Thinking, or Some Poor Semblance Thereof

Professor Re-Reformed,  :)

First, allow me to fill in a pop culture gap for our younger readers that you tossed out in your last blog title. Here's the link for the background on the television show, Room 222.

"What we need are more groovy teachers like you." (LOL)



For all the explanations that Hedges offers up in this chapter of what is wrong, I was actually struck by a question he asks: "How will we cope with our decline? Will we cling to the absurd dreams of a superpower and the fantasies of a glorious tomorrow, or will we responsibly face our stark, new limitations? Will we heed those who are sober and rational, those who speak of a new simplicity and humility, or will we follow the demagogues and charlatans who rise up in moments of crisis and panic to offer fantastic visions of escape?" p. 145

The question above represents not only this chapter but the entire work, indeed the entire culture. A shockingly accurate example of where we are is on display in this election cycle. While we are looking for answers to those pointed questions, we are constantly presented with simple explanations and divisive rhetoric. Words are twisted, intentions misrepresented, and misinformation offered up as fact. This week, while Santorum was pandering to his ultra-conservative base, he said:

"President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob.”


“There are good decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them...”

And a good bit of other nonsense I won't quote here. Are we now drifting so far off course that we not only don't want deep thinkers but we want the very IDEA of intellectualism to be something that carries with it a smear of disdain and suspicion? Must every professor be labeled a liberal? Is all teaching to be categorized as "indoctrination?" 


We see this so often.  A truth--that everyone doesn't need to go to college--shrouded in vaporous accusation and twisted into some insidious scheme for brainwashing the masses. Meanwhile much of that work has already been accomplished in all sorts of other ways including politicians, like Santorum, explaining (to cheering crowds, no less) that critical thinking isn't important. Though the 99% crowd wants to make it clear that there is economic class warfare the equally damaging war may be the one being waged against anyone capable of turning ideas over, recognizing nuance, and speaking the truth about those "stark new limitations" Hedges wants us to recognize.

We are now barreling headlong towards a wasteland devoid of critical thought. I find it interesting that more people don't see the danger in that. But as you like to point out we have no historical reference any more for how that might play out.

Responding to Room 2/22 on Another Spectacle Night

Madame Briefly [:)],

We are so indeed so Romanesque in our lip service to our symbols that once actually stood for a great deal more than they do now.  The hollow ring can be heard by the discerning ear.

Circling the drain in smaller and smaller circles are we, in GC’s words?  What a mind he was!

I believe Hedges would say that even if a presidential candidate could surmount the poisonous influence of the money washing over the shores of our politics, one can’t achieve very much if we don’t elect a Congress of same broad general thinking as him or her.  Even then, there’s a Supreme Court and lower courts that will stymie some of what could be achieved.  Our Framers may have given us a government structure that is hard (but not impossible!) to impose direct tyranny, but it is also one that when tyranny of a subtle sort creeps up and infuses the system, it is extremely hard to overturn it.

This chapter, this chapter: It deserves quoting extensively, and the first five pages of it in toto! There are a number of Americans who can still remember that America of which Hedges speaks, before corporatism and plutocracy, already strong enough, surged in the last 30+ years to their ultra-dominating positions.  Yes, there were some things that were artificially (and unfairly) advantageous about the America depicted by Hedges in his opening starkness, but it had working classes and middle classes that were strong or at least promising. 

No longer.  And to Hedges, the rot is so deep, the stranglehold so interwoven and strong, he is not sure that the previous America can return, even as he “pray(s) and work(s) and strive(s) for its return.” (142)

But oh yes, bread and circuses (their updated versions) still work for many, many, many!  Yet my mother, who formerly loved the glamour and anticipation of Oscar night, now says she finds it boring.  The wisdom of age perhaps? :)

And I hereby pick up your gauntlet of brevity and reclaim my reformist designation! Enough said! LOL

Red, White, and Oh So Blue

 Dear Blogger Formerly Known as Reformed El Windbaggo!

Your new title didn't last long! :)

And so we come to the final chapter. As I read The Illusion of America I thought how familiar it might seem to our old friend, Gibbon. I got the impression Hedges was practically quoting him on p.142, when he wrote about how we still use "the same civic, patriotic and historical language" along with "symbols and iconography" as well as "national myths, but only the shell remains."  But even more than Gibbon I was reminded of a latter day prophet's words:


"Politicians are put there to give you that idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations, and they’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State Houses, and the City Halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear." ~George Carlin

To see GC with someone else we are very familiar with on this blog, Glenn Beck (who was actually at his best when he was at CNN) click here. 

