Shaking The Foundations On Purpose

Madame,

My forte? THAT’S a bit depressing! :)

You have well-spoken about the fixation on the present. A society that does not TRULY value (or at least the learning of lessons from it) what has gone before is a tool for the abusively powerful (how much better fortified we were when the classics were not pushed aside in curriculums as “irrelevant”!). And if the members of that society cannot or will not know, recognize, and become alarmed into action at how self-destructively similar they are to the Romans, then the future (and not the extremely far off future, either) will write a new chapter that replaces America and Americans, at least how we have known those terms. We may or may not be wiped off as a people and as a political entity (as the Romans were wiped), but the effect could be severe enough the distinction might not matter all that much. And after all, some of the Romans’ influences continued on (and some still do!) long after they themselves had ceased to exist.

And “living in the moment” is not even inappropriate advice much of the time. This frenetic culture does often need to focus on the now rather than always be working toward something else. Yet we don’t take our moments like African and other cultures do, but only as some sort of momentary diversion, a brief and often ineffective time-out from the perpetual “busyness” that rules our lives (and the mindlessness, as you’ve pointed out, that fills in when it isn’t). These twin poles of busyness and mindlessness chew up most all our TRULY rational decision making, and prevent our evaluating things clearly. “We cannot get a hold of the culture until we get a hold of ourselves. Lots of shaking will be necessary.” Oh, how very well said Madame!

Readers should pay extra heed to the wise words coming from Madame this week. They are especially hard-hitting and vitally relevant! I have been reading them over and over again. How very exacting she has described how we have disconnected ourselves by seeking only those like ourselves, by shutting our minds, by becoming extremely defensive when our propaganda is questioned, by clinging to things solely by emotion and then defending that by attempting “logic.” We have become a nation of extremes. Even the desire (a healthy one) to hold onto a piece of our inner child has been thrown to the other extreme of refusing to grow up (more irresponsibility, as you’ve pointed out). A nation of INDIVIDUALS who refuse to bear the responsibility of their own lives and their families is bad enough, but an additional (and wholescale destructive) side-effect is that those individuals aren’t stepping up to take responsibility and action for the future of their society. There is a marked lack of sufficient workers FOR the collective good. Many TAKERS, takers FROM the collective wealth of the society (social, institutional, infrastructural, financial, etc.), but few CONTRIBUTORS to that collective wealth. Civilizationist historians list that effect between the 2nd and final stages of a civilization’s downfall!

How a great people (should I say a “once great people”?) are falling by their own folly, weakness, selfishness, and willing abandonment of wisdom! WE ARE complicit, as you say, in refusing to evaluate. Too many of us are FAR too okay with being shallow, or leading what Socrates considered the greatest failure—the unexamined life. We let ourselves off the hook. How our descendants will despise us and what we’ve left them! That so many of us don’t even care about THAT is further evidence of how much our own ancestors would disown us if they could be present now. We would be Rosemary’s babies to them!

Those of us who have shaken off at least some of this seductive, sedative, enfeebling culture must shake the tree. People may get mad—actually, probably WILL—or ignore us, but we will despise ourselves if we do not take this stance. This is OUR moment in history. Others were given theirs, still others will be given theirs, but this is OURS. As Michael Jordan said: “I can accept failing. But I can’t accept not trying.”

Thomas Friedman—I don’t even agree with the guy a fair portion of the time—has, along with Michael Mandelbaum, written a book on what we used to be good at and how by getting back to that, we can get back to where we need to be. I hope it has an effect (and not just because it advocates a similar third-party stance as I’ve previously taken—Friedman, have you been sifting my ideas? Lol). For as I’ve stated before, it seems to me we are still at the stage where we have a great deal of latent strength, a great deal of possibility for correcting ourselves and not only jumping off this road to doom, but setting a good path. There are glimmers of recognition among some of the elites, like Republican governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana—another guy who I don’t agree with some of the time—that indicate some of the rich and/or powerful are awakening to the Potterville we have been forming and what is being lost in its wake.

As the year-long campaign “season” begins to accelerate, and as we try to “fix” the economy, we need armed with awareness. Hedges: “The most essential skill in political theater and a consumer culture is artifice. Political leaders, who use the tools of mass propaganda to create a sense of faux intimacy with citizens, no longer need to be competent, sincere, or honest. They need only to appear to have those qualities. Most of all they need a story, a personal narrative. The reality of the narrative is irrelevant. It can be completely at odds with the facts. The consistency and emotional appeal of the story are paramount. Those who are best at deception succeed. Those who have not mastered the art of entertainment, who fail to create a narrative or do not have one fashioned for them by their handlers, are ignored. They become ‘unreal.’” (48)

Over and over I hear the voice of one of my professors from school, shaking me out of lazy thinking and lazy accepting: “How do you know?” “HOW do you know?” How DO you know? How do YOU know? How do you KNOW?” Of course, even this questioning can be taken to an extreme too, but we are not questioning enough, and because of that, a small group at the top can control us. Meaning we have a democracy for the few.

The hour is SO late that our continued inaction will mean it indeed is too late (as Hedges largely believes it is). We have the Supreme Court ruling in favor of corporations and their allies in most instances, and one of the results has been a corrupted and abused campaign financing process. Lobbyists write much of the laws (witness, as one small example that is large in consequences, contractors being able to set their own expiration dates, meaning the government is forced to buy new things to replace “expired” ones), and blitzkrieg through the legislative sausage “process” what their corporate masters want. The revolving door spins so continually now that effective regulation and oversight have become the exception rather than the rule. So much money is offered for post-government employment that government officials and our representatives are often doing the bidding outright of their future corporate employers. A corporate-controlled media tailors and shades the political dialogue to suit itself and its fellow corporate allies. “Expert” news commentators, and “experts” in general, deceive a public paying scant attention anyway (only 4% of commenting “experts” on TV during the debt ceiling “crisis” were economists, for example, and yet hardly anyone commented on this. I say this, and I don’t even agree with the assumptive models and filters economists use!) The public then finds (when it does actually realize, which often isn’t the case) that its distraction, apathy, unexamined cynicism, and delusion have disempowered it. Their standard-of-living goes down, but instead of holding those responsible (and themselves), they lash out irrationally and are unwilling to consider alternate and relevant information. Corporate power increases, and the mechanisms of the republic become more of a sham. And as Hedges says, the worse this reality becomes for us, the less that we, the put-upon, want to hear about it.

It doesn’t need to be that way. Yes, we don’t need to become humorless curmudgeons devoid of enjoying some escapism from the pressures of modern life, but this entertainment/social media diverted/spectacle culture can no longer be embraced if we are going to make it.

Choosing not to resist means we are okay with the US in the not too distant future being a shadow of what it is today, let alone of what it was yesterday.

You’re not a baby anymore, America, so you both need and deserve the shaking!