PJD,

Not only does the government relish segregating us, but they depend on it. The government and their owners need us to be afraid and demoralized. And, for the most part, we are.

France, anyone?

Beautifully eloquent.

Could it be that the government has systematically, perhaps unwittingly, sought to isolate us from each other so that we are no longer truly a society? The government has relished segregating us on the basis of many factors: patriotism, homosexuality, sexual deviance, ethnicity, religion, gender, crime. Instead of trumpeting our similarities, the government seems to relish pointing out our differences. That, in tun, makes people mistrust and fear one another. The result is a breakdown of genuine society, not to mention civility, leaving the government as the only "secure" beacon in the night. By the way, the government is not the society, nor even the nation. The nation is its people. If those people lose their connections to one another, the nation ceases to exist, even if the government endures.

Dave

Dave: Thank you for pointing out that this government is not the uniter that it pretends to be. The only interest they appear to have in the citizens is what little money we can generate for the industrial complex, which can leave one totally alienated and disconnected. The cohesiveness of family, of friends and of community and faith is and always will be what connects us to each other.

What do you mean "not united".

The media makes a big deal about how united Americans are every time there is a disaster (9/11, Katrina, I-35W bridge).
US foreign policy, infrastructure neglect and growing income gap assures many more disasters ahead during the continued US descent to becoming a fascist third world nation.

It always amazes me when someone talks or writes about looking forward to school during the summer as a child. For me, school represents a time of imprisonment. The social part was mostly stressful, even though looking back I was part of the "in" crowd all through elementary school.

Having to raise my hand to sharpen a pencil or use the restroom was an alien concept; I could not imagine why I couldn't be trusted to go sharpen my pencil without permission. I guess living in a home where strictly enforced rules made sense and where I was trusted to make small decisions for myself (like when to go to the bathroom) was a disadvantage in school.

Academically, school was mostly a waste of time. I could read before I entered school, and my first grade teacher was very upset about this. Most of the rest of what I learned I could have just as easily read about on my own. The only subject I might have benefitted from was math, and it was badly taught. I was a mostly "A" student, but I was never challenged or excited by what we were learning. It wasn't until my own middle age that I discovered history and current events could be interesting.

Junior high school was an especially horrific experience. Coming into adolescence was difficult enough, but sitting in alphabetical order (and boy-girl-boy-girl!) in every class meant that the class bully sat next to me most of the time. We were not permitted to talk in the hall, and we had to travel in line with our class. We had the same students in every class, unlike the method used in most schools today, so they could regiment us in a miriad of ways.

When I graduated, I was unable to comprehend the tears of many of my classmates. I wanted to go up to them and shout "we've just gotten out of jail!"

I know this was not the point of the article, and I know not everyone felt as I did, but I do know disliking school is a very common experience. It was such a bad time for me, even though I now work for the school system (as a programmer - not in a classroom), I get depressed every year when school starts up again.

I teach art at our local art center, and I find that at the start of each set of classes, I have to counter the detrimental effects of public school art "education." My students are afraid of their own creativity. When I tell them that no one can tell you that you have done something wrong in art, almost every child says something like, "My art teacher does in school!"

Things are better in some ways than when I was in school - I'm 60 now - but it seems that the atmosphere is getting worse. Our county's schools have just begun a new closed campus policy for all schools, meaning that students are not permitted to leave the school for lunch. Dress codes are getting more and more oppressive, and the zero tolerance behavioral codes are absurd. When I was a child, at least I could walk to a friend's house before going home. Now a child needs a note from his or her parent and a note from the friend's parent before being permitted to go home with another child. (I don't know how the rules are enforced once the students leave the school, but I do know the rules exist because I edit the student handbooks.)

Our schools are not teaching democracy, nor do they teach the principles upon which this country was founded. Public schools have always been geared toward discipline and making everyone "all come out the same." But with the culture of fear we now live in, this fearmongering has filtered down into our schools and made school an increasingly even less nice place to be.

School most certainly never seemed like a way to connect to the world. Instead, it cut me off from real life and made my childhood miserable until summer arrived when I had a short reprieve. Family life, with books, good music, and cultural activities, seems to me to be a much more solid introduction to the world than the artificial, and often negative, atmosphere of most schools.

