Category Archives: culture

There is No Pipeline, Schools are Prisons

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By Ryan Calhoun

Source: Center for a Stateless Society

We are told there is a pipeline in the United States that travels from our school system to our criminal justice system. Correct as the data corroborating the pipeline’s existence may be, it is a flawed way of conceptualizing the issue. There is no pipeline out of schools and into prisons, because schools and prisons in this country are not conceptually separable.

Every child is mandated to receive an education with the threat of reprisal by the judicial system if they fail to. Children are thus coerced into attending a learning center, almost none of which adequately meet the educational needs of children. Some opt for public school “alternatives” like homeschooling or private schools, but the model of education is still generally the same and attendance is vigorously enforced. Through forced schooling, children are largely deprived of the ability to engage with the world and learn by means of play. They must cease the process of seeking fulfillment of genuine desires and begin one of alienation from their natural curiosity.

The consequences are shockingly apparent in a case out of Columbia, South Carolina where a police officer at a public high school physically manhandled a young black girl. The scene: A female student sits passively in her chair while the officer demands she stand. The lead-up to the incident is irrelevant. Insubordination to authority in schools is an inevitability for any child with a mind and drive of her own. For having such a mind and drive of her own (“resisting” in law enforcement-speak) the student was grabbed by the neck, slammed to the ground and dragged across the classroom, all while still partially connected to her desk.

Once again, this is not abnormal behavior. Disobedience is something youth do well and often. The response to disobedience, insubordination, and general independent-streaks at any school usually boils down to authoritative command and punishment. Physical assault on children is not legal in all schools, but it is in 19 states. Each year, over 800 children are assaulted legally and as a matter of policy at their schools. In South Carolina, it is legal to handcuff students for simply being loud.

In addition to the female assault victim in the South Carolina incident, the classmate who filmed the shocking video was also later arrested and held on bail. She was kidnapped for filming what was, by any reasonable standard, child abuse. Why was this allowed to happen? Her charge was “Disturbing school.” Please allow this to fully register. Non-violent, peaceful actions by children are construed as attacks on the supposed civility of school.

This officer’s assault is not an aberration; it is how schools treat students. They have no freedom to leave. Anyone who escapes is treated as a fugitive. They are permitted to go home, but this does not change the striking similarities between prisons and schools. It is now regular for schools to have guards — some are cops hired out and some are the schools’ own security staff. Students are filed along corridors and into rooms in such a way as to surveil and control their flow of activity.

People of color are far more likely to find themselves physically assaulted by staff in schools. They are more likely to receive punishment than their white counterparts for the same behavior, and as a result, they begin to recognize the system’s perception of them as marked criminals. Eventually, many are sent to even more coercive penal environments, where the violence and authoritarianism from the administration only escalates. Many students are lucky enough to avoid the transition from educational to criminal detention centers. But far too many either aren’t able to successfully navigate the educational-police state, or have the deck stacked against them from the outset. Their fate is a sad and unnecessary one.

There is no pipeline from school to prison. Some are just forced to stay in class.

Citations to this article:

Insurrection and Utopia, Part 1: “We are Eating From a Trashcan; This Trashcan is Ideology.”

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By Dr. Bones

Source: Gods and Radicals

It all started innocently enough. A friend asked me a question on facebook:

“How can you advocate anarchic revolution when your political vision is so far in the minority?”

The underlying premise was a good one: In a country of 300+ million, how can you call for the upheaval of society, the breaking of societal and political bonds, when so few would readily identify as Anarchists/Socialists/Communists/Leftists/Anti-Capitalists/What-have-you? It’s a question often thrown at the Left and unfortunately many haven’t fully wrapped their heads around it.

In a way it’s a watermark. For an ideology or political vision to go from outright dismissal and laughter to being asked to provide real world examples of what would be done if it came to pass is a sign of growth; it is a signal, an omen, that the winds are beginning to blow in our favor and many want to know what might lie ahead. It’s one thing to talk about “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need” but it’s quite another to discuss how restaurants would be run democratically and without profit or what exactly people might “do” on a day to day level in a classless, stateless society.

Still, the question is not an easy one. We could argue that it is the one question that has always plagued and nagged the Left: “Well that’s all good and well, but how do you plan to achieve this? How does such a world become born?” Staunch Marxists rely on a religious belief in the inevitable procession of history, Syndicalists will rail about the need for increased unionization, firebrand Neo-Bolsheviks plot to simply take power and liquidate class enemies, while the newly minted faux-left “Democratic Socialists” will hem-and-haw about passing enough laws to magically change the balance of power.

All of these options present difficult problems. History has been shown to be anything but inevitable (every year since 1914 has been “Late Capitalism”), a worker-owned McDonalds is still a site of exploitation, nobody ever bothers to explain just where all these people ready to kill for the Revolution are to come from, and the ludicrous doctrine of the Sandernistas that the wealthy and powerful will simply submit to higher taxes and the rule of law is so preposterous it’s only response should be derisive laughter.

So, where are we? Where do we go from here? How are we to change the world?

I start first with a question: Whose world?

You Can’t Teach an Old Carrion-Eater New Tricks

Society, technology, language, and culture all bear the birth marks and forms of the ideological underpinnings of the system they emerged from. Marx notes:

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance.

The Ruling Class, whether Capitalist or State Socialist, informs and projects its will and vision onto the rest of society by the sheer nature of being the dominant force in that society. Of course we can see this politically, but Marx notes this extends also into ideas, culture, anything that could be identified as a byproduct of human interaction and thinking.

The iron steel resolve and blatant disregard of human life so typical of the fearsome Bolshevik Commissar was not so much traits born as traits cultivated; ideals taken within the individual and digested. These cultivated traits came directly from the ideological call for early revolutionary Bolsheviks to identify themselves as “hards,” to be tough, to be ruthless and uncompromising in their goals; when they took state power it become propagated on a cultural level. This meme, this political trait, spiraled out and became a creature, a position, a symbolic figure to be adored/feared all onto its own. It transcended its existence as a mere “idea” or feeling about how party members should behave.

Uber, the trendy internet-based taxi service, could have just as easily manifested into the world as a collectively owned, worker-managed co-op. The internet platform itself is not that revolutionary, the people and tools to create the business were there all along and yet….it did not. Instead Uber emerged and was formed through an ideological lens that made sense to the Ruling Class and by a CEO who’s practically a poster boy for modern capitalism:

“Let’s consider how Kalanick treated his Uber taxi drivers in New York. When he was trying to convince them to break the law to boost Uber’s footprint in the city, Kalanick offered yellow cab drivers free iPhones and promised to “take care of” any legal problems they encountered with the TLC. A few short months later, when the service was forced to close, those same drivers received a message to come to Uber HQ. Reports the Verge ‘Multiple drivers said Uber called them into headquarters, claiming they needed to come by in order to get paid and would get a cash bonus for showing up. When the cabbies came in, Uber surprised them by asking for the device back, informing them that taxi service was no longer available in New York.’”

