Commentary

Commentary / Video — 2 Comments
4
Feb 12

Buying in or selling out? The greatest dilemma ever told (#medialit)

CRASS: There Is No Authority But Yourself (click here if you can’t view it)

During my media ethics course this week I launched into an epic rant that frightened some students.

The diatribe was inspired by a recent controversy covered by Boing Boing about the (mis)appropriation of a logo belonging to the infamous punk band, Crass (click here for the initial post and here for the follow-up). The backstory is that some fashion designer in London, Hardware, blatantly ripped off the Crass logo to convert it into some apolitical fashion icon (if you compare the current Hardware Website with the logo posted at Boing Boing, you will see that Hardware hastily fixed their plagiarism problem). Concurrently, for our class we watched The Greatest Movie Ever Sold by Morgan Spurlock (maker of Super Size Me), which has the subtitle, “He’s not selling out, he’s buying in.” In a nutshell, Spurlock made a movie about branding and product placement by branding and selling his “doc-buster” to advertisers. The question for my class about the film–and what spurned the epic rant–was, Can a critical film about marketing use branding to make its point?

I’ll get to Spurlock’s film momentarily. Returning to Crass, the logo controversy led me to YouTube where I found a documentary about the band. Watching it reminded my of how in the early 1980s Crass had been such an ethical influence on me as a young punk rocker. Crass fans were considered “peace punks” that were into the scene not for style, but to participate in oppositional politics and an alternative social movement. As an anarchist collective Crass practiced what they preached. Whenever they performed they donated whatever was left after expenses to local charity. They were truly a not-for-profit endeavor that wanted to live by their principle, “There is no authority but yourself.” In retrospect this phrase is not in-sync with ecology, which eschews such pronounced individualism, but the basic anti-authority stance is still valid.

Our culture should not be dictated by an economic ideology that has taken over virtually all realms of life (see the book Monoculture for a good overview of this point). Relatedly, I asked the class if it were anachronistic to have a strong anti-commercial stance that contradicts the prevailing paradigm that views privatization and the commercialization of public space as gospel. I have found that many students these days seem to accept the blanket marketing of their lives as the price for doing business as usual. Many have internalized the age-old justification for screwing over anyone: it’s just business. Indeed!

At Boing Boing commentators criticized Xeni Jardin (who posted about the Crass controversy) by arguing that it was hypocritical to promote open culture and remixing but then not apply the same standards when a fashion designer does it. My response is that we’re not talking about an absolute ideology that can’t differentiate between an open and closed commons. Crass were about sharing and generosity. Corporate theft from punk rockers is the opposite. It’s evil. There is a difference between fair use and plagiarism, which comes down to intent. What is the purpose of the appropriation technique? You can tell the difference by observing which act is participatory and which one is not. This is the thin red line of dissent versus exploitation, and fair play versus cheating.

Trailer for The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. Click here if you can’t see it.

Which brings me to Spurlock’s documentary, a film that I essentially experienced as a major mind fuck. On the one hand, it does exactly what it sets out to do: it makes transparent the entire process of selling out. So in the process of making a film that is potentially a critique of marketing, the filmmaker must sell out. How does one reconcile this contradiction? Is it even possible? Has media criticism devolved into self-mockery?

One way for me to respond to this film is to go back to the problem of “postirony.” The term, coined in Alex Shakar, appears in the book The Savage Girl. It is described as follows:

“…Our culture has become so saturated with ironic doubt that it’s beginning to doubt its own mode of doubting. If everything is false, then by the same token anything can be taken as true, or at least as true enough. Truths are no longer absolute; they’re shifting, temporary, whatever serves the purpose of the moment. Postironists create their own sets of serviceable realities and live in them independent of any facets of the outside world that they choose to ignore….Practitioners of postironic consciousness blur the boundaries between irony and earnestness in ways we traditional ironists can barely understand, creating a state of consciousness wherein critical and uncritical responses are indistinguishable. Postirony seeks not to demystify but to befuddle, not to synthesize opposites but to suspend them, keeping open all possibilities at once. And we marketers, in forging a viable mode of postironic consumerism, must seek to foster in the consumer a mystical relationship with consumption. Through consumption consumers will be gods; outside of consumption they will be nothing: a perpetual oscillation between absolute control and absolute vulnerability, between grandeur and persecution.”

One way this insidious phenomena manifests itself is in the way marketers have appropriated culture jamming into their repertoire of manipulation. The classic example is Sprite’s Obey Your Thirst ad campaign that features celebrities making fun of themselves selling products. In media literacy parlance, these are the “wink, wink” and “flattery” persuasion techniques that essentially argue, “we marketers know we are full of crap, and we know that you know that we are a bunch of bull, so buy our product anyway!” Thankfully many see through this, but these techniques also do a lot of idealogical work. Essentially, this approach turns grassroots media activism and education into market research, undoing and refracting our legitimate critique into a hall of mirrors (for example, watch how this Fed Ex ad uses media literacy deconstruction techniques in its Super Bowl ad). In this way, capitalism has the incredibly capacity to absorb critique and then turn it on its critics (Occupy movement, watch out!).

So where does that leave us with Spurlock? The truth is, I think the film is a great tool for discussion, or what I like to call an “object-to-think-with.” For that, I believe it has educational value. I believe he is sincere and treats the subject with a lot of respect. (Check out Spurlock’s TED talk for more insight into his thinking about the film.)

But I still remain incredibly uncomfortable with its “truth in advertising” approach. My discomfort is grounded in an old school punk mentality–as outdated as it may seem–that there are lines that should not be crossed. One cannot “market” the revolution, as one major label A & R guy once promised Crass (they politely refused). What is at stake is the cultural commons, which is “all that we share.” As long as there is a commercial barrier between us and the access point to that shared space, then buying in really means fencing off. I still believe that there should be noncommercial spaces that are free from the nefarious influence of corporate power. The more we succumb to the temptation to allow corporations to mediate our methods of critique and engagement, the more we erode our capacity for culture to grow, learn and evolve. No one but a corrupt legal system bequeathed these corporations the right to take over our cultural life. Why do we continue enabling them?

OK, rant over. Thanks for listening!

Occupy the new year (and the spirit of the times)

The Occupy Rose Parade octopus (click here if you can’t see the embed video)

Local news coverage by CBS (click here if you can’t see the video embed)

As a native Angeleno, one of my annual rituals is to watch the New Year’s Day Rose Parade. Though I have never witnessed it in person, I have checked out the scene in Pasadena the night before and know many artisans who design and build floats for the annual parade. This year was no different, with the exception that I wanted to share the nostalgia with my kids. However, now that I’m a bit of an ex-pat, I see things that were part of my past with a slightly defamiliarized perspective.

As the parents of former students have told me, media literacy ruins TV watching for the family. Though I wanted to convey my enthusiasm for the artisanship of Rose Parade floats to my daughter, I couldn’t remove my critical hat. I became highly sensitized to the more troubling aspects of the event’s televised broadcast. Before watching it I was keenly aware that an Occupy group planned to tail the parade with their own anti-corporate message, so I was hoping to see if the network coverage (in this case, NBC) would mention or cover the Occupiers. What transpired should be of little surprise to any seasoned media watcher.

