Madness, Civilization and Media
Like most mediated Americans, I'm fascinated by the Jaycee Dugard story. To recap briefly, at 11 years old she was abducted by a drug-crazed rapist/pedophile who claims to be a messenger from God. He's deluded to the point that he believes he has invented a machine that can channel the voice of God. Meanwhile he confines his victim in a compound while fathering two children with her. He has shielded her from the reality beyond the fence, but teaches her how to become a computer graphics expert. We have yet to learn the further horrors perpetrated by the abductor, Phillip Garrido.
Now, I don't mean to be flip or to denigrate the great tragedy of this incident. But I see in media coverage some persistent tropes and larger issues that warrant investigation. First, Americans are particularly fascinated with abductions. My Italian partner was horrified and fascinated by the number of abduction posters around the US, in particular when you enter Wal-Mart. Obviously it's a huge and significant phenomenon, and a sign of our collective madness.
Beyond the countless sad stories of ruined life, abductions are also part of a larger cultural mythology. From the earliest days of cinema to the X-Files, it has been a constant theme. For example, the myth of the baby-stealing gypsies repeats itself throughout the history of film. But even before that there was the 19th century genre of native abduction tales in which young white women were taken from civilization, then safely return after an ordeal with "savages." The homecoming is always tainted by a bonding to the abductor and changes resulting from the period of capture. Recent alien abduction stories update and maintain a continuum from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. Somehow, throughout the pantheon of abductors, civilization remains the stabilizing and normal reference point to cope with the horror of removal and displacement.
Yet western civilization is itself a removal and displacement machine. To quote Andy Warhol, “Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.” This is the story of the past 5,000 years. We have been kidnapped from Earth, but fail to recognize the aberration. Is it fair to say that as hostages to abstract principles, we suffer from collective Stockholm Syndrome -- that we have bonded with an abusing overlord?
Clearly the experience of Jaycee Dugard's family is quite real, so I don't want to relegate it to the status of myth. However, is not the story also a model for the history of western civilization? According to ecopsychologists, and particular Paul Shepard's book Nature and Madness, we took a turn from a sustainable neolithic culture that did well for hundreds of thousands of years to one dominated by a murdering, misogynistic God. Shepard's claim is that as a civilization we have been essentially abducted from a nurturing "ontogenesis" with nature -- a coming into being through bonding with Mother Earth. Meanwhile the abductor(s) -- priests, scientists, teachers, politicians -- claim their right to do so because of commands from a monotheistic (and literate!) Lord talking through boxes (books, TVs, radios, computers).
Perhaps Jaycee Dugard's story has such resonance because deep down inside we all feel like her: our culture, dominated by an abstract force field called God/Capitalism, pushes us into schools and institutions that separate us from a profound and loving connection with the world. It breeds us to become robotic slaves to an international, abstract monetary system, and demands that we never leave the compound, lest the world "out there" derange us. We're kept locked up and domesticated through punishment and rewards that entangle us in a violent domestic partnership based on the rule of an abusive patriarch and the threat of human sacrifice.
Don't believe me? If you are male, recall how, as a child in school, if you ever left the black box of acceptable male behavior (patriarcal culture), you were beaten back into the box by your classmates. The culture literally uses violence to keep you from being a whole person. And when violence doesn't work, then a shitty diet, deformed curriculum, and the dehumanizing life of corporate enslavement finishes the job, all the while you are promised that at the end of the line is Heaven. Meanwhile, we perform human sacrifice through rituals of war that send the future to die in the urban slums of Empire for the Lords of Freedom, Democracy and the Market. Criminals are electrocuted or injected with poison to reaffirm the authority of our abstract, disembodied Sublord of Justice.
So, lifting a page from Orwell's 1984, we engage in a collective ritual of hatred aimed at Phillip Garrido who is called an abhorrent deviant, yet our media system and culture turns a blind eye to the very reality in front of us: that the globalized economy is raping and pillaging the earth in the name of our ever-punishing deity and its free market, creating a world that presently has more slavery than when it was legal. We are pressured to serve the system as serfs at the command of disembodied voices coming from a box, and to take as normal the rants of insane men who claim to be authorities of these abstractions.
Again, just to be clear, Garrido is a sick, dangerous man who has destroyed many lives. He deserves his future confinement and punishment. My goal is to simply to look at this case as a teachable moment to reflect upon madness, civilization and media.
Apologies for feeling a bit cynical today. I still love the world.
Image by doug88888, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
Tweet- 9-10-09
- Antonio Lopez's blog
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Comments
A brilliant analysis
Antonio... I'm so glad this post made it to RS: it deserves a wider audience than your blog where I first read it. I was going to comment there but got distracted so I'm glad to have a second chance to remark on what a brilliant post this is. I think this is an excellent analysis of our current collective insanity. It certainly resonates with my experience.
