A Sharpening of the Senses - Rethinking the Things We Say, Trying to Decipher What they Mean
I invite everyone whose critical thinking skills have survived the unprecedented barrages our civil liberties have sustained through recent years to envision an abstract scenario:
"Any social structure that shunts out critical perspective and slams shut the eyes of right skepticism is condemned to the undoing of itself through its imprudence and self-instilled ignorance."
Still with me? Try this one:
"Any participatory society that consciously leaves behind any of its potential participants, essentially barring them from the democratic process, is fundamentally weaker for its practice of exclusion."
Sound about right? They're sort of self-evident truisms, aren't they? (as if the opposite scenarios could possibly be true) I think by common sense these are proofed from corruption or distortion, but sadly, they are apparently not impregnable from assaults brought on by present-day power. Private power that serves no end other than to sustain itself is inherently anti-democratic when it intrudes into the domain of it's parent country's government; this is nevertheless commonplace in the modern world, and with the advent of globalization, the destructiveness of its antisocial side-effects is exponentially intensified. It is for this last self-evident truism that the utter necessity for activism has reached a state undeniable for those concerned about the world.
The more one sees, the more one understands; but there is very strong social pressure against both of these activities applied by those who possess inordinate amounts of power. An individual must resist these pressures and make a conscious effort to see and to understand; failure to do either of these is symptomatic of chronic failure to be truly free. One can easily become wrapped into an unsustainable routine of thoughtless consumption and operate under the false presumption of freedom without realizing how much freedom and personal power they have passively ceded. The freedoms to see, to feel, and to believe are the most hard-fought and precious freedoms we have, but they are also the most seldom used, and this is truly a tragedy. If you cannot effectively stand against what our corporate-driven consumerist culture suggests you ought to do and still maintain your comfort and contentedness as an individual, how can you honestly believe you have freedom?
"Support our Troops"
"Freedom isn’t free"
"Proud to be American"
"9/11 - Never Forget"
These are all examples of mantras repeated unceasingly throughout America nowadays that most mouths utter them without examining their denotative meaning with the brains behind them. In short, what do all these bumper stickers actually mean, does anybody know? I Do!
"Support our Troops" - a few hegemonic, ethnic-intolerance based wars are raging throughout the third world and are being fought by young American boys and Girls. I honestly don't give a shit that these young Americans are getting killed, or for that matter, that families living in these countries are routinely slaughterer by the thousands solely for being born with the wrong shade of skin. Besides, my life is too inwardly-focused to take action on their behalf; that would disrupt my daily routine. I did, however, spend a couple bucks on this magnetic bumper sticker because then I can say that I haven’t done absolutely nothing about American-borne global injustice and, as a consequence, I sleep more easily at night. It's pretty cool looking too, isn't it?!
"Freedom isn’t Free" - this one I honestly have not even thought about at all; I just purchased the bumper sticker, probably without even reading it (thought the flag on it looked really trendy). If I had contemplated it a bit, I would have realized how laughably self-contradictory it is. Freedom is, by its very definition, free; anything else isn't freedom (hence the root word 'free' -see how easy that was!). The expense precluding this bumper sticker's unstated antecedent from being free (for clearly 'freedom' is this grossly misplaced scapegoat) is 'aggression'. I'm not talking about the sort of aggression most of us are somewhat guilty of in our adolescent or young adult years; I mean grand-scale aggression, the sort that Gestapo agents and Nazi death squads were executed for at Nuremberg. In that sense, there is a good deal of truth to this sticker's true meaning: unprovoked-genocidal-behavior-directed-against-the-defenseless-
civilians-of-the-third-world isn't free.
"Proud to be American" - more truthfully translates to 'Embarrassed to be chronically insecure about myself'. I take pride in being American, even though all that 'being American' theoretically entails is being born within a specific set of legal circumstances and topographical boundaries. My feelings are hurt and I become hostile when someone implies I am (gasp) "un-American". My knowledge is probably completely amiss of the Constitution's words, or the fact that my America's health care system is counted the worst of any industrialized nation (effectively meaning the 'America' I am proud to be a part of is slowly killing me), but identifying with this spirit of nationalism works wonders to compensate my serious shortcomings in self-esteem.
"9/11 - Never Forget" - this is a tricky one, tough to nail down, really. If I forget 9/11, my mind will become entirely destitute of any dimensional depth with regards to current events, politics, and contemporary history because it is the only fragment of any such understanding/awareness I now have. That would be bad. I think also that if only I can devote all of my attention exclusively to the memory of one isolated historical event which took place five years ago, I can successfully tune out all of the U.S. borne injustices that obscenely dwarf the tragedy of 9/11. I'll also never piece together the naked truth that U.S. foreign policy preceding that event literally invited commercial planes into skyscrapers as the only means of a disenfranchised global community capturing the world's attention to assert its distaste for economic slavery and American hegemony. I'll keep staring at those fallen towers and perhaps 200,000 Iraqi citizens weren't brutally killed in their homelands, as subsidized by my own tax dollars -9/11 - never forget; and nothing else in history ever happened.