The parade coverage opened with a flyover of a Northrop Grumman’s B-2 stealth bomber, ironically dubbed the Spirit. In a sense, Spirit is an apt name for it represents the “spirit” of a particular mode of thinking (as in zeitgeist, which means “spirit of the age”). At a cost of $1.5 billion each, the B-2 represents the absurdity of our social structure in which our government pays outrageous sums to an elite group of military contractors at the expense of a withering infrastructure. Anthropologists and historians of the future will note how incredibly insane such a social system is. Meanwhile, parade commentators Shaun Robinson and Al Roker fawned over the bomber arguing that for most of the audience it was the main attraction. Such death technology warship should not be surprising given that one of NBC’s primary shareholders is the military contractor General Electric.

The rest of the broadcast represented a seamless integration between the values of the military industrial complex and totalitarian capitalist ideology. The parade’s Grand Marshall, J. R. Martinez, is a bit of a rising media personality whose notoriety comes from his experience of overcoming the psychological damage of getting 40% of his body burned while deployed in Iraq. While I admire his perseverance and resilience, none of the discussion of this man’s tragic circumstances get contextualized by how unnecessary it was in the first place. No doubt, with stealth bombers getting applauded by pop culture punditry and parade organizers, these dirty little details need not be aired publicly. Martinez is a perfect metaphor for the denial of our sick system: get burned and disfigured and then turn it into corporate motivation for how to transcend the adversity of Empire’s reckless global behavior.

Meanwhile, each parade float was a mini-ad for its corporate sponsor. It was obvious that Roker’s canned commentary was essentially ad copy penned by the corporate overlords. Meanwhile, interspersed throughout the coverage was a noticeably higher ratio of advertising that mostly hawked product discounts and financial services for the newly poor. Though subtle (or not if you are media savvy), this was truly a hegemonic spectacle selling the ideology of the 1%. Good thing the Occupiers were there to counterbalance the message. Yet.. if you watched NBC, such a perspective didn’t exist. It was eliminated from the parade’s coverage.

This is a blatant example of how alternatives get excluded by the traditional power structure’s media system. Luckily, we no longer exist in a reality bubble of top-down communications. The complex ecology of our current social media allows for alternative perspectives to be shared horizontally. This is not to say that Occupy Rose Parade was entirely ignored. The LA Times and local news stations mentioned it, and those who were in attendance at the parade certainly had a chance to be exposed for the first time to the Occupy message. Not surprisingly, some critics disparaged the protestors for degrading a family event with politics. But in light of the parade’s default message of corporate and military domination, to not see the entire event as political represents a triumph of ideology.

Let’s hope that those who fail to see the political nature of mainstream media spectacles increasingly become the minority. Transforming and educating for a new perspective means we have lots of work to do. To begin with, its time to occupy the spirit of our age. I keep harping on the Occupy theme, but I believe it represents a concrete alternative to the mode of communication propagated by the hyper-capitalist take-over of the cultural commons.

Commentary — No Comments
29
Oct 11

Mic check

Dear friends and readers,

Those who have followed this blog over the years have probably noticed a substantial drop in production. There are many reasons for this, but an important one is that Facebook and Twitter have channeled some of the creative energy that the blog was used for in the past, such as linking and sharing. For this reason, I hope you will follow my Twitter account as well (@mediacology) or check out the box in the right column with my Twitter updates. I’m not a massive Twitterer, but usually that is where I filter things that I think others would be interested in.

The other reason has to do with my writing time getting eaten up by my current book project. I’m prioritizing my creative flow by channeling it into the book, but occasionally some half-baked thoughts surface and I find that blogging is a good way to process. Fingerscrossed, the manuscript is due in two weeks, so I’ll have a chance to get back into the flow again.

Peace out!

PS I posted the following request elsewhere. If you have any suggestions, please post in the comments section:

We all know intuitively and rationally that the no-longer mainstream media represent the interests of the 1% (re. the occupy wall st. meme). I would like to compile some stats to make this point more clearly. Aside from the most obvious fact of media consolidation, can anyone suggest a way to connect the 1% economy and media with some grounded statistics or facts?

Commentary — No Comments
29
Sep 11

Dousing the KIndle-Fire

Lots of buzz this week about the new Amazon Fire, the Kindle update primed to take a big bite out of Apple (OK, I couldn’t resist such a silly cliche). Upon viewing its first TV ad (posted above) I’m struck by the use of the fire metaphor for describing communications, something I’ve also been doing in response to the meme model of media. The idea of memes is too mechanical for me–it implies that an idea is an object that gets replicated from person to person. I prefer to think of an idea as a kind of flame that inspires or ignites new understandings, but doesn’t just repeat itself. My initial inspiration for this understanding comes from Buddhism which sees thoughts as impermanent.

Amazon borrows the concept from Voltaire, whose pithy little quote makes an excellent argument for how ideas belong to the public sphere and cannot be owned:

“The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.”

Unfortunately, as DefectiveByDesign.org points out, Amazon’s digital rights management strategy is more about restriction than sharing. For example, even though you purchase books through its service, you don’t actually own them. You can’t trade, give away or resell them in the same way you can with physical books. By storing your media on its cloud drives, Amazon exerts complete control over your content and can delete books if they choose (it has happened). This also represents more of the creeping privatization of our data. We have to trust Amazon to not abuse their power of surveillance, data tracking and censorship. Remember that they deleted Wikileaks from their servers when it became politically uncomfortable.

While the media will likely focus on the titanic battle between our gods of capitalism– Amazon’s Jeff Bezos versus Apple’s Steve Jobs–our rights under their control freak purview will increasingly diminish. As the African proverb states, when elephants fight, the grass gets trampled. So be mindful for how these new gadgets get fetishized in the absence of a healthy debate about their impact on the public sphere.

For what it’s worth, I own an iPad and I happen to like it, but I’m also not that impressed. I have been mostly disappointed by how limiting it is in terms of my power to create and do stuff with it. It is certainly a perfected media consumption device that makes reading Twitter and PDFs a great pleasure. But when it comes to making media, even something as basic as a PowerPoint presentation, forget it. Even my favorite presentation tool, Prezi, is rendered useless by the iPad (I can view Prezis with an app, but i can’t edit them because iPads don’t have Flash).

In sum, though I’m a fan of tablets for reading and viewing media, they reinforce old media regimes and increase the monopolization of our mediasphere. It’s probably why big media companies really love them. If we eventually migrate from flexible laptops to restricted tablets, it will probably mean a general regression to the one-to-many media model of old rather than to increased participation that should be the promise of the new. I hope I’m wrong.