Hedges points out that none of this is really new, as we've discussed before. We just don't ever seem to learn the hard lessons as humans, do we? 


"Cultures that cannot distinguish between illusion and reality die. The dying gasps of empires, from the Aztecs to the ancient Romans to the French monarchy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire have been characterized by a disconnect between the elites and reality." p.143



While I'm writing this evening I'm watching the Republican debate. Congressman Paul is making many of the same points as our author while the remaining three candidates seem to have a firm grasp on the illusion or at least a great stake in maintaining it. The fact that so few young people seem to be interested in politics, and yet Paul has such a groundswell of support among them is encouraging. Perhaps there is an awakening on the horizon. Revering the Constitution as the law of the land. There's a concept.



I had a few disagreements with Hedges when it came to what he wanted but they were the same kinds of things we wouldn't see Paul and Nader agree on. The big things are what matter most.  I thought Wollin's concept of inverted totalitarianism (p.146) was interesting. Maybe the fact that it doesn't revolve around a strong leader is why we see such a lack of any kind of leadership. We recognize something familiar on p. 148: "...inverted totalitarianism, consumer goods and a comfortable standard of living, along with a vast entertainment industry that provides spectacles and appealing diversions, keep the citizenry politically passive."


Bread and circuses. That theme just never gets old. 

A Positively Negative Send-Off

MMM (Most Madame M),

First, your writing: Platinum stuff in both words and conveyance!

Second, your question: The labor is long, and the seeming deaf, legion, but the consciousness is a mysterious thing.  Just when it seems nothing has been achieved, and nothing has been internalized, the light is visible when it comes on—for one, and sometimes many! 

When that day comes, we will find that positive psychology in service to corporate fascism are both more brittle than they appear.

Are we up to the challenge?  I don’t know, but would still be trying to awaken my fellows even if I believed we weren’t.  The future can be full of surprises, but regardless, being true to one’s self is of mega-high importance.

I sense that Divine Madame M is anxious to proceed to the next chapter.  Permit me to continue on this one for a bit (indulge! Lol), for Hedges is making salient points:

“Psychologists, in and out of government, have learned how to manipulate social behavior.  The promotion of collective harmony, under the guise of achieving happiness, is simply another carefully designed mechanism for conformity.  Positive psychology is about banishing criticism and molding a group into a weak and malleable unit that will take orders.  Personal values, those nurtured by an independent conscience, are gently condemned as antagonistic to harmony and happiness.  Those who refuse under group pressure to become harmonious are deemed a drag on the corporate body and, if they cannot be reformed, expunged.  Those who are willing to surrender their individuality are granted small rewards doled out by the corporate structure.  They can feel, at least until they lose their jobs, that they belong to an important and powerful collective.  They can adopt a corporate identity.  They feel protected.  The greatest fear becomes the fear of disrupting the system, of becoming an impediment to the harmony of the corporate collective.”  (129)  In other words, Hedges says, we become a society of sleepwalkers, with our critically thinking minds and independent wills turned off.

Treating workers as expendable things, as organic machines, did lead to dehumanization.  But while the classic capitalist exploiters took the standard “get as much out of them as possible while paying them the least” (and all the clever tricks that can be done to help do that), the maligned (but capitalist) progressives (one of Glenn Beck’s least favorite words) “sought to establish a stable corporate state…collective bargaining, profit-sharing, company magazines, insurance, pension plans, safety reform, workmen’s compensation, restricted work hours and the ‘living wage.’” (130)  Not necessarily for egalitarian or philanthropist purposes either, but to stabilize and make palatable “working for the man.”

Whatever progress was made in these areas would be eroded by the underlying capitalist imperative for profit, and the accompanying pressures of global competition and quarterly impulses of greed and short-term shock jumps.  Workers would return to being worked—amidst a culture of expectation, even among their fellows—far in excess of what is reasonable to have a meaningful non-work life, or even, as Hedges gives us glaring examples, just to sleep enough.

Drives for quality and continuous improvement, while worthy goals, would become vehicles for corporate manipulation of workers who rarely shared in the productivity gains made.

And that’s even when companies and their employees weren’t being pressured (as in, do if you want to keep holding your job) “to push merchandise and services onto customers that they didn’t want.” (137)

One corporate worker, Hedges records, says that “’positive psychology’ is a euphemism for ‘spin’…They try to spin their employees so much they can’t tell right from left, and in the process they forget they do the work of three people, have no health insurance, and three-quarters of their paycheck goes to rent” (the receivers of which are often another group of exploiters). (137) [Professor’s Note: And these workers will be further “spinned” by being turned against government workers who still have health insurance and other things that corporate workers USED to have.]

