Materialist Rhetoric: The Savage

Ariana Grande - 7 rings (2019). Video Source: Youtube.

This week, I am selecting words from the technosphere that reveal the materialist mindset, be it from scientists, technologists or capitalists. Today's word, from the last, is savage. The lyrics are below; this video version of Grande's My Favorite Things cover on Youtube has over 603 million views.

Image Source: Broadway.

Ariana Grande, 7 Rings (released 1 February 2019)

Yeah, breakfast at Tiffany's and bottles of bubbles
Girls with tattoos who like getting in trouble
Lashes and diamonds, ATM machines
Buy myself all of my favorite things (yeah)
Been through some bad shit, I should be a sad bitch
Who woulda thought it'd turn me to a savage?
Rather be tied up with cuffs and not strings
Write my own checks like I write what I sing, yeah (yeah)
My wrist, stop watchin', my neck is flossin'
Make big deposits, my gloss is poppin'
You like my hair? Gee, thanks, just bought it

I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it (yeah)
I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it
I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it
You like my hair? Gee, thanks, just bought it
I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it (yeah)

Wearing a ring, but ain't gon' be no "Mrs."
Bought matching diamonds for six of my bitches
I'd rather spoil all my friends with my riches
Think retail therapy my new addiction
Whoever said money can't solve your problems
Must not have had enough money to solve 'em
They say, "Which one?" I say, "Nah, I want all of 'em"
Happiness is the same price as red-bottoms
My smile is beamin', my skin is gleamin'
The way it shine, I know you've seen it (you've seen it)
I bought a crib just for the closet
Both his and hers, I want it, I got it, yeah

I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it
I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it (baby)
You like my hair? Gee, thanks, just bought it (oh yeah)
I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it (yeah)

Yeah, my receipts, be lookin' like phone numbers
If it ain't money, then wrong number
Black card is my business card
The way it be settin' the tone for me
I don't mean to brag, but I be like, "Put it in the bag," yeah
When you see them racks, they stacked up like my ass, yeah
Shoot, go from the store to the booth
Make it all back in one loop, give me the loot
Never mind, I got the juice
Nothing but net when we shoot
Look at my neck, look at my jet
Ain't got enough money to pay me respect
Ain't no budget when I'm on the set
If I like it, then that's what I get, yeah

I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it (yeah)
I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it (oh yeah, yeah)
You like my hair? Gee, thanks, just bought it
I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it (yeah)


Songwriters: Ariana Grande / Kimberly Krysiuk / Njomza Vitia / Oscar Hammerstein / Richard Rodgers / Taylor Monet Parks / Victoria Monet

7 rings lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc, BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Publishing LLC, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd. All rights belong to owners.

Reproduced non-commercially under Fair Use.


See all posts in the What's Left Over? series on materialism and anti-materialism in technological advancement.

Materialist Rhetoric: The Splice

A rat embryo. Image Source: Science Pictures ltd/SPL via Science.

This week, I am highlighting vocabulary which is being used by materialists to explain their long term goals and beliefs. I will then expand on where all this is going. For today, a news headline from The Post Millennial: Japanese scientists to grow rat embryos spliced with 30 percent human DNA. The plan is to grow human organs inside animals, and the word 'splice' is equated with 'help.' The plan was explained in Nature on 26 July 2019:

"A Japanese stem-cell scientist is the first to receive government support to create animal embryos that contain human cells and transplant them into surrogate animals since a ban on the practice was overturned earlier this year.

Hiromitsu Nakauchi, who leads teams at the University of Tokyo and Stanford University in California, plans to grow human cells in mouse and rat embryos and then transplant those embryos into surrogate animals. Nakauchi's ultimate goal is to produce animals with organs made of human cells that can, eventually, be transplanted into people.

Until March, Japan explicitly forbade the growth of animal embryos containing human cells beyond 14 days or the transplant of such embryos into a surrogate uterus. That month, Japan’s education and science ministry issued new guidelines allowing the creation of human–animal embryos that can be transplanted into surrogate animals and brought to term. ...

Nakauchi says he plans to proceed slowly, and will not attempt to bring any hybrid embryos to term for some time. Initially, he plans to grow hybrid mouse embryos until 14.5 days, when the animal’s organs are mostly formed and it is almost to term. He will do the same experiments in rats, growing the hybrids to near term, about 15.5 days. Later, Nakauchi plans to apply for government approval to grow hybrid embryos in pigs for up to 70 days."

See all posts in the What's Left Over? series on materialism and anti-materialism in technological advancement.

Quantum Computing Rhetoric: In a Word, Supremacy

Demonstrating Quantum Supremacy (23 October 2019). Video Source: Youtube.

In an attempt to understand where advanced technology is headed in cultural terms, I will begin simply by presenting examples of rhetoric used at Silicon Valley Corporations and by other tech developers. Each word provides the vocabulary of a new priestly class. Today's word comes from Google: supremacy.


See all posts in the What's Left Over? series on materialism and anti-materialism in technological advancement.

What's Left Over? The Materialist Algorithm for Cognition

Image Source: Morten Tolboll.

This post continues my investigation of materialism and anti-materialism as competing responses to technology. My central argument is that right-wing and left-wing descriptions of politics and the economy are misleading and obsolete. Politics and economics are evolving to mirror tech-oriented materialism and anti-materialism. The worst of the former is leading to tyrannical political oppression. The worst of the latter is leading to an alienation from the mainstream consensus about reality.

Thus far in this blog series, I have focussed on materialism as a way of seeing the world, which is grounded in empiricism, scientific exploration, rationalism, secularism, and the associated economic mode of capitalist consumption. All of these aspects concentrate on humankind's five senses and how they can measure and experience the physical realm.

More radical forms of materialism reveal where this is stance is headed. In 2013, Stephen J. Cowley and Frédéric Vallée-Tourangeau edited a collected volume of scholarly essays entitled, Cognition beyond the Brain: Computation, Interactivity and Human Artifice. The editors explain that the notion that we are free to think inside our heads is a fairy tale. They argue that the thoughts we have inside our own heads as private expressions of personal existence, and as ego-controlled responses to the outside world, constitute a bedtime story we tell ourselves about our independence as individual beings.

'Thinking,' for these academics, is not an internalized activity expressing the cognitive power and freedom of a single, rational creature. Rather, as I suggested in my post, Who Writes Your Reality?, 'thinking' is a culturally-modulated experience. It is even possibly constructed from the outside in. That is, your brain from this materialist standpoint is like a Tabula rasa, upon which the outside world may write its programs as it wishes. The editors of Cognition beyond the Brain call old-fashioned notions of subjective 'thinking' a 'folk concept,' a culturally-shaped story we tell ourselves about what we are doing:

"Like all folk concepts, ‘thinking’ is a second-order construct used to ‘explain’ observations or, specifically, how action is—and should be—integrated with perception."

This is a radical departure from the earlier Postmodern deification of the subjective mind, wherein social objectivities were demolished and everyone's personal truth was considered sacrosanct.