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Addicted to Nonsense
Will Tiger Woods finally talk to the police? Who will replace Oprah? (Not that Oprah can ever be replaced, of course.) And will Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the couple who crashed President Barack Obama's first state dinner, command the hundreds of thousands of dollars they want for an exclusive television interview? Can Levi Johnston, father of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's grandson, get his wish to be a contestant on "Dancing With the Stars"?
The chatter that passes for news, the gossip that is peddled by the windbags on the airwaves, the noise that drowns out rational discourse, and the timidity and cowardice of what is left of the newspaper industry reflect our flight into collective insanity. We stand on the cusp of one of the most seismic and disturbing dislocations in human history, one that is radically reconfiguring our economy as it is the environment, and our obsessions revolve around the trivial and the absurd.
What really matters in our lives-the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the steady deterioration of the dollar, the mounting foreclosures, the climbing unemployment, the melting of the polar ice caps and the awful reality that once the billions in stimulus money run out next year we will be bereft and broke-doesn't fit into the cheerful happy talk that we mainline into our brains. We are enraptured by the revels of a dying civilization. Once reality shatters the airy edifice, we will scream and yell like petulant children to be rescued, saved and restored to comfort and complacency. There will be no shortage of demagogues, including buffoons like Sarah Palin, who will oblige. We will either wake up to face our stark new limitations, to retreat from imperial projects and discover a new simplicity, as well as a new humility, or we will stumble blindly toward catastrophe and neofeudalism.
Celebrity worship has banished the real from public discourse. And the adulation of celebrity is pervasive. The frenzy around political messiahs, or the devotion of millions of viewers to Oprah, is all part of the yearning to see ourselves in those we worship. We seek to be like them. We seek to make them like us. If Jesus and "The Purpose Driven Life" won't make us a celebrity, then Tony Robbins or positive psychologists or reality television will. We are waiting for our cue to walk onstage and be admired and envied, to become known and celebrated. Nothing else in life counts.
We yearn to stand before the camera, to be noticed and admired. We build pages on social networking sites devoted to presenting our image to the world. We seek to control how others think of us. We define our worth solely by our visibility. We live in a world where not to be seen, in some sense, is to not exist. We pay lifestyle advisers to help us look and feel like celebrities, to build around us the set for the movie of our own life. Martha Stewart constructed her financial empire, when she wasn't engaged in insider trading, telling women how to create a set design for the perfect home. The realities within the home, the actual family relationships, are never addressed. Appearances make everything whole. Plastic surgeons, fitness gurus, diet doctors, therapists, life coaches, interior designers and fashion consultants all, in essence, promise to make us happy, to make us celebrities. And happiness comes, we are assured, with how we look, with the acquisition of wealth and power, or at least the appearance of it. Glossy magazines like Town & Country cater to the absurd pretensions of the very rich to be celebrities. They are photographed in expensive designer clothing inside the lavishly decorated set pieces that are their homes. The route to happiness is bound up in how skillfully we present ourselves to the world. We not only have to conform to the dictates of this manufactured vision, but we also have to project an unrelenting optimism and happiness. Hedonism and wealth are openly worshiped on Wall Street as well as on shows such as "The Hills," "Gossip Girl," "Sex and the City," "My Super Sweet 16" and "The Real Housewives of (whatever bourgeois burg happens to be in vogue)."
The American oligarchy-1 percent of whom control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined-are the characters we most envy and watch on television. They live and play in multimillion-dollar mansions. They marry models or professional athletes. They are chauffeured in stretch limos. They rush from fashion shows to movie premieres to fabulous resorts. They have surgically enhanced, perfect bodies and are draped in designer clothes that cost more than some people make in a year. This glittering life is held before us like a beacon. This life, we are told, is the most desirable, the most gratifying. And this is the life we want. Greed is good, we believe, because one day through our acquisitions we will become the elite. So let the rest of the bastards suffer.
The working class, comprising tens of millions of struggling Americans, are locked out of television's gated community. They are mocked, even as they are tantalized, by the lives of excess they watch on the screen in their living rooms. Almost none of us will ever attain these lives of wealth and power. Yet we are told that if we want it badly enough, if we believe sufficiently in ourselves, we too can have everything. We are left, when we cannot adopt these impossible lifestyles as our own, with feelings of inferiority and worthlessness. We have failed where others have succeeded.