Commentary — No Comments
15
Sep 11

A friendly review of Mediacology

I just came across a sympathetic and thoughtful review of my book on the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Website (I swear I wasn’t looking for myself on the Web!). This review was far more appreciative than the last one I read in which the author expressed a desire to throw my book in the garbage (I hope that she at least put it in the compost). Reading reviews is incredibly painful, but thankfully the AEJMC reviewer got what I was trying to say while ignoring all the typos!

One thing the reviewer points out is that Mediacology was not an easy read. Agreed! Mediacology was my first book and was done in the midst of heavy readings of McLuhan and the Media Ecology tradition. I was playing with academic jargon, perhaps as an exaggerated response to the boring newspaper journalism I had been doing for so many years before. Every venue demands a different style and over the years I have become schizophrenic from writing in so many different formats: punk fanzines, magazines, newspapers, blogs, academic journals, academic books and popular culture books. I’m hoping that I’m finally hitting a sweet spot between all of these with my current book project. But that remains to be seen. The main thing I realize is that my first book didn’t exactly practice what I preached: though I was calling for participatory educational practice, its language was a bit too inaccessible. Let’s hope I do a better job on the next round.

Commentary / Film / Video — 2 Comments
11
Sep 11

A cinematic balm for the 9/11 blues

My Italian friends asked me if I wanted to to do something special for 9/11. I was ashamed to say that the memory conjured something that I didn’t want to re-experience: bloodlust, revenge and war. All I can remember is how the moment of compassion and empathy that the incident called for eroded as fast as war plans were drawn-up to invade Afghanistan. Ten years ago all I could think about was the impending world war that would be launched in the name of 9/11 victims and their families. Indeed, the mainstream media failed to give voice to the peacemakers and antiwar critics who predicated the inevitable folly, crucial voices that I’m afraid have been proven right by the course of history.

But for this post I didn’t want to focus on politics. Rather, I wanted to share with you a clip from a film that I feel is one of the most powerful polemics against political violence I’ve ever seen. It comes from the Italian film Buongiorno, notte (Good Morning, Night), directed by Marco Bellocchio (who, BTW, won last night’s lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival). Unfortunately there are no subtitles, so I will have to set it up for you.

The film is about when Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, was kidnapped in 1978 by the Red Brigades, a left-wing terrorist group. The movie depicts the 55 days of his captivity in Rome, focusing on his captors, four young brigadistas, and their relationship with the imprisoned Moro. The story zooms in on the conflicted brigadista, Anna Laura Braghetti, who is increasingly troubled by the fact that the Italian political establishment won’t negotiate a prisoner exchange–the condition for his release–which means that Moro will be sentenced to death by his captors and eventually murdered.

The clip I have posted above involves Braghetti (performed by Maya Sansa) reading Moro’s final letter to his wife. It is then ingeniously overlaid with a letter by a WWII partisan who was sentenced to death by the Nazis. She then has a shattering epiphany (1:50 in the clip) when she realizes that the senseless horror that is about to be inflicted on her captive is no different than the heartless political murders of the past. Bellocchio emphasizes this point by intercutting source footage of prisoner executions from the war. Cut to Pink FLoyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky,” for me it is one of cinema’s most poignant montages, a heartful rebuttal against the cold logic of terrorists and vengeful war machines.

I hope you have the patience to watch the entire clip. Even if you don’t understand the language, it is poetry in motion. Incidentally, it is possible to see a subtitled version of the film. If at all possible, I encourage you to watch it and learn more about this tragic moment in Italian history.

Citizen Media / Commentary / Networks / Video — 1 Comment
18
Feb 11

“Weapons of mass mobilization”: Social networks and revolution

Al-Jazeer’s Empire on social networks and revolution. Features some excellent talking heads.

Meanwhile, NYU’s Jay Rosen has been a bit of a lightening rod in the debate between the so-called digital Utopians and the pessimists. He rounds up the debates on his blog here. I recommend following him on twitter.

What do I think? Any media that enters into a communication or language community will disturb it. By disturbance I mean an ecological disturbance as in when a new element enters into an ecosystem it becomes a new ecosystem. The fact is, the Internet is part of the system, so we can’t even speculate what the situation would be without it. Obviously it is a mix of both. But I like the point from Mark Poster (thanks Peter!) that the Internet is not a hammer, but a social space. Of course people make revolutions. But empathy is contagious and we can’t be empathetic with that which we do not know. Something is in the air, and certainly media are generating the wind.

Commentary — 4 Comments
31
Jan 11

Homage to Cairo (and beyond)

I’m loath to make historical analogies, simply because every historical moment has its own unique characteristics that would not be possible if we impose nonexistent conditions. So as the clutch mechanism of time slips, it would be unfair to compare the unreal moment of democratic potential in Egypt with those events in Spain when the libertines of Catalunya tasted freedom but were feeling Franco’s fascist forces pushing against the edges of their dreams for autonomy. Unfortunately for the Republicans of Spain, history didn’t side with them, and the freedom fighters of the Spanish Civil War were crushed and wiped out as the world’s leaders stood by, or as was the case of Stalin and Hitler, made sure that they were destroyed.

So why are my thoughts on Spain during these days of North Africa’s fight for democracy? As I read via the twitterverse the incredible ways in which everyday Egyptians are self-organizing to fill the space of a collapsed state, I’m reminded of George Orwell’s profound passages about free Barcelona during the early days of the Spanish Civil War (if you haven’t yet, you must read Homage to Catalonia). In it he describes a spirit of cooperation and brother/sisterhood that permeated cafes and barber shops alike, one in which a temporary autonomous zone of human potential was freed from the restraints of state terror and mechanized control. To behold such a space is a beautiful thing. To live it is a miracle. To unlearn it is impossible.

Now, one thing (among many, which makes this just a thought exercise) that differentiates the current situation from Spain in 1936 is the global interconnectedness of the events unfolding on our screens. Though the Republicans defending against Franco were shored up by a vast solidarity movement from around the world that sent volunteers and fighters to aid their embattled democracy, few could monitor and mobilize support in real time to prevent the horror that was unleashed by Franco and his allies. Though I’m not on the ground in Egypt to provide any physical assistance, through the Internet* I’m able to track, share, connect and extend an invaluable resource that drives any revolution: empathy.

I know it is vogue to decry net Utopianism, and to invoke something as woo-woo as “empathy” seems rather weak in comparison to the kinds of assistance that foreign brigadistas gave the Spanish Republicans. But I would argue that solidarity is a powerful force that feeds the people engaged in real struggle. The worse feeling is to be in an isolated cell somewhere, subject to random torture, knowing that you are completely alone and without help, as was the case for Spanish libertines who were abandoned after the fall of their republic. People are wired for connection and thrive from positive feedback. (For more about this, I highly recommend watching the Jeremy Rifkin’s RSA animation of his “empathic civilization” thesis.)

