The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies
Let's begin with beer. Near my home I drive past a billboard advertisement for Coors Light. The slogan is, "Coors rocks Harrisburg." Now, does anybody actually believe that Coors does in fact "rock Harrisburg?" No. Does the Coors corporation itself believe it? No. Does anyone believe that Coors believes it? No. It is a lie, everyone knows it is a lie, and no one cares. Everyone automatically writes it off as an ad slogan, an image campaign.
The next sign advertises Miller Beer with the phrase, "Fresh beer tastes better." Does anyone actually think Miller is fresher than Budweiser, Coors, or