May 5, 2009

It's Not Going To Be Okay

The article, It's Not Going To Be Okay, by Chris Hedges is not saying any thing new, but it is saying it well. I suggest you read the article in full, but for those of you who are attention span deficient, here is a recap:
... the corporate state has successfully blocked any real debate about alternative forms of power. Corporations determine who gets heard and who does not, he said. And those who critique corporate power are given no place in the national dialogue.

They have to begin structural changes that involve a very different approach from a market economy. I don't think this will happen."

The American left, he said, has crumbled. It sold out to a bankrupt Democratic Party, abandoned the working class and has no ability to organize. Unions are a spent force. The universities are mills for corporate employees. The press churns out info-entertainment or fatuous pundits. The left, he said, no longer has the capacity to be a counterweight to the corporate state. He said that if an extreme right gains momentum there will probably be very little organized resistance.
While you're at it, you might as well read Buying Brand Obama by Hedges as well:
President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertiser wants because of how they can make you feel.

A public that can no longer distinguish between truth and fiction is left to interpret reality through illusion
So what's next? Where do we go? How do we start to make meaningful change on a large scale. I know that we start with ourselves and all that, but it looks like we may need more. Ideas? Thoughts?

10 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:02 PM

    "Our way of life is over."
    "Our empire is dying. Our economy has collapsed."

    I'm no economist - haven't yet finished secondary education - but it seems to me that this is far from the truth. The economy is undergoing upheaval, but it has done so many times in the past. No-one can except eternal bull markets. Perhaps the only difference is the high level of globalisation, meaning more of the world is dependent. Yet even so, first fiscal quarter reports for 2009 are surprisingly positive.
    I can't really make a case for this argument because I'm not qualified, but to say that America is dying seems to me rather staggering an exaggeration.

    I think far more important than the economy right now are sustainable sources of energy, and humanitarian issues around the world... unemployment is rampant in so many poor nations and yet the instant America stops churning out cars quite so fast as before, panic strikes.
    There is no spiralling trend for complete economic collapse. Consumer spending decreases: corporations streamline themselves and their business model.

    And yet if one were to take a look at the true face of nations such as India, Zimbabwe, Sudan... even if all that Hedges predicts, like some apocalyptic prophet, becomes true - and more - even then the USA will still be far more fortunate than millions of people who live in conditions we can scarce imagine.
    The other day a middle-aged lady came into school and talked of her philanthropic work in South Africa, where she recalls a two year old girl who stumbled into an orphanage, blood streaming from her vagina - she had been gang raped.
    How can anybody ignore this?

    America... stop feeling sorry for yourself.

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  2. Thanks for your comment Anonymous, and I agree with you that the essay does begin a bit too apocalyptic and doused with hyperbole, but I found the main point worth sharing was the idea of a corporate take over and the subsequent decline of the American Left.

    As for your comments about the emerging world, you are also right that these trends cannot be ignored, but like you mentioned Globalization had made corporatism a global problem and many of the issues the developing world faces are direct results of this new world order.

    Finally, as for feeling sorry for ourselves, I do not feel sorry for an Empire that is in decline or for the people who will lose their boats and ATVS, but for the ignorance that has spread across America leaving it a simple giant unable to understand its own predicament.

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  3. mmm... i must go get a second cuppa...

    much better. i can't and won't speak for chris hedges- he does that pretty well for himself. i can give my humble take on the state of the world though. i am not sure that americans are feeling sorry for ourselves. perhaps we are. i think that many of us are simply afraid. not just of losing our jobs and homes- it's bigger than that. you can't tell by the corporately controlled propaganda machines that masquerade as american media-- but many americans have awakened to the fact that america was not what she portrayed herself as.

    we have lost our 'innocence' so to speak- and broken through the fog of nationalistic narcissism- and we are in no man's land. i have a feeling that's why over 70% of americans still believe in the obama brand.

    the truth is- we have bigger issues than the economy. our entire planet is collapsing. ecosystems are being wiped out; resources being used up or polluted; climate is changing so that our way of life is forever gone. and this is why folks are scared. wars come and go- economies tank and rebound- but you can't fix the broken planet. only time can do that- and humans don't have much left.

    mmm... sounds apocalyptic doesn't it? i don't look for a 'rapture' but i do look for a mass die off of the human species- perhaps even in our lifetime.

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  4. Anonymous9:02 PM

    thanks for your reply... in part I was trying to point out that America is not much more at risk now than it was four years ago, or eight. But I agree entirely with you that ignorance is the cause of much of the world's problems. Maybe the solution is simpler than one may think... perhaps educational reform world-wide is necessary and inevitable. I also personally believe that much funds invested in crime prevention on a small scale (i.e. catching criminals, and preventing peaceful people from smoking their gram of marijuana every weekend) would be far better allocated for rehabilitation and/or education. The thousands of people siphoning off a nation's funds daily in their prison cell (up to a trillion dollars every year according to some sources) would be better off rehabilitated, re-educated, and sent back to a life (sure, make a city for criminals and wall it off, but I am convinced that mental and psychological woes, together with financial need, account for 95% of all crimes).