We consume these countless lies daily. We believe the false promises that if we spend more money, if we buy this brand or that product, if we vote for this candidate, we will be respected, envied, powerful, loved and protected. The flamboyant lives of celebrities and the outrageous characters on television, movies, professional wrestling and sensational talk shows are peddled to us, promising to fill up the emptiness in our own lives. Celebrity culture encourages everyone to think of themselves as potential celebrities, as possessing unique if unacknowledged gifts. Faith in ourselves, in a world of make-believe, is more important than reality. Reality, in fact, is dismissed and shunned as an impediment to success, a form of negativity. The New Age mysticism and pop psychology of television personalities and evangelical pastors, along with the array of self-help best-sellers penned by motivational speakers, psychiatrists and business tycoons, peddle this fantasy. Reality is condemned in these popular belief systems as the work of Satan, as defeatist, as negativity or as inhibiting our inner essence and power. Those who question, those who doubt, those who are critical, those who are able to confront reality, along with those who grasp the hollowness and danger of celebrity culture, are condemned for their pessimism or intellectualism.
The illusionists who shape our culture, and who profit from our incredulity, hold up the gilded cult of Us. Popular expressions of religious belief, personal empowerment, corporatism, political participation and self-definition argue that all of us are special, entitled and unique. All of us, by tapping into our inner reserves of personal will and undiscovered talent, by visualizing what we want, can achieve, and deserve to achieve, happiness, fame and success. This relentless message cuts across ideological lines. This mantra has seeped into every aspect of our lives. We are all entitled to everything. And because of this self-absorption, and deep self-delusion, we have become a country of child-like adults who speak and think in the inane gibberish of popular culture.
Celebrities who come from humble backgrounds are held up as proof that anyone can be adored by the world. These celebrities, like saints, are examples that the impossible is always possible. Our fantasies of belonging, of fame, of success and of fulfillment are projected onto celebrities. These fantasies are stoked by the legions of those who amplify the culture of illusion, who persuade us that the shadows are real. The juxtaposition of the impossible illusions inspired by celebrity culture and our "insignificant" individual achievements, however, is leading to an explosive frustration, anger, insecurity and invalidation. It is fostering a self-perpetuating cycle that drives the frustrated, alienated individual with even greater desperation and hunger away from reality, back toward the empty promises of those who seduce us, who tell us what we want to hear. The worse things get, the more we beg for fantasy. We ingest these lies until our faith and our money run out. And when we fall into despair we medicate ourselves, as if the happiness we have failed to find in the hollow game is our deficiency. And, of course, we are told it is.
I spent two years traveling the country to write a book on the Christian right called "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America." I visited former manufacturing towns where for many the end of the world is no longer an abstraction. Many have lost hope. Fear and instability have plunged the working class into profound personal and economic despair, and, not surprisingly, into the arms of demagogues and charlatans of the radical Christian right who offer a belief in magic, miracles and the fiction of a utopian Christian nation. Unless we rapidly re-enfranchise these dispossessed workers, insert them back into the economy, unless we give them hope, these demagogues will rise up to take power. Time is running out. The poor can dine out only so long on illusions. Once they grasp that they have been betrayed, once they match the bleak reality of their future with the fantasies they are fed, once their homes are foreclosed and they realize that the jobs they lost are never coming back, they will react with a fury and vengeance that will snuff out the remains of our anemic democracy and usher in a new dark age.
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207 Comments so far
Show AllHey Chris, you are the only one I know of who speaks truth to power. Well done.
I have been saying exactly this for the past ten years.
We are living on borrowed time using borrowed money.
And events in Seattle, WA may prove I am right. Because yesterday four police officers were gunned down in an ambush in a coffee shop while they were doing routine paperwork.
You are asking "Why is this tragedy a symptom of the coming Collapse?"
Well, you see, more and more people are beginning to see the various police agencies not as neighborhood protectors, but rather as the armed paramilitary of the financial and celebrity Elite. Go and review police actions vis a vis protesters over the past ten years. Especially the recent police behavior in Pittsburgh during the G20 summit there.
Add to that the growing understanding by the general population of the galloping accumulation of phantom wealth by the Elite, and you begin to see the level of desperation and hopelessness that fuel the recent family massacres and workplace tragedies of the past year.
The entire fragile edifice is showing massive fractures, let alone cracks, and the Elite and their media puppets just want to sell you more plastic crap and SUV's (sorry, 'crossover vehicles'...), while wiping out more of your hard won human and civil rights, stealing not only the last penny in your pocket, but the food out of your child's mouth.
The time for change is upon us. It is beginning to look like the peaceful option of a controlled reconstruction of living in a smaller scale will die too. Last year, a Russian scholar predicted civil was in the US and it's dissolution into six separate new countries.
I think he was more right than he knew.
The Russian scholar who predicted the dissolution of the United States into six separate nations is giving us good advice on how to handle the shit we are in now. The United States is finished as a democracy. We the people need to start over again to form a new system of government. It is obvious that our current system has been purchased by, and is controled by that top one percent.
We need to organize in smaller physical areas. Presdent Lincoln was wrong to insist that states may not choose to disaffiliate with the union. We are the United States---not the United State. States may choose to join the union and also to withdraw.