This is how Uber is evolving, this is how the entire concept other companies will build off is evolving: through actions committed under the dictate and logic of a particular ideology. Taken as gospel or rejected as too harsh new companies will only differ themselves in shades from this first “business plan” and mold their own social and economic arrangements within this ideological parameter. Even the technologies, once thought to be “pure” of politics develop along political lines.

“In an even stronger sense, many technologies can be said to possess inherent political qualities, whereby a given technical system by itself requires or at least strongly encourages specific patterns of human relationships. Winner (1985, 29–37) suggests that a nuclear weapon by its very existence demands the introduction of a centralized, rigidly hierarchical chain of command to regulate who may come anywhere near it, under what conditions, and for what purposes. It would simply be insane to do otherwise. More mundanely, in the daily infrastructures of our large-scale economies — from railroads and oil refineries to cash crops and microchips — centralization and hierarchical management are vastly more efficient for operation, production, and maintenance. Thus the creation and maintenance of certain social conditions can happen in the technological system’s immediate operating environment as well as in society at large.”

What’s interesting is the feedback loop this creates: technology is warped and shaped by the society(and thus dominant ideology), while at the same time the society becomes molded by the technology.

“As technologies are being built and put into use, significant alterations in patterns of human activity and human institutions are already taking place … the construction of a technical system that involves human beings as operating parts brings a reconstruction of social roles and relationships. Often this is a result of the new system’s own operating requirements: it simply will not work unless human behavior changes to suit its form and process. Hence, the very act of using the kinds of machines, techniques and systems available to us generates patterns of activities and expectations that soon become “second nature.”…

Winner gives several examples of technologies employed with intention to dominate, including post-1848 Parisian thoroughfares built to disable urban guerrillas, pneumatic iron molders introduced to break skilled workers’ unions in Chicago, and a segregationist policy of low highway overpasses in 1950s Long Island, which deliberately made rich, white Jones Beach inaccessible by bus, effectively closing it off to the poor. In all these cases, although the design was politically intentional, we can see that the technical arrangements determine social results in a way that logically and temporally precedes their actual deployment. There are predictable social consequences to deploying a given technology or set of technologies.”

In effect we our trapped in a web: We exist in a world not only molded and shaped by a Hierarchical and Capitalist mentality, but the very tools we use including our social selves maintain and reinforce this artifice. The ideology molds the world which molds the people which molds the technology which molds the world which molds the people, etc, etc, etc. As Slajov Zizek points out even those who wish to rebel against the system seem doomed(as if by design?) to remain within it:

“If, today, one follows a direct call to act, this act will not be performed in an empty space — it will be an act WITHIN the hegemonic ideological coordinates: those who ‘really want to do something to help people’ get involved in (undoubtedly honorable) exploits like Medecins sans frontiere, Greenpeace, feminist and anti-racist campaigns, which are all not only tolerated, but even supported by the media, even if they seemingly enter the economic territory (say, denouncing and boycotting companies which do not respect ecological conditions or which use child labor) — they are tolerated and supported as long as they do not get too close to a certain limit. This kind of activity provides the perfect example of interpassivity: of doing things not to achieve something, but to PREVENT from something really happening, really changing.”

Even if State power is seized, if the old masters are cast out, the very throne itself acts like a cursed object and corrupts those that sought to destroy it. People who fought for the worker’s emancipation end up crushing strikes, Greens end up debating just how much depleted uranium to bury underground and how much to fire out of tanks, anti-austerity Leftists end up dispatching riot police to break up protests, the list goes on and on throughout history. The simple truth is you can take the most noble pauper and make him a king, and he may be a great king, but he must still maintain certain conditions(however unjust) by simply being king. The more he becomes attached to this position the more “pragmatism” takes over, excusing acts once thought unthinkable in the name keeping the current conditions going if only to “continue to do good things.” Hugo Chavez and Castro can speak all day of “people’s liberation” but the fact is people aren’t liberated if simply holding a different opinion is so threatening to your revolution they have to be jailed. And thus the throne lives on. While the Kings may change shape or party color the throne of the State and Capital continue to exist, continue to propagate exploitative and domineering cultural memes, social conditions, and technological apparatus.

But there is hope, even on the hinterlands of the oh-so-popular activism of today, in that seemingly bizarre behavior the State displays when people, protests, and organizations are met with overwhelming force.  Why can millions march up and down streets freely “as long as they do not get close to a certain limit” of behavior? What is this Hedge, this boundary we must cross? What is this line so jealously guarded?

Push it to the Limit

Remember the Cuban Missile crises? Where the big bad Soviet Union brought us within an inch to war, ready to point nuclear warheads stationed in Cuba right at us? And how it was only through tough diplomacy and American bravado that we got them to turn around? No? Good, because it didn’t happen like that at all. The Soviets, arming an ally after a recent American-backed invasion, made the deal, not us: Remove the missiles stationed in Turkey(a country that shared a border with the USSR) pointed at Moscow and they would do the same. Kennedy liked the deal and took it. This brought horror to the Military-Industrial establishment; they saw it as backing down to the Soviets. Remember that ideology bit? They didn’t see it as two individuals avoiding nuclear war; their ideological lens would not permit them to. They instead saw it in a hierarchical, dominating dialectic: we had been submissive towards another power. But the Soviets didn’t see it that way, and neither did much of the world, and therein lay the true danger: a new way of thinking, a shift in vision had been displayed and put into practice. And this would not stand.

Others have covered just how against the grain Kennedy went, and how often those who went against him howled for war. I leave the fact that one of those two combatants is dead under your feet for you to play with and ponder. I could mention that right when Nobel Laureate Martin Luther King started talking about “economic justice” and planned on occupying DC until the Vietnam war was ended he too ended up dead. Interestingly enough his family won a wrongful death suit(full court transcripts available) alleging the government killed him. But I’ll instead stick with “accepted” facts like the long history of COINTELPRO, an FBI program specializing in infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations. And this wasn’t a kids games either.

“Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.

Psychological warfare: The FBI and police used myriad “dirty tricks” to undermine progressive movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists. They used bad-jacketing to create suspicion about targeted activists, sometimes with lethal consequences.

Legal harassment: The FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, “investigative” interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.

Illegal force: The FBI conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations. The object was to frighten or eliminate dissidents and disrupt their movements….

The FBI also conspired with the police departments of many U.S. cities (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago) to encourage repeated raids on Black Panther homes—often with little or no evidence of violations of federal, state, or local laws—which resulted directly in the police killing many members of the Black Panther Party…In order to eliminate black militant leaders whom they considered dangerous, the FBI is believed to have worked with local police departments to target specific individuals, accuse them of crimes they did not commit, suppress exculpatory evidence and falsely incarcerate them.”

Anyone who thinks this has ended is sorely mistaken. Really, really mistaken.

“Participants were tasked to “identify those who were ‘problem-solvers’ and those who were ‘problem-causers,’ and the rest of the population whom would be the target of the information operations to move their Center of Gravity toward that set of viewpoints and values which was the ‘desired end-state’ of the military’s strategy.”

Let me translate that for you: “We are actively studying political movements, identifying people whom might actually change things and are using propaganda techniques to change the conversations they have as well as they views they hold to better suit the military’s domestic strategy.” Let that one sink in.