On this note, then, I want to balance some of the skepticism coming from the likes of Morozov who argue that net activism is as much a tool of repression as liberation. We could all point to Iran’s Green Revolution as an example of both the failure of the Net and empathy to save the situation. However, it is also not over, and the fact is that through our interconnectedness, we are stronger and more able to keep the struggle alive than to let it disappear into some dungeon in the periphery of an Iraqi or Afghan war zone. Let’s not shut down the optimism that empathy drives. And let’s not so quickly dismiss the role that media can play in supporting the hard work of organizing and rebelling that is now stripping old emperor’s of their illusions, parading them naked across the world’s screens.

PS A note on the strange irony of my historical analogy. Franco launched his attack on the Republic with his North African brigades.

* FYI, my own particular formula for monitoring events is a combination of Al Jazeera English’s Internet stream, the Guardian UK’s live news blog, Twitter, and Mother Jones’ “explainer” page. From these primary portals I’m able to link into a variety of sources. In particular I’ve been able to diversify my Twitter stream to be more inclusive of non-Western perspectives. Compared to the universe of American MSM, this is really a whole different reality. Here you get pointed questions from intelligent and independent thinkers who don’t feel compelled to ask the kinds of ridiculous questions that the Wolf Blitzer’s of the world are asking, such what role al-Qaeda has in the Jan. 25 movement. Give me a break. And while I’m at it, why hasn’t anyone in the MSM pointed out that new Egyptian VP Omar Suleiman was a key figure in the CIA’s rendition to torture program? Is the American press that cowardly?

Commentary — 1 Comment
14
Jan 11

War of words, words of war

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In response to last weekend’s tragedy in Tucson, I feel fairly small and insignificant in terms of what I have to add to an already bloated mix of hyperbole and moral panic. But I do know what it’s like to have a gun pressed into my temple (a real one, this is not a figure of speech), so I feel a great deal of empathy for any victims of gun violence. The vile feeling of gun violence is indescribable, and once you have been victimized by it, you find yourself shying away from the ubiquitous presence of guns in-your-face imagery: from video game billboards to T-shirts. Sadly, this perverse sickness permeates our media and our culture, so it is very difficult to look away. Most often we have no choice.

In terms of the the war of words (sorry for the military-like metaphor) about the role of language in the mediapolis (to borrow a term from Roger Siverstone), I agree that it is impossible to prove whether or not the militant verbage and graphics of various national figures caused the shooter to commit this heinous act. I also agree we can’t blame society for every cowardly act by a human. But I don’t mean to align myself with this same defense emanating from the echo chamber’s most vociferous haters: O’Reily, Beck and Palin. Because this is a disingenuous defense. If Beck says you can’t prove Loughner listened to a word he said, this still does not excuse Beck from discharging sewage from his mouth, let alone pay him to do it. It may not poison me directly, but I sure don’t like the stink.

It would go against my own theory of media to argue that a pundit’s words can program someone to act in a certain way– this view is far too mechanistic and assumes that ideas are things that can be placed into people’s minds. Humans are not programmable computers. However, the general atmosphere can be poisoned by attitude which makes certain cultural expressions more acceptable than not. Words set tone and when amplified to the Nth degree they can frame cultural norms. Coke can’t prove that an ad convinced me to buy a coke, but that doesn’t deter them from crowding my mindspace with the idea of Coke.

The metaphors and disinformation deployed by the Right enables a certain level of self-interested intolerance to be permissible and pushes a cultural perspective that is not healthy for any community, be it Tucson, Baghdad or Kabul. Nor is it worthy of any culture that claims to be civilized. Likewise, these views are not accidentally detonated, but are in service of a hierarchical system predicated on fear. These acts of verbal bullying are a control strategy, and even more cynically, an economic one. Murdoch, who deserves a lot of blame for this toxic atmosphere, wouldn’t employ such strategies if they didn’t make big bucks.

Psychologists calls this “pre-conventional” behavior, the kind associated with little children who are incapable of understanding the needs of others. “Post-conventional” behavior is marked by empathy and the ability to look beyond self-interest, but this also requires critical thinking about one’s own beliefs. The Tucson massacre is begging for a post-conventional dialog. Will the mediapolis respond accordingly?

The reviews are mixed. The media pariahs showed their true colors, to be sure. For example, how crazy is the claim that criticizing Beck and Palin puts the Republic in danger? Hmm, their speech doesn’t endanger other people, but criticism of them does? Which way are they going to have it? Moreover, deployment of the dreaded blood libel and lynch claim seems like a bit of paranoid thinking for a bunch of rich people who get paid millions to rant incoherently. To claim they were victimized at a time when the guns were aimed at other people and to equate their plight with the persecution of blacks or jews is really despicable. Have you ever heard such privileged elites whine so much?

I don’t mean to sound like a hypocrite here, but this is one situation where my capacity for empathy is really stretched. We can chalk it up to the sad rantings of confused, suffering and narcissistic individuals. On the other hand we are obliged not to be rugs: psychic boundaries are important. In light of the state of our planet, if ever there was a need for a time out for media cry babies, it would be now.

From a media ethics point of view, polluting the public sphere with lies, hypocrisy and hatred constitutes irresponsibility. This is not a call for censorship, but for restraint and basic human dignity. Right speech (not right-wing speech), from a Buddhist point of view means refraining from lies, harmful speech, gossip and slander. There is an ethical and practical reason for this. The moral reason is the gold standard of Kantian ethics and the Christian tradition: don’t do onto others that which you would not want done to yourself. Words included. The practical reason is quite simple: harmful speech will always bite you in the ass. Such is the case with Beck and Palin who are now having to defend there diminished characters, attempting to salvage their parasitic media personas in hopes that people will look beyond their hypocrisy and verbal misdeeds. No doubt many will, and that is simply the tragic result of demagoguery that mixes codes and flattery to appease the closed reality of traumatized, hardcore nut cases.

I have a fairly simple syllogism for media ethics. It is as follows:

1) We are all interconnected.

2) As interconnected beings, we live in communities.

3) Healthy communities require communication to function well.

4) For communication to work we need trust.

5) Trust requires credibility and reciprocity.

Is this too much to ask for? If our economic structure, and hence media system, cannot get past point one, then our reality is in serious need of a make-over. In the very least we can start with the premise that words are energy. The difficult question we must all ask ourselves is, What is the quality of energy we want to share? The Mayan greeting, Lak’ech, means “I am another yourself.” Imagine if all of us started our interactions in such a way…

Commentary / Mindfulness — 3 Comments
8
Nov 10

The conspiracy of noble silence

“The Buddha was famous for remaining silent when he was asked any of fourteen questions, questions like “Are the self and the world eternal? Are the self and the world not eternal? Do the self and the world have an end? Do the self and the world not have an end?” Although much has been written about the deep meaning of his noble silence, one of the more plausible interpretations (which actually occurs in a Buddhist text) is that the Buddha remained silent because he knew whatever he said, he would be misunderstood. If he said that the world was eternal, people might get discouraged and not practice because they would conclude that they could never get out of samsara. If he said that the world would end, people might not practice because they felt they could just wait around for samsara to end naturally.”

Donald S. Lopez, Jr., “From The Academy” Click on the link to read more by professor Lopez (not relation to me).

