Bageant: We've Let Corporations and Media Rob Our Souls -- It's Time to Do Something Meaningful

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Bageant: We've Let Corporations and Media Rob Our Souls -- It's Time to Do Something Meaningful

By Joe Bageant, JoeBageant.com. Posted April 6, 2009.

The most chilling accomplishment of American capitalist culture is that we have commodified our own consciousness.



I just returned from several months in Central America. And the day I returned I had iguana eggs for breakfast, airline pretzels for lunch and a $7 shot of Jack Daniels for dinner at the Houston Airport, where I spent two hours listening to a Christian religious fanatic tell about Obama running a worldwide child porn ring out of the White House. Entering the country shoeless through airport homeland security, holding up my pants because they don't let old men wear suspenders through security, well, I knew I was back home in the land of the free.

Anyway, here I am with you good people asking myself the first logical question: What the hell is a redneck writer supposed to say to a prestigious school of psychology? Why of all places am I here? It is intimidating as hell. But as Janna Henning and Sharrod Taylor here have reassured me that all I need to do is talk about is what I write about. And what I write about is Americans, and why we think and behave the way we so. To do that here today I am forced to talk about three things -- corporations, television and human spirituality.

No matter how smart we may think we are, the larger world cannot and does not exist for most of us in this room, except through media and maybe through the shallow experience of tourism, or in the minority instance, we may know of it through higher education. The world however, is not a cultural history course, a National Geographic special or recreational destination. It is a real place with many fast developing disasters, economic and ecological collapse being just two. The more aware among us grasp that there is much at stake. Yet, even the most informed and educated Americans have cultural conditioning working against them round the clock.

As psych students, most of you understand that there is no way you can escape being conditioned by your society, one way or another. You are as conditioned as any trained chicken in a carnival. So am I. When we go to the ATM machine and punch the buttons to make cash fall out, we are doing the same thing as the chickens that peck the colored buttons make corn drop from the feeder. You will not do a single thing today, tomorrow or the next day that you have not been generally indoctrinated and deeply conditioned to do -- mostly along class lines. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/135162/bageant%3A_we%27ve_let_corporations_and_media_rob_our_souls_--_it%27s_time_to_do_something_meaningful/

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Yayyy for Bageant...always clear and sane writing.

TY marmar for finding this.

[Locrian]

2. great article

[Earth Bound Misfit]

3. K & R n/t

[MedleyMisty]

4. I love Bageant

We're from sort of the same background except that he's older and back in his day a smart redneck kid could climb up the social pole, so he explains things in a way that I can understand. Although I'll never be able to afford to just go to Belize if I want.

This is the thing that I have the most trouble understanding - I grew up really sort of isolated and didn't get nearly as much cultural conditioning as other people, so I misinterpret people's motivations constantly. I tend to think that people are aware that they are evil corporate tools and are quite fine with it. I imagine people who are pro-war imagining Iraqis and Afghans watching their loved ones die violently and horribly and getting off on it.

Essentially, I tend to think that humans are rational and make informed choices. I know, the joke is on me.

Also, the isolation has increased since I became an adult - I haven't watched TV in a decade.

Like it blew my mind the other day at work when this person sent out this mass email about helping someone during the bad economy when I know that person has a McCain/Palin sticker on their car. I interpreted that to mean that they were quite pro-other people suffering because I assumed that they were as informed and free to think independently as I am.

Of course, that same person also once asked if I had a church home, and when my totally blank face told her that I had no idea what that phrase meant (I was trying to remember if I'd heard any ads for a developer named Church Homes on the radio) she apologized and said I just seemed so Christ-like. So many assumptions and misunderstandings.

But then I give breaks to people who choose to support the other side when really the end result isn't that much different. I guess it's just - I can understand not being very well informed and not having all that much to make a decision on and choosing the side that seems to be the good cop. It's like at least your intentions are good.

But then I have never been in a situation where the Republicans were portrayed as the good cop. I was raised in a manner that was about as complete an opposite to authoritarian as you can get and I am secure and know that I am loved and safe, so the world is more of a beautiful wonderful inviting place to me than a frightening one that I need to divide into categories of different value to understand and deal with.

You know - I was tested as working at college level in fifth grade but I am coming to believe that intelligence has very little to do with why I am so different and why I am not a sheep. More and more I think it's good self-esteem. Not that I don't sometimes think I'm a fat ugly cow or obsess over doing things wrong or being stupid. But at my core, I like myself and who I am and know that I am well-loved by others for who I am. No one ever placed "conditions of worth" on me. I don't feel like I have to be other than what I am to be loved - I don't have to be rich or "successful" or have certain material shit or any of that. I have been extremely lucky and have been unconditionally loved my whole life.

So there's an idea - if you want to rescue people from the American corporate hologram, love them for who they are. Accept them as is. Make it okay for them to be themselves, whoever that may be.

It won't bring down capitalism but it's a start.