On Evolution, Media, and the Sociocultural Narrative.

...So people such as Jordan Peterson -from this blog´s last entry- believe that one per cent of the population (human or animal) will inevitably control eighty per cent of the resources within any given situation - be it money, power, opportunities, or simply resources per se. 

This is, in his view, the ratio and dynamic which will be generated within any societal structure, and it cannot be helped - nor can any specific structure of societal organisation be blamed for this ´natural tendency´.

 One word: evolution. If evolution is, at all, the great driving force we have been told about, then it must account for the changes we thrive towards, changes which are observable and whithout which, in fact, 21st century society cannot be understood.

 It´s interesting how nature and ´natural tendencies´ are brought into the discussion of society´s organisational patterns, while the evolutionary aspects of our human predicament and condition are ignored: for starters, humans only became so while evolving out of a previously monkey-primate status. 

When the modern car was invented by Henry Ford, wealthy industrialists sentenced: "It will never catch on! horses can run on either uneven ground or tarmac, and horses do not require those ´roads´ which cars do!"

 ...Right?

Take the recent phenomena that is texting, for instance. It has been around for the last 17 years - as experts arbitrarily count from the year 2000 onwards, when researching the texting phenomena. Texting has greatly affected our view of language, communication, the frequency of this very  communication, the quantity of things that we now more or less collectively consider worthy of sharing, etc etc etc.

Professor David Crystal, a life-long linguist, honorary linguistics lecturer at two prominent british universities and patron of the International Teachers Association of English as a Foreign Language, has this to say on the matter of texting and the evolution of the English language:

 Professor David Crystal during his BBC "It´s Only A Theory" appearance. 

It´s Only A Theory is a primetime BBC program where experts are given the opportunity to defend "a theory of theirs" within their field of expertise, which they may not have a chance to delve into, during their regular professional lives. Professor Crystal argued the validity of "texting language", and its evolutionary significance.

The current narrative which underpins occidental society argues that tough characters thrive, "everything has been invented", and that human evolution finished with the acquisition of a thumb.

This is not the case. 

Evolution is an ongoing process, by its very definition.

We may not personally like the direction in which a society may be going, or the fact that it is at all in motion - just as we may not personally be able to appreciate this planet´s perpetual and orbital motion. It would, however, appear that neither of these two are about to be stopped due to personal discomforts and dislikes.
Why? Quite simply, "...because you can´t hold the tide with a broom".

"We´re all just looking out for something real" ...Ryan Gosling´s police boss tells him, during a private chat, in Denis Villeneuve´s Blade Runner 2049. 

 ...Well, forget science fiction. 

Our current world is striving to identify the 'real' out of the immigration phenomena, cultural meltdown and dissolution, the proliferation of new, uncontrolled emergence of technologies, the loss of ´traditional values´, cultural amalgamation, ecological fragility, ideological pendulums... However much all of these things may really be currently happening, we seem to be on the lookout for something real which may suit our idea of the real.

Apparently, convenience defines our concept of the authentic, to a much greater degree than we had realised.
...Not a very authentic attitude, in and of itself.

 ...We seem to be currently enduring a kind of evolution - which some of us seem to be resisting with all of their might. 

We can stay monkeys, stuck on meaningless traditions, whilst human rights are swept away, or we can better ourselves, improving what we deem worth shedding, observing, analyzing, feeling just what it is that makes us feel good, and what it is that we could do without... Because, indeed, plenty of the evolutionary aspects of existence are epigenetic, beyond the biochemical diktats of our genes and/or past-acquired behaviours.

On another episode of BBC´s It´s Only A Theory, ex-BBC programme coordinator and internet entrepreneur Andrew Keen tries to argue that social media is harming "proper and adequate audio-visual media" narratives - as he deems teenage (in any case, amateur) provided youtube content to be of a lesser quality than approved, traditional, filtered, supervised, edited, censored, audiovisual "entertainment".

See below.

 ...And how about this verbal jewel of a reply to Mr Keen´s argument, above, concluding the programme, from american panelist, comedian and social commentator Reginald D. Hunter (thumbnailed above), on "traditional media", economics, and old models of social cohesion, as the very conclusion to this blog entry - which you can see here, at 27 mins, 07 seconds.