I want to live in the Republic of California. This Republic will not participate in the wars for empire and will be a democracy. This republic will function at the direction of the people (living people--not corporations) to care for the needs of the people and to protect all life on Earth.
You can do the same in your state. Let's return to the Articles of Federation.
Luckily (?) I live in Canada... although how long we are going to last as an independent nation is open to interpretation.
Mr. Harper seems hell bent on driving us into the cancerous arms of the Fatal US embrace. And if the US gets desperate enough for petroleum, we may find ourselves enjoying the dubious 'benefits' of a US military occupation. Canada is, after all, America's fourth largest supplier of natural gas and oil, and all of your vital Alaskan pipelines run south through Canada. If you were willing to fly halfway around the world to bomb some third world sandbox into rubble over 'National Security', rolling your tanks and drones over the worlds 'longest undefended border' should be child's play, even for Nobel-winning Obama, or more likely Puppet Palin.
It seems Canada is a semi-autonomous province of the Empire. Did you see the clip or article about Amy Goodman's treatment by Canadian border police?
We are not semi-autonomous but a fully bought and paid for entity compeletly under the direct control of the Empire
Well at least you have health insurance eh?
While the health care file is the one area where Canadians have been reasonably resistant to the ruling class' mind control tactics, it is none the less dying a death of a thousand cuts.
The attack started in earnest in 94 when we were duped into believing the country had reached the "debt wall" and was only one step away from bankrupcy.Thus rendering us compliant to the governments slashing of social spending.
By the way the government of the day was considered left wing, which of course made it easier for them to get away with it.
And don't forget that Canada has the greatest resource, water, too.
And there are already drones (supposedly unarmed) patrolling the U.S./Canadian border.
Well, there are lots of undocumented deer and moose that cross that border. You want to keep America safe from lyme disease, don't you?
The armed ones will be overhead during the Winter olympics. To protect the USain athletes, don'tchaknow...
Canada is also the foremost supplier of oil to the USA, believe it or not.
That's the truest and most devastating indictment of American culture I've yet seen. Congratulations, Chris.
Pretty much every weekday I watch a couple of the morning mainstream network "news" shows. I follow that by listening to Democracy Now, (DN). The difference between DN and the network shows is stark and dramatic. DN is almost always hard news, while the mainstream shows are almost never. The network shows mostly just cover the three "G's", glitz, gossip, and gore.
Take today for example, the mainstream shows talked about Tiger Woods apparent near demise at the hands of his golf club wielding wife, overweight pets, and the White House party crashers.
Democracy now talked about Canadian border guards censoring free speech at the border concerning the upcoming Olympics, free trade and civil liberties, and the 10th anniversary of the shutdown of the WTO talks in Seattle.
When you watch the MSM morning news shows you realize why the average Amerikan is so ignorant and ill-informed. And personally, I don't think that this is being done by accident either.
Of course it's not being done by accident. As has been pointed out here before, most of the main commercial news stations are owned by military contractors, or companies that get a large portion of their income from military contracts.
"The network shows mostly just cover the three "G's", glitz, gossip, and gore."
This statement cracks me up because I've taken to calling republicans the party of the three "G's":
God, Guns and Greed.
"This statement cracks me up because I've taken to calling republicans the party of the three "G's":
God, Guns and Greed."
Yoou missed one. Gutless. Who else would goo AWOL from a safe job with the Texas Air Guard (Bu$h), or get four special deferrments from participating in the military (Cheney) while the average Jes of the country are fighting in Viet Nam?
What does the acronym GOP stand for? Greedy Oligarch Pustule.
matthew loughran
when i watch the daily corporate news on tv and if i was stupid enough to listen on the radio i will hear hours of crap. story after story about black friday and the need shop. the corporate media says shop peons!!! shop now there are bargains everywhere you need to go now peons!!
the main thing to remember is when you think of 'Murcan corporate media think about a toilet flushing.
i personally don't watch the assinine reality shows and some of the other crap chris hedges was talking about is incredibly annoying. my gf and i matter as much in this country as any yuppie asswipe. we all do people. we are real people by helping each other when someone is hungry or is about to lose their home or any other way.
great article by chis hedges. it is sad and yet amusing about the level of stupidity that this country has become.
matt loughran
gavleston tx
harris county green party
Sioux Rose
Hedge's concluding statement brings to mind the rise of fascim in an impoverished, humilitated Germany. It could well repeat here.
