The Fuck It Point
Savage Revival (2012)
Film Review
The Fuck It Point occurs when you fear the evil of the current system more than you fear actively organizing to tear it down. A growing number of activists around the world have reached this point (which Paul Hawken discusses in Blessed Unrest). We still have a little further to go to reach critical mass.
The specific fears that deter people from attempting to dismantle the current economic system are fear of losing privilege, fear of police brutality, fear of imprisonment, fear of death, fear of chaos and instability, fear of failing and, most importantly, fear that other people will think badly of us.
After summarizing a wealth of evidence that capitalism is doomed, The Fuck It Point asks whether it makes more sense to let it collapse on its own or to take active steps to dismantle it. The filmmakers maintain if we sit and waiting for the crash, the people who have prepared will “hold all the cards.”
The film focuses a lot of attention on corporate media manipulation that promotes apathy and passivity. Even when peoples know they’re being ruthlessly exploited, they can be too psychological paralyzed to do anything.
The public relation industry continually recycles do-nothing messages. One day they tell us that climate change and mass extinction is easily fixed with the right technology. The next day that the ecosystem is too far gone to do anything. The day after that they blame us for the global ecological crisis and urge us to buy more eco-friendly products.
The film also challenges the myth that humans can no longer survive without civilization. The obvious reality is that human beings can’t survive without clean, non-toxic air, water and food and robust social relationships – which are increasingly difficult to access under the current system. People find the idea of giving up civilization unthinkable because they are addicted to it.
The filmmakers estimate that only 1/7 of the current global population achieve real benefit from our current economic system. The other 6/7 would experience an immediate improvement in their life circumstances if it collapsed.
The Most Revolutionary Act 
Incredible that we have another disgruntled employee who details his mobbing in a 1999 employment suit against a Florida TV station, and, some 16 years later his mobbing continues unabated until an unfortunate retaliatory shooting at a Virginia news station. The striking and tragic parallels between this man and Downing, in the fact that their situations seemed to stalk them, would make for an excellent article. Below are a couple of links you might find useful. Any thoughts on the role blacklisting and/or reputation smearing may have played here? It seems to me that the mobbing culture in corporations and academia play a heavy role in these tragedies.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/shooting-alleged-gunman-details-grievances-suicide-notes/story?id=33336339
http://heavy.com/news/2015/08/vester-lee-flanagan-virginia-shooter-bryce-williams-lawsuit-sued-florida-television-station-racism-discrimination-retaliation-documents-wtwc-tallahassee/
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The media coverage here is extremely misleading. There is no way that a high functioning TV reporter “gradually descends into madness” – true mental illness presents quite differently. This seems to have been a classic case of work place harassment, despite the court findings. It appears that co-workers were warned not to sympathize or affiliate with Flanagan – which is classic in all the cases of workplace harassment I worked with. And there is no question he would have been black listed after leaving his job at the news station.
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PeaceFrog did you see this? memoryholeblog.com/2015/08/27/va-reporter-and-cameraman-shooting-discrepancy/
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Yes. I don’t agree with the analysis on that one. Flanagan looks to be biracial, and relatively light-skinned. His Google images show a freckled pigmentation, perhaps a mild case of vitiligo. Lighting, given the time of day, weather, etc., can markedly alter the color of picture.
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Here is a quote from a professor who was the victim of academic mobbing; it is totally revealing about the mobbing process and the veritable fait accompli the victim finds herself in:
“I’ve never heard of a whistleblower who wasn’t mobbed, and I have no doubt he found it impossible to get work after that. I was highly regarded in my profession as a professor, only to discover that no one, in or out of my profession, would hire me for a full time job of any sort (which was also compounded by age discrimination). And once you’ve been driven out, being mobbed again is more likely than not because not only are you more hypersensitive, but make any mistake or show any emotion and the new coworkers conclude you’re indeed nuts. They’re just watching for the evidence to explain what happened, and see any social faux pas as that evidence.”