Truth be told we may never fully know how deep the rabbit hole goes. But there is a unifying factor here: the State clamps down hard whenever the ongoing narrative, the ideology itself is shown not to be the only one. They’re afraid of ideas, because these things are what sparks action. The greatest threat to the system isn’t just learning things aren’t what they appear to be, but beginning to imagine a world where things are different. If something is outside the “parameters of acceptance” for the dominant ideology it presupposes that there are limitations to the system; if there are limitations to the system it can become old, worn out, made useless, and ultimately replaced.

So the Ruling Class will violently defend it’s doctrines at all costs. Can we beat such an invincible enemy, an enemy whose literally shaped us all our lives?  How can we achieve that? Can we ever free ourselves and stop eating out of the trashcan of Capitalist Ideology?

Follow me down a rabbit hole of our own making, lets…article6

 

Dr. Bones is an 8 year practitioner of the Southern occult tradition known as Conjure, Rootwork, and Hoodoo. A skilled card reader and Spiritworker, Dr. Bones has undertaken all aspects of the work, both benevolent and malefic. Politically he holds the Anarchist line that “Individuality can only flourish where equality of access to the conditions of existence is the social reality. This equality of access is Communism.” He resides in the insane State of Florida with his loving wife, a herd of cats, and a house full of spirits.
He can be reached through facebook and at drbones@gmail.com

Peter Levenda Podcast Roundup

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Peter Levenda is best known as the author of the Sinister Forces series, a seminal trilogy on the occult history of the United States. He’s also the alleged author of the Simon Necronomicon. Like Robert Anton Wilson (with a more historical and sociological bent), Levenda is able to draw connections between a wide range of fascinating but seemingly disparate topics and consistently digs up mindblowing information that could leave readers questioning their understanding of reality. Throughout the year he’s been doing a larger than usual number of podcast interviews in part to promote his latest book The Hitler Legacy: The Nazi Cult in Diaspora, How it was Organized, How it was Funded, and Why it remains a Threat to Global Security in the Age of Terrorism. Fans of his writing will likely enjoy all the following podcasts which highlight different aspects of his work. Those new to Levenda might want to start with the Higherside Chats interview which provides an expansive yet concise overview of his research.

12/17/15: The Higherside Chats (Sinister Forces, Occult History and The Nine)

http://thehighersidechats.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/THC-Peter-Levenda-Free.mp3

12/10/15: Project Camelot (Nazi Roots of ISIS)

8/25/15 – 10/27/15: Dave Emory (10 Episodes on the Hitler Legacy)

https://wfmu.org/playlists/DX

8/7/15: Dreamland (w/ Joseph Farrell on the Dark Energies of the Modern World)

http://strieber.streamguys1.com/dreamland_08_07_15fr.mp3

4/18/15: Auticulture (on culture, religion, the occult, and geopolitics among other topics)

http://auticulture.com/podcasts/Levenda.mp3

10 Reasons To Embrace Your Inner Weirdness

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By James McCrae

Source: The Mind Unleashed

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde

High school was hard. Not so much the classes. The classes, at least at my high school, were a breeze. The hard part about high school was navigating the social cliques and doing anything possible, including great leaps of effort and imagination, to not, under any circumstances, do or say anything that would constitute the tragic and unshakable label of being weird. I did my best to look like everyone else, and everyone else did their best to look like me. We were all hiding – with each other and from each other.

Being insecure in high school I can understand. Everyone is still growing into themselves and trying to map out their coordinates on the spectrum of social relationships. High schoolers are allowed to be nervous wrecks, afraid that their own shadow will make fun of them if they trip and fall. But after high school, when we transition into adults, shouldn’t this need for approval go away? My high school years are long gone but everywhere I look the social pressure to conform to the standards and expectations of others remains. Adults too are afraid of looking weird. Should we be?

Throughout history, the great creators and innovators were those who were not afraid to stand out from the crowd and risk being different. The truth is, everyone is different. This should be celebrated, not hidden. Allowing yourself to be weird is good because it means you have stopped judging yourself. And when you stop judging yourself you will stop judging others. And when you stop judging others they will stop judging you. But first you can’t be afraid to be different. You can’t be afraid to be weird.

It’s okay to be weird. Here’s why.

1. There is no such thing as normal.

Everyone is weird and therefore nobody is weird. Personality exists on a spectrum. Some people are loud, others are quiet. Some people are creative, others are analytical. There is no right or wrong way to be. There is no normal; there is only natural. What is natural to me may not be natural to you. Don’t worry about being normal. Find your natural.

2. What you think is weird is really your super power. 

We all have traits that make us different. The truth is that what makes you different is secretly your superpower. If it seems weird, you just haven’t learned how to harness the power yet. Instead of hiding what makes you weird, learn how to use it. When you master your quirks you will find power within them.

3. What makes you weird makes you memorable.

Being normal leads to mediocre results. Nobody pays money to see what is expected. People pay money to see things that are unexpected and captivating. What makes you weird makes you interesting because you have something others do not. People won’t remember the thing you did that everybody does. But they will remember the thing you did that only you can do.

4. The world needs more authenticity.

People are hungry for authenticity and realness. Your weirdness is in high demand because it is true. When you start living as your true self – weirdness and all – you are giving those around you permission to do the same. We all want to be real. But we’re afraid to be the first one. Your honesty and truth have great value to others. We may not say it out loud, but we want you to be honest. We want you to be weird.

5. All great art was made by weird people.

Every great creative achievement – whether in music, art, science or business – was, by definition, different, and required a new way of thinking. This is the creative benefit of being weird. Embracing your weirdness gives you a new perspective. Innovation does not happen within the status quo. Innovation happens when outsiders challenge the status quo with weird ideas.

6. Resisting your weirdness makes you dark.

When we freely express ourselves – even our quirks – we feel better. There will always be people who do not understand or appreciate our differences, but that’s okay. But when we hide our unique characteristics and resist our natural weirdness, we don’t feel good. Our personality becomes dark. Just as a black hole results from the absence of a star, so does the rejection of our inner light result in a dark and inverted projection of self. Your weirdness is part of you. It’s okay to let it shine.

7. Standing out is how you find your tribe.

Many people follow crowds because they don’t want to be lonely. But standing out will not make you lonely. When you break away from the crowd you will find others like you. This is your tribe. Most people never find their tribe because they are afraid of letting go of what is known. But when you embrace your weirdness and stand up for what you believe in, you will find those who have stood up before you, and you will serve as inspiration for those who will stand up next.

8. Every new idea is weird at first.

Even the best ideas, when they are first introduced, seem weird. A new idea is like a biological mutation. At first it doesn’t make sense. But eventually the biological mutation finds a purpose. Ideas are the evolution that pushes society forward. When Henry Ford introduced the world’s first automobile, it seemed weird and unnecessary. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses,” he said. Instead, Ford took a risk on an unpopular idea. It seemed weird at the time, but who could question him now?

9. If you hide your truth you might regret it.

Nobody looks back on life and thinks, “I wish I had tried harder to be like everyone else.” But if you spend your life trying to be like others, instead of being the best version of yourself, chances are you will look back with regret and think, “I wish I had lived without fear of being judged or misunderstood.” In the end, living your truth is all that matters.