A related experience to the abduction trope is the theme of adoption. I felt so different from the rest of my family (and community) growing up I often wondered whether I was adopted. Adoption is more benign than abduction, but the resultant feeling is the same: a sense of alienation and disconnection from those around us. A sense of not belonging.
The Stockholm Syndrome is so true too. As I heal my relationships with my parents (we were estranged and didn't talk for many years) I'm alarmed at how aggressively defensive they are of a worldview they hold which obviously isn't in their best interest. I see this in the broader culture as well. I am reminded of those on the American Right who are attacking the notion of free universal healthcare, arguing against what seems to me to be something in their own best interest.
I was with you every step of the way right up to the part where you said Garrido "deserves" his confinement and punishment. I believe in restorative justice, which to me is a more compassionate, healing approach to justice. After all, is Garrido not a product/victim of the same system you are critiquing? For me offenders should only be incarcerated if they are a danger to themselves and/or the community (in this case Garrido clearly is the latter) or need help focussing on their rehabilitation, and should be released if and when they are rehabilitated (in this case I suspect Garrido will never be fully rehabilitated and will never be able to be safely let out into the community). Punishment is a form of revenge and has no place in the compassionate rehabilitation of offenders, in my opinion.
Other than that small quibble, a beautiful piece of writing.
A Thought-Provoking Article
The national obsession with missing and kidnapped children for me ties in with white America's loss of hegemony and its yearning for a return to a pre-60s Eden. Notice in these cases that not only are the victims mostly white, but, more importantly, those the most obsessed tend to be white (and politically conservative) as well.
These people, and their families, tend to feel victimized themselves, by a world that has seemingly changed from one of safety to one of fear and danger. And because they live heavily-mediated lives, the message they get from the media is that the world outside is very dangerous and it's best only to venture out when necessary, and only in a vehicle.
I don't watch TV, and because I don't, have a very different view of the world. Yes, the world is incredibly violent and chaotic. Yes, horrible things are happening 24/7. I myself may die a sad, horrible death at the hands of someone who neither knows me or cares about me.
But in the meantime I want to feel the sun on my face, hear the wind and rain, see the hard blue of sky and silver-gray of cloud. I want to make, as the gospel says, the inside like the outside, and the outside like the inside. And every day strive to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
www.flickr.com/photos/21366765@N03
Tyrannical Metaphysics
a 1000 thank yous.
Excellent
Yes!
I agree totally with Mark!
Your suggestion that the majority of the public is suffering from Stockholm syndrome is right on! The more I think about it, the better it fits.
It’s a scary thing to contemplate the almost complete power and consequence of this type of mass psychosis. All we have to do is look at the devastation all around us…
Naming the disease is often the first step toward a cure, but at this late stage I’m not so sure consciousness has the historical time necessary to evolve. Humanity needs a miracle of some sort…
Yet, I applaud you for giving me an explanation for this particular behavior; an explanation I’ve been seeking for a long time. “Why, of course!!! Why didn’t I think of that?”
The rest of your article gave me the impression that your excellent ideas are still in the fleshing-out stages, and that several editions from now this story will have the wings it deserves. In fact, I think there’s a book hiding in there somewhere! (And that's a book I'd love to read!)
Right On
It is articles like this that make RS so excellent! Maybe the name should be changed to Unreality Sandwich.
I really can't remember the first time that I became aware that the "media circus" about/surrounding the most recent outrage was fixed. Indeed we should be aware of our surroundings but we do have free will. After being glued to the tele for several hours during the 9-11 event I finally reached a saturation point. I dragged my beloved outside to another reality. A golden September afternoon with the sun streaming down through the pines and the gentle call of birds.
What we focus on is our reality and in my world view we are being kept in a constant state of fear. Amber Alert indeed!
Free will is magnificent but it be a delicate balance. On all the levels that we operate on (past, present, future and more?) what is true for each person is rarely the same for anyone else. Do we really know what is true for us or are we mostly on autopilot?
And if we make our own reality are we not responsible...
Cheers
Co-Abductors ... {belated comment}
I guess one can almost say that not only have we begun to bond with the "abductor{s}" ... but have begun to almost pathologically accept such to the point where we offer each other up as "co-abductors" of the humanistic sacrament
Like those "Zombie" movies ... once bitten ... one desires to also bite others.
Misery loves company.
The only thing left is the actual competition ... who will vie for abductor privilege ... and who will suffer the fate of independent freedom
Entheogenic Vaccines to promote Zombie immunity ... ... from the "pearl before swine" flu ... {lol}
Who's really responsible?
An interesting and valuable perspective. However, unfortunately, the cause of the disease is not identified. Without accurate diagnosis, no appropriate treatment can ensue.
Phillip Garrido can be incarcerated but that will not stop the abductions from happening. No change in the system that created Garrido will take place by locking him up. The system, or civilization, needs to change. And the system is not the cause, either. Phillip's parents are the cause of his childhood trauma that resulted in the gross distortion of a human in his adulthood. Certainly, he is responsible for his actions, and responsible for his healing, but that can't and won't happen unless the cause is identified.