There’s an old saying, one that was the motto for the infamous Barrington Hall co-op in Berkeley: “Those who know don’t tell, those who tell don’t know.” This is can be applied to so many facets of our lives. If you are a writer and someone asks you, what are you writing?, often to speak of the work is to invoke the energy of it, which is deflating when you sit down to actually write out your ideas. If you speak them, why do you need to write them? This of course is only relevant if you are engaged in the traditional practice of individual authorship. For many other kinds of creative work (especially the kind that many of us are engaged in), sharing is a conditon for evolution.

But more to the point of this particular dharma lesson, there is the issue of labeling, as Lopez’s longer piece discusses (linked above). To be a “true” Buddhist, you don’t label what you do, because the practice of Buddhism is beyond dualism (saying “this” is “that,” and so on). Dualism is not wrong–we need to survive and function in the world and discernment is absolutely necessary. But attaching dualism to reality as opposed to understanding that this style of thinking is just a cognitive tool to organize perception, we start to believe the labels are reality as opposed to the phenomena that emerged the labeling. Likewise, naming something thingifies it, a prerequisite for its commodification.

More importantly, as described in the above anecdote, the Buddha believed such questions only create more suffering. Do we really need to know how the universe was created? Is it necessary to think through this idea in order to live a full and happy life? He wanted to simplify our approach to the world so that we do not get caught up in such large unsolvable, unknowable problems.

Which brings me to my most important point: conspiracy.
Continue reading →

Commentary / News / Politics — No Comments
14
Sep 10

Dis-illusioned Beck

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Girolamo Savonarola: Beck’s Old World counterpart (Image source: Wikicommons)

Without intending to do so, this is my belated response to the 9/11 anniversary. Even though what follows doesn’t address the event explicitly, no doubt it is the background of the current rise in rightwing fanaticism. Anyhow…

Alternet has a great thought piece about the Glenn Beck phenomena. In particular the author does an excellent job of comparing Beck’s popularity with the shenanigans of the film Network‘s Howard Beale (based on Beck’s own claim that his role model is indeed Beale). Granted, I’m far more sympathetic to Beale’s character than I am with Beck. But the parallels between Network‘s uncanny prediction of the future of news (it was made in 1976), in particular its prescient vision of what would become Fox News, makes the comparison necessary and appropriate. It has certainly become on odd time when the fake news is real (Daily Show, Colbert Report) and the real news is fake (Fox and other cable news).

Admittedly, it has been hard for me to grasp how a completely nonsensical character like Beck could come across to his fans as a serious journalist. In a way, he’s a perfect empty signifier for television. He can use the professorial signs of serious research through his deployment of a blackboard and sophisticated-looking diagrams, and he commands all the tricks that TV offers as a medium of emotional engagement. Whereas in the past you’d find such rants in conspiracy laden books, like Gary Allen’s None Dare Call It Conspiracy, or on radio (which remains a popular medium for right wing anger), TV is a “cool” medium (to put it in McLuhan’s terms) that engages more senses and therefor has a far more powerful effect. What Fox is doing is mainstreaming John Birch Society antics for its own cynical business interests, but might find itself in trouble when their clown-lead movement takes over government and starts outlawing the kind of liberal lifestyle enjoyed by the rich New Yorkers who staff and operate conservative corporate media. For a hint of what this kind of world might look like, I suggest reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
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4
Jul 10

Postironic stress disorder

One of my earliest posts on this blog was about Tila Tequila, whose initial claim to fame was being the most “friended” member of MySpace. My initial shock was her insistence that success was due to her punk rock DIY approach to celebrity. Anyone who knows anything about punk (that is, from direct experience), celebrity and punk are like BP oil swirling in the Gulf of Mexico. Unless, of course, you are geniuses like the Sex Pistols (and Malcolm McLarin), who exploited the media as a kind of guerrilla warfare. Now that John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten) self-parodies on reality TV shows (I still love the guy– you’ve got to see Filth and and the Fury for some insights into his character), it seems like the media has won the war.

Enter Lady Gaga. As Nancy Bauer writes in her NYTime philosophy blog post, Lady Power,

“Gaga wants us to understand her self-presentation as a kind of deconstruction of femininity, not to mention celebrity. As she told Ann Powers, ‘Me embodying the position that I’m analyzing is the very thing that makes it so powerful.’ Of course, the more successful the embodiment, the less obvious the analytic part is. And since Gaga herself literally embodies the norms that she claims to be putting pressure on (she’s pretty, she’s thin, she’s well-proportioned), the message, even when it comes through, is not exactly stable. It’s easy to construe Gaga as suggesting that frank self-objectification is a form of real power.”

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15
Mar 10

Hurt Locker: The technologically insulated American at war (and cinema)

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After hearing so much about Hurt Locker and its Best Picture award (I’ve always been intrigued by war movies), I thought I’d give it a whirl. For starters, this ain’t Apocalypse Now! or Full Metal Jacket, let alone even close to some of the better, more complex war films that delve into the distorted and demented politics of its leaders. In particular I’m thinking of Major Dundee by Sam Peckinpah, which is set during the so-called Indian Wars. Hurt Locker also lacks the psychological nuance of something like Terrence Malick’s brilliant The Thin Red Line.

Hurt Locker is neither adventurous nor cutting edge, and not much better stylistically than a TV show like CSI. Ultimately it’s a really boring movie with bad dialogue that poorly fleshes out a series of tension and release sequences that draw on music video and video game aesthetics. It is full of cliches about poor American soldiers who cannot make sense of a chaotic environment not of their choosing as they enter the labyrinth of a surreal war landscape populated by an alien Other. Framed as an “American tragedy,” once again an invaded country becomes a purification drama for Hollywood’s liberal consciousness.

So I hope no one thinks Hurt Locker is a serious anti-war movie, because if this is what passes these days as war criticism, then the depoliticization of Iraq has truly succeeded to permeate the pop culture landscape.

Just compare, for example, the Americans–self-identified as “USA friendlies”– versus the zero-dimensional Iraqis who seem to have no history or personality beyond the usual tropes and stereotypes (see my list below). The only insight into how the other side thinks comes from an Iraqi professor who is allowed three lines of dialogue, one being that he is pleased to have the CIA in his home. Moreover, the film forces you to sympathize with the military every time they kill Iraqis. Army recruiters most love that.

The only hint of the film’s consciousness comes at the end of the movie. We transition from a closing shot in Iraq with kids throwing stones at the Americans to the returning soldier’s existential crisis at home when he faces a wall of cereal in a market– recalling the clash’s prescient protest song, “Lost in the Supermarket.” In the end, cleaning rain gutters is not as thrilling as war, so this middle class soldier–a cypher for our system– has to go back to Iraq because now he is addicted to the adrenaline of war–like our consumer economy. The last shot has him transformed as a technologically shielded man who lurches suicidally towards another bomb. Like our militarized system, he has lost his humanity.

Though the last shot is a pretty strong image, compare it to some of the dialog when two soldiers complain about the war. Soldier 1: “How do you deal with it?” Soldier 2: “I just don’t think about it.” Wow, heavy shit.