10. When you own who you are the world will conform. 

There is power in self-perception. If you see yourself as capable, others will see you as capable. If you see yourself as incapable, others will see you as incapable. When you own your weirdness and claim it as a strength, nobody can judge you. The choice is yours. Would you rather bend your focus to fit the world around you, or bend the world around you with the power of your focus?

“When she transformed into a butterfly, the caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but of her weirdness. They wanted her to change back into what she always had been. But she had wings.” – Dean Jackson

Saturday Matinee: Star Wars Knock-Off Double Feature

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Media hype surrounding the release of the latest Star Wars film is similar to the release of the previous films in the series except for the fact that prior to the release of the first installment, few outside the sci-fi community predicted it’d be such a success. Though it’s too early to tell how much of an enduring cultural impact The Force Awakens will have, in hindsight the impact of A New Hope has been substantial. It definitely raised the bar for effects-laden “event” films and marked a transition point for Hollywood from releasing films with a more gritty pessimistic tone and European-influenced aesthetic of the early and mid seventies to films with larger budgets and more optimistic “retro” sensibilities of the late seventies and beyond.

Star Wars also upped the ante for the potential boon to be had not just for studios but from merchandising partnerships, multimedia spin-offs expanding the franchise universe and countless opportunists attempting to cash in. Kids growing up in the post-Star Wars era had no shortage of Star Wars toys and products to choose from (or Star Wars-like toys and products) which helped boost a generation’s interest in sci-fi, space and technology. On television kids and adults could get their sci-fi fix through such shows as Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Quark, and an anime from 1974 repackaged as Star Blazers for American audiences. Meanwhile Hollywood was diving head-first into the sci-fi/fantasy resurgence with Disney’s The Black Hole, a space-bound James Bond in Moonraker, new versions of Superman, Star Trek and Flash Gordon, Ridley Scott’s Alien, and Jimmy Murakami (When the Wind Blows) and Roger Corman’s Battle Beyond the Stars among others.

Movie producers around the world also jumped on the bandwagon with films as diverse as Os Trapalhões (The Dabblers) from Brazil and Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saved the World), also known as “Turkish Star Wars” due to the filmmaker’s liberal use of Star Wars footage for spliced in effects shots and backdrops. As many horrible examples of this subgenre of world cinema as there are, there’s at least two I’ve found to be charming and enjoyable in their own ways: Message From Space (Japan, 1978) and Starcrash (Italy, 1979). Both feature eclectic casts with hammy performances (eg Vic Morrow and Sonny Chiba in Message From Space and Caroline Munro, Christopher Plummer and David Hasselhoff in Starcrash), both have low-budget yet creative production design, and like Star Wars, they also make a decent attempt at recombining various mythological and cinematic tropes to create new fantasy worlds. Message From Space also had the benefit of having Kinji Fukasaku in charge, the auteur who also directed Black Lizard, Battles Without Honor and Humanity, and Battle Royale.

Message From Space (Full Movie)

Weaponized Hyperreality: Social Engineering Through Corporate State Propaganda and Religion

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By Luther Blissett and J. F. Sebastian of Arkesoul

Perhaps no philosophical concept more aptly describes the current cultural milieu than hyperreality, characterized by wikipedia as “an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced postmodern societies.” The predominance of hyperreality comes at a time when people in power have never had more to conceal, distort and distract the population from while there’s never been more people who have more means and motives to stay distracted. This is evident in many aspects of contemporary life from corporate news narratives shaped by sponsors and “official sources”, increasingly absurd denials of the true state of the economy from (mis)leaders, widespread dependence on pharmaceuticals worsened by direct-to-consumer advertising and a sham drug war, fanatical worship of celebrities, to slavish acquiescence to fads and fashion. But most obvious is the increasing amount of time spent in front of screens whether for work, shopping, social media, education, self-expression, games, web content, or the exponentially growing volume of video entertainment. Though video games and web series are catching up, the primary narrative formats for cultural expression and transmission today are still television and film.

Struggling to retain their cultural/economic status in the face of increased competition while appeasing shareholders of their monolithic multinational corporate owners, large film and television studios are increasingly risk averse. This is glaringly apparent in the output of major studios which are for the most part the media equivalent of comfort food; familiar (formulaic), satisfying (crowd pleasing), full of empty calories (lacking intellectual/emotional complexity or challenging ideas) and generally bland in terms of content and presentation. On television this is commonly displayed through clichéd tropes, characters and situations while films are now more than ever driven by CGI enhanced spectacle. Both rely on repeating what has worked in the past and (for viewers of a certain age) appealing to nostalgia while pandering to current cultural trends.

Of course such strategies overlap, as there’s more than a few television programs that offer Hollywood style spectacle and big budget movies which imitate successful formulas in the form of adaptations, sequels, prequels, reboots, spin-offs, and mockbusters. In fact the majority of Hollywood’s summer blockbuster output is now comprised of such derivative and safe content predominantly in the form of fantasy and science fiction films.

The ideological motives and functions of cinema and other pop culture are manifold, but a major one is control and influence of mass audiences. We now know the US government has been doing it at least since the 1950s. According to a Church Committee investigation detailing Operation Mockingbird in 1976:

“The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.”

More recently, in 1991 the Task Force Report on Greater CIA Openness revealed the CIA “now has relationships with reporters from every major wire service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation,” which enables them to “turn some ‘intelligence failure’ stories into ‘intelligence success’ stories, and has contributed to the accuracy of countless others.” It also revealed that the CIA has “persuaded reporters to postpone, change, hold, or even scrap stories that could have adversely affected national security interests…” (Global Research, Lights, Camera… Covert Action: The Deep Politics of Hollywood)

Government influence of culture factories such as Hollywood through covert infiltration or embedded advisors ensures that the end product reflects the values and behaviors they wish to promote (ie. xenophobia, deference to authority, nationalism, parochialism, narcissism, anti-intellectualism, consumerism, rapaciousness, etc). In some cases, most notably Zero Dark Thirty and United 93,  the goal is to cement an official narrative into the collective consciousness. A more sophisticated method of social engineering via Hollywood is predictive programming; presenting through media societal changes to be implemented by leaders in order to gradually condition the public and reduce resistance to such changes.

Manipulation of public sentiment through mass media also makes sense from a purely corporate perspective. Why wouldn’t media owners gear the ideological content of their products to support the systems they benefit from while screening out more critical messages? Occasional subversive content may get past the gatekeepers if it’s immediately profitable (which it sometimes can be if particularly resonant), can be co-opted in some way that serves the status quo, or if the creative minds behind it are particularly lucky, talented, and/or well connected. Regardless, one could argue uncritical media consumption is a form of pacification through distraction and escapism and all corporate media content are a result of calculating the highest return on investment, which more often than not reflects the culture’s most deeply ingrained values and myths.