I'm not sure what the alternative is, although I do have some ideas for making schools less destructive. Smaller class sizes, eliminating grades for academic achievement at least in elementary schools, better teacher training, and co-ordinating from one subject to the next to reinforce learning would be good places to begin. I surely do not advocate privatizing, and what we have is probably better than nothing. However, we have a long way to go to have schools that actually prepare our citizens for a particapatory democracy in a technological age.

People desire to be united, but do not want to give up their autonomy. How many people really know their neighbors, even after living there for years? You say hi how are ya, but we prize our privacy and respect that of others.

Humanity may be conflicted in dualities that we are only now beginning to understand. We can express ourselves on the Internet, but only when we get out and talk with people do you feel connected.

I do not think that the government consciously keeps us apart. Business does not want you to share your salary figures with others, because then everyone would want a fair pay check and we go along with it.

Like in the comic strip Pogo, we have met the enemy and it is us. If we want to change things, look in the mirror first. It is a good place to start.

Thank you Mr. Carroll for putting the deep rooted feelings and beliefs of so many United States citizens into focus:

"Here is the disconnect that matters this August: A vast population of shamed US citizens, seeing the war as key to multiple unfolding disasters, regard it as the most pressing issue in the world. But so what? Private brooding desperately seeks a mode of public action, yet is thwarted."

I do fervently believe that we must bring our shame into the open, admit our complicity, and address the issues we face. The First Step is "An Intervention" ala Alcoholics Anon. with our pathetic leaders. The "Intervention" is called IMPEACHMENT. We as CITIZENS must stop enabling these war addicted beasts from ruining our country and our world. The First Step--Impeachment--is only the First Step. It is necessary to take this step to repudiate our citizenry from the actions taken in our name. Then we must take many steps to deal with our national and globals issues. Our Congress is wrong, we cannot make any progress until we first, "clear out the Bushco"!

A reminder from Sy Cophant, undersecretary of Loyalness:

Please remember to include the word "Bush" at least three times per posting.

All hail Bush,

Sy Cophant, undersecretary of Loyalness
cc: loyalbushies Levels 1 - 4

DaveEriqat August 6th, 2007 1:06 pm
"Could it be that the government has systematically, perhaps unwittingly, sought to isolate us from each other so that we are no longer truly a society?"

Whether those consequences were sought or not, the period we're living in was declared The Post Human Era by Francis Fukuyama, a neo-con, in 2002.

"The result is a breakdown of genuine society, not to mention civility, leaving the government as the only 'secure' beacon in the night. By the way, the government is not the society, nor even the nation. The nation is its people. If those people lose their connections to one another, the nation ceases to exist, even if the government endures."

These cats are followers of Hegel, Marx's mentor. For them, Reason is God, and the State is Absolute.

Republican, Democrat, one Party.
Thesis, Anti-thesis, Synthesis = The End of History.

Fukuyama also declared The End of History (i.e., the goal of Communism) before Bush ever stepped foot into office.

Fukuyama is a neo-con at Johns Hopkins University.

This is just one piece of the puzzle, but it's still a piece.

LeeAnnG August 6th, 2007 3:13 pm

LeeAnnG, your post was fascinating. We need to share our personal stories to help us to put into context the real life effects of the top-down changes being imposed upon us.

Given your interest in education, you may enjoy reading John Taylor Gatto's book, "The Underground History of American Education."

It's available to purchase or read online:

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm

The government has relished segregating us on the basis of many factors: patriotism, homosexuality, sexual deviance, ethnicity, religion, gender, crime.

You forgot the biggest one - economic class.

If a classless society is not possible, would something between the extremes be? And how could one be set up when the plutocrat or hegemon extremists themselves make the rules? Mike Gravel is the only one that realizes this. Democracy falls into dictatorship unless the people, not its elites, make the laws.

PJD: You got me there. I don't know how I overlooked that one.

iammyself: I'd love to move to France!

Dave

The disconnect Mr. Carrol writes about is ingrained in a competitive, as opposed to, a cooperative society, because people are motivated by fear and desire manipulated by commercial advertizing to sell every one out to each other. The only reason we survive at all is the minimal cooperation we maintain in our towns and municipalities, and Social Security, Medicare, etc. The once famous American Standard of Living was based on a rough balance between capitalism and socialism that has since fallen victim to these modern robber barons who want everything.

I just want to add these are some great posts and a great article which I think has isolated the issue.

