Archive for the 'False Consciousness' Category

Jul 05 2007

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Personal Gratification:

Published by cyrano2 under American Nightmare, American Illusion, Hyper-Individualism, American Dream, Money Worship, American Delusion, Corporatism, False Consciousness, Consumerism, Savage Capitalism

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rapaciousconsumption

“Here There Be Monsters”

Pastel on Paper: “Rapacious Consumption” by Ric Hall and Ron Schmitt

Essay by Jason Miller

7/5/07

“America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”

—John Quincy Adams

While it certainly was not his intent, Adams’ assertion serves to remind us of a truth revealed by vast oceans of tears, torrential rivers of blood, and formidable piles of human remains. Leaving murder, mayhem, and misery in its wake, America does “go abroad,” but not, as Adams noted, “in search of monsters to destroy.” What Adams failed to perceive, despite living in the midst of the Native American genocide and the abject evil of chattel slavery, is that America is the monster.

Yet like most monsters that exist outside the boundaries of imagination, the printed word, celluloid, or digital imagery, the United States and its denizens ostensibly appear rather harmless and mundane. In fact, it would probably be more accurate to say that a fair number of people still perceive us as downright heroic, cloaked as we are in our beguiling raiment of freedom and democracy. Continue Reading »

9 responses so far

Jun 24 2007

Overgrown Kids, Unshackled Ids, and the Death of the Superego

Published by cyrano2 under American Nightmare, Militarism, American Illusion, Souless Capitalists, American Infantilization, Capitalism, Shattered Moral Compass, American Dream, Money Worship, American Delusion, False Consciousness, Simulacrum

NOTICE TO OUR READERS: The editors will be most grateful for your attention at the end of this feature. Thank you.

Sculpture: “The Id” by TJ Dixon and James Nelson

By Jason Miller

6/24/07

Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.

–Sigmund Freud

Frightening as it may be, the Earth’s fate rests in the hands of children. With incredibly formidable military firepower at its disposal, the United States could catalyze Armageddon at any time. And while they may be adults chronologically, our sociopolitical structure is dominated by emotional infants.

Nietzsche once pronounced God dead. In the United States, we have a more readily demonstrable (and perhaps related) problem. Our collective id has rendered its governing superego impotent, and perhaps dead. Our prevailing moral standards, as inconsequential as they have become, are of the Jerry Falwell variety. They are mean-spirited, self-serving, judgmental, narrow-minded, selfish, and belligerent. As far as US Americans are concerned, Christ may as well have preached the Sermon on the Mount from the lowest recesses of Death Valley.

Recall that our basic drives such as libido, hunger, and aggression flow from the infantile dimension of our psyche known as the id. In terms of psychodynamics, the superego’s role is to counter-balance the irresponsible, amoral, and essentially sociopathic nature of the id with a healthy degree of conscience and guilt. Yet in the United States, we are inculcated with a deep sense of our exceptionalism and entitlement from the moment we emerge from the birth canal, thus crippling our ability to empathize and seriously impeding the development of our superego.

Consequently, conscience, guilt, personal discipline, and delaying gratification are barely extant in the toxic cesspool of our sociocultural environment.

Continue Reading »

18 responses so far

Jun 24 2007

Liberty, Politics, and the Self

Published by cyrano2 under Faux Christians, Spiritual Awakening, Shattered Moral Compass, False Consciousness, Consumerism, Spiritual Bondage, Intellectual Chains

”Spirituality used to be ontology (philosophy of reality) thousands of years ago, but those days are long gone. Now spirituality is mostly entertainment, self-deception, and self-mystification, which is to say a dedication to unrealities.”

By Sankara Saranam

Meta Arts Magazine

It’s hard to dispassionately and philosophically discuss liberty with a straight face these days without becoming a journalist and describing the many ways in which our liberties have deteriorated in our declining society. I’ll try, but I don’t know how long I’ll last or the point of lasting, anyway. Am I to write something for a ’spiritual’ column that practically serves as distracting entertainment while our liberties are being suffocated? I could stop now and advise you to go to buzzflash.com to read the news; but whether you stick around or not, one thing to say about liberty is that the quickest and most pain-free way to lose it is by failing to keep abreast of current events, failing to know history, and failing to engage is a continuous social dialogue that raises self-challenging questions.

The perspective I commonly give to principles like liberty, and everything else, in my writings is the ontological one. That perspective is certainly important, as it provides a foundation for how to think about things, how to define things, and how things stand in relation to what is real. But it is half the battle. The other half is embodying that perspective in ways like the ones listed above - ways that are real, i.e. spiritual, duties.

Spirituality used to be ontology (philosophy of reality) thousands of years ago, but those days are long gone. Now spirituality is mostly entertainment, self-deception, and self-mystification, which is to say a dedication to unrealities. Of course, no one really wants to believe that, but it wouldn’t be self-deception if they did.

Continue Reading »

4 responses so far

Jun 18 2007

America The Dutiful

Published by cyrano2 under American Illusion, American Infantilization, Capitalism, American Dream, Money Worship, American Delusion, Corporatism, False Consciousness, Simulacrum


By Vi Ransel

6/18/07

After the Great Depression
the Rich had the impression
we were ripe for revolution.
Their solution? A New Deal.

But this “gift” they gave us
was merely to enslave us
temporarily amaze us
’til they could tear that mother down.

After World War Two
they gave us credit.
Did it work on us?
You bet. It’s
worked so well we’re
all in debt up to our ass.

We got little Levitt
mockups of their mansions,
sprawling highway expansion
of veins ready for the oily needle
in the nation’s arm.

And they let us go to
college, but they’re
afraid of knowledge
’cause it’s POWER
(to The People). Can’t
have that! You have a
dream? You just dream on.

Basic education is outdated
on the corporate plantation.
All the world’s remediation
can’t undo the devastation done
by whole word reading and new math.

And this theft of skills
makes a mockery
of participatory democracy,
sending us down the corporate
Manifest Destiny path.

Advertising’s their predation
for our seduction and sedation
so without evaluation
we’ll submit
while they feed on us like jackals,
slap our souls in shackles
and have us branded by age three
with corporate logo loyalty.
Our only future is the next thing that we buy.

Pharmaceuticals push legal drugs
for shyness and bad moods.
Huge conglomerates sing our love songs
to alcohol, SUVs and fried foods.
They’ve tranquilized and supersized us
with material goods
and ubiquitous depictions
of degrading sexual juxtapositions
laid like land mines
in all the media’s neighborhoods.

Yet after all this depredation
we’ve let the corporate plantation
become our American Idol(atry).
We want our ship to come in
so we can be just like them.
Meanwhile we take our place in
the new U.S. “serve us” economy.

Ask not what your country
has done to you, because
there is no remorse. And
don’t you know nobody
knows you when you
down(sized) and out(sourced).

2 responses so far

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