Hedges points out that our material progress and material “wealth” do not serve us all that well, because of what we have brought along for the ride: “Positive psychology, like celebrity culture, the relentless drive to consume, and the diversionary appeals of mass entertainment, feeds off the unhappiness that comes from isolation and the loss of community. ” (137)

The rapacious corporate capitalism, the maniacal global competition and greed accompanying it, have, as Robert Lane tell us via Hedges, resulted in “a postwar (WW2) decline in the United States in people who report themselves as happy, a rising tide in all advanced societies of clinical depression and dysphoria (especially among the young), increasing distrust of each other and of political and other institutions, declining belief that the lot of the average man is getting better…a tragic erosion of family solidarity and community integration together with an apparent decline in warm, intimate relations among friends.” (138)  All of which serves the corporate power structure and its perpetuation.

And which brings us to Hedges’ closing thoughts on this chapter: “The nagging undercurrents of alienation and the constant pressure to exhibit a false enthusiasm and buoyancy destroy real relationships.  The loneliness of a work life where self-preservation is valued over authenticity and one must always be upbeat and positive, no matter what one’s actual mood or situation, is disorienting and stressful. The awful feeling that being positive may not, in fact, work if one is laid off or becomes sick must be buried and suppressed.  Here, in the land of happy thoughts, there are no gross injustices, no abuses of authority, no economic and political systems to challenge, and no reason to complain.  Here, we are all happy.” (139)

Do we need a better indication of how insidiously strong untraceable and unaccountable corporate money is when such shadowy, accusatory (with twisted information or outright deliberate misimpressions) ads come on right before a President’s State of the Union address, as they just did last month?

But we’ve been conditioned not to blink at that.  Oh, legions of emus and ostriches, please don’t stick your heads back in the ground, even if you are looking for some nourishment!

And yes, Madame, I have WAY blown my self-restraint on paragraphs, but your wish for this chapter to close is hereby granted! LOL, LOL, LOL!

Beating a Dead Unicorn

Dearest Reformed El Windbaggo,


I feel like I've been beating a dead horse, or perhaps some whimsical creature of fantasy. ;) You clarify your point perfectly with your historical examples of groups (and we could add many more along with individuals) who have gone down fighting. Hope may go down with them, then bubble along underneath the current of their stories, popping up elsewhere like a buoy, to inspire and challenge others. So as you intimate hope doesn't die with those people but becomes a pregnant idea for a different time and place. "That they would not accept meekly what overwhelming power had dictated would be their fates! They would be true to their spirits every moment before they exited this life." Would that that would be us, and our readers.

Ah, we have, if not a meeting of the minds, then at least a meeting of the stubborn spirits. ;)

And no one is advising, but I find that limitations are exacting. :) The refiner's fire of editing. lol

I'm reading The Help, the best seller (which, by the way, was rejected 60 times before finding a publisher. I love the perseverance represented in that. ) about how domestic help was treated in the pre-civil rights south. It is such a perfect picture of this chapter. There's the fraudulent appearance on the surface that everything was just fine and everyone was happy with the situation. But who was happy? The people who benefited the most from the system remaining unchanged.  And they perpetuated the illusion that those at the mercy of the status quo were content with the way things were, even forcing them to voice approval of the injustice they were victims of.

"Abileen, you like having your own toilet, don't you?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

Eventually we do see the domestic help muster the courage to speak the truth. Quietly, carefully at first, with pounding hearts and drawn shades. But the truth is a powerful thing. It may get shoved around a bit, yet it cannot be made to disappear. It does however need the conduit of words. Are we going to call out truth; are we going to name it? Can we bear to give ugliness a voice? Hedges' willingness to speak, not only in this book but elsewhere, a truth few want to hear is admirable.

The book has me asking--do we have it in us? Are we, as a culture, as a people, equipped to do the hard work necessary? The intro to the next chapter hardly seems as if the author has much hope.


We would rather be ruined than changed;
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
~ W.H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety

Where do we go from here?

*This week's brevity brought to you by Life. :)

Hope We're Not Hopeless (About This)!