I drove to South Florida to spend Thanksgiving with my daughters and grandchildren, and in order to have access to the grandkids, I had to endure the values of my children. One daughter got her degree in business and shares a home with a financial advisor (they are both in their late twenties), and both lost 50% of their home equity in the collapse of recent real estate values. Yet both drive fancy cars and had the TV on the entire time I was there. It was a master stroke of tolerance on my end as the ONLY thing blasting was football. They reside in a fancy townhouse and their neighbor, a contractor, is the same age. He took his TV system out onto the back patio to blast football there. It made me realize why I could never live in an urban center again. This obsession with "sports" passes for cool or culture, or what TO do and to me it's just the prelude to warfare, soft propaganda constantly filtering into the collective consciousness.
Here were these strong young men (along with their girlfriends, wives and kids) completely into the football games playing ALL weekend. Between the image thing--their fancy cars, expensive townouses, pretty female companiones, and constant TV/sports, there is NO interest in the world. Nothing outside their little manicured worlds matters. And this made me feel like an alien.
Every generation for the most part seems to rebel against its parents. My children grew up in the l980's when Reagan's version of a material world that lent a whole new Divine blessing onto the well-to-do imprinted them. It's a more compelling image than that of a parent relating things far more worrisome, things like the wreckage of nature, the escalation in global arms sales, etc.
Maybe this is some form of Darwinian adaptation, that this generation has such a limited number of charmed days left given the inevitable ravages of a completely imploding (too much riches/bulk at the top) financial pyramid, added to the various and significant stresses upon nature, added to the pain on the part of millions, and a good percentage of those millions armed.
Driving to the Keys after the holidays I thought I'd stop in Coconut Grove for an espresso. I park my car near the Mayfair where I always find parking. The streets were rather bare, and in pursuit of a coffee shop I passed what looked like a street bazarre. A very fancy shop had been converted into something akin to an upscale flea market. Inside were vendors with all kinds of exotic objects, and I thought I'd check out the price of any gold coins, if I could stumble upon such an item.
The vendor I began to talk with explained that he used to do gun shows, and that one day a gentleman from the Palm Beaches came up and asked him if he also bought gold. He said he did. The vendor inquired how much he had to sell, and the guy responded that he had about twice his own weight. The guy weighed about 300 pounds. Turns out he was the sole heir to an extremely wealthy woman, wealth beyond what most of us imagine... one of those houses in the Palm Beach area with several guest houses, etc.
The heir was told by his attorney to get rid of the jewels under the radar to avoid taxes, so this vendor bought pounds of gold WITH gems just for the weight of the gold. He said the guy showed up with a laundry bag full of gold rings, bracelets, etc.
This is a strange world when one individual can amass a king's fortune and so many starve. The dynamics of rewarding the rich at everyone else's expense cannot remain much longer. What's happened via the collapse of the stock market and the false devices used to prop up the illusion that all is now OKAY is patently falacious, and as more and more starve, lose their homes, find their "numbers come up" in the health-care lotto (without any paid assistance), individuals will shoot at unlikely targets and some will band together to wreak havoc. The priorities of the current paradigm are so corrupted that like a worm-eaten garment, they can no longer hold (the thing) together.
If any on CD have not viewed the entire ZEITGEST ADDENDUM You tube videos and/or CENTURY OF THE SELF, these are must views and explain so much about the underlying dynamics to 90% of the articles we read on C.D. For me turning off the TV constitutes an act similar to unplugging from the Matrix. Those of us who can do this realize the values being promulgated are anathema to the true riches of life, the intangibles that the world of Mammon & Mars married together are systematically destroying, acre by acre.
Thanks for the thoughtful and provocative post.
I too think that this whole financial system is about to crash, and is being held together in part by media propaganda. When I watch mainstream news shows there is always the ongoing search for "green shoots" to show that things are not that bad, and are getting better. But when I go online, outside of the mainstream media filter, I see that things are bad and getting worse.
I think in the not too distant future your kids and their families are in for a rude awaking.
Tom
Thanks for the great comment Sioux Rose. I also noticed the level of violence being shown on TV. Sickening. I think worse than sports. Of course there's no connection between this exposure to violence and the slaughtering going on in our cities and the illegal wars we export elsewhere. This clear infection of the human condition is very sad and disheartening to watch. Words now have such little value, such little true worth, such disconnection with reality. The loss of language renders human relationships a farce. Wisdom and goodness, seemingly, are being bred out of our global gene pool.
Chris Hedges hits the bullseye, again.
Sioux Rose
WAYOUT: Thank you for your compliment. Reading (some weeks ago) Nick Turse's research articles on DARPA and the species of weapons (insects rendered robotic) being funded and developed, added to Robert Jensen's research on the degrading forms of pornography saturating the Internet, added to the violence (torture) now woven into state policy utilized in offshore prison networks, added to its shadow over too much media "entertainment," and then all the team-based aggressive sports. These items normalize aggression, and can be placed under the heading: "Mars rules." Tragically, day by day I see more and more evidence to substantiate that description. Slaughter in our cities, health care out of reach for so many, toxic exposures everywhere and heading home, and then the illegal wars, the genetically deformed babies, etc. For those who are afraid of hell, our modern architects appear to be working their powers to render of this green earth a veritable living HELL. None underway seems possible to a civilized humanity, and yet...
