and all but avoid making us feel we are actually in a shopping mall. It is s(t)imulation of the senses to keep us ‘entertained’ and hooked; the more time we spend in them, the more money we are likely to spend on them.
Or airports, unless it is Auckland Airport, which has the comfort, ambiance, and efficiency of a windy bus shelter on a cold Winter’s night with music that rivals that in the waiting room of your dentist.
Airports aren’t just a place to catch a plane, they can also be a destination.
Click-bait has a similar function online, with cleverly designed webpages and tailored ‘personalised’ content pushed upon us. If you are not aware of this, you are more likely to be sucked in deeper and further but nobody is immune because in human psychology it is mind (or limbic brain rather) over matter.
We are only a few steps away from the Utopic dystopic world in The Matrix.
Some of us seem to be having faint hopes for a “surprise” in the upcoming Budget and even more so after the CGT got unceremoniously dropped. This so-called Wellbeing Budget may be nothing more than a dead cat bounce.
One would expect the Government to start a narrative in the lead up to the Budget. Next week would be a good time although about half the country will be on holiday. Maybe the week after.
Generally, people do not like ‘surprises’ from Government or Budget. No news is good news. We do not want the world as we know it changed. Predictability gives a (false) sense of security that trumps the risk of change to an unknown new situation or outcome – the Devil you know.
I am not even cynical about the Budget. It will contain genuine aspirations wrapped in political rhetoric to give us warm fuzzy feelings. It is undeniable that we need reassurance from our Government in these turbulent times – the whole country was rocked to its core by recent events.
The realities of party politics and MMP in New Zealand are such that nothing much will change any time soon. Sudden changes send shock waves through our society and will not lead to progressive transformation but could easily sink good ideas or intentions. The best we can do is to slowly turn the Titanic onto a new course and occasionally get off the bloody boat and set foot on land to test and taste reality and then report back to the Captain. Regardless, cruises make for good photo albums FB posts.
I wish all of you a good and safe break over Easter.
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