Madame Madame,

A passionately reasoned defense Madame! You have brought up good historical examples, and the human spirit has often demonstrated such.  But it got me thinking that perhaps the two of us have painted our intellectual avatars into a corner!  The human story is complex, and what you and I have spoken of is not the full mosaic.  If I have cast confusion on Hedges’ point, I have done a disservice.  I did not mean that hope itself is not important in general (nor do I think that he believes it unimportant in general).  But only that Hedges feels that blanket expectations of hope for those awakening to this illusory culture is perhaps itself illusory and even diversionary.  Sometimes it is only when people don’t have hope for themselves or even their loved ones that hope conversely exists for others that come after them, others perhaps even un-envisioned, and perhaps only for humanity itself (and in this point maybe we are agreeing, just from different angles).  The Alamo, the Light Brigade, the Easter Rising, the countless failed and crushed rebellions, are just some examples.  The struggles of the Native Americans of the Western Hemisphere are especially instructive.  Failing to maintain their freedom, utterly defeated and sometimes exterminated, they fought hopelessly with no thought that they would inspire or influence anyone.  But sheer defiance, sheer statement that they would go down fighting, go down struggling, that the dominant power(s) would at least know they didn’t accept what was dished out, and more importantly, they themselves were true to themselves.  That they would not accept meekly what overwhelming power had dictated would be their fates!  They would be true to their spirits every moment before they exited this life.  People can thus protest and cease to cooperate even where hope does not exist, even when depression or despair would otherwise be pandemic.  Is that not one of the points Hedges is making?

And yet how un-intendingly inspired by examples of courage (and perhaps by guilt at our cultural implication) we can be in considering these tales from the human experience!

I will agree ahead of time that it is hard for Americans to postulate the no-win scenario.  We are the Jim Kirks who would rather tamper with the test than accept such a thing.  In one respect, that says great things about confidence and determination.  In another, it says volumes about refusal to deal with reality.

I agree (wholeheartedly!) with everything else you stated in your posting!  Your writing has been much crisper and harder-hitting than mine of late! If someone’s been advising you—I need to enlist him or her as well! :)

Much of positive psychology, at least on the surface, can perform a beneficial function (as the examples on p. 127 purport to show).  One of the problems with positive psychology, however, is its use for MANAGING problems instead of really addressing them, let alone solving them.  Another is that its organizing principles often eliminate the creativity with the negativity.    Still another is the drive for more feelings manipulation, primarily in the quest for effective control.   This of course spills out of corporate halls and into homes—and politics and political preferences.  It can take some perhaps further sinister turns as well, as Hedges implies on p. 128 (and which mirrors a significant portion of Naomi Klein’s work on investigating psychology and breaking of individuals, institutions, and countries).

Paragraph Police!  Perish any such thing! :) May the Orwellians not infect our blog!  War is NOT peace!  Freedom is NOT slavery! Ignorance is NOT strength! :)

Hmm.  One oversized paragraph, one large but manageable paragraph, and four small quickie paragraphs.  Do believe El Windbaggo is making some progress! :)

Occupying Hope

Perfectly Professorial Dr. J, 

I'm going to completely disagree (surprise!) about hope not being the most important thing. I think it's a uniquely defining human factor. It's the basis for even drawing attention to the problems we are mired in.  Hopelessness is the source of much depression and paralyzing inaction. Why would anyone "cease to cooperate" or protest? Because of even the tiniest spark of hope that things can be different. It is what people are clinging to when all else is lost. It is not the same thing as optimism. Among prisoners of war it is the optimists who fare the worst. They believe the illusion that rescue is imminent, for example, only to be continually disappointed. The hopeful realist however, handles hardship much better.

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end - which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
~Admiral Jim Stockdale

So instead of sappy affirmations and false positivity, a hopeful realism is something to embrace. Yes, things are bad. Darkness is closing in. But are we going to retreat into the darkness and mourn, or are we going to keep fighting the encroaching night? The fight requires hope. "Protest without hope" seems like an oxymoron to me. What else would the purpose be? Even if all hope is lost for one's immediate future, the very action implies a belief that for others at some point in the future things can be better. If you are talking about a false hope (used as a control tactic) or the illusion of hope to manipulate, then we'll agree on those.