If “I fucking hate this place” and “Let’s get out of this fucking desert” are the strongest statements the film’s characters can make, then Hollywood is as spineless and addicted to the military as the Democrats. Because in the end, though Hollywood cast a guilt vote to make this their best picture, in the film industry the war machine will continue to march unabated as a primary partner in the development of animation and other block-buster special effects technology to be prototyped for war training VR.

Ultimately I concur with Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles (a much better and more introspective book/picture than Hurt Locker), who wrote that there is no such thing as an anti-war movie:

“There is talk that many films are antiwar, that the message is war is inhumane and look what happens when you train young American men to fight and kill, they turn their fighting and killing everywhere, they ignore their targets and desecrate the entire country, shooting fully automatic, forgetting they were trained to aim. But actually, Vietnam War films are all pro-war, no matter what the supposed message, what Kubrick or Coppola or Stone intended… [soldiers] watch the same films and are excited by them, because the magic brutality of the films celebrate the terrible and despicable beauty of their fighting skills. Fight, rape, war, pillage, burn. Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man; with film you are stroking his cock, tickling his balls with the pink feather of history, getting him ready for his real first fuck. It doesn’t matter how many Mr. and Mrs. Johnsons are antiwar—the actual killers who know how to use the weapons are not.” (pp. 6-7)

It seems to me that the film’s Best Picture award is driven by a sense of shame about the war– a need to feel and say something about it, but even in the Obama years no one (that is, anyone in a position of power) is willing to stand up and call the Iraq war for what it is: a crime against humanity. So when a dramatic film can make this case, then it will certainly get my vote. But I’m not holding out hope. At least not for it to be made by Hollywood.

Here is a quick an dirty laundry list of unoriginal war film tropes from Hurt Locker:

Inane dialogue as indication that somewhat will die (also used in horror films).
Kid Iraqi (“Beckham”–yawn) who learns American black slang (and sells DVDs) as symbol of the hybridized, Utopian future of Iraq.
Zero-dimensional Iraqis except as The Horrible Evil Enemy Without Any Consciousness (unlike the technocratic warriors of America who kill with high technology but also have feelings of guilt).
A cameo of the sadistic yahoo commander (we only get a momentary glimpse of him).
War-stressed, PTSD soldier who doesn’t have the capacity (or stomach) to “hold it in,” and of course is the one character who gets wounded right before he is supposed to finish his tour.
Veteran perverted by horrors of war harbors an idiosyncratic secret obsession.
Strange and creepy intellectual analyst whose healing powers are over-shadowed by his naivety and lack of warrior purification (and of course is killed).
Depersonalized death/massacre of the other/enemy.
Spectacularized violence as cleansing ritual for do-gooder Americans.

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22
Feb 10

Doctors-Without-Border

I want to preface my comments by saying that I support the work of Doctors without Borders, and they were the first organization I donated to after the earthquake in Haiti. With that said, I was struck by the above poster I received in my email. It advertises a documentary about their work that will screen worldwide (click her for locations and more information). At first I thought it was just cheeky sales pitch for donations, framing the work of the organization within the narrative structure of an action film. The image reminded me a little of the Constant Gardener, in which Africa becomes the backdrop for purification of the white man’s soul (as is the case of the Western genre of film).
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8
Feb 10

Super Bowl 2010: Meme police

This year’s slate of Super Bowl ads indicate two trends: 1) a continued lack of imagination among the highest paid “creatives” in the world, and 2) a backlash against environmental activism. These Super Bowl ads were decidedly conservative by recycling standard demographic tropes to shore up the shrinking ego of the persecuted male species. This has been the long-standing approach of torch-bearer Bud Light, which perfected the art of celebrating the isolated, addicted male in defiance of the over-bearing power of women and community. What is new this year is transmuting this “abusive authority” into the guise of ecological consciousness.

Case study number one is the “Green Police” ads by Audio, which couches its anti-PC message in ironic humor, thereby softening the seriousness of its subtext. It confirms the fears that environmental regulation will result in a police state, and turns anyone who cares about the environment into a potential fascist. While we may laugh at such cartoony fears (it’s only a joke, right?), the Rush Limbaugh crowd takes them very seriously.

(It’s not an illegitimate protest. From an eco-justice point of view, the threat of global regulations forced upon local populations is real, but in the latter case the concern is that corporate interests will hijack environmental rhetoric in the service of obliterating local autonomy in the same way that trade liberalization promoted by the WTO has done.)

Here Audi defends the rich white male’s perceived loss of autonomy and his right to be a jerk. My particular peeve against Audi is based on personal experience in Europe where Audi drivers across the board are the most arrogant and dangerous exemplars of the tragedy of commons (for example, watch this ad). On highways one must be in constant alert of Audis rushing at jet fighter speed, lest your leisurely Sunday afternoon drive through the Tuscan countryside ends in a pile of crushed steel, bones and shattered glass.

The paranoia exhibited by Audi plays into the general meme that government regulation of corporate abuses will translate into socialist totalitarianism. Say “Green Police” ten times fast and you may end up with “Greenpeace.”

Call this a backlash shot across the bough of environmental activism. Green consciousness becomes the work of thought police.

You can see more “Green Police” ads and PSAs here.

Case study number two comes from Bud Lite, which (yawn) sticks to its failsafe storyline. In it Bud Lite’s primary target audience (those possessed by an inner 13-year-old “mook“) must retreat to their boys-only (stripper exception clause allowed) playhouse to take cover from moralistic authorities (women) who condemn their innocent behavior. But now the right to secrecy, addiction and misogyny is threatened by ecological activism. In this ad, rather than a house being built of recycled beer cans (which excites a young female foil), its owners have constructed a living refrigerator, without realizing, however, that symbolically it’s also a morgue.

Case Study number three is the Budweiser bridge. The only thing surprising about this ad is how it blatantly demeans humans as mere slaves to their corporate overlord. In this case, people are willing to let the truck (a symbolic container of the Budweiser corporate brand) drive over their backs. So while the previous ads play into people’s fears of losing individual freedom to ethical constraints, here people voluntarily become the servomechanism of corporate power and control. How’s that for ironic Super Bowl humor!

Bonus footage: Go here to see a hilarious Daily Show deconstruction of Super Bowl ads from 2004.

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24
Dec 09

Scaling down

Scaling-Down

Photo by me

As we watched the events unfold at Copenhagen, many of us felt powerless to infuse wisdom into the process. It seems as if the globe’s political leaders cannot transcend their own momentum, and remain stuck in a reality that defines everything in the context of numbers. One thing that Jacques Ellus points out in The Technological Society is that a consequence of the technological mindset is establishing a set of perimeters on how to think about and categorize the world, and to make taboo human scaled relationships that result from organic processes.

Consequently, this year the theme that keeps knocking me over is to scale down. In my work and professional/activist ambitions I have felt the need, like many of us, to change the world as quickly as possible. The task often feels existential and too massive to contain– our system seems like giant robots trouncing the earth and often I feel like a Lilliputan trying to pin it down.