Similarly with civilization, if "we have been kidnaped from Earth", as Lopez suggests, who did the kidnaping? Civilization? The media? Neither of these institutions are capable of carrying responsibility. Only individual people can carry responsibility.
Lopez goes on to state: "our culture, dominated by an abstract force field called God/Capitalism, pushes us into schools and institutions that separate us from a profound and loving connection with the world." But it is not our culture that is responsible for this. "Our Culture" is not capable of carrying responsibility. It is merely an abstract idea created by people. It is, indeed, our PARENTS that push us into the schools and institutions, indoctrinating us into the distortion called "civilization". But they are protected from accountability because no one wants to hold THEM responsible.
Holding parents responsible for having sacrificed us to civilization/god/capitalism, implies that we, as children were not loved. That, unfortunately, seems way too unbearable to tolerate as an adult, and impossible to even conceive of as a child. "NO, we can't blame them. They did the best they could," we cry. We can't fathom that perhaps "the best they could" was not good enough for us and was not what we needed. So, when the difference between accountability and blame are superimposed, the crime continues in the name of "for your own good."
Blame is the right of the victim. However, responsibility is the tool of the mature adult. If we blame, we remain a victim. The only avenue of healing available for us to pursue is to embrace the responsibility and hold our parents accountable for the trauma we all suffered in childhood.
The Stockholm Syndrome is a very valuable phenomena to conjure up in this discussion. It applies most directly to the plight children face in childhood. Children are 100% dependent and completely vulnerable. They will bond with whatever is there to bond with in order to survive. Thus, the "abusing overlord", as mentioned by Lopez, is indeed, the parents who raise us.
Childhood trauma is defined as "anything less than beneficial to the harmonious development of a child on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels of existence." Anyone raised within "civilization" will have a history of childhood trauma, simply because parents, up until very recently, have raised their children with the same emotional blueprint that their parents raised them with.
Changing this blueprint requires facing the trauma and holding the parents responsible. This change is really the only change that we all require. This change will change civilization from a shame-based reality into an authentic experience of wholeness.
For more information on childhood trauma, please refer to the works of Alice Miller.
Thanks for the feedback!
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Be sure to check out my book, Mediacology (http://mediacology.com/the-book/)
Mama!
Reality Check
As someone currently living in a country where there is Real Internet Censorship and Real Press Censorship (Thailand) as well as archaic laws punishable by fifteen years in prison for criticizing the monarchy and being constantly in contact with people who live in countries like China where access to information is limited, I would argue that it is not some "vast media conspiracy" that keeps the people of the West from accessing more radical or interesting viewpoints, but simply laziness, disinterest, and a general apathy regarding the power of the media possibilities at their disposal. Recently, I found myself in a situation where I was quoting chapter and verse the development of US relations with Thailand in the 20th century, and the mostly Western people around me, (who live here and really ought to be aware of such transitions) looked stunned at my relative in-depth awareness of such events and asked me where I found my information. Asked again and again about where I was getting my information - on an island where Internet is plentiful and most censored information is relegated to anything that discusses the King, I simply said this, (and quoted from my own facebook posts) "You know this thing called the Internet - the thing you sit on all goddamn day long playing Mafia Wars and reading about Ashton Kutchner? (or whoever the fuck he is) Well, hey, listen, there's this place, and it's called wikileaks.com and in December of 2008 they acquired - and the RELEASED - fifteen years worth of Congressional Reports and I went and picked through the 700,000 of them with a thing called a SEARCH ENGINE (the thing you use to look up pictures of cute kittens) and I downloaded a pile of documents to my computer and then I READ THEM." The fact that US citizens or citizens of any other Western nations are "in the dark" about "what's really going on" is very simply a choice. A choice to remain ignorant. In the 1950s-80s, when mass media dominanted all information channels, such ignorance could be excused or explained away - that is where your dark tunnel lived. People who choose Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs as their primary sources of information about US foreign and domestic policy are making *conscious decisions* to stay within the compound - because in reality, the exit from the compound is only a mouse-click away. Blaming "the media" as the culprit for mass ignorance (at least in the West) is in essence setting up a boogey man where none exists - people CHOOSE their ignorance, and so far as I can tell, most of them LIKE IT THAT WAY.
PS: (and I added this once before, but not quite sure where it went) Be careful throwing around a word like "slavery" to describe the conditions of the people of the West. While not legal per se, but *certainly* tolerated by people in the highest level of the government, slavery and human trafficking are alive and well in southeast Asia. In the Esarn region of northeast Thailand, literally thousands of young boys and girls are sold into sexual servitude *by their parents* (!!!) to work in the brothels of Phuket, Pattaya, and Bangkok. Sure, call your dead-end job slavery, but it's not quite the same as being a literal slave, compared what's going on outside "your little compound" safe within the West.
http://bit.ly/2wNNG4 (Thai sex trade)
http://www.twitter.com/gregoryptm