This is particularly true for fantasy/sci film films, which have become ubiquitous for a number of reasons including cultural tastes of global demographics, aesthetic trends (eg. hyperreal CG effects for evermore spectacular imagery), impact of changing media technology on the economics of production and distribution, growing awareness of the value of properties belonging to rich fictional universes which can be mined by worldbuilding studio screenwriters, and in many cases, resonance with our increasingly dystopian world. Most fundamental is profitability, especially as sfx technology becomes more advanced and affordable, licensing opportunities increase, and film franchises that come with large and passionate built-in fan bases reduce the need for marketing and practically sell themselves.

Many who grow up immersed in geek culture already have a hyperreal relationship with fantasy and science fiction realms which heightens the nostalgia evoked by the stream of multimedia incarnations and product tie-ins (bolstered by cult-like fan communities). Is it any surprise that fans who’ve extrapolated on the “Jedi” concept from the Star Wars films turned it into a religion? The Jedi cosmology (and similar ones from countless sci-fi/fantasy films) are modeled on mysticism, a philosophical framework which could fill a void for spiritually deprived materialist cultures. For many people, comic book fandom is another safe and entertaining way to explore concepts that might otherwise be too “out there” (perhaps especially among those who share an equally strong interest in materialist science). At the same time, because of the influence of marketing, the greater role of technology in society and changing cultural trends, geek culture has become a larger part of mainstream culture. Combined with celebrity worship, the lure of technology (both on-screen and off), and increasingly omnipotent powers of multinational corporations, modern big budget sci-fi/fantasy films represent a confluence of potent socioreligious crosscurrents.

Recent works such as Christopher Knowles’s Our Gods Wear Spandex and Grant Morrison’s Supergods examine to an extent superheroes as modern mythological archetypes. Bill Moyer’s The Power of Myth explored how Joseph Campbell’s theory of the monomyth (or hero’s journey) influenced and shaped the Star Wars films (which itself has influenced myriad blockbusters since). In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Campbell identified a story template used in almost all pre-modern cultures across the globe which goes something like this:

A reluctant “chosen one” in an ordinary world receives a call to adventure and warning of a danger that must be confronted. With the training and wisdom of a mentor the hero crosses the threshold into the unknown. Companions acquired along the way assist in overcoming a series of challenges and temptations until reaching the depth of their fears and resultant apotheosis or rebirth. This empowers them to achieve their goal and return triumphant to an admiring family/community/nation etc.

It’s not hard to see the attraction of narratives such as this which tap into primal emotional needs and can be found in a wide range of religious narratives such as the lives of Buddha, Christ, Muhammad and Rama among others. It also serves as a metaphor for spiritual/psychological journeys through life.

In a recent post on his Secret Sun blog, Christopher Knowles states “Myths grow out of times of crisis and upheaval, in one way or another. The current vogue for superheroes is a symptom of the powerlessness felt by a populace under assault by the realities of Globalist social engineering, war-making and economic redundancy.” I would add that myths can also be exploited to function as part of a cultural assault to perpetuate Globalist agendas. Authoritarians are all too eager to depict themselves as monomythic demigod saviors and/or those serving them as self-sacrificing rugged individualist heroes fulfilling their grand destinies.

In the same piece, Knowles concludes: “But myths do die. They aren’t immortal. The next war or wars may in fact sweep away the myths of the 20th Century entirely. The wars may send people reaching back to far older myths as civil wars can rekindle the bonfires of identity, sending people back to the myths of ancestors. This has always emerged in times of close conflict, particularly in conflicts seen as struggles against occupying powers.”

If he’s correct, there may be some hope for our culture to reclaim myths as a means of understanding reality rather than serve as a trapdoor to fabricated hyperreality. The problem is that there is a gap that needs “filling in” between reality and hyperreality. One of the many consequences of postmodernism is the complete blurring of the line between what is real and what is not. A sort of apathy has kicked in within the human psyche given that crushing truths, not easily discernable in the past, are all out there in the raw. Religious and scientific truths once held sacred can be easily discarded. Morality is a rare hobby in a generation both cynical and powerless to discern reality. This is as well due to globalism and technology, which serve as hubs for information retrieval that wasn’t readily available. Humanity has developed thicker skin, while at the same time widened the existential void left by a reality that is less and less objectifiable. Opinion makers are everywhere, information is ubiquitous, and the species is obsessed with being entertained while answers are readily manufactured in the shape of capital fetishes, all the while ideology that purportedly made a call for a “better and different” world, such as Marxism and psychoanalysis, has become both a haunting spectre and an empty promise.

In the past these formulae failed. In the future they seem more and more unlikely. Capitalism has adapted itself to revolutionary ideology. It has generated even more power from it, defusing the motivation for change and twisting the definition of revolution, all the while turning such concepts into brands. The irony. There is call for a “new objectivism”, however. A bet for a system reboot, in which categorical truths can be retrieved and argued from. The analogy is this: keeping what works and dismissing what doesn’t. Sounds like a simple and logical plan. The problem is that those who get to define what works and what doesn’t will be the powerful, uncanny minority. This is their game, and we have cynically accepted it. It is the way it is. Unless we can evolve from reality to hyperreality, and from hyperreality back into reality, as a species that learns, adapts, understands how high the stakes really are, and moves forward as a collective that is conscious and responsible of its flaws, it appears we are doomed. Three scenarios: first, the narrative will continue as is: the majority will continue to be repressed, and will perpetually seek escape by the hand that feeds until lost completely in hyperreality. Technology moves forward, religion condenses into inconvenient myth: we completely “plug in”. Then what? Well, you just have to see Her to see into this future. The second, war extinguishes civilization and winds back the evolutionary clock, think Mad Max, until we reach the first scenario, as if in a loop. The third and most bleak, nuclear war. The species ends.

What we learn from this exercise is that we are at the apex. This is it. The crushing truth of existence is firmly on our shoulders. War is unravelling. An ever-shrinking number of brands dominate the world. And an even smaller number of people call the shots. In between reality and hyperreality there is confusion. There is no longer a basis to discern between the two. We are as it were, lost. We need to fill in this gap. We need to dig deeper than ever before for a reason to dissolve our differences. Somehow the dilemma is set: surrender or die. But the crux of the problem can be overridden if we use the knowledge and tools we have to fight for a better, and more responsible alternative.

The Other Dieoffs

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By Chad Hill

Source: The Hipcrime Vocab

Last week I realized that there were a few subtleties left out of my (rather depressing) topic. I argued that America was doing more than just throwing its working class under the bus; it was actively trying to eliminate of them. Meanwhile, the media, especially that tailored to the richest twenty percent of news consumers, is consistently waxing ecstatic on how this is the “best, richest, most peaceful time, ever,” because Facebook, even though most of us Americans are living in communities that are in an advanced state of decay, if not outright collapse.

The point I wanted to make is that the dieoff is happening not only at the end of life as we saw last week, but also at the beginning. By this I mean that it’s simply too expensive to have kids anymore.  Lowered birthrates are a sort of “stealth dieoff” among the lower classes, and the upper ones too.