As a colleague reminds me, complexity theory shows that all system change happens at a local level. Perhaps in our desire to see a massive global political shift many of us have disregarded another option, which is to scale down our thoughts to the local level, and to work within the means that we have available to us. For me that translates to living a certain kind of low impact lifestyle, and also re-dedicating my work in the classroom where I have a lot of one-on-one contact with the next prototype of human, our youth. And of course spending more time with my family.

My sustainability education mentor, Pramod Prajoli, has the following guidelines for moving into the next phase of transformation:

1) critique to regeneration

2) ideologies to ideas

3) discourse to design

4) global thinking to local thinking

Some ideas I have for the coming year include editing a textbook for media educators that incorporates a sustainable framework, and to develop a green curriculum that can be used as part of media literacy work.

Meanwhile, I want to rededicate myself to eating well, relaxing more, taking it a bit slower and remembering to breath. Now is not the time to panic, but to become grounded and rooted again in our life work.

I’ll close with these thoughts from Tricycle Magazine:

Caring for Each Other

The Buddha has suggested that we are without a mother and father to take care of things for us. Mother Earth, once thought to be all-forgiving and capable of absorbing any abuse we could heap upon her, is not the infinitely benevolent resource we thought she was. As we learn of our own mothers at a certain point of maturity, Mother Earth can and does get worn down by giving and forgiving in the face of our persistent demands. And our Father who is in heaven, though perhaps immensely old and lord over a host of devas (as the Buddhists view him), is nevertheless subject to the laws of karma and is not sufficiently omnipotent to make it all work out for us in the end.

If we do not care for one another, who else will care for us? Who among us has the right to say of another, “He is of no use to us?” For better or worse, whether we like it or not, we are all in this together. Learning how to care for one another is a central part of the path and of the practice.

- Andrew Olendzki, Ph.D., “Medicine for the World,” from the Summer 2008 Tricycle. Read the complete article.

Commentary / Ecology / News — No Comments
19
Dec 09

Losing Hopenhagen?

Former Vikings, contemporary Danish are better known now for windmills, bicycles and excellent rain gear. Like many of the social democracies of Europe’s northern frontier, to some the Danes are actually Europe’s modern hippies, which they hoped to leverage with the “Hopenhagen” brand. History, it was hoped, would show that Copenhagen and its COP-15 UN Climate Change conference had saved Earth. But just as the witch is the shadow of our abandoned body, the transnational police state that now follows global leaders around the planet is the shadow of our abandoned democracy. When it comes to the global family, would we tolerate thugs at the Thanksgiving table clobbering the kids whenever they protest eating factory farmed turkey? Even a feel good slogan like Hopenhagen can’t shake off the reality of global climate negotiators and their roving police state, because a real solution ultimately means the dismantling of the current imperial system of carbon-based economics.

Ostensibly led by the United States, it appears that “Hopenhegan“– like Obama’s “hope” campaign–was a smiley-faced rouse to rebrand neoliberalism. For the conference organizers it’s apparent that the initial plan would be photo ops outside, while inside the only legally binding climate agreement in existence– Kyoto– would be dismantled, and the air would be subdivided into commodities that can be bought and sold on a global cap and trade market exchange. Whoever dreamed up the idea that pollution should be commodified was on the same genius page as those who thought up private prisons and subcontracted war, thereby creating new business opportunities that can only be fueled by more pollution, criminalization and violent conflict. You have to hand it to these guys for the brilliant ways they have figured out how to capitalize on misery.

Case in point. One of Hopenhegan’s “partners” is DuPont, who claims on the Hopenhegan official Website that they have always been good ecologists (“DuPont has long been a leader in the area of climate change, calling for policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a way that’s both environmentally effective and economically sustainable.”). Of course they have, in particular the kind of sustainability of the Agent Orange and napalm variety. And then there is “water neutral” CocaCola, whose Indian production facilities have fouled and devastated community water sources all over the subcontinent. Or take the branding of climate change news by Chevron (see screen grab above) through its strategic ad placement on Website news linking economic development with carbon reduction. I could go on.

I’ve never been a fan of hope anyways. In my spiritual work I learned long ago that visualizing change and a brighter future is not facilitated by hope. Hope is a desire that can never be fulfilled; it is a kind of cosmic panhandling. It is far better to intend, to place a specific goal into the future and to work for it, rather than expect a handout from the overlords of destiny. You can be sure that Goldman Sachs and the military industrial complex do not hope for anything. They strategize, organize and seize opportunities. How is it that, for example, the hidden agenda of the Copenhagen talks is that 20% of the global population gets to control 60% of the atmosphere, as Lumumba Di-Aping Chair of G-77 has pointed out? This is what global capital is planning for. As Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International, stated, “The bottom line is we have global economic apartheid and essentially what we are seeing here is a sort of climate apartheid.”

Meanwhile, the rest of us can either just hope that the Empire decides deescalate, as Copenhagen police finally did during one protest, or to organize as many are now doing. Small island nations, indebted countries and citizen groups have disrupted and stopped what would have been a global disaster of an agreement (what was announced yesterday is not bindiing). We have to hand it to civil society for frustrating the World System’s bogus consensus– for now. I suspect it is a bit of what Paul Hawken talks about in Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming– disparate and diverse groups working locally, but collectively form the greatest movement in human history. It may be getting its sea legs now, as the contradictions of Copenhagen are too stark to bear.

The US media, unfortunately, continues to provide a disservice to the public by not covering the issue from an egalitarian point of view. But that is to be expected. Any student of political economy would predict this kind of coverage. Not surprisingly, in my international culture and media courses, it is only the Americans who are clueless about climate change. PR has certainly earned its top dollar for confusing the issue. So it is a legitimate concern that Obama’s hands are tied back at home. No doubt, if Congress can’t pass a decent, even totally watered down, health care bill, it will surely fail at supporting any meaningful climate treaty.

Paying for carbon reduction is not charity. It’s a moral obligation. We (that is, those of us born in the global economic “core”) have produced 60% of the historical CO2 in the air right now. Whatever treaty the rich countries of the world want to push is going to kill millions of people because by settling on a 2 degree increase in global temperatures it is surely signing a death warrant for the colonized world. The word from African activists is that $10 billion a year is only enough to buy coffins. Never before have the contradictions of the system been so open and transparent. Whereas in the past we could justify the abstraction of land ownership and property because it was fixed and concrete, air is ephemeral and obviously belongs to all equally. The concept of owning and selling it should be too absurd to past muster. But then again, we also take a lot of absurdities for granted.

This is our endgame. Either we are a global family with real democracy, or illegitimate Empire that will continue to treat the world as a chess set. We already know the agenda of one set of players, what is ours?

* * *

There are many great posts out there processing the situation. I suggest starting with Adrian J. Ivakhiv’s blog post at Indications. It will lead you do many other excellent links, too many for my tattered mind to grapple with right now.