    But maybe there is a grander issue at hand. Maybe the rise and fall of dictators, the wars, the ever-increasingly-destructive weapons of humanity are something we can never eliminate. Maybe it is simply a question of intelligence - to intelligent to live as animals do, not intelligent enough as a whole to see past the petty things and on to a grander scale.

    Because let's face it, far more people worry about bread on the table then sustainable economic development. You cannot blame a middle-aged single father of three for driving a 15 year old car.
    And so many people spend 10-12 hours a day doing their job, as corporations compete senselessly and redundantly, and the majority of people waste away their lives on idle pleasures and unnecessary work.
    It's a system that was never perfected on a small scale and cannot be torn out on the large...

    But one of the greatest problems is that, even in the era of Socialism in Europe, everything worked on a nation-wide scale. Such a blindly new ideology cannot just be switched in like a plug moved from one place to another. I think it needs to happen on a small scale, as in a village, then a city, then a region - a system of cooperation and monopoly, where the wealth of information and ease of surveillance prevents companies from abusing their power, and where the technology of today allows for all to be housed in equal comfort and happiness...

    I seem to be wandering... and I have a knack for proposing (often impractical) solutions whenever faced with a problem, but I also think that proposing and implementing ideas is better than a ripple of despair spreading through the blogosphere while bloggers continue their lives exactly as before, for there remains nothing to be done...

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  5. Hey Anonymous, I wish I knew who you were. You are making some great points, even if you are rambling.

    I love this:

    I have a knack for proposing (often impractical) solutions whenever faced with a problem, but I also think that proposing and implementing ideas is better than a ripple of despair spreading through the blogosphere while bloggers continue their lives exactly as before, for there remains nothing to be done...

    perhaps impractical ideas are what we need. It is obvious that capitalism is not working and will eventually collapse, but Socialism and communism do not seem to be solutions, we need to rethink the entire way we do things.

    As for bloggers, being full of hot wind, perhaps we are just as lost as others and grasping to find solutions for problems so immense.

    Keep reading and stop by more often. Would love to learn who you are and make stronger connections.

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  6. Man! I've thought about this one long and hard,


    For me, the flipside is a line from Wolf Biermann, his tongue firmly in his cheek, "If the revolution is inevitable ... then who will bring it about?"

    I'm a real structuralist (well ... actually a poststructuralist who happens to think that money is important) and notice that history is largely shaped by the great impersonal forces that make us lurch from epoch to epoch. So why bother to try to bring about structural change? Corporate capitalism was never an idea that was subsequently implemented (which is to say it is a naturally occurring socio-economic phenomenon) and neither will its demise be an idea that will subsequently be implemented.

    The conclusion I've come to is that there is a huge difference between a new form of social organisation that seems forced on humanity and one that is welcomed. The task I've set myself is a modest one: to herald the dawn.


    A

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  7. I had a bit of a difficult time extrapolating what it is you are trying to say, and correct me if I am wrong, but I felt the gist of your argument is that:

    1. that history is largely shaped by the great impersonal forces that make us lurch from epoch to epoch. So why bother to try to bring about structural change?


    2. Corporate capitalism was never an idea that was subsequently implemented (which is to say it is a naturally occurring socio-economic phenomenon) and neither will its demise be an idea that will subsequently be implemented.

    While I am intrigued and a bit excited by the idea of history as impersonal forces beyond our reach, I still think that people or groups of people can and do bring about change. I can understand the argument that if MLK was not part of the civil rights movement, then someone else would have been and eventually through the millennium we would inch closer to racial harmony, or that if not Gandhi than some other dude a few hundred years later, would have liberated India from Colonial rule.

    But why should the idea that people don’t matter, stop us from trying to matter and bring about these changes more quickly. I have been watching Planet Earth the BBC series and have been thinking a lot about the insignificance of any human behavior what so ever. In ten thousand years none of this will matter. We will hopefully have gone extinct and the planet will evolve on without us. Looking back at our reign as a parasitic reign of greed and terror.

    I guess my retort is what are the impersonal forces that shape history if not the actions of people or groups of people? We do effect history like each drop of water effects the flow of a river etc…It may appear inconsequential, but each person has to ….well, I am not sure where I am going with that.

    As for point two, I have to disagree, I think corporate capitalism was and still is an idea and a way of life that was very carefully crafted from several philosophies. And you being more educated than I can piece that puzzle together. But Corporate capitalism is the mechanism where a small group of the earths population control the majority of its resources and wealth, surely this is an idea that has been implemented by this group to maintain this control, and so it’s demise if careful thought about and organized against, like British colonial rule, can be dismantled. No?