Now, lowered birthrates is certainly something I can get behind, but I would rather it have come from choice rather than economic necessity. I realize that not everyone is like me, and for some, the desire to breed is unstoppable. The rich are perennially complaining that the poor are having children they can’t afford, a very Anglo-Saxon complaint that goes back several hundred years. Of course, the poor will continue to breed no matter what because a child costs nothing to produce, and if their ancestors hadn’t behaved the same way after all, they wouldn’t be here. The idea that poverty will stop the poor and indigent from breeding has a poor track record, especially with the numbers of poor and indigent consistently rising. All it means is that more children will be born in poverty, and we now know that there are a host of behavioral and epigenetic consequences of that. Most certainly, the fallout from that will once again be placed on individual failure rather than social circumstance.

Scientists Find Alarming Deterioration In DNA Of The Urban Poor (HuffPo)

The number of kids in the US would be shrinking if it weren’t for immigrants. Americans are castigated for having children they can’t afford, with entire communities, especially rural ones, bereft of well-paying jobs. Meanwhile people in these communities see a massive influx immigrants with huge families working in all the blue collar occupations that they used to do. Is it any wonder that anti-immigrant demagoguery is a political winner in decaying Middle America? Corporate America felt they could keep a lid on this situation forever, even as they cynically stoked this reactionary fervor to delegitimize the very idea of the common good to gain tax benefits and hide the stealth takeover of government. Now they cannot control the demon they have unleashed. The nihilistic philosophy purveyed by the Right of every man for himself has reaped a whirlwind that even they can no longer control. It was only a matter of time before someone hijacked it and used it for their own personal ends.

This article is from the British newspaper The Guardian, but is just as relevant to the United States:

These hurdles to the world of adulthood continue to be a great source of sadness and anxiety, and I’m not alone. For swathes of people in their 20s and 30s, who largely thought they would be at least a bit sorted by now, achieving the adult lives they want seems a distant fantasy. Spiralling property prices coupled with the fetishisation of housing as an investment – expressed through buy-to-let properties and often poor rental conditions – means secure housing is off the table for many of us as we continue to subsidise our much richer landlords…The recession, unstable and unreliable unemployment, low pay compounded by a pensions shortfall and an ageing population, have all led to a situation in which many members of my generation feel not only short-changed, but helpless when it comes to building some semblance of a stable family life. While our generational predecessors, the baby boomers, reaped the rewards of free university education and affordable property prices, we have been disproportionately affected by austerity…

Jealousy towards baby boomers is an everyday occurrence. You’ll be sitting in a bar with friends and hear them lament the fact that their parents had bought a house by the time they were 27. .. Generation Y – or millennials, if you must – are still often portrayed as existing in a state of perpetual kidulthood; we’re Peter Pans who never want to grow up. Yet many of us are desperate to do so.

Unaffordable housing and living costs are often portrayed as a “London problem”. “Why not simply move?” detractors say, as though career opportunity, family ties or personal finances are not an issue. Yet I spoke to people in their 20s and 30s from all over the UK, and many felt the same way: that their chances of getting to the point where they are stable enough to settle down and have children are slim to none. Many of them feel great sadness about this, not only because they look to their parents’ generation and see opportunities they’ve never had, but because a gulf is opening within our own generation – between those who can start a family or whose parents can help them get on the property ladder, and those who can’t….

The more people I spoke to, the more apparent it became that this is not just about generational divides, but about class. Interviewees were forever mentioning friends or acquaintances who had been privileged enough to buy, while those from low-income backgrounds lost out.

‘Babies? An impossible dream’: the millennials priced out of parenthood (Guardian)

The decay of America’s working class is often chalked up sort of a moral turpitude, and this is depicted as something that emerged as a fallout of the permissive 1960’s, despite the fact that it more exactly coincides with the shuttering of factories all over the country than the flower children. The lower classes are consistently depicted by the media as stupid and lazy, and thus deserving of their plight. Meanwhile, the wealthy are depicted as increasingly hard-working and morally upstanding, constantly either studying for another certification or working to the point of exhaustion, and pushing their sheltered, overprivileged children to study hard and get into a good college so they can keep up with the Joneses. Yet at the same time, these poor, working class white Americans are held up as moral exemplars of the nation; the “Real Americans,” in contrast to the swarthy, godless, libertine city-dwellers living it up on welfare. Middle Americans get the mixed message that they are morally superior than the lazy, dark-skinned masses in the cities (where most of the economic activity takes place), at the same time as their communities are being overtaken by violence, family breakdown and chronic drug abuse. It’s a rather schizophrenic view, to say the least.

I recently read this comment on Disinfo :

Viewing this site without Adblocking software is quite the experience. Right now, I’ve got two professional wrestling ads and an ad for Kohls up top. Down at the bottom:

“The way Kim Kardashian lost her virginity is disgusting!”
“25 sexy girls who don’t hide that they’re bisexual!”
“14 selfies taken right before death!”
“20 unseemly moments caught on Walmart security cameras!”
“24 stars who forgot to wear underwear in public!”
Something about ultimate female fighter Ronda Rousey.

It’s like the server is emanating from “Idiocracy,” targeting the oh so coveted “13 Year Old Boy Who Jacks Off 23 Times a Day” demographic.

When I click on the banners, I’m brought to a site running so many simultaneous video ads that my computer freezes. “Gee, thanks! Say, could I perhaps buy something from you?”

This is in reply to a Matt Taibbi article, America is too dumb for TV news.

It’s our fault. We in the media have spent decades turning the news into a consumer business that’s basically indistinguishable from selling cheeseburgers or video games. You want bigger margins, you just cram the product full of more fat and sugar and violence and wait for your obese, over-stimulated customer to come waddling forth.

The old Edward R. Murrow, eat-your-broccoli version of the news was banished long ago. Once such whiny purists were driven from editorial posts and the ad people over the last four or five decades got invited in, things changed. Then it was nothing but murders, bombs, and panda births, delivered to thickening couch potatoes in ever briefer blasts of forty, thirty, twenty seconds.

What we call right-wing and liberal media in this country are really just two different strategies of the same kind of nihilistic lizard-brain sensationalism. The ideal CNN story is a baby down a well, while the ideal Fox story is probably a baby thrown down a well by a Muslim terrorist or an ACORN activist. Both companies offer the same service, it’s just that the Fox version is a little kinkier.

And this coming not long after “Black Friday,” in which we are treated to scenes from all over the country of herds of people camping out outside in the freezing cold on one of our few holidays outside the blank, cinderblock boxes of suburban wasteland, so that they can trample themselves to death to secure a new big-screen TV, video game or juicer.

It does seem like Idiocracy, which was theoretically a parody movie, is increasingly an accurate depsiction of our society right now. We currently have a reality TV star running for president. What else is Donald Trump but our very own President Camacho?

Idiocracy is now. How much further can society plummet?

On this news website, chronicling just one area (upstate New York), every article was a depiction of the horror show that Middle America has become:

Mother hid dead body of 11-year-old daughter missing for over a year in freezer, police say

Rome police: Teen shot girlfriend’s baby after trying to stand with loaded gun

Man checks into Syracuse hospital with gunshot wound, but won’t say what happened

Armed Arizona man threatens Islamic community in Upstate NY

In Louisiana, a ‘picture-perfect’ family of 4 is dead in murder-suicide

Mississippi Man Guns Down Waffle House Waitress After She Asks Him Not to Smoke (Alternet)

Citing mass shootings, Upstate NY sheriff urges citizens to carry guns

This is not the sign of a healthy society. This is a society in the grip of madness. This is the other dieoff.