Hats off to you, Reginald.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

David Crystal, OBE, FBA, FLSW, FCIL (born 6 July 1941) is a British linguist, academic and author. Crystal studied English at University College London between 1959 and 1962, and was a researcher under Randolph Quirk between 1962 and 1963, working on the Survey of English Usage. Since then he has lectured at Bangor University and the University of Reading and is an honorary professor of linguistics at Bangor. Retired from full-time academia, he works as a writer, editor and consultant, and contributes to television and radio broadcasts. His association with the BBC ranges from, formerly, a BBC Radio 4 series on language issues to, more recently, podcasts on the BBC World Service website for people learning English.
Crystal was awarded the OBE in 1995 and became a Fellow of the British Academy in 2000. He is also a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists. His many academic interests include English language learning and teaching, clinical linguistics, forensic linguistics, language death, "ludic linguistics" (Crystal's neologism for the study of language play), style, English genre, Shakespeare, indexing, and lexicography. He is the Patron of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL, honorary vice-president of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), and Patron of the UK National Literacy Association. He is a consultant for Babel - The Language Magazine, for which he has also written articles.

Reginald Darnell Hunter (born 26 March 1969) is an American stand-up comedian based in the United Kingdom. Having initially travelled to the UK at the age of 27 as a theatre student training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Hunter became a comedian after performing his first comedy set as a dare. Realizing that he enjoyed performing comedy, and that it might be remunerative, Hunter turned his attention from acting to stand-up. 
Hunter was nominated for the Perrier Award in the 2002, 2003 and 2004 Edinburgh Festivals. He won the Writers' Guild Award for Comedy in 2006 for his show Pride & Prejudice... & Niggas

It's Only a Theory is a British television panel game show, first aired on BBC Four in 2009. It was conceived by and starred Andy Hamilton and featured Reginald D. Hunter as a regular panelist. Announced by the BBC in April 2009, the eight episode series was produced by Hat Trick Productions. The panelists discuss theories "about life, the universe and everything" submitted by professionals and experts. The panel debates each theory and decides whether it is worth keeping.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in Westminster, London and it is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees.

...as we were saying.

Who would have thought it.

I was talking about patriarchy during the last blog entry, and then THIS happened.

The interview above takes place during the same news slot that was featured on the previous blog entry, where Orbital had a feature entry, granted by the same Channel 4 news anchor, Cathy Newman, not six months ago.

...Well, has the more recent, above, Cathy Newman / Jordan Peterson interview become viral, and a worldwide item of ideological discussion, let me tell you.

Jordan Peterson is professor of clinical psychology at the university of Toronto, and he has recently become rather controversially famous, worldwide, due to his views and statements on feminism, gender roles, hierarchical structures within society, natural selection, happiness, and fulfillment.

Many of his phenomenally controversial -to say the least- theories stem from the observation of 'natural organisational patterns' within nature. 

...Such as lobster dynamics.


Yep, that's right.


He has picked lobsters, due to his evolutionary metadata appreciations, as the organism to observe when fighting human depression, due to investigations into serotonin modulation while researching depression.


Pattern recognition within nature is, rightfully, the latest scientific furore, as its acknowledgement and practical applications seem to possess endless practical uses within all sciences - funnily enough, in a fractal universe. 

However, pattern acquisition is not for the simple minded. Perhaps for this very reason, pattern acquisition is the measure used by occidental governments as an accurate estimation of intelligence, as of late.

However, Mr Peterson is seeing patterns where there aren't any, and is also recovering some old cyclical behaviours when it is convenient for his discourse.

Twenty days have gone by since such interview was held on Channel 4's news at 10 - which is perhaps one of the most, if not the most, objective news slot in the UK.
This interview / heated exchange has so far been viewed six and a half million times on YouTube, and counting.

Jordan Peterson has since disclosed on his personal podcast, and everywhere else he has been since, that he declared himself the 'winner' of the interview, where he was being challenged by Ms Newman regarding views he had expressed somewhere else, and which he was avoiding the mentioning of.
Cathy Newman stated, live, what she knew he had said somewhere else, and which he was pretending he hadn't.
The video above must be watched to fully understand this blog, and while it is true that Cathy Newman often interrupts Jordan Peterson during the interview, it is clear she is doing so because she understands who she is sitting opposite to.