There are many unnatural elements in our society, the example of school is one I talk about to friends at great length. Especially as I've tried to belong to the academic community and found it to be a driving force behind conventionality and conformity. Now these aren't necessarily bad influences in and of themselves, but they have created a climate of sublimatation, and pent up longings and desires that can never be fulfilled by fitting in. We are unique.

I visit a small town in New Hampshire once a year and I am always amazed that the people here stay secluded warmed by the blue glow of the tv, only infrequently coming out and talking to their neighbors. The village store has been driven out of business years ago by high insurance, and plumbing ordinances, once the place where folks gathered and chatted. It's tough not to be "dumbed down."

I do think that somehow we've been devided against ourselves, become a kind of diaspora. I also think that people will take action when there is a catalyst, whether that's war, or something else I cannot forsee entirely, but history like nature seems to have a way of springing unexpectedly out of the cracks in the sidewalk. Because, although I've been saying the same for most of my adult life - let's call that 30 years which I know isn't much - but surely life can't continue on this way indefinitely. Surely events will catch up to us.

geoff29,

Indeed, events caught up with Americans during the Vietnam War and now with Islamic terrorism and the Iraq War. But when people equate themselves with sit-coms they fail to comprehend reality, instead relying on news casters to tell them what's happening. Only when their sons and daughters come home in coffins do they begin to ask questions, almost too late.

If I had to debate someone whose position was that the fabled system of "checks and balances" has failed, I would lose the debate. The Bush Administration secures power by the day, the judiciary has been stacked with rightist idealogues, and the Congress is a craven group sucking huge sums from corporate lobbyists on K St. The people have no real protection any longer.

If there is any 911 type attack, Bush will impose martial law, and any critic can have his or her finances frozen, which means immediate survival situation. Without access to money, one cannot even feed oneself. This is even more insidious than detention centers.

"Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out." Think I'm gonna vote GOP for the first time in my life, the Dems are such cowards, phonies and suck-ups in the face of the biggest sitting duck of a criminal this country ever saw....

Civilization was an environmental mistake brought about by the evolution of a big-brained mammal who, though evolved to live in small groups, now lives in mega-tribes all overly armed and dangerous to themselves and others as they scramble to plunder the planet of its remaining resources.
Relax and enjoy the last few years of life on earth such as it will be.
Just look at the line up of Repugs and Dems and what they say. They are all pretty much fools of one kind or another. Have any of them called for banning nuclear weapons, coming together and making peace, or sharing resources, curbing population growth? NO, they all talk about bombing people to prove they are the alpha leader or denying women abortions in an overpopulated world. Pretty disgusting mess we are all in.

A community is the sum total of social, political and cultural relations. A community arises from and is based upon the economy – which is the sum total of the ways social wealth is produced and distributed.. The community and the economy together make up what we call society. This is my understanding of society.

For many years after I got out of the Army, I worked in various factories. The unity of the workers in these factories was very real as we fought for better working conditions, wages, health care, etc. We were very much connected as a class. Even when I was in the Army, as an enlisted man, we were united as one group, and the officers another.

Today, the industrial base of the US is changing. Many industrial jobs are being replaced by robotics, and the rest are being shipped to cheaper labor countries like Mexico.

I guess my point is, today it is much harder to see yourself as part of a class. It may appear we are all individuals fighting against this amorphous evil. We need to reconnect on the bases of class. We are not all in this together.

Giant global corporations are replacing local and national companies.Consequently, wealth and poverty polarize.

The social destruction that we have seen in the past twenty-five years is only the beginning of the process. Homelessness will increase, education of working class youth will continue to decline, war will become part of the American way of life, health care will slip further and further from the grasp of the poor. All this will become the school where the American people learn of class and class solidarity.

LeeAnnG -
My hatred of school was kind of a defining feature of life for me. Read John Holt, especially his 'How Children Fail" and "How Schools Fail', to get a wonderful sense of what alternatives there be to our present system of 'education'. I believe that what children do best is to learn - until they go to school. There are two kinds of learning: what you learn because you're interested in, curious about something, and every other kind of learning, which means essentially, what you have to learn because somebody is making your do it. Our system of education discourages the first kind of learning, in fact there's scarcely room for it in the school curriculum. Of course, there are those lucky (or unlucky?) ones who want to learn what their teachers want them to learn. My partner is one of those. At our first meeting we argued for nearly an hour at a subway entrance about schools, and neither of us has given an inch in the ensuing 15 years or so.