I remember reading about previous dark ages where the mystics and awakened souls had to go underground to survive. I would not rule out a similar adapation now.
odoco
Sioux Rose - wonderful to hear from you again.
As I history teacher I couldn't help but compare Hedges'last paragraph about the Christian Right posing itself as the last salvation to the starving masses to a similar event in the 18th and 19th centuries - when the slave owners force-fed their brand of religiion to their chattel property with the aim of refocusing their attention on an after-life more tolerable than the present life in hopes of staving off open rebellion against the masters.
I visited with my step daughter a few weeks ago; we discussed the world's condition, all the preventable tragedies, etc. Her comment was: "I just wish Jesus would come and take me away from all this." Never did she even think that SHE could do something about ALL THIS. This is the condition you refer to in your post.
How do we awaken the people to their true responsibilities Sioux Rose? How do we get a greater percentage of people to turn off the tv's and take charge of their REAL lives - ?
How about guilt? You could say something like "Don't you think God put you on this earth to actually do something, and not just reap undeserved rewards in an afterlife?" Mind you, I am an atheist, so I might not have the proper perspective.
Sioux Rose
ODOCO: Fifteen years ago I was more optimistic. I felt that the film media was a magic mirror, and that if positive images were projected through its medium, a great increment to mass consciousness could occur. Sadly, the merchants of more made use of the air waves and instead of lifting the public's mind, they helped create addictions where none needed to exist at all.
Life has a way of playing teacher. Things taken for granted once becoming scarce remind us to honor the gifts we failed to wisely appreciate. A transition is in the works...
Another fine posting and psychic travelogue from the nether worlds.
Into the heart of the ambient darkness visible. Captures the spooky solipsism of domestic Americana which translates seamlessly into morbidity and death in foreign lands. For they are indeed–one and the same continuum.
"...there is NO interest in the world. Nothing outside their little manicured worlds matters. And this made me feel like an alien." –(SiouxRose)
The almost viral 'strangeness' is becoming a constitutive immanence in America. A 'super' or meta alienation. Things seem 'unmoored.' Meaning is lost. All meaning.
It is as if hovering in the air close above, a kind of weird, metallic 'storm' layer that has drifted in from the military blood deserts. Full of death. Toxic diaspores of particulate dread swarm, free floating waiting to achieve a critical materialization. There is the 'humming' of premonitions, still opaque, still coded, but in the process of coalescing.
The unraveling. There is no future in America. It covets apocalypse. 'Moby Dick' has been spotted on the far sea horizons. When he comes there is nothing left. Puts the Ahabs out of their misery which they now mistake as joy. Nothing but pornography.
"In America Sex is everywhere but in sex." –(Roland Barthes)
It's the same in Southern Florida, Washington D.C. and even in my decaying West coast city– that is all but a recombinant corpse surviving on myth, appearances and masquerade.
Knowing that the darkness is full on and cannot be 'reverse engineered' is the beginning of a hope that is not spurious.
Voting in the next round of staged and farcical elections? Assuredly so! Choose better candidates and elect 'real' Progressives? Most certainly! Let the roundelay of clowns begin again. The rich here go to restaurants staffed by insouciant hipsters who survive stylishly on the tumescent, decaying cachet. The economy and culture of the parasite holds all in thrall.
When a patient of mine– a Latin American woman who works in a 'Grand Luxe' hotel as a night janitor– remarked, I thought facetiously, that she believed the hotel to be "occupied by vampires," I felt an odd sense of uneasy acknowledgment. Then it occurred to me she was not being at all facetious. It was a 'sign.'–(Jill Bains)
Sioux Rose
AMFORTAS: Powerful words! Just today I was telling a lovely woman who confessed to me she was about to begin taking anti-depressants that I have days where I feel absolutely SUFFUSED with sorrow. Given the nature of my analytical mind, I sometimes try to find "the reason." I like to journal, and sometimes will make a list of things that MIGHT be bothering me. Yet there are times where I am UTTERLY sure I am feeling the silent (given the distance) screams of the children overseas whose family members have been blasted away by "smart" bombs, or perhaps sense the hunger pangs that call out to the heavens in those who've gone days without food. I told this woman that shutting off feelings could shut out the spiritual messages that might be intended to come her way. In these days when the pendulum of our shared realities swings with exaggerated force from one side of the spectrum to the other, how can we shut out the intense feelings generated? AS if we are allowed to only know pleasure when pain is what's being randomly delivered to thousands, millions perhaps.