America is one giant tapestry of scam artistry. From pedophiles in Congress, to hedge-funders jacking the price of drugs, to shaking down taxpayers to fund sports stadiums for billionaires, to gutting finance laws, everywhere you turn there is a scam where someone is either trying to rip someone off, or is getting ripped off. And those who are getting ripped off are busily looking to get in on the hustle where they take advantage of someone else below them. It’s a society of predators and prey. And we think this is somehow normal. How much longer can a society like this last?

Isn’t it time we start acknowledging that this is what capitalism is. I mean inherently. It’s the law of the jungle. It’s every man for himself. It’s the “survival of the fittest.” It’s everyone jockeying for some sort of advantage, every minute of every day, morality be damned. It’s a society dedicated to nothing else besides getting every last dollar from the next guy by any means possible. It’s appealing to the lowest and basest instincts in humanity. Yet we’re told that “naked self interest” is natural and is the sole engine of prosperity, and that extreme inequality drives us to “achieve” by the pseudoscience of economics, and most of us appear to believe it.

This is the society we’ve made for ourselves. Are your proud of it? So is it any wonder there’s a backlash, whether from religious fundamentalists or radical political ideologies like Trumpism?

…on the free market it is legal and customary to instrumentalize our fellow human beings, violating their dignity because our goal is not to protect it. Our goal is to gain personal advantage, and in many cases this can be achieved more easily if we take advantage of others and violate their dignity…What is decisive is my attitude and my priority: am I interested in the greatest good and the preservation of the dignity of all, which is something which affects me automatically and which I benefit from as well, or am I primarily interested in my own welfare and my own advantage, which others might, but will not necessarily draw benefit from? If we pursue our own advantage as our supreme goal, the customary practice is to use others as means to achieve this goal and to take advantage of them accordingly.

If we must constantly fear that our fellow human beings will take advantage of us in the market as soon as they are in a position to do so, something else will be systematically destroyed: trust. Some economists say this doesn’t matter because the economy focuses completely on efficiency. But such a view must be disputed, for trust is the highest social and cultural good we know. Trust is what holds societies together from the inside – not efficiency!..The interim conclusion to be drawn is radical: so long as a market economy is based on pursuit of profit and competition and the mutual exploitation that results from it, it is reconcilable with neither human dignity nor liberty. It systematically destroys societal trust in the hope that the efficiency it yields will surpass that achieved by any other form of economy.

10 Moral Crises That Have Resulted From Unfettered, Free Market Capitalism (Alternet)

This comment to a Barbara Ehrenreich piece at Naked Capitalism describes one major reason the white working classes, especially who have bought into the “rugged individualism” ethos, are being skinned alive by this economic system.

I believe this analysis is missing a very important component. True, historically poor whites have experiences somewhat more privileged conditions than minorities (admittedly even today they still do), but that traditional privilege has simultaneously caused them to be somewhat more fragile, less resilient than other oppressed groups. Poor whites are more atomized, isolated people in America. They do not have, nor have access to, the same cohesive social structures that have tended to develop among minorities as a survival mechanism against white oppression in the past.

I don’t say that as a theory, but rather as experienced reality. In the trailer park my family still lives in minority groups tend be gregarious and social among themselves (and honestly among others as well if one were inclined to invite himself as I often was). From my experience they were mostly psychologically stable and had a good ability to roll with the punches. The poor whites on the other hand were near universally drug addicts and thieves, and even when they did (or do–they’re still there I mean) form (weak) social bonds they’d nevertheless steal from each other or rat each other out to the police regardless. This was something I never saw happen among minorities (though I’m sure it does happen; I just didn’t see it at all).

Anyway to continue on, I believe that our economic system is in decline across the board, and that everyone’s wealth and prosperity are taking a hit on average (and the poor are getting the worst of it, as is common in collapsing societies–as I believe I understood from Jared Diamond’s work as well as a Sciencedaily anthropology article I read a while back). This being the case, I put the two together and come up with the idea that poor whites simply do not have the social frameworks, that were previously forged by oppression among the minorities, required to survive a declining society–and thus are dying off.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/12/america-to-working-class-whites-drop-dead.html#comment-2520049

Which coincides with my observations.

Of course there are no social bonds in a society where it’s every man for himself trying to gain personal advantage. Humans were not meant to live like this. The endgame of such a society is Colin Turnbull’s description of the Ik in Uganda, also brought about by a rapid onset of scarcity and deracination. We’re doing the elite’s dirtywork ourselves. They don’t have to massacre us if they can get us to massacre each other.

Meanwhile, among the “meritocratic elite” winners, things are not looking so rosy either:

The rich middle- and high-school kids Luthar and her collaborators have studied show higher rates of alcohol and drug abuse on average than poor kids, and much higher rates than the national norm. They report clinically significant depression or anxiety or delinquent behaviors at a rate two to three times the national average. Starting in seventh grade, the rich cohort includes just as many kids who display troubling levels of delinquency as the poor cohort, although the rule-breaking takes different forms. The poor kids, for example, fight and carry weapons more frequently, which Luthar explains as possibly self-protective. The rich kids, meanwhile, report higher levels of lying, cheating, and theft.

One of the two major causes of distress, Luthar found, was the “pressure to excel at multiple academic and extracurricular pursuits.” …From their answers, Luthar constructed a profile of elite American adolescents whose self-worth is tied to their achievements and who see themselves as catastrophically flawed if they don’t meet the highest standards of success. Because a certain kind of success seems well within reach, they feel they have to attain it at all costs—a phenomenon she refers to as “I can, therefore I must.” Middle-class kids, she told me, generally do not live with the expectation that they should go to Stanford or earn $200,000 a year. “If I’ve never been to the moon,” she said of middle-class families, “why would I expect my kids to go there?” The yardstick for the children of the meritocratic elite is different, and it can intimidate as much as it can empower.

The second major cause of distress that Luthar identified was perhaps more surprising: Affluent kids felt remarkably isolated from their parents….

Since Levine wrote The Price of Privilege, she’s watched the stress in the Bay Area and in affluent communities all over the country become more pervasive and more acute. What disturbs her most is that the teenagers she sees no longer rebel. A decade ago, she used to referee family fights in her office, she told me, where the teens would tell their parents, “This is bad for me! I’m not doing this.” Now, she reports, the teenagers have no sense of agency. They still complain bitterly about all the same things, but they feel they have no choice. Many have also fallen prey to what Levine calls a “mass delusion” that there is but one path to a successful life, and that it is very narrow. Adolescents no longer typically identify parents or peers as the greatest source of their stress, Levine says. They point to school. But that itself may suggest a submission of sorts—the unquestioned adoption of parental norms.

The Silicon Valley Suicides (The Atlantic)

One of the reason the children of the elites feel such a sense of anxiety is by design. We’ve made sure that anyone who doesn’t make it into the “cognitive elite” now lives a life of persistent humiliation, desperation and scarcity, constantly trying to stay one step ahead of the debt collectors and predatory law enforcement. And now they can’t even afford to have a family, as we saw above. Add to that the fact that the social safety net is being gutted every day because it is “unaffordable,” even as the pool of jobs is inexorably shrinking. Is it any wonder they’re being driven to neurosis, even to the point of taking their own lives?