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Yes, I am still blogging. My original blog has always been timinglogic.blogspot.com . My original postings on that site fed into Open Salon through an RSS feed. It was pretty crappy what they did to us. As Camile Paglia noted, Salon has become a ridiculous web site that no longer supports its original principles and their level of journalistic integrity is on the decline. From some of the hit data I saw, there were more people reading Open Salon posts than were reading most of the articles on Salon written by paid journalists. Not really surprised since our stuff was real and theirs was generally conjured up horseshit supporting the state. That we woke up one day and they had just shut us all out was a sign of the lack of compassion and concern for others that this system of rot breeds.
Anyhoo…..while I haven’t exchanged emails in a while, there are a few writers over there I keep in touch with. If you’d like to stay in touch, you can find my email link on the front of my blog. I don’t want to post it in the comment section here. I looked for one on your site before posting a comment but didn’t see any. If not, that’s okay too.
Be safe. Did you ever win the election for office you were running for?
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If you look at this William Bryce “road rage” video, uploaded by an unknown source, there is something very wrong here. Look at the what is being filmed and the other driver, who is filming, has to have a camera installed in his cap, there is no other explanation when you view the video. What was a guy with a camera wired to his cap following Bryce for-quite a coincidence:
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“The public relation industry continually recycles do-nothing messages. One day they tell us that climate change and mass extinction is easily fixed with the right technology. The next day that the ecosystem is too far gone to do anything. The day after that they blame us for the global ecological crisis and urge us to buy more eco-friendly products.”
My sentiments exactly! I know the planet is being destroyed, but my complaint is what you have written here. The finger needs to be pointed at the criminal elite perpetrators, not the disenfranchised, struggling masses who are only doing what has been placed in front of them to do by the elite powers!
“The film also challenges the myth that humans can no longer survive without civilization. The obvious reality is that human beings can’t survive without clean, non-toxic air, water and food and robust social relationships – which are increasingly difficult to access under the current system. People find the idea of giving up civilization unthinkable because they are addicted to it.”
Spot on again! We believe we have been cured from something that never needed to be cured, the way the world was along time ago, and suffering horribly from the “cure”.
Get rid of governments, worldwide monetary systems and large populated areas, and then go back to a more simple way of life, without the technology that is slowly but surely destroying us all!
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Agreed. In my view, it can’t happen soon enough.
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Reblogged this on Awakestate.
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We will never reach the ‘fuck it’ point and aid in the collapse of this shit because we are addicted to capitalism. We’re addicts because we are brainwashed, constantly, to buy-buy-buy even when we don’t have the money to buy. We take the title of our ‘paid for’ vehicle and hand it over to a ‘Title Loan’ store and run right out and buy another huge, HD TV with 3D tunnel vision, locked-in mind control with non-stop streaming commercials. If the TV programs were actually 15 minutes, total time, I would be shocked because I seriously believe that people are not really watching TV programs, they are watching back-to-back commercials even while watching the so-called programs aka commercials and what do commercials do? They promote the growth of capitalism. Buy-buy-buy until you die. And even then, they pry rings off cold dead fingers to pay any outstanding debt.
The ‘fuck it’ point is when a person says “fuck it! I need that brand new fully loaded vehicle with the latest bells and whistles. Where’s the credit card?” Sad, but true!
Thanks for another “will we ever wake up?” call to action, Dr. Bramhall!
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You’re right, Shelby. Sometimes it can get really discouraging to see so many people still buying into mindless consumer capitalism. If you look at the numbers, though, the middle class (which is where the buy-buy propaganda is aimed) is rapidly being destroyed – with half the US population at near poverty levels. They can’t buy and the banks aren’t giving them credit cards any more. This is really clear from the statistics about retail sales bottoming out and the closure of so many retail outlets.
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I was planning on reblogging this today. But reblog is missing from all of the posts I had saved, not just yours.
