Cultural appropriation, for want of better words, is the adoption or use of the elements of one culture by members of another culture. It generally is framed, by the pundits, as harmful and is claimed to be a violation of the collective intellectual property rights of the originating culture. I want that to sink in for just a moment. Now, I am not sure whom is appointed to lead what culture; however, the pundits are a dime a dozen when it comes to raising hell about it. For the most part, when a white man sings rap and grabs his crotch or when Katy Perry wears the wrong clothing, the PC Police are out in force screaming for retribution. Elvis’ appropriation of African American music is probably the best 20th Century example which had people on both sides of the aisle raising hell.
In Canada last month, three editors lost their jobs after making such a defense.
The controversy began when Hal Niedzviecki, editor of Write, the magazine of the Canadian Writers’ Union, penned an editorial defending the right of white authors to create characters from minority or indigenous backgrounds. Within days, a social media backlash forced him to resign. The Writers’ Union issued an apology for an article that its Equity Task Force claimed “re-entrenches the deeply racist assumptions” held about art.
Madness. And being honest, this means that humanity is approaching the top of that bell shaped curve wherein humans, at least in the developed nations, have too much time on their hands. It means that soon, most labor intensive work in the industrialized sector will succumb to the iRobots of the world. Here, let me explain this in a way in which the Foreclosurepedia Nation has come to appreciate,
Innovation and technology have always been the causation in that which discards the working class upon the heap of obsolescence. Take our economy, for example. As Foreclosurepedia wrote about several weeks ago, the vast majority of trades; the way in which the Fed interacts with Wall Street, is now dictated by High Frequency Trading (HFT) guided by complex, computer algorithms. We do not have an economy based upon true capitalism wherein market confidence is based upon your mom or dad buying 500 shares of Coca Cola. Take for example, how eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, according to a new report published by Oxfam to mark the annual meeting of political and business leaders in Davos.
The relatively hawkish tone of the Fed and the turmoil in Washington, DC, is merely the public finally getting a glimpse of what I predicted several years ago almost to the day in that Q3 FY2017 would be the beginning of our next Great Recession. And as I said back in 2013, our problems are not necessarily human, they are the advent of dependency in HFT algorithms.
When the Boston Bombings occurred, the Dow dropped 266 points. When Syrian hackers hijacked the Associated Press (AP) Twitter feed and reported the White House had been bombed and President Obama was injured, the Dow dropped 100 points in two minutes or the equivalent of almost $136 Billion. Today’s stock exchanges are running on what is commonly referred to as HFT. This, when incorporated with the recent acceptance of social media onto the Floor of Congress, had many concerned.
They are no longer concerned, though. In fact, the cyclic evolution of one crisis to the next, has become rote of not only the United States, but the world. And that is why we have found ourselves in the Next Big Crisis. And while neither I nor appraisers take much stock in HousingWire, fact of the matter is they play both sides carefully to be able to say, I told you so. Just take a read from HousingWire this morning.
We are here and the sky is falling. It is ever so much more critical in the Mortgage Field Services Industry when you take into consideration Foreclosurepedia was capable of viewing in upwards of 3 billion documents and photos on the Safeguard Properties servers without username or password. Ironically, technology has not caught up to the Industry unless you are working with the International Association of Field Service Technicians (IAFST) whom appear to be on the bleeding, cutting edge.
And to end my diatribe today, I want to quote Kenan Malik, whose NY Times Opinion Piece I quoted from earlier,
Appropriation suggests theft, and a process analogous to the seizure of land or artifacts. In the case of culture, however, what is called appropriation is not theft but messy interaction. Writers and artists necessarily engage with the experiences of others. Nobody owns a culture, but everyone inhabits one, and in inhabiting a culture, one finds the tools for reaching out to other cultures.
Appropriation, you see, depends upon which side of the table you are sitting.
