Status Updates From High-Rise

So rem koolhas coded

'It's a mistake to imagine that we're all moving towards a state of happy primitivism. The model here seems to be less the noble savage than our un-innocent post-Freudian selves, outraged by all that over-indulgent toilet training, dedicated breast feeding and parental affection...Our neighbors had happy childhoods to a man and still feel angry. Perhaps they resent never having had a chance to become perverse...'

'The true light of the high-rise was the metallic flash of the Polaroid camera, that intermittent radiation which recorded a moment of hoped-for violence for some later voyeuristic pleasure. What depraved species of electric flora would spring to life from the garbage-strewn carpets of the corridors in response to this new source of light?"

This was written in 1975 and yet is perfectly capturing the dread and anxiety of living in a late-stage-capitalistic society. The high-rise is a microcosm of the world of 21st-century technology and isolation. Or in Ballard's words: 'In many ways, the high-rise was a model of all that technology had done to make possible the expression of a truly "free" psychopathology.' Hit the nail on the head there, sir.