Imagine the obscenity of "happiness studies" at established institutions of higher learning when weapons of destruction form the dominant "background music" our society is "playing." It seems the more US policies generate depravity in their wake, the more the domestic population is imposed upon to feel happy all the time. And it's so convenient that there are chemicals to bend and trick the neuro sensors (correct me if I used the wrong terminology since the medical zone is not my arena of expertise) IF individuals are NOT feeling very happy. Disaster capitalism meets psychology... the more misery being created, the more drugs can be sold to offset it. And never need the cause factors be eradicated. What a hell on earth Mammon united with Mars has made of our shared world!
Amfortas, thank you for your always incisive response(s). Conscience for the larger world is becoming something rare... people are being convinced they need ONLY worry about their own security, happiness, financial status, body image, etc. I'm glad so many of us in this forum see through the lies, and speak frankly here. That we understand the fundamental shared fabric of creation. We are all in THIS together.
Perpetual television blasting sports - you have my deepest sympathy.
I 2nd your suggestion to view Zeitgeist and Century of Self. Better yet, watch with any Repub, Right Wingers you know. I'd DISAGREE though about turning off the TV...limit viewing yes, turning off no. There's alot of good educational programming out there, e.g. Science, Discovery, History, etc. And not all of it is toe-the-official-line programming. Most shows present both sides, even on topics like 911. And the kiddy channels are actually good in the sense that even though it's mostly pop fluff, the overall message is "be tolerant, consider others, talk things out". Very progressive, but presented in a harmless fashion.
I agree with you about TV. Generally lots of crap but there still is some good stuff out there. IMHO PBS's Frontline is one of the last hard hitting news show left that is still worth watching.
I have seen three Adam Curtis BBC documentaries when I lived in the UK: "The Power of Nightmares", "the Century of the Self", and "the Trap". I highly recommend all three of them. In my opinion these are among the finest documentaries of their type ever produced.
I saw these on BBC 2 UK television. To my knowledge, NONE of these have been aired in the USA. They are available online, however.
I bought The Power of Nightmares at Amazon. The P of N, The Century of the Self, and The Trap are all available for free online at Lilyfilms.com.
Funny how the Century of Self is coming to people's minds here. Good call.
Excellent comment.
Too much of wealth has been accumulated fraudulently or by manipulating puppets in government.
SIOUX,
I spent the entire Thanksgiving Day fasting, meditating, and doing yoga, alone. Confused the hell out of friends and family, but I wanted to stay away from the excesses of which you speak, to get back in touch with that "quiet inside" . . . and, admittedly, to make a statement.
My deepest sympathies for what you had to endure.
Peace,
John
Sioux Rose
SEVENTH SON: I think I will opt out of Christmas and do something like that. I'm in the Keys now, and I realize how much I miss living here. I may find a way to sublet a place for a few weeks... winter hits North Florida hard and frankly, I hate the cold.
DUBET: I do feel some sexism in your post. It presumes that only the male is the hunter, that only the male gets to seek sexual variety, that women are sitting ducks that the male predator may pick and choose for his lust at any moment. I don't get the feeling you recognize that women also may (at times) like sexual variation. Then, too, if a society ONLY was designed for and about intercourse, who would bother to tend to the fields? Fix the machines? Make sure the roof didn't leak? What of all the faulty birth control and adding lots more births to the population explosion "list?"
I once had a boyfriend who wanted sex every day and I used to tell him to give me a few days off to build up an appetite. I mean for a meat eater, would filet mignon BE filet mignon if it was eaten every day? There is a restaurant I like on Cedar Key and I usually dine there once a week. I spend a small amount and from a financial perspective, could dine there more often. However, I've found that by pacing this treat I enjoy it more, the ritual carries more of a sense of the sacrament. The drive over through uncharted wilderness allows me to unravel my thoughts, and coming upon the small island chains is a revelation. If I went daily that sense of the sacrament, the awesome wonders would get lost in rituals of banality. I think that happens with sex, too. Do you realize there would be no music without the rest beats? Or as Gibran stated, "Let there be spaces in togetherness."
hey, sioux...
first, apologies for any sexist misunderstandings...
whatever I feel about myself, being a man, I assume for any other, man or woman...that is one of the fundamentals, equality...it wouldn't be fair for me to think I am somehow unique in this regard...just as I feel constantly attracted to women, I am certain my wife, and other women, are experienceing the same attractions to other men...
is it not interesting to you that this entire article, a rather lengthy one, discusses so many facets of our lives in a dire and frightening manner, yet never once mentions sex, or the potential for our societal attitudes regarding this biologically dominant piece of our life experience to be involved in a meaningful way?
second, I am intimately familiar with the concept of space in music and in all other facets of life...you are absolutely correct that without the one, the other has no meaning...it is lack of socially acceptable choice and opportunity that I address...I know many write this subject, sex, off as trite or trivial, yet...
as long as you've raise the subject, one of the wonderful features of music is the cointinually evolving nature of harmonies and rhythms...things are always moving from faster to slower, and back again...minor to major...tension and release...very sexual...what if one's sexual life featured just such motion and variety, with periods of rest, or repeat, as natural as any other? that's really what I'm getting at...what if one's whole life experience was more migratory?