Ahh, the satisfaction of comprehension. I'm glad all that fog has finally been chased from our virgin minds; now we can get onto correcting the errors we, as a country, have made. Let's prioritize countering the activities that endeavor to kill people on an industrial level. We are still left with many choices! Protecting the environment is a good one, or the removal of trade sanctions and embargoes directly responsible for wide-spread famine and epidemic levels of diseases and illnesses which are easily vaccinated in the industrial countries. Or how about standing against this grotesquely inhuman "Global War on Terrorism"; we can argue against its persistence on the pretence of its absurdity, realizing that any comprehensive, worldwide campaign against the manifestation of terrorism in the global context would begin by bombing the Whitehouse and the Pentagon to dust. I don't mean to sound snide or sarcastic; such action would adhere precisely to the Bush doctrine on combating terrorism. All of you who fancy to brand me a Godless liberal and call it a day would be well-advised to consult a history book while bearing in mind the immortal words our beloved commander-in-chief had stated on the eve of the war on terror: "no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support them, because they're equally as guilty of murder" (or something to that effect). Reconcile that bold declaration of policy with realities of U.S. policy resulting from the Dili Massacre in East Timor; reference the 12 November '92 Boston Globe for an article about the civil court case Todd vs. Panjaitan. Connect these two for an interesting perspective of United States terrorist-harboring behavior. Of course, to do so, we need to agree on a few ground rules. 1) Murdering defenseless civilians who are peacefully gathered constitutes terrorism. 2) "Defenseless Civilians" are entitled to life irregardless of their ethnicity or nationality. 3) Legal statues of limitations will be upheld (there is none on murder; the Dili Massacre occurred in 1991). 4) The United States must hold itself to the same standards of moral conduct that it impresses upon the rest of the world; failure to do so incurs defiling the nobility of any of our diplomatic endeavors, a practice essentially shifting what we call 'acts of terrorism' to something more closely resembling 'resistance of foreign imperialism'.
Browse these sources if you wish; accept your role as passive perpetuator if you don't. Comment if you feel there is a third course I've overseen; I would be delighted to hear it. Don’t allow yourself to become discouraged, in any case. Whichever of these three categories you identify with (of the two I've described or the third, unknown), we can all contribute to the causes of justice and peace. While I don't feel that repeating hackneyed bumper-sticker wisdom accomplishes anything, I feel that a sharpening the senses, thinking critically and with motivation for conscious, calculated action, can.
"Any social structure that shunts out critical perspective and slams shut the eyes of right skepticism is condemned to the undoing of itself through its imprudence and self-instilled ignorance."
Still with me? Try this one:
"Any participatory society that consciously leaves behind any of its potential participants, essentially barring them from the democratic process, is fundamentally weaker for its practice of exclusion."
Sound about right? They're sort of self-evident truisms, aren't they? (as if the opposite scenarios could possibly be true) I think by common sense these are proofed from corruption or distortion, but sadly, they are apparently not impregnable from assaults brought on by present-day power. Private power that serves no end other than to sustain itself is inherently anti-democratic when it intrudes into the domain of it's parent country's government; this is nevertheless commonplace in the modern world, and with the advent of globalization, the destructiveness of its antisocial side-effects is exponentially intensified. It is for this last self-evident truism that the utter necessity for activism has reached a state undeniable for those concerned about the world.
The more one sees, the more one understands; but there is very strong social pressure against both of these activities applied by those who possess inordinate amounts of power. An individual must resist these pressures and make a conscious effort to see and to understand; failure to do either of these is symptomatic of chronic failure to be truly free. One can easily become wrapped into an unsustainable routine of thoughtless consumption and operate under the false presumption of freedom without realizing how much freedom and personal power they have passively ceded. The freedoms to see, to feel, and to believe are the most hard-fought and precious freedoms we have, but they are also the most seldom used, and this is truly a tragedy. If you cannot effectively stand against what our corporate-driven consumerist culture suggests you ought to do and still maintain your comfort and contentedness as an individual, how can you honestly believe you have freedom?
"Support our Troops"
"Freedom isn’t free"
"Proud to be American"
"9/11 - Never Forget"
These are all examples of mantras repeated unceasingly throughout America nowadays that most mouths utter them without examining their denotative meaning with the brains behind them. In short, what do all these bumper stickers actually mean, does anybody know? I Do!
"Support our Troops" - a few hegemonic, ethnic-intolerance based wars are raging throughout the third world and are being fought by young American boys and Girls. I honestly don't give a shit that these young Americans are getting killed, or for that matter, that families living in these countries are routinely slaughterer by the thousands solely for being born with the wrong shade of skin. Besides, my life is too inwardly-focused to take action on their behalf; that would disrupt my daily routine. I did, however, spend a couple bucks on this magnetic bumper sticker because then I can say that I haven’t done absolutely nothing about American-borne global injustice and, as a consequence, I sleep more easily at night. It's pretty cool looking too, isn't it?!
