Life, Liberty, and Nonsense

Professor J,

You asked Americans to look to their senses in your last post. We are fighting an uphill battle on that one, aren't we? Those senses are numbed by prescription medications and any real information that might be useful is shrouded in rumors or distorted in televised screaming matches.

We are enchanted by the sparkle of what's offered up to us. We guzzle the illusion presented to us and beg for more. We pass over real news to get the latest updates on the Cruise/Holmes divorce. Fewer and fewer can even delineate between journalism and celebrity gossip and entertainment. In our real lives we are put off by and avoid the person who spreads gossip and seems to revel in the misfortunes of others. We sense the truth about them which is that instead of compassion for us in a time of despair they might make ill use of us in the same way. But as a culture we have become callous about using the personal lives (and pain) of celebrities as entertainment. I like your phrase "spiritually sad" and it certainly applies to many things about us as a culture as well as the "parasitic plutocrats."


"We are bombarded with useless trivia and celebrity gossip despite the valiant efforts of a few remaining newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, along with Democracy Now, National Public Radio, Pacifica, and Jim Lehrer of the Public Broadcasting Service. These organizations still practice journalism as an ethical pursuit on behalf of the common good, but they are a beleaguered minority. The Federal Communications Commission, in an example of how far our standards have fallen, defines television shows such as Fox's celebrity gossip program TMZ and the Christian Broadcast Network's 700 Club as "bona fide newscasts." The economist Charlotte Twight calls this vast corporate system of spectacle and diversion, in which we get to vote on American Idol or be elevated to celebrity status through reality television programs "participatory fascism." (168)

Is it any wonder our reasoning processes are cloudy and vague and our sense of history weak at best and non existent at worst? We are adrift in a sea of useless disconnected information much of which is ridiculous and we are becoming ridiculous excuses for citizens in the process.

In the lead up to the July 4th holiday, I was in the grocery and saw one of those banners for sale that you stick in your front yard. On a background of red, white, and blue were the words "Life. Liberty. Happiness." As if happiness is magically bestowed on us without pursuit. I couldn't help wonder as I stood there with the milk getting warm if this isn't part of what's wrong with us as a nation. Not the cheap little banner, but the cheap citizenship it represents. I wonder if the people who purchased this decoration had voted in our last local election, read up on the latest news, or were going to be discussing important issues at their barbecues. Did the person who came up with this idea boil it down on purpose to be scooped up by unthinking revelers planning cookouts and backyard fireworks, or did they actually perceive that we'd been promised happiness?  When we reduce one of the greatest historical documents ever penned to a marketable catch phrase on par with "live love, laugh" it cannot bode well for us.

A couple of weeks after I'd been pondering the larger meaning (if there even is one) of that $5.99 piece of nylon, I read an article by Hedges, How To Think. I whole heartedly recommend reading the entire thing but here's a quote we that probably won't see on flimsy yard decor any time soon:

"Human societies see what they want to see. They create national myths of identity out of a composite of historical events and fantasy. They ignore unpleasant facts that intrude on self-glorification. They trust naively in the notion of linear progress and in assured national dominance. This is what nationalism is about—lies. And if a culture loses its ability for thought and expression, if it effectively silences dissident voices, if it retreats into what Sigmund Freud called “screen memories,” those reassuring mixtures of fact and fiction, it dies. It surrenders its internal mechanism for puncturing self-delusion. It makes war on beauty and truth. It abolishes the sacred. It turns education into vocational training. It leaves us blind. And this is what has occurred. We are lost at sea in a great tempest. We do not know where we are. We do not know where we are going. And we do not know what is about to happen to us."

 Perhaps it's that naive trust in "linear progress" that made the creator jump from "pursuit of" to just plain ole "happiness."  Hedges warned us previously in this book about positive psychology. Let's just all believe we're happy while the thing falls apart around us. Our founders, however (and honestly couldn't we say pretty much every rational person up until about 40 years ago?) knew that "happiness" isn't really the end goal. I suspect that Jefferson knew that it was "the pursuit," the striving and struggling for improvement in ourselves, our circumstances, our families, and communities, that made us better and provided rich internal lives.

The sickening irony of our celebrating our national independence with items "made in China" like this one, when we are so heavily in debt to them, we can save for another discussion.

Here's the last paragraph from Hedges' How We Think article:  "And here is the dilemma we face as a civilization. We march collectively toward self-annihilation. Corporate capitalism, if left unchecked, will kill us. Yet we refuse, because we cannot think and no longer listen to those who do think, to see what is about to happen to us. We have created entertaining mechanisms to obscure and silence the harsh truths, from climate change to the collapse of globalization to our enslavement to corporate power, that will mean our self-destruction. If we can do nothing else we must, even as individuals, nurture the private dialogue and the solitude that make thought possible. It is better to be an outcast, a stranger in one’s own country, than an outcast from one’s self. It is better to see what is about to befall us and to resist than to retreat into the fantasies embraced by a nation of the blind."