Maybe it’s a glitch?
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Mine is gone too (at least from the header). WordPress seems to have moved the Reblog button to the bottom of the post.
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Thanks! Like my mother used to say, “If it had been a snake, it would have bitten me!” 😉
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I must admit it took me about 24 hours to figure it out. You don’t seem to have a Reblog button. You can also use the Press This button to reblog, but it’s a bit more complicated.
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Bet you don’t know who this is. Haha. You just popped into my mind and I was wondering how you are doing. Hopefully, well. Well, fuck it! 🙂 I’m pretty sure we reached that point long ago in the U.S. Of course, that doesn’t mean that this system will survive because there is no organized resistance. The old saying is you need someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to. Right? How many people in the U.S. or around the world have that? When people lose a reason for being, they simply start going through the motions and the system starts to deteriorate due to people just putting in the “jail time”. In fact, I think one could consider that until this state of “fuck it” is achieved, in some way these pathological control systems thrive on resistance against them. It gives them a reason for being. They are able to rally the cry of defending “the system”, be it the fatherland as in Nazi Germany, Oceania in Orwell’s dystopian 1984 or freedom and democracy in the US corporate state. Thugs are able to create a passionate fervor within the single mind of the pathological organism to protect itself against anyone who is different.
Regardless, the suppressive nature of bureaucracy creates its own self-fulfilling prophecy. Look at the Soviet Union. The United States looks like the Soviet Union or the Borg. But, in many ways, it could be argued to be even worse.
Stay safe.
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How could I ever forget you, TL. How exciting to hear from you. Are you blogging anywhere since Open Salon shut down.
You raise some interesting points. When it comes to surveillance and government corruption, I think the US is far worse than the Soviet Union. As a psychiatrist, I’m well aware of low income people who reached the fuck it point decades ago and deal with it via drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence and child abuse.
I think you’re right that vanguard resistance by a small minority of activists is futile. The important work to be done is informing and educating the population about alternative ways of being. So long as the Internet remains free and “neutral,” I see the web playing a big role in this. More and more people are really fed up with the lies they get from the corporate media and are turning to the Internet as an alternative source of information.
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Thanks for your URL, TL. I’ve just clicked to follow your blog by email. I agree it’s a great pity about Open Salon – especially to do it with no warning like that.
I came 11th out of 19 candidates (only 9 got a seat on the health board) in the 2013 election. I was really stoked not to come last.
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Reblogged this on An Outsider's Sojourn II.
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“The specific fears that deter people from attempting to dismantle the current economic system are fear of losing privilege, fear of police brutality, fear of imprisonment, fear of death, fear of chaos and instability, fear of failing and, most importantly, fear that other people will think badly of us.”
Oh, is that all . . .
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Americans are such cowards, aren’t they?
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And they aren’t informed enough to realize it.
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That’s the really sad part.
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But don’t be too sad DrB …….. we still have those Russians!
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Pingback: The Fuck It Point, Film and Review | Tales from Genie and Lou
You’re right, PeaceFrog. The road rage video is very odd. Have you seen this?
http://memoryholeblog.com/2015/08/28/global-movement-to-raise-awareness-of-covert-harassment-and-surveillance/
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Yes. I have been a mobbing victim in the workplace, and have had it follow me both in employment, and elsewhere (what is referred to as “gang stalking”, really is organized community mobbing). What bothers me is the DEW claims. These seem a little far-fetched, smack of the government establishing fake fronts to control the information on a contentious subject, and, taint legitimate attempts to expose issues like the link between mobbing and violence.
More has been revealed about Flanagan’s employer:
http://newsguardians.com/wdbj7-accused-of-daniel-crandall-coverup/
Another reporter claims that he was coerced into not reporting on a high profile attorney who was a major advertising client of the station. He claims that he was even warned not to speak to any prosecutor regarding sexual abuse allegations at the client’s law firm.
The devil is always in the details!
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