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  8. Herald the dawn.

    I don't think there is much disagreement between us. If we pose the question: is history driven by the actions of individuals or (rather) by huge impersonal forces (such as economic change, land usage, technological change and the likes) we already make an error. I mean that the question presupposes an error. The error is the idea that there are two different things (individuals and great impersonal social forces). But there is only one world.

    You are correct when you say that "While I am intrigued ... by the idea of history as impersonal forces beyond our reach, I ... think that people or groups of people can and do bring about change" and ask " ... what are the impersonal forces that shape history if not the actions of people or groups of people?". We know that large scale economic activity is comprised of a mass of microeconomic activity. Once you rope together every individual economic choice in a large self-contained economy, there is nothing in addition to that. The whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. (Well, there are the actions of governments, multinationals, the IMF and so on - and they would have to be included in any account of large scale economic change, possibly in terms of the activities of individuals, possibly in another way.) Widespread changes in land use are the sum of all the individual (changing) choices about land use. Technological change is nothing more that the development and use of new technologies by a large number of people.

    We can't ask whether history is driven forward by individuals or my massive impersonal forces. There is no fact of the matter. The situation is vastly more human-centred. When we try to understand the world we live in, we can try to understand it in terms of behaviour of human individuals, including the interactions between them. Or we can talk about in broader (and more sketchy) terms about economic conditions, technological conditions and so on. The mode of analysis that we choose (mainly the unit of analysis) depends on what is most effective to understand the world we live in and (maybe) change it. The advantage of broader (and more sketchy) accounts of social and economic change is that there seems to be some hope of understanding how the world works on a large scale. The bind is that, having described/ analysed the world at that level (unit of analysis bigger than the human individual) there may well be a gulf between the analysis and individual action for social change. As individuals, we can feel overwhelmed by the great impersonal forces that (our analysis shows) nudge history along as we lurch from one epoch to the next.

    Just as chemical change is nothing more than the sum of a large number of interactions between atoms & molecules, social change is nothing more than the sum of (changing) interactions between a large number of people.

    Structural change becomes a slippery goal. Whoever thinks they brought structural change about is probably wrong. (But its an understandable mistake.) At the time of the French Revolution, the old feudal system was crumbling - as was British colonial rule when it was dismantled. Revolution always smashes a crumbling door. There is such a thing as 'the objective circumstances' for social change. And, also, people need to bring it about.

    So what shall we do, in our modest way, to hold history's hand and help steer it with little tugs and pushes? We'd better not be too ambitious. Lets celebrate our triumphs - perhaps not our personal triumphs but the triumphs of history, the ones we hold close to our hearts. Lets sing of the crumbling of brutal empires, the demise of slavery, the growing equality of black people, women and other oppressed majorities. Lets dance on the ruins of the Berlin wall. Lets write and sing and paint pictures about freedom to love and the legislative liberation of queer people. (Some people make jolly TV shows about gay lives. I'd like to smile and shake their hands.) Lets call for the dismantling of nuclear arsenals. Dance round the fire. Lets speak as clearly as we can - and chant and pray - about the steps we think might be our next.

    Herald the dawn.

    While we are busy with that, lets not forget to take care of our fragile bodies, respect our friends and love our children. Our individual lives are important too.

    What do you think?


    Alan

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  9. Thanks Alan, for your insightful comments. I think you are so right when you say:

    Revolution always smashes a crumbling door. There is such a thing as 'the objective circumstances' for social change. And, also, people need to bring it about.

    I also really liked your allusion to chemical changes and how they work on molecular levels, but ultimately make larger more meta changes.

    Thanks for skewing my thinking a bit.

    Loved:

    Lets celebrate our triumphs - perhaps not our personal triumphs but the triumphs of history.

    This is something I often forget to do...

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  10. Actually this dialogue helped nudge my thinking along a bit. So thanks for that.

    Running through my head as I put this piece of writing together were some classic problems in Marxist thought. (When Marx died, he left two great unsolved questions: What determines price of gold? and Why is there no communist party in the USA?)

    Incidentally, it was Leon Trotsky who solved (in advance) one of Hedges' problems. Trotsky observed that the rise of Fascism in Germany was associated with a comparable growth in the strength of the communist party. It was not a swing to the right. It was the polarisation of German politics. It seems that the emergence of (objective) circumstances for rapid social change are typically associated with a surge of support for both right and left political views. When things are stable, political parties squabble over the centre ground. If the going gets tough in the USA, the left probably will reemerge.

    I should offer two corrections. I think I should have said "A revolution always kicks in a rotten door" That sustains the metaphor better and is closer to the original. I stole it from the US diplomat and economist JK Galbraith. And I don't know where he got it from.

    I also don't think it was fair of me to describe black people as a majority. I hope you guessed what I meant.... something like ... non-white people are in the majority.

    Alan

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