Maybe it’s the waters. Maybe it was the extended heat wave or the fires raging in the west. Or, maybe it’s the loss of that wonderful optimist, Ted Kennedy. Whatever it is, I am finding myself pulled down into the abyss of cynicism and despair over our ability to actually turn around the awful state of affairs. The workers keep losing their jobs while the bankers keep getting their bonuses. The percentage of Carbon Dioxide keeps climbing past the environmental a base line limit of 350ppm
What strikes me the hardest is, that I have grown so cynical of the oligarchy and the possibility of meaningful response from the American public, that it has become almost impossible to dredge up any meaningful optimism. (hence the name of this blog). I keep wondering how to get even the people I know and love to start looking behind the illusions which inform their decisions.
Maybe you know what I mean. Its one thing to understand that the bastards in power are sucking us all dry with their financial games and lies. Its quite another to get it that this blood sucking will eventually influence our very personal lives, not just those others in the news. Everyone seems to keep making their financial and consumption decisions as if they each live in a uniquely protected bubble. When this comes apart we will all have to start living differently, and it probably won't be so much fun!
Have you noticed how many towns are laying off teachers and cutting back services? Even high end suburbs, near cities which still have an economic base, are starting to feel the pinch. Last week the Boston suburb of Lexington (voted one of the best school districts in MA) announced that they must cut the school department by 50. Wait till next year.
When are people going to get it? Their world is crumbling around them and there are no resources to buy back the compromised lawmakers. Whether it is in health care, or global warming, or delusional economics, there is no one funding the good guys. All the money is on the side of those who will be getting increased profits, and therefore increased status, from whatever addiction or selfish behavior they are selling today. Face it "They" have all the guns n money and that means they own the Congress and the Senate. Those of us on the other side, the liberal do-gooders, who want equity, sanity and health have bubkus.
Well actually we have Move On dot org dunning us for money daily, but that is another matter. I guess I am the sorriest to have learned that the Democratic Party is no longer the stewards of progressive values. They are simply well paid stewards of the same corporate oligarchy which has owned the Republicans for so many years.
You gotta admit there are clear rules in a Market Economy. The ruthless win.
What the ruthless have learned however, is how to use the media system to keep those who haven't won afraid of real change and reform.
Chris Hedges has a wonderful, to the point essay about our own self delusions and which consequential reality comes into focus. The Rise of Gonzo Porn Is the Latest Sign of America's Cultural Apocalypse pretty much hits the nail on the head.
The childish idea that we can always prevail, that reality is never an impediment to what we want, is the central motif of illusion peddled on popular talk shows, by the Christian Right, by Hollywood, in corporate retreats, by the news industry and by self-help gurus. Reality can always be overcome. The future will always be glorious. And held out to keep us amused and entertained are spectacles and celebrities who have become idealized versions of ourselves and who, we are assured, we can all one day become.
The cultural embrace of illusion, and the celebrity culture that has risen up around it, have accompanied the awful hollowing out of the state. We have shifted from a culture of production to a culture of consumption. We have been sold a system of casino capitalism, with its complicated and unregulated deals of turning debt into magical assets, to create fictional wealth for us and vast wealth for our elite. We have internalized the awful ethic of corporatism -- one built around the cult of the self and consumption as an inner compulsion -- to believe that living is about our own advancement and our own happiness at the expense of others.
Danogenes would be hard pressed to find a better summation of the sad state of affairs which confronts us all, and which, ultimately makes any rational political and economic reform almost impossible to imagine.
Its nice to see that Mat Taiibi’s work is getting real legs. The recent Columbia Journalism Review Don’t Dismiss Taibbi takes on the whole financial journalism press who was caught looking flatfooted and syncophantic when faced with the awful realities of Goldman Sach’s crimes.
And you wonder why I think Eeyore was an optimist.
Have you noticed how many towns are laying off teachers and cutting back services?
ReplyDeleteMikey replies:
// rant //
This assumes that school is a Good Thing and that Teachers do Socially Useful Work.
Can anyone possibly believe this any more? Was this your own experience of school?
For most kids, being in school is a hell of fear and loathing, which we are carefully taught to suppress behind a massive wall of denial, in order to be considered sane as adults.
Can't you remember the sickening smell of fear that permeated every school you ever attended? Or was Allison in The Breakfast Club (1985) right? When you grow up, your heart dies.
School is prison for kids. School is the opposite of learning. School is an industrial era anachronism that has long since ceased to perform any but custodial and day care functions.
"I had a terrible education," joked Woody Allen. "I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers." That was only funny back in the days when it was -- mostly -- untrue.
If every public school were torn down and thrown into the sea, it would be much the better for kids and much the worse for the fish.
What is the actual content of public education in this country?
Materialism, selfishness and competition:
Surprise! precisely the values that are destroying the earth, and that have gone so far toward destroying us.
The hidden curriculum of every public school is materialism, selfishness and competition. These are the core values that must be internalized to achieve "success." Any school that attempted to express, live out or teach the opposite of these values would -- by definition -- be all about "failure" and it would be shut down by the power of the state before you could say "No Child Left Behind."
Jesus taught that every good tree bears good fruit (Matthew, 7:17-19). If we honestly judged public education by its fruits, who would not demand that so evil a tree be cut down and hurled into the fire?
Being a teacher in this system is the moral equivalent of being a concentration camp guard in the Third Reich. Maybe worse; a death camp only kills the body.
It will be objected that we cannot abolish school. What would we replace it with? Well, what would you replace Auschwitz with? The absence of evil is a much-needed gap that requires no filling.
What did people do before mandatory "education" was imposed on them? They learned by doing. They learned by apprenticeship. They learned what they needed, to survive in their worlds, a task at which public schooling manifestly and constantly fails.
It's very simple. Imagine the kind of world you would like to live in. Think about what you would need to know in order to build such a world. Demand that your teachers teach you that, and nothing else.
// end rant //