I often felt disconnected in my 20 or so years of school. I remember one college class was so impossible for me that I lit matches and stared at the flame during class in order to hold onto some sense of reality. More recently, I lived for about 15 years in Puerto Rico where I felt that I fitted in perfectly: people took me to be a 'Gringo', a Norteamericano, and that's what I was.

We have a lot to learn about learning, we have only begun to understand the process and how to make it better.

I will continue to blame the car, your car, your dependence upon driving it every day as far as you do, to some job where you make enough money to make the car payments and the insurance premiums and gasoline at $3.05 a gallon after gallon after gallon after gallon; a little less costly possibly, three miles away at some other gas station quickie-mart parking lot depravation of nature alongside the freeway abomination, though the cost of the drive there negates any savings, nevermind the additional air pollution, air pollution, air pollution.

Is not the Iraq War entirely for the gasoline you put in your fucking car that you drive to some fucking big box psuedo cost-saving wholesaler retailer on the far side of the freeway-laden metropolitan area of Nowhere County vistas routinely decorated with untold 2-story neon signs advertizing fast food, gas stations, tires and mattress marts alongside the fucking Interstate?

I will continue to blame the car, your car, your dependence upon driving it as much as you do, as if you had a choice. Whether or not you realize how creating choice will take years and vision, I will continue blaming your car and my cars I've stopped driving 10 years ago, not you nor the many like you and me and them. The car is a worthy target of scorn. The military industrial complex is entirely based upon driving cars, and flying away from the crass worlds of cars to some exotic vacation land hotel set apart from that world's own car infection disease.

Like Haussmann's Parisian boulevards, the US suburbs are designed deliberately to defuse any mass revolutionary democratic movement. People concentrated in and around urban areas, which compress work and education and habitations into a small compass, can foster common action.

It's impossible to commute to a revolution.

I join others to laud LeeAnnG's post. Carroll's article was good, but yours was better. I could share similar horror stories, and I distinctly remember buses and buses of kids leaving 8th grade and sobbing, and my thinking "What the...?" I consciously rebelled against the notion of being bound to the group.
One day, after I learned to drive, my car broke down while going to school, and I felt a yearning to "be with the group." That feeling gave me pause.
One kid in high school was itching to get out. He took AP exams and Jr. college classes, and when a school administrator got in his way, how he ground them into the dirt!... I was awed by him, but never equaled his courage.
We are creatures of the group. Our most prominent psychology was set during the last cerebral evolutionary step, the one that set Cro Magnon apart from its forebears. The "tribe" is the fundamental human unit, not the family, not political group, or anything else. All other collective entities are second cousins at best, but human motivation can best be understood by the small communal group. If you don't believe this thesis, consider our present plague: Bush. George W is governed by "loyalty," that is, beholden to the group, his associates, his family, his financial supporters, his tribe. I seriously don't think he gives the rest of us, the larger collective unit, much shrift at all. It's all hard-wired; Bush is as much explained by Cro-Magnon evolutionary conditioning as a hockey team.
The more a person can break away from this mental predestiny, the better. I think I understood this instinctively during high school. Thanks to all for reinforcing it!

Thanks to all of you who responded to my post. I really appreciate the references for me to read. I also read a book titled "Reading, Writing, and the Hickory Stick," which was a condemnation of corporal punishment in American schools. It was full of horror stories, and made me even more opposed to this barbaric practice. Fortunately, many states have banned it in recent years.

I loved the way bwallace put it: "My hatred of school was kind of a defining feature of life for me." Perfect! I couldn't possibly say it better.

I've writted several blogs in the past few months about the dreadful writing skills of at least 90% of the school administrators I encounter. I edit the handbooks for the entire county, and I also do TV displays for school activities. It's amazing how many so-called educators think words like "room" and "scrimmage" are proper nouns that need to be capitalized. They don't know the difference between "it's" and "its" or when to use commas. These are the people who decide what our children should learn. There are many things wrong with education in American, starting with the fact that most school administrators are not scholars.

yes the Corporate Media have continued to not show the bodies. How little comment there has been on this of late! I am amazed that there hasnt been any visual media protest. Simpy saying HMPHH to the "MSM" and going to the internet DOES NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM. The Corporate media still setts the agenda.