It’s yet another dieoff.

So who exactly is thriving in a society like this? Because I can’t find anyone. Yet we’re constantly told by economists that this is just the “natural” evolution of society, as inevitable as the phases of the moon or the law of gravity. There is simply nothing to be done but stomp down on the pedal of more growth and innovation. Really?

Can there be any doubt after reading stories like those above, that something is seriously wrong? for those of us who don’t live in gated communities, or the rarefied communities in Manhattan, Washington D.C. or Los Angeles where all of our media originates, we can see this with our own two eyes. We see the dysfunction around us. Yet the media constantly denies it. It’s dedicated to stoking our fears and insecurities to push product. Can there be any surprise that people in this frightened and decaying nation are turning to someone like Trump who ignores the economists and promises to “make us great again?” It was only a matter of time before someone did it.

Now, you might accuse me of cherry-picking the sordid and sensationalist stories above. I collected them last week entirely by happenstance intending to write about them, but in the interim, something else happened that you may have heard about. As cynical as I am, even my breath is constantly getting taken away.

I once wrote that mass-shootings will become so common in America that the media won’t even bother to cover them anymore. One remarkable thing about the massacre in San Bernardino was that it managed to completely obscure the other gun massacre that took place on the very same day! And it pushed coverage off of the religious fundamentalist massacre at an abortion clinic less than a week before. In other words, there are so many gun massacres that the media cant even cover them all!

Of the 30,000-plus people killed by firearms each year in the United States, more than 11,000 of those are homicides. That means there are more than 30 gun-related murders daily.

The San Bernardino massacre marked the 353rd mass shooting in America this year alone, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which defines a mass shooting where at least four people are either injured or killed.

“You have 14 people dead in California, and that’s a horrible tragedy. But likely 88 other people died today from gun violence in the United States,” Everytown for Gun Safety’s Ted Alcorn told the New York Times.

In 2015 to date, according to the Gun Violence Archive, 12,223 people have died as a result of gun violence in America, while another 24,722 people have been injured.
“We’re having a mass shooting every day, it’s just happening under the radar,” Jon Vernick, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Centre for Gun Policy and Research, told news.com.au.

New York Daily News front cover divides America: ‘God Isn’t Fixing This’ (news.com.au)

Legislation that was unobjectionable to the George W. Bush administration—laws that would simply prevent people on the FBI’s consolidated terrorist watch list from buying guns or explosives—are voted down in Congress. A physician, running for president, say,  “I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away.” And 185,345 background checks to buy guns were processed on Black Friday alone—a new record. According to the FBI, “The previous high for receipts were the 177,170 received on 12/21/2012—a week after Adam Lanza killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.” Mass killings turn out to be extremely good news for the gun industry. 

Beyond the frequency and the brutality and the futility of effecting changes, maybe this is a statistic worth noting. As Joshua Holland writes: “Perhaps the most frightening thing we know about gun violence comes from a study conducted by researchers at Duke, Harvard, and Columbia that was published earlier this year in the journal Behavioral Sciences and the Law. It found that almost one in 10 Americans who have access to guns are also prone to impulsive outbursts of rage. Among this group are almost 4 million people who carry their guns around in public and say they ‘have tantrums or angry outbursts,’ ‘get so angry [that they] break or smash things’ and lose their temper and ‘get into physical fights.’ ” This is not about mental illness; it’s about anger, violence, and fear. And in no small part because of mass shootings, we become more angry, violent, and more fearful all the time. 

And while we read the same articles, and make the same phone calls, and buy more guns, and grow more frightened, one other thing does change. Our schools go into lockdown. More and more. Thursday in Denver (“reports … of an armed person at the school”). Thursday in Pleasant Grove, Utah (“after a student reported another student with a gun”). Thursday in Chicago. Thursday in Palm Beach, Florida. Thursday in Dallas. Thursday in Savannah, Georgia. Thursday (and two other days this week) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Friday in Philadelphia. Wait, what? Kids bring guns to schools? In what universe does this surprise us? For our children, a world of daily shootings and daily lockdowns is the way they will have been raised. For them, as a friend who lives near one of Thursday’s lockdowns puts it, “It’s not if. It’s when.”

Mass Shootings are Changing Us (Slate)

The irony is that, when it comes to real resources, America is one of the best placed societies in the world. We waste upwards of forty percent of our food and energy on a daily basis. While we do import oil, this is mainly due to our profligate ways rather than true scarcity or “need.” Our population density compared to land area is the envy of Europe, much less places like India, China and Nigeria. We have the resources to give people a much higher standard of living in an industrial decline situation than much of the world, it’s just that our frontier growth mentality and bootstrap ideals dictate that life must be a hard struggle, and that allowing the rich to accumulate massive fortunes is somehow not only morally, but also practically, ideal.

I feel somewhat fortunate that I understood from an early age that the American lifestyle is toxic just be observing the lives of people around me. I never bought into the bullshit, and it seems like the people who did are the ones who are struggling, particularly mentally. My circumstances are somewhat similar to this woman from the article cited above:

Some might argue that expectations are now simply too high. Thea, 26, certainly thinks so. “I come from a working-class background, so, while I have had some financial help from my parents when I’ve been desperate – I’m talking a couple of hundred quid a month – the onus has always been on me to achieve and get where I want to be in life. I’ve not had anything ‘handed’ to me, like a house or substantial amount of money that would help me settle down in future.”

But it doesn’t bother her too much. “My upbringing and background have helped me accept my current situation. Despite not having much money as a kid – we never went abroad, for example – I never felt I missed out on anything. I do think my expectations of what constitute necessities – foreign holidays, owning a house or car – are lower than those of some of my peers who had more middle-class upbringings.”

Thea has never wanted children and, as an only child, knows that she will inherit her parents’ house when they die. “I think the country, as far as wages, property, poverty and my generation actually being able to build secure finances, is in an absolute state and something undoubtedly needs to be done. But I also think part of the problem is that so many people go to uni now: it devalues a degree (I don’t have one) and doesn’t guarantee anyone a job. So you’re left with broke, unemployed twentysomethings in debt.”

In my office context, I saw countless examples of people pursuing the “American Dream” of going deep into debt for a fancy degree, clawing their way up the career ladder by working 80-hour weeks and hitting the links, marrying someone from a suitable class background, pumping out the babies immediately thereafter, and moving out of their cozy, walkable neighborhoods to a bloated starter mansion out in the distant exurban wastelands, with the requisite hour-plus commute to be in a good school district (and moving another ten miles out with every raise or promotion). This is the good life? Really? I had no intention (or even opportunity) to get into the competition of who has the bigger house, or whose kids have the best SAT scores, or any of that nonsense. Being born on the bottom with no family has its advantages. You don’t have to be a hermit to not buy into this society’s bullshit, you just have to think for yourself, something most people are conditioned never to do, because if they did the whole thing might fall apart.

But then, again it’s all falling apart anyway.