Your explanation of the cost involved in unhealthy behaviors and how taxation can be used to reflect the true cost to society is a convincing one. In case our readers have missed the news swirling around this topic this week, sugar is likely to join tobacco and alcohol on the "if you want to do that you are going to have to pay" list. Here's an article explaining the details:

Tax sugar like alcohol and tobacco in order to combat obesity? Some health experts think its a good idea.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/tax-sugar-alcohol-tobacco-order-combat-obesity-health-experts-a-good-idea-article-1.1016514#ixzz1lkbptatZ

Nearly all of the things that Hedges points out in this chapter that are shrouded in the stench of manipulation are techniques used by corporations. The coercion, indoctrination, and peer pressure are  similar to approaches used by cults. Only not the "cult of self" that Hedges spoke of early in the book, but religious cults and totalitarian regimes who have a great stake in being able to manipulate individuals to acquiesce their individuality for the good of the group. In this chapter the author outlines how far we've fallen away from thinking of relationships (especially business ones) in any terms of morality. On page 134 the action (group leaders learning the "birthday, marital status, anniversary, number of children and hobbies" of underlings) isn't in and of itself, disturbing. We regularly seek to learn these things about people we care about, even in the work place. It is the motivation of control that separates it from genuine concern. It might even be considered a perfectly appropriate leadership tool, provided there is a basis of authentic concern for the well being of employees.

The heavy handed style he describes being used in plants in Japan and Mexico are probably much more damaging (some of them seemed potentially emotionally scarring) than some of the pep rally techniques used on mainstream corporate America. Generally what I've seen is that over time the illusion of the company or management caring is disclosed and employees may learn to say the right things in meetings, but out of the earshot of management it's a different story. New employees or people buying into the cult of positivity are likely to be referred to as "true believers" and seasoned employees make illusion shattering a daily goal. Yes, these folks are recognized as not being "team players" or having attitude problems. Few companies ever realize that they'd have more creative and efficient employees if they'd stop micro-managing and browbeating.

I thought his point on p.138 was the real problem behind the chapter and corporate America's need for all these little tricks and instances of mock friendliness: "The corporate teaching that we can find happiness through conformity to corporate culture is a cruel trick, for it is corporate culture that stokes and feeds the great malaise and disconnect of the culture of illusion."  It is the system itself, the disconnection, the networking he's previously mentioned, and the further erosion of true relationship that is eating away the mental and emotional health of so many.

And no smiley face or motivational speaker is going to fix that.

I HOPE ;) the Paragraph Police aren't visiting our site. ;)

Authenticity City

 Most Madame M:

“Peppery complaints sprayed against the Occupiers”?  Nice turning of a phrase Madame, rich in meaning!

Perhaps the newly awakened will NEED hope, but perhaps also that is not the most important thing.  Because, Hedges says, it may not be there, at least not for themselves, or at the very least not in the short-term, and they shouldn’t buy into the illusion that it is.  Struggling on and registering protest, even when there is little to no hope in the recognizable future, needs to occur, however, at least so there can be a worthwhile future, sometime.   As Hedges says, that may be the most important thing.  Sometimes it is only when the desperate 1) cease to cooperate and 2) protest without hope, that change, oddly enough, becomes possible.  Those who have little to lose can be a welling and sometimes unstoppable force.  Yet unlike some other cultures, we have been poor strugglers for the long haul.  We are decent problem solvers for the short term, but long struggles?  We have rarely had the indomitable will and enduring faith, grit, and determination.

Becoming unstuck in time are you, pilgrim? :)

Is it manipulation to encourage healthy behaviors?  Not so much.  Not when there are steep costs to society.  Free riders are manipulating the system, albeit selfishly and perhaps unconsciously, by choosing their destructive habits and behaviors, and then expecting us to pay for their consequences.   I would therefore assert it is not manipulation to incent behaviors when that is the case, but only a mild implementation of restoring market rationality.  I have said before (and will again) that our society will function much better, and far more realistically, when the true costs for things are made apparent.  Our market system is demonstrably flawed (and failing at one of its central premises) because so many costs are absorbed by the society, diverted, subsidized, or masked, and NOT made part of the transaction.  The consumer is not operating with all the necessary information, and therefore is not making a really rational or well-informed decision in many cases.   From fuel costs to certain foods, to many other things, the list is really large.

But your concerns about manipulation are well-founded.  Hedges sums up many examples with these words: “the true purpose of positive psychology—how to manipulate people to do what you want.” (125)

Tendrils of weakening and diversion work better than boots on the neck for longer-term behavior modification.  Weakness sews apathy, and despair, and diversion breeds embrace of illusion.  Force can bring fear, it is true, but it can also bring strong reaction and determination (and thus force often contains within it the seeds of its own destruction).