Doubts? Watch the video below, as Jordan Peterson vents off at large on his actual views of the 21st century's workplace, gender roles, women, relationships, and everything we had come to know and love as 'civilization', or even 'evolution'. Not much, then.

There is, as of late, a tilting trend to ´grant´ the ´victory´ from the Channel 4 interview, to Jordan Peterson, based on the fact that a sector of the public perceived an outcome where he ´owned´ his host, Cathy Newman, during such interview. 

...Patriarchal thinking patterns, once again.

Nobody ´owns´ anybody else when a debate is being held, as it is the case here. Even more so when the interviewer is simply trying her best to elicit statements from her guest, and which such guest has made somewhere else, and which would shock most people who apparently give Mr Peterson an unconditional ´thumbs up´, simply because he speaks confidently... as only a professor of clinical psychology would know.

Jordan Peterson oozes superficial confidence, like a two-dimensional Don Draper from Mad Men, if this was ever within the confines of the possible.

Still, Mr Peterson once again vents off, on one of the currently most popular 'comedy' podcasts, with daily downloads of 120 million - the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast (of which I am a regular listener):

During the podcast interview above, Mr Peterson is humorous, cynical, highly hind-sighted, self-righteous, and all kinds of wrongs, when referring to his Channel 4 interview.


He appears, as per usual, articulate, calm, well structured in his thought process, and a long list of superficially healthy etceteras. 


Does this take away one iota from his radically shortsighted, predatory, unevolved, and unimaginative discourse? 

Not in my book.

Self-confidence does not equate righteousness. 
A mirage also appears real, until it is found that it isn't so.

...You be the judge.

Dr. Jordan Peterson is a professor at the University of Toronto, a clinical psychologist and the author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (Jan 2018, Penguin Books). His now-classic book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, offers a revolutionary take on the psychology of religion, and the hundred or more scientific papers he published with his colleagues and students have substantively advanced the modern understanding of creativity and personality. As a Harvard professor, he was nominated for the prestigious Levinson Teaching Prize, and is regarded by his current University of Toronto students as one of three truly life-changing professors. His classroom lectures on mythology and psychology, based on Maps of Meaning, were turned into a popular 13-part TV series on TVO.

Cathy Newman was educated at Charterhouse, an independent school. Newman graduated with a first from Oxford University, where she read English at Lady Margaret Hall. After university, Newman briefly worked for Media Week and The Independent (as business correspondent) before joining the Financial Times at the age of 23. Her older colleague Alice Rawsthorn acted as a mentor at the FT, where Newman worked as a media and then (for three years) political correspondent. Newman entered a television career in 2000. She gained a Laurence Stern fellowship to work at The Washington Post for four months. During her period in the US, she followed the 2000 Presidential campaign of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. She joined Channel 4 News as a political correspondent (and deputy to political editor Gary Gibbon) in January 2006. In this role she broke several stories, including claims the Treasury pushed through the nomination of then Chancellor Gordon Brown's close friend Ronald Cohen for the House of Lords, challenging Peter Mandelson at the Brighton Labour Party conference in 2009, over his claimed use of the C-word in a conversation with Rebekah Brooks, then Wade, the CEO of News International.

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster that began transmission on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the station is now owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation, a public corporation of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport.

The Joe Rogan Experience is a free audio and video talk podcast hosted by American comedian, actor, sports commentator, and television host Joe Rogan. It was launched on December 24, 2009 by Rogan and his friend, comedian Brian Redban, who also produced and co-hosted. It has grown to become one of the world’s most popular podcasts, spawning a community of listeners around the globe. On August 18, 2017, it reached its 1,000th episode.

On society's definition of success, and "quelling the aggression in men"

Actresses currently endlessly denouncing male power and its corresponding abusive behaviours in Hollywood... Big time international media moguls, high ranking media executives, media personalities being denounced as sexual predators... Predatory behaviours apparently being practised amongst male youngsters... 

What on earth is going on??

The standard sociological definition of patriarchy states that "patriarchy is a social system in which males hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property."
...Sounds like generic James Brown lyrics, had he chosen to express himself this way?

When establishing a dialogue about complex issues, we understand metaphors best, as comparative systems which enable the identification of similarities between ideas and concepts - as the comparison established within a metaphor aims to provide clarity on otherwise hard-to-grasp subjects.

The lion roars at its loudest and is at its most dangerous when mortally wounded and cornered.

This seems to be our current patriarchal predicament.

This is not a case of trying to appear sophisticated, nor trying to side with women at the right time. It is a case of genuinely believing that organisms evolve, and as such, global culture (in itself a metaphor for the way organisms cluster cohesively)  is ´moving up a notch´, forcing a change on past -wrongly- tolerated behaviours, as these will simply not only not serve us in the coming future: the patriarchal archetypes of yesteryear will impede our individual happiness. They stomp on evolution.
They always did, as a matter of fact.

If this is ´hard to grasp´ -pardon the, once again, metaphorical pun, but metaphors are where it´s at!- consider this: once upon a time in the not too distant past, ´popular´ music was understood to be publicly enjoyed in clubs and discos, where male bravado, trouble, and general shenanigans were the recipe of the day, any day - in and of itself, a very male way of spending an evening. Moreover, music-making was to be overseen, controlled and distributed very much within a patriarchal pattern, as it almost exclusively projected male dreams and defined reality within a male mentality of righteousness, aspirations, desires, fantasies, world views, romance, etc

From Bob Dylan to Lou Reed, James Brown to Oasis, ´popular´ music seemed to display the content of the male imagination - furthermore, it epitomised the male idea of success, and it stained the creative process with it.

'To quell the 'machoism', to quell the aggression in men': Orbital interview, Channel 4 News, July 2017.

(at 2 minutes 22 seconds, Phil Hartnoll pretty much resumes the core concept of this entire blog entry)

Yes, electronic music festivals have been described as ´tribal´ -as if this was a 'step back' in the wrong direction (??)-, but then again, the dynamics often established within these festivals and style of music observe a much more ´egalitarian´ community, distribution of roles, behaviours, male-female polarity, and cultural concepts.

In the video interview above, Paul Hartnoll states at 3 minutes 5 seconds: "Punk was always hitting against the wall, trying to hit against society, whereas 'rave culture' just turned away from the wall and walked away from it... and that's what truly frightens people in power, when people just say: 'we're just off to do our own thing, we're not going to try and fight you, we don't really care what you do'".

...Evolution, in action.

The prominent places women are increasingly occupying within occidental societies seems as strange a phenomenon to some, as electronic music is to 'rock traditionalists'. In the same sense that 'replicants' in Blade Runner are originally perceived as 'lesser forms of life' but they prove to be 'more human than human', the evolving aspects of modern life shock, at first, those who believe music is exclusively made by guitars, and women should carefully and perpetually make sandwiches.

And it is important to understand that the male-female polarity is just that: a polarity, not necessarily concordant with gender attributes - just as electrical polarities (+/-) are interchangeable. 
Music, like everything else in this planet, evolves in seemingly strange ways, and what seems 'artificial', electronic, is not necessarily less natural than, say, Led Zeppelin's chauvinistic lyric narratives - that's right, the Zeppelins have a few things to answer for, including the theft of the music featured within, at least, their first album, and there is a lengthy lawsuit on course, due to this. Whereas electronic music, often lacking lyrics, allows for a concentration of pure harmonic power, and a sonic delivery untarnished by narrative projections of ideals, which are often, quite simply, male projections and masculine fantasies of 'authenticity' and what is 'natural'.

Could it be that occidental definitions of success have, at their core, long been defined by an 'everything goes' / 'the lion always eats the zebra lagging behind' etc etc paradigm? And could it be that we are now, finally, challenging this paradigm? Could it be that the feminine polarity within society is challenging society, as we have lately come to know it?

The -often overlooked- english philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, stated during a Harvard lecture in 1929: "when criticizing the philosophy of an epoch, do not chiefly direct your

attention to those intellectual positions which its exponents feel it necessary explicitly to

defend. There will be some fundamental assumptions which, adherents to all the variant

systems within the epoch, unconsciously presuppose. Such assumptions appear so

obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of

putting things has ever occurred to them. With these assumptions, a certain limited

number of types of philosophic systems are possible, and this group of systems

constitutes the philosophy of the epoch.”

In other words: a caveman would probably not understand that 'rights' are a worthwhile concept, or that women are, in fact, not 'the weaker sex'. Women are equipped to give birth - I'd say that's pretty tough.

M.I.T. lecturer William Irwin Thompson, building on Alfred North Whitehead’s ‘epoch theory’, has
stated that "to understand contemporary culture, you have to be willing to move beyond

intellectual definitions and academic disciplines. You have to be willing to throw your net out widely and be willing to take in science, politics, and art. To catch a sense of the whole in pattern recognition, you have to leap across the synapse and follow the rapid movement of informational bits."

To put it simply, cultural conditioning exists, and it is something to be observed, and to very much keep an eye on, as it may feel comfortable to 'belong' to a socially condoned paradigm, but this may often be a collective misperception.

If it is true that everything evolves, then everything moves along. Music moves along, society moves along, the concept of success moves along, and women accordingly protest the 'balance of power' which a while ago seemed to be 'socially acceptable'.

...And patriarchy is, apparently, dying. 

...Good riddance, too. For if it is true that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then the existing 'balance of power' between genders genuinely needed to be challenged... since long ago.

Physicist Stephen Hawkin allowed Orbital to sample his voice for the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony, reciting '(it is time we) transform our perception of the universe'.
Couldn't agree more.

______________________

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster that began transmission on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) - the station is now owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation, a public corporation of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport. 

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) covered the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in London and is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. 

When rockstars actually, really, rock...

Queen : the band that will inevitably be heard in the background whenever someone is trying to sell cars, shampoo, beer, holidays, pasta, or in fact, just about anything, these days...

Queen are no longer fully active as a band, since Freddie Mercury famously died 26 years ago. 

You may, however, find that founding member Brian May still very much ROCKS the scene, given the things he stands for...

 

 *Brian May speaking at the student union, Oxford University / on animal rights.

...And the things he canNOT stand nor tolerate.

 *Brian May speaking at the BBC, Newsnight / foxhunting law and amendments.

*Brian May debating the former British Environment Secretary, SkyNews / foxhunting law and amendments.

Does it not make you wish that every 'rockstar' stood for something else than just selling records and being 'adored'?

Gandhi once said 'be the change you would like to see in the world', and Mr May seems to have taken the sentence to heart and put it into practice. 

I for one, am right behind Mr May on this one.
When certain people argue that the human role in balancing nature / controlling nature / wildlife management and 'preservation' is 'key'... noting this recent news item may just be worthy of everyone's attention.


And this, below, is an interesting post closer - from Brian's interview on R.T., if only to listen to an interviewer with a most curious russian / obvious american schooling / but scottish accent (!)

ABOUT BRIAN MAY: Brian May, musician and astrophysicist, is most widely known as the guitarist, songwriter and occasional singer of the rock band Queen. He was appointed a CBE in 2005 for services to the music industry and for his charity work. He earned a PhD in astrophysics from Imperial College in 2007 and is currently serving as the 4th Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University. Planet Rock voted May the 7th greatest guitarist of all time, and he was ranked at No. 26 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. In 2012, May was ranked the 2nd greatest guitarist of all time by a Guitar World magazine readers poll. ABOUT THE OXFORD UNION SOCIETY: The Union is the world's most prestigious debating society, with an unparalleled reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. It has been established for 189 years, aiming to promote debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe.

NEWSNIGHT:
It is the BBC's flagship news and current affairs TV programme - with analysis, debate, exclusives, and robust interviews.

RT (Russia Today)
A global news network broadcasting from Moscow and Washington studios. RT is the first news channel to break the 1 billion YouTube views benchmark.

 

When rock lyrics dissect modern society better than a psychologist ever could...

...you know Blade Runner´s dystopian narrative is not too far away.

The Cars´ most recent record includes this little gem of a lyric, reflecting on 21st century life. 

Once again, Ric Ocasek tackles fairly philosophical and social issues with sophistication and panache:

Blue Tip (The Cars)

You believe in anything

They tell you how to think

The simpletons all circle

In the raging roller rink

I'm trading in the alley

I'm booking up a storm

Forget about reality

'Cause nothing is the norm

Yeah yeah

So what can you do

You say

They owe me a few yeah

Blue tip of your cue yeah

You got that look on your face

You'd like to be in the race

You cannot hide your disgrace

You leave without a trace

All set to weary your heartland

Black and white TV

Stroking all the gun heads

Into the ninth degree

You here the screamers coming

They clamor in disguise

You think that you'd be running

To the other side

Yeah yeah

So what can you do

You say

They owe me a few yeah

Blue tip of your cue yeah

You got that look on your face

You'd like to be in the race

You cannot hide your disgrace

Can't fill an empty space

(Ah)

You stupefy the thinkers

(Ah)

You're hugging all the flakes

(Ah)

And all the things you think are true

(Ah)

Only mystify the fakes

Well keep your hat on backwards

And keep your lips tucked in

The world is full of quackers

And belly button rings

I know you'd like to be immune

To the things they say

You're hung up on your heroes

And upon the beast you pray

Yeah hey

What can you do

You say

Well they owe me a few yeah

Blue (blue) tip of your cue yeah

You got that look on your face

You'd like to be in the race

You cannot hide your disgrace

You leave without a trace

You got a look on your face

You'd like to be in the race

You cannot hide your disgrace

You leave a bitter taste 

 The Cars - Blue Tip

...Twenty-five years separate the above lyric with the one below, also by Ric Ocasek, also about our modern, 20th / 21st century world.

...Has much changed?

This Side Of Paradise (Ric Ocasek / The Cars)

The midnight oyster bellies bug you 
From inside you want to scream

The comic cut is your arrival

Your reflections are obscene

Well you're looking for another end

Doing time

But you still can't turn away

Well you're looking for a real friend

Any kind

That wants to play the games you play

On this side of paradise

You're never going to go through twice

Stay tuned at any price

To this side of paradise

Cylinder dreams passing in stages

Lethargic grins left to bare

Broadway windows cubical cages

Where escape is fairly rare

Well you're looking for another end

Any Time

But you still can't turn away

Well you're looking for a real friend

Any kind

That wants to play the games you play

On this side of paradise

You're never going to go through twice

Stay tuned at any price

To this side of paradise

You've got to keep yourself well amused

Pay no attention to the faulty news

Set yourself on automatic cruise

Sometimes you just got to lose

On this side of paradise

You're never going to go through twice

Stay tuned at any price

To this side of paradise

On this side of paradise

On this side of paradise

Ric Ocasek / The Cars - This Side Of Paradise

Blade Runner: Who, Here, Is Human.

Few commercial movies have managed to walk a stranger path than Blade Runner.

When it was first released, it was, quite simply, a commercial flop. 

The film underwent one of the first 'test-audience' exercises back in 1982, and it seemed that its cryptic dialogue and noir-like narrative proved too intense and cognitively dissonant for test audiences. As a result, a 'compromise' version was released, which featured a happy ending and off-screen voice narration -throughout the entire length of the film- performed by Harrison Ford (in order to spoon-feed the 'complex' narrative). 
...And this was the very version which flopped.

Blade Runner's original budget was somewhere around 28 million dollars, of which 17 million was originally recouped. 

Gross profit figures for the movie have since surpassed its original budget, but this happened slowly, due to its soundtrack becoming successful in its own right -and sought after-, and due to the cultish status that the movie achieved over time.

As many as eight (8!) 'authorized' versions exist of the original theatrical release, of which it is now more or less understood that 2007's 'The Director's Cut' is now canon. 

The Director's Cut of the original Blade Runner does not tie up its narrative with off-screen narration, sweet endings or 'feel good wraps': it shows overpopulation leading to isolation, engineered beings behaving more naturally than ‘genuine human DNA’, as it shows genetically engineered beings who may well have a soul, whereas humans, increasingly and throughout, become dehumanized. 

The film tackles both the marvel of technological advances and the alienation and isolation embedded in modern, disjointed societies. The subtle but firm music during replicant Rory’s death scene also suggests the questions: ‘Did Rory Batty have a soul? Was it legal to kill him because he sought a different life than what was planned out for him by the ‘architects of society’?

The Director’s Cut also revealed Deckard as a possible replicant, ignorant of his own condition, and intentionally kept in the dark. Additionally, Deckard’s boss, and Tyrell himself -the ‘maker’ who deems others subhuman- may ultimately share this same condition, according to director Ridley Scott. Vangelis’ score and sound design planted the seeds of doubt over these cryptic subjects and delivered a hefty part of the emotional complexity -within the Director’s Cut- aiding the cryptic, multilayered web of messages to become more intuitively explicit.

So why a sequel?

What does Blade Runner 2049 add to the Replicant narrative?

Is it really necessary to look any further into such a dystopian future?

The archetypal, complex, multilayered messages embedded in Blade Runner have derived into a cult-ural phenomenon. The very system it criticises –and its inhabitants– did not originally give it a chance, perhaps because “there’s no psychologist to go to when it is an entire species that has gone berserk”, as American ethno-botanist Terence McKenna once said. Society has precipitated into this dystopia. Something about it now rings true in the collective unconscious, the overarching ego of modern contemporary culture. 

This is the modern myth emergent from Blade Runner: what does it mean to be human.

Blade Runner asks what it means to be human. It blurs the lines between human and 'machine', from both sides: that is the goal.  The ultimate question is not whether or not Deckard is human - although RIdley Scott's Director's Cut (now canon) most definitely points out that Deckard is, in fact, a replicant...oh yes indeed. 
But the real question is ‘what does it mean to be human’, as the lives of the replicants are more human than the lives of the ‘real’ humans. Real humans seem to live like robots, whereas ‘robots’ are, at the very least, trying to rise above their emotional limitations.

The world is, not-so-slowly, becoming the barren technological 'eco-collapse' that Blade Runner depicts. And it must be remembered that the film portrays, at its core, a deeply dystopian world. Blade Runner 2049 has taken these postulates and deployed a further number of questions, derived from the philosophical standpoints which the original movie postulated. But no definite answers are given, even to the ever-pending question of whether Deckard is, actually a replicant, because, apparently, it isn't enough to have had Ridley Scott proclaim this out loud. 

In the open-ended  treatment of both Blade Runner and its sequel, Blade Runner 2049 -directed by Denis Villeneuve-, the directors have chosen to open up avenues of possibilities within the original themes present in the book that both movies are loosely based on: 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?', written by Philip K. Dick. 
Where the original Blade Runner (director's cut) chose to permit a romantic relationship between a human/replicant and a replicant, and heroic behaviours exercised by replicants, its sequel delves further into the blurring of 'synthetic' and 'natural' behaviour: replicants seem to be able to display what can only be described as a conscience, where humans often seem to lack this very quality.

Our modern culture is rushing towards Scott’s and Villeneuve's dystopian vision, and it requires myths and warnings that articulately observe the complexity of our situation, addressing the brutal power we now possess to modify the environment, and to modify and to enslave each other. 
CRISPER -actual genetic engineering technology for the alteration of human embryos' DNA- is now a legal reality in several countries, and it's enjoying its first years of infancy. Genetic engineering is no longer an embryonic endeavour.

Scott’s warning in his original -then final cut- vision was overlooked at the time of the movie’s original release. Its multilayered complexity was not culturally allowed to communicate one of the most perplexing and questioning messages the viewing public could ever receive: 

Who, here, is human.

It is actions that will determine the answer. And replicants often perform actions which elevate them over the human behaviour displayed. ...Pharmaceutical mega-gigant Glaxo-Smith-Kline announced, two years ago, a £32bn (that's Thirty-Two Billion Pounds) budget for what they have coined as the ‘medicine of the future’: ‘simply’ modifying electronic impulses in the nervous system, ‘writing’ new bio-electronic code, overriding the autonomous nervous system, via microchip implant, to ‘address diabetes and asthma’. 

...As a collective of organisms in cognitively dissonant denial about their own condition, our society is increasingly becoming a synthetic reproduction. We inhabit a virtual reality, product of the ‘condensation of human activity’, the ‘noosphere’, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin noted back in 1922. 

The gritty future that Ridley Scott portrayed has now proven realistic and believable. Denis Villeneuve's sequel has chosen to deploy this world fully, expand it and surround it with further questions, many of which bear strong resemblances to questions our society is currently asking. ...Blade Runner 2049 is a brutally and densely imagined reality of 'nearby dystopia' with such subtle warnings that, perhaps, the only way for us to understand its real message is to absorb its carefully scored choreography, weaving the narrative waves.