"Freedom isn’t Free" - this one I honestly have not even thought about at all; I just purchased the bumper sticker, probably without even reading it (thought the flag on it looked really trendy). If I had contemplated it a bit, I would have realized how laughably self-contradictory it is. Freedom is, by its very definition, free; anything else isn't freedom (hence the root word 'free' -see how easy that was!). The expense precluding this bumper sticker's unstated antecedent from being free (for clearly 'freedom' is this grossly misplaced scapegoat) is 'aggression'. I'm not talking about the sort of aggression most of us are somewhat guilty of in our adolescent or young adult years; I mean grand-scale aggression, the sort that Gestapo agents and Nazi death squads were executed for at Nuremberg. In that sense, there is a good deal of truth to this sticker's true meaning: unprovoked-genocidal-behavior-directed-against-the-defenseless-
civilians-of-the-third-world isn't free.
"Proud to be American" - more truthfully translates to 'Embarrassed to be chronically insecure about myself'. I take pride in being American, even though all that 'being American' theoretically entails is being born within a specific set of legal circumstances and topographical boundaries. My feelings are hurt and I become hostile when someone implies I am (gasp) "un-American". My knowledge is probably completely amiss of the Constitution's words, or the fact that my America's health care system is counted the worst of any industrialized nation (effectively meaning the 'America' I am proud to be a part of is slowly killing me), but identifying with this spirit of nationalism works wonders to compensate my serious shortcomings in self-esteem.
"9/11 - Never Forget" - this is a tricky one, tough to nail down, really. If I forget 9/11, my mind will become entirely destitute of any dimensional depth with regards to current events, politics, and contemporary history because it is the only fragment of any such understanding/awareness I now have. That would be bad. I think also that if only I can devote all of my attention exclusively to the memory of one isolated historical event which took place five years ago, I can successfully tune out all of the U.S. borne injustices that obscenely dwarf the tragedy of 9/11. I'll also never piece together the naked truth that U.S. foreign policy preceding that event literally invited commercial planes into skyscrapers as the only means of a disenfranchised global community capturing the world's attention to assert its distaste for economic slavery and American hegemony. I'll keep staring at those fallen towers and perhaps 200,000 Iraqi citizens weren't brutally killed in their homelands, as subsidized by my own tax dollars -9/11 - never forget; and nothing else in history ever happened.
Ahh, the satisfaction of comprehension. I'm glad all that fog has finally been chased from our virgin minds; now we can get onto correcting the errors we, as a country, have made. Let's prioritize countering the activities that endeavor to kill people on an industrial level. We are still left with many choices! Protecting the environment is a good one, or the removal of trade sanctions and embargoes directly responsible for wide-spread famine and epidemic levels of diseases and illnesses which are easily vaccinated in the industrial countries. Or how about standing against this grotesquely inhuman "Global War on Terrorism"; we can argue against its persistence on the pretence of its absurdity, realizing that any comprehensive, worldwide campaign against the manifestation of terrorism in the global context would begin by bombing the Whitehouse and the Pentagon to dust. I don't mean to sound snide or sarcastic; such action would adhere precisely to the Bush doctrine on combating terrorism. All of you who fancy to brand me a Godless liberal and call it a day would be well-advised to consult a history book while bearing in mind the immortal words our beloved commander-in-chief had stated on the eve of the war on terror: "no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support them, because they're equally as guilty of murder" (or something to that effect). Reconcile that bold declaration of policy with realities of U.S. policy resulting from the Dili Massacre in East Timor; reference the 12 November '92 Boston Globe for an article about the civil court case Todd vs. Panjaitan. Connect these two for an interesting perspective of United States terrorist-harboring behavior. Of course, to do so, we need to agree on a few ground rules. 1) Murdering defenseless civilians who are peacefully gathered constitutes terrorism. 2) "Defenseless Civilians" are entitled to life irregardless of their ethnicity or nationality. 3) Legal statues of limitations will be upheld (there is none on murder; the Dili Massacre occurred in 1991). 4) The United States must hold itself to the same standards of moral conduct that it impresses upon the rest of the world; failure to do so incurs defiling the nobility of any of our diplomatic endeavors, a practice essentially shifting what we call 'acts of terrorism' to something more closely resembling 'resistance of foreign imperialism'.
Browse these sources if you wish; accept your role as passive perpetuator if you don't. Comment if you feel there is a third course I've overseen; I would be delighted to hear it. Don’t allow yourself to become discouraged, in any case. Whichever of these three categories you identify with (of the two I've described or the third, unknown), we can all contribute to the causes of justice and peace. While I don't feel that repeating hackneyed bumper-sticker wisdom accomplishes anything, I feel that a sharpening the senses, thinking critically and with motivation for conscious, calculated action, can.
posted by Daniel Black | 10:13 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home