It has been left to philosophers to register the warnings to our nearly deaf and nearly scatomic audio and visual receptors: As Hedges records, philosopher David “Jopling warns of grave moral consequences for a delusional society. ‘This means that the range of social, emotional, and personal relations that connect us to others, to the social world, and to our own humanity, are progressively weakened as self-deceptive strategies become progressively entrenched in behavior and thoughts.’” (124)

I am going to both agree and disagree with you about the techniques demonstrated on pages 125-126.  I would agree they would not be appropriate (indeed, could be counterproductive) for a pre-teen, but for a teenager, they may have a place, at least at times.  While it seems to this reader that Hedges has a bit too much suspicion sometimes of things that are well meaning (but perhaps occasionally misguided), I do agree with him that much of the subtle (and often insincere) manipulation is all about CONTROL, especially where corporations are concerned.

Ah, progress of a sort.  I have joined you, Madame Housewife, in proceeding a few pages into the chapter.  I do tarry a bit, ‘tis true, but there is just SO MUCH that is important!

And while I have seemed to blow my self-limit on paragraphs, many of them are quite short, so perhaps I can be given a pass? If you count the sizable ones, there are only five! :)

Drawing Fine Lines in the Sand

Dear Professor Brevity (LOL),

"Mad M" made me smile. An angry moniker for being optimistic? Touche. :)

Recently Robert Schuller's dream, the Chrystal Cathedral went bankrupt and was sold off to the Catholics. So much for positive thinking versus reality. Reality wins. Perhaps my problem isn't so much with Hedges' "dour" message. Nearly throughout the entire book, I can do little but agree with him. So in an effort to answer your question about why I might feel the way I do, I've been trying to untangle that visceral little knot. Maybe it isn't so much choosing one thought process or another but instead choosing the appropriate thinking for the situation or time.

As we've mentioned before, one of the peppery complaints sprayed against the Occupy Wall Streeters is that they don't offer up any solutions. It's hard to problem solve if you haven't first identified the things that need correcting. That requires a big unpleasant dose of, sometimes grim, truth. Illusion shattering and awakening bleary eyed Neos is hard work, and our author (nearly wrote friend :)) is an indefatigable champion of it.  Once awakened, those newcomers to reality are going to need hope that things can be different. They will gasp for it like air. Then solutions and new ideas can be floated. I'm thinking that my resistance, despite agreeing with nearly everything he says, is a result of a heartfelt desire to move on to solutions. Maybe we are (Billy) pilgrims experiencing the same reality at different points in time. (Guess what book I'm re-reading!)

One thing I completely agreed with the author about was the ridiculous way of communicating with a child (manipulation disguised as understanding) outlined on pp.125-126. When that kid is about 12 he's going to stop listening to that drivel and become suspicious of everything the parent says. Ron Paul resonates with young people because they have a radar to detect (even well polished) phoniness.  I didn't really understand the point of Hedges including the research done by Peterson and Park included on p. 127 about the most important "character strengths" in every society around the world. Their study and conclusion, that these traits are necessary and distributed in the same proportions across groups of people, seemed to fall in the harmless category.  Later, on page 129, however, ideas like manipulating social behavior, promoting conformity, and "molding a group into a weak and malleable unit that will take orders" should make the reader queasy. At the bottom of the page my questions and reservations are summed up nicely by Berkeley anthropologist, Laura Nader, "There is a vast difference between social harmony and harmony ideology, between positivity and being genuinely positive."

Here's a question: Isn't the idea of libertarian paternalism (Nudge, by Thaler and Sunstein,  is a good example) and taxing unhealthy behaviors like smoking or eating trans fats another form of this? You and I would agree (maybe, lol) that we would like to see healthy behaviors encouraged by a variety of means and unhealthy ones punished by making them more expensive to participate in. Is it okay to manipulate the people for their own good?  It sounds harmless but isn't it just a mild form of coercion?  Is one promoting "social harmony" and the other just pushing "harmony ideology?" There seems to be a lot of gray.

Your Dave Marsh comment made me wonder--what kind of people does he know? Wouldn't that have a tremendous influence on his thinking? Yes he's "divorcing himself" from much of this culture's silly and sometimes dangerous illusion, but one can imagine that that kind of thing might be a very good or a really disastrous idea. OR maybe our own reality is more indicative of truth than we think.  Marsh's idea might be a way of breaking down problems/solutions into manageable chunks that people could deal with thus alleviating feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. I suspect it is the magnitude of the problems and a feeling of powerlessness to solve them that is feeding our national depression, so maybe he's onto something.

This abbreviated correspondence means edit, edit, edit! Brevity has never been our forte! :)