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21
Oct 09

Fox News Chyron Highlights 2012 Apocalypse Fears

“Most of that “many,” of course, are the ancient Mayans, who had the good sense to die out as a culture before any of the real apocalyptic pain was visited upon the earth.”

Look, sorry to say this, but the majority who are obsessed with 2012 are non-Mayan (as a story on HoffPost mentioned already). And I think contemporary Mayans would object to this characterization that they died out. What they did do is reorganize. Mayans are alive and well throughout Central America and Mexico, their culture is quite alive and in may ways much stronger than ours.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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6
Sep 09

Madness, civilization and media

Like most mediated Americans, I’m fascinated by the Jaycee Dugard story. To recap briefly, at 11 years old she was abducted by a drug-crazed rapist/pedephile who claims to be a messenger from God. He’s deluded to the point that he believes he has invented a machine which can channel the voice of God. Meanwhile he confines his victim in a compound while fathering two children with her. He has shielded her from the reality beyond the fence, but teaches her how to become a computer graphics expert. We have yet to learn the further horrors perpetrated by the abductor, Phillip Garrido.

Now, I don’t mean to be flip or to denigrate the great tragedy of this incident. But I see in media coverage some persistent tropes and larger issues that warrant investigation. First, Americans are particularly fascinated with abductions. My Italian partner was horrified and fascinated by the number of abduction posters around the US, in particular when you enter Wal-Mart. Obviously it’s a huge and significant phenomena, and a sign of our collective madness.

Beyond the countless sad stories of ruined life, abductions are also part of a larger cultural mythology. From the earliest days of cinema to the X-Files, it has been a constant theme. For example, the myth of the baby stealing gypsies repeats itself throughout the history of film. But even before that there was the 19th century genre of Native abduction tales in which young white women were taken from civilization, but safely return after an ordeal with “savages.” Yet the homecoming is always tainted with a bonding and changement resulting from the time of capture. Recent alien abduction stories update and maintain a continuum from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. Somehow through out the pantheon of abductors, civilization remains the stabilizing and normal reference point to cope with the horror of removal and displacement.

Yet, Western civilization is a removal and displacement machine. To quote Andy Warhol, “Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.” This is the story of the past 5,000 years. We have been kidnapped from Earth, but fail to recognize the aberration. Is it fair to say that as hostages to abstract principles that we suffer from collective Stockholm Syndrome, in which we have bonded with an abusing overlord?

Clearly the experience of Jaycee Dugard’s family is quite real, so I don’t want to relegate it to the status of myth. However, is not the story also a model for the history of Western civilization? According to ecopsychologists, and particular Paul Shepard’s book Nature and Madness, we took a turn from a sustainable neolithic culture that did well for hundreds of thousands of years to one dominated by a murdering, misogynistic God. Shepard’s claim is that as a civilization we have been essentially abducted from a nurturing “ontogenesis” with nature– a coming into being through bonding with Mother Earth. Meanwhile the abductor(s)–priests, scientists, teachers, politicians– claim their right to do so because of commands from a monotheistic (and literate!) Lord talking through boxes (books, TVs, radios, computers).

Perhaps the Dugard story has such resonance because deep down inside we all feel like her: our culture, dominated by an abstract forcefield called God/Capitalism, forces us into schools and institutions that separate us from a profound and loving connection with the world. It breeds us to become robotic slaves to an international, abstract monetary system and demands that we never leave the compound, lest the world “out there” derange and make us insane. We’re kept locked up and domesticated through punishment and rewards, entangling us in a violent domestic partnership based on the rule of an abusive patriarch and the threat of human sacrifice.

Don’t believe me? If you are male, recall how as a child that in school if you ever left the black box of acceptable male behavior (patriarcal culture) you were beaten back into the box by your fellow classmates. The culture literally uses violence to keep you from being a whole person. And when violence doesn’t work, then a shitty diet, deformed curriculum and dehumanizing life of corporate enslavement finishes the job, all the while you are promised that at the end of the line is Heaven. Meanwhile we perform human sacrifice through rituals of war that send the future to die in the trenches for the Lords of Freedom, Democracy and the Market. Criminals are electrocuted or injected with poison to reaffirm the authority of our abstract, disembodied Lord of Justice.

So, lifting a page from Orwell’s 1984, we engage in a collective ritual of hate aimed at Phillip Garrido who is called an abhorrent deviant, yet our media system and culture turns a blind eye to the very reality in front of us: that the globalized economy is raping and pillaging the earth in the name of our ever punishing deity and its free market, creating a world that has more slavery than when it was legal. We are pressured to serve the system as serfs at the command of disembodied voices coming from a box, and take as normal the rants of insane men who claim to be authorities of these abstractions.

Again, just to be clear, Garrido is a sick, dangerous man who has destroyed many lives. He deserves his future confinement and punishment. My goal is to simply to look at this case as a teachable moment to reflect upon madness, civilization and media.

Apologies for feeling a bit cynical today. I still love the world.

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30
Jul 09

Is evolution necessary (right now)?

Devo has their take: “De-evolution is real”

Life in the Universe by Prof. Stephen Hawking | Rational Vedanta:

There is no time, to wait for Darwinian evolution, to make us more intelligent, and better natured. But we are now entering a new phase, of what might be called, self designed evolution, in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA.

In “progressive” circles (I use the term progress cautiously because it’s often uncritically deployed in the service of environmental destruction), it’s taken as a given that humanity must evolve in order to survive an impending ecological disaster. Yet, havne’t we had enough progress and evolution to deal with the crisis? After all, humans did quite well for tens of thousands of years but started to slip with the invention of various technologies that we equate with human “progress”: agriculture, writing, electricity, combustion engines, microwave ovens, etc. You look at any book and you see these inventions going along a straight line as if increased information means we are smarter or better and that we are along a linear path of evolution. But is this really the case?

Part of the problem can be found in the extended Stephen Hawing talk quoted above. He equates DNA’s nucleic acids with words in books, as if to say that writing (alphabetic in particular) mirrors nature, or visa versa. But this is contrary to what many scholars have documented (interesting literate metaphor), which is that the phonetic alphabet (our form of writing) actually biases the left brain, and hence is very much out of step with ecological intelligence. Leonard Shlain in the Alphabet and the Goddess suggests that writing supplanted our brain’s evolutionary tools for hunting and killing, while pushing aside the right brain’s capacity for gathering and nurturing. This is a contrarian view of evolution which argues, to paraphrase the great band Devo, we have “devolved” into a particular cognitive bias that is responsible for global chaos.

Hawking says we need external evolution– this would be a similar argument for the “global brain” that so many “evolutionaries” would advocate. But just because we build a brain, does it mean it’s a sane one? I would argue– along with practically any yogi in the world–that we are particularly out of balance with our perfectly adequate biological heritage. What we need is revolvelution– a re-awakening of what is already our evolutionary and natural gift. We don’t need any more gizmos or additional DNA strands to do the trick. We just need ourselves to wake up to what is already there.