We all discuss the need for change, but shy away from discussing REAL change...property ownership change...sexuality change...recreational drug use change...working for a living change...government change...industry and electricity change...
these are real issues...we can't just continue to let them wallow in a status quo condition...we must make revisions to our deepest psychological patterns...
I think you're great, sioux, and I hope you would understand I harbor no sexist feelings...women are the jewels of this life...with a couple of exceptions...
Sioux Rose
DBUET: I meant to get back in response to your post sooner but am quite busy in the lively Keys. In any event, there definitely is a parallel between monogamy and property ownership. In a sense, this belief in the "ownership" society lends itself to our wish/need/habit/cultural drive to possess our spouse or partner. Not too many people are comfortable with the idea that their significant other might not just entertain "lust in his/her heart" for other, but would actually act on it. I know there are some couples that subscribe to the "swinging" thing, but I think it's human nature to want to feel that the intimate bond is a sort of sacrosanct space that only two (who love each other) might share. Infidelity has broken many hearts and marriages.
Across the span of adult existence, most of us will have different partners, and I fully understand the idea of serial monogamy. If society had no premise of ownership at all, if the tribe raised the children, if all land, goods, foods were communal and equally shared, perhaps our sexual expressions would follow along the line of mores based less on the premise of possession.
Also, since the desire for variety is a factor in many people's libidinal lives, don't you think that's why Hollywood makes use of so many beautiful people, frequently scantily clad so that the viewer can vicariously identify with whomever is on film kissing or enjoying sex with that individual? This is one way, through theater or the big screen, that the wish for sexual interplay with others is satisfied.
Thanks for the compliment, and by the way, I'm glad you are not sexist, and I totally appreciate both your candor and congeniality. Sometimes clashes of opinion in this forum become brutal, as if character assassination is a requirement for establishing different strokes for different folks. You're lucky you have such a healthy sex drive... that's not a given in all men over 45, you know. If you could bottle it and sell it, you'd put Pfizer out of commission!
I'm glad you responded, sioux rose, and I appreciate your thoughts...see you in a more current thread...
Speaking of sports, do people realize that the fascination of sports, week upon week, owes not a little to a brutal 'progressive taxation' on those who score the most points? When the game is over, all scales are rebalanced, and the two teams meet next as if newborn babes. Indeed, were it not so, WHY SHOULD EITHER TEAM PLAY? AND WHO WOULD WATCH THEM IF THEY DID? Someone explain to me how the multi-generational 'right to property' encourages competition in capitalism, but not in sports.
So it could be in our capitalism, and WAS 1930s-1980s. Instead your 300 lb heir furtively avoids taxes and, in doing so, life, to himself and to who could contribute with a bit more shared resources. The vast majority of people in America just GIVE UP. They go through the motions, content to trade life-time for food and TV time. They are worse than slaves; the slaves at least had someone else to blame. With Reagan, we turned away from progressive taxation, and the wealthiest 1% of Americans went from owning 20% of America, to owning 40% of America. And this did WHAT for them? It turned them all into your 300lb heir skulking away from the taxman. And the rest of America turned into a modern-Dickens novel: skulking away from the debt-collector.
A nation of skulkers...
Siouxrose November 30th, 2009 10:36 am -- The experiences with your family sound so familiar. As I see it, the vast majority of young people these days buy into the values and "infotainment" supplied by mass media, including television, movies, pop music, and magazines. They talk to each other about these things ad nauseum, as if they were important.
It was said almost in jest that there are three kinds of people: those who make things happen; those who watch things happen; and those who don't know what happened. Our young are slipping from the second to the third category at an alarming rate.
Anyway, we owe it to our families to give them the opportunity to make contact with reality -- important reality -- in current events, and great art, which is never an element of pop culture. There's one thing we can take advantage of: sports, pop art, "infotainment," and (IMHO) organized religion, ultimately do not provide what people need to lead satisfying lives. Those of us enjoying the finer things might help those suffering from the malaise by setting an example.
There are young people -- the kids on "From the Top" come immediately to mind, but there are millions more -- who can relate to the real and the important and the beautiful, and who will soon be making things happen. We just have to love, and help along, those who appear trapped in the cultural wasteland Hedges and you describe.
sioux says:
"Here were these strong young men (along with their girlfriends, wives and kids) completely into the football games playing ALL weekend. Between the image thing--their fancy cars, expensive townouses, pretty female companiones, and constant TV/sports, there is NO interest in the world."
what if, perhaps, inside each of these men, IS an interest...just not one that they can publicly acknowledge...perhaps they regularly harbor sexual interest in a number of adult females among the never-ending stream of other people they continually encounter, perhaps a small number of specific adult females they know, females they have no social 'right' to be interested in, but are, anyway...naturally so...females who respond in kind...
where does that leave them? unable to act on these feelings without severe retribution, either socially, emotionally or financially, yet also unable to deny their existence, or their pleasurable effects, or to even honestly dicsuss such feelings and occurrences without being pariahed...tough go...are we just supposed to pretend?
also, because the sexual urge and act and climax are unique, no other activity they could even comprehend will answer...therefore, how important is any interest?
in other words, if what you want most is to be able to engage sexually with those that you are attracted to, and are equally attracted to you, yet you are socially denied this, everything else becomes a substitute purpose...life, itself, becomes a second life, as your first one is forbidden...this is where we are, in my opinion...I wonder how many of these men would have been there, drinking beer and watching football, if they might actually have had the option of engaging sexually, and healthily so, with those they desire elsewhere? just asking...
lest folks jump on the fact that I used a hetero example, the question would be the same for homo or bi...the idea is that natural behavior is being squelched, leaving no substitute but unnatural...
Are you saying if they were free to act on their feelings, they would then begin to feel for things outside of their world?
"in other words, if what you want most is to be able to engage sexually with those that you are attracted to, and are equally attracted to you, yet you are socially denied this, everything else becomes a substitute purpose..."
I feel like you're coming from some other era. You talk as if millions of people don't actually, in fact, *choose* to do this--with very few real repercussions to themselves.
Frankly, given the economic conditions, what we probably need to talk about is women (and children) who have no real control over their persons.
I'd be far more concerned about the implications of that than some idiot who got married when they shouldn't have and now they can't get their rocks off without getting themselves in trouble with their so-called better half, and so they sit transfixed before the tube all day instead.
Yeah, that's a rough life.
Thanks for posting about "the century of the self" - I'm nearly though it, and it's very, very interesting ;) and great history too, of the 20th century - politics, advertising, psychology, etc.
Ms. Rose, thank you for sharing your experience with us. You did your best that you could but we will need younger men and women with a progressive spirit just like you to carry on the fight to end this TV and gold madness.
By the way, who flagged Sioux Rose's comment? I thought that Sioux's post was perfectly on-topic and an excellent illustration of the plight of our younger generation Americans who are settling for a smaller to no future deal. Whoever flagged her comment must be the same rascal who flagged comments of other great people on this site who had the courage to share their personal experience related to the articles being presented. Whether it's losing children to wars or losing children to greed and materialism, all of this is ruining the future of America's younger generations. I can only imagine that both Marlene, Sioux, and others like them were not comfortable discussing their personal experiences but I applaud them for having the courage to spill it out and make their voices heard. I know the pain in one's mind and heart when he or she has to put up with losing one's kids to wars or losing their kids to being totally different and falling into the wrong traps even if it doesn't kill right away. We all came here to share our thoughts on these matters and we have every right to continue doing so. If that neocon Obama flagger has a problem with that, then here's my message to that troll: get out and go back to your infotainment world where you belong.
America will have no future if there are no younger progressives to carry that progressive torch and keep those flames burning.
I was wondering the same. Nobody knows if it was one person or two who flagged yours and/or Rose's post(s) but that flagger is like a sniper on this forum. Hang in there. Like you said before, the CD admins will sort this out.
I was once flagged when I introduced myself. There are a few a$$holes on this site who make big noises against personal narratives while they hypocritically give their own bs personal narratives. Flagging comments in general has lost its grace. 99% of the comments that are flagged are hardly offensive or worth reporting and the CD admins know that. I wouldn't worry about one's comments getting flagged. For some people, tattle-taling is a hobby. CD could change the way it handles reporting of comments by forcing the user to answer general questions regarding flaggging and to make a valid explanation so that the administrator does not have to waste time sifting through invalid complaints. I think that SR's and JWV's posts should be unflagged. CD should offer the option to unflag comments in general and allow reasons along with it. Sorry for the long post here but just trying to help.
Sioux Rose
JW VEREZ: I am still hoping the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree and that after trying on/out the transitory pleasures and products of the world that Mars/Mammon (consumerism on military-assisted steroids) built, my girls will return to values more in keeping with the ancient Truths, those based on beauty, decency, integrity and what never goes out of style... even if the temples of mammon do their utmost to make this species of sentience uncool or dated.
I don't know one person who buys into all that crap so well enumerated by Chris Hedges.
What's wrong with me?