Until there is visual off-line protest against the lying Coporate Media nothing will change.

Dear bandjineer: The car aint the problem! Its the stinking oil companies,dammit! Its the lobbyists,its Exxon,Its our politicians refusing to allow alternative forms of energy. When was the last time you were offered an alternative fuel? Never! Im getting ready to drive across town,burn some crude,pollute the air and ya know what IT AINT ME OR MY CAR THATS THE PROBLEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Here is the disconnect that matters this August: A vast population of shamed US citizens, seeing the war as key to multiple unfolding disasters, regard it as the most pressing issue in the world. But so what? Private brooding desperately seeks a mode of public action, yet is thwarted.

The American myth is that such concern gives form to the political process, never more so than during a presidential election. But there, too, as the candidate debates steadily show, the defining note is one of ineffectual detachment. And why shouldn't youthful summer doldrums open into massive civic anguish?

The war has become a god apart, for which now it will really punish everyone"

Well you know, should anyone actually address it and DO SOMETHING as we are always admonished to do, that individual will come to rue the day they thought to speak out of line--for they will be castigated as an "attention whore" and punished for their massive egos, or they will be marginalized as the "looney left"--even when it is the majority view--or red-baited like ANSWER when their capacity to organize hugh demonstrations threatened to draw back the mask.
The dynamic is in place to reinforce no action taken and the groupthink is pervasive accross the spectrum.

i think individually we are truly powerless, but also as a group we are as powerless as we want to be.
as a group the american citizenry is passive, willing to believe its leaders.
of course this is in great part due to the awfulness of the establishment press. but to an extent there is a desire to accept authority, to prove that one is a "patriot" by buying the stories in this case of the neocons.
of course the group is made up of individuals but the "patriots" outnumber those who somehow or other have fallen through the brainwashing machine. but the ratio i think is about 80% to 20 %. i take this from the initial response to this disgrace of a war. 80% went along with this war at the beginning. so that in a way is the bigger enemy than the government. those are the instant collaborators with this neocon government.

The isolation spoken of here is a direct result of a confused body politic that continues to put its faith in one or the other of the two parties owned by the corporate capitalist state. Both political parties barely net half of the entire electorate in every election, which makes either one a minority faction. But both machines use their public relations apparatus to encourage belief in a system that is no longer answerable to the population, and every time we come down betrayed by these people, demoralization grows by leaps and bounds. Even the defeats suffered by an independent, political force that works to know its base are less demoralizing then defeats imposed by two political blocks that never gave a shit about us to begin with. If anyone can demonstrate how anything but isolation can grow out of such development, I'd like to see the evidence. Our common isolation is a reflection of our common political helplessness and hopelessness.

We need a genuine, independent opposition movement, based on the different political perspectives that may be found within the working class majority, the laboring majority. Further, any moves along those lines must, at the outset, accept minority status as a concrete condition of the political struggle as it unfolds in this moment, and continue working consistently and quietly until it builds mass support over time in community organizations, unions, religious bodies etc. The democrats will never help us do this, as they thrive on our confusion, our isolation, our desparation. We have to do it ourselves. And until such time as the political life of this country begins to reshape itself, the cultural life will continue to ping pong between isolated helplessness and our perrennial know-nothingism or neo nationalist, quasi-fascist "unity". The subjective factor of a real democratic resistance- that's us- must come into play. Until it does, this continued fracturing of the cultural life of the country will be all we'll ever have. Moreover, it will be all we'll deserve, as time and circumstance will have demonstrated that in the allegedly freest nation on the planet, our population had to make a choice between self-determination and ownership by the company store, and we'll have allowed the latter choice to have been made for us by a bunch of corporate statist assholes.

What a lot of great posts.

I think I've got the answer to the changing society thing, as far as being isolated and internet-bound.

My theory, to be honest, is that we've become so unnatural in our expectations of how we should look, we can't stand to look at each other or have others look at us. Period. It's a mass psychosis. The few of us that feel perfectly acceptable in public with no worries are, generally, young or often terribly shallow and either way uninvolved in politics and always easily swayed into buying the next cool thing.

And sometimes, when I look at the silly falling-down pants and tatoos with pierced things everywhere, all so radical until everyone else does it in drab clothes, I think oh kid....I wish you'd pay more attention to the news, because all I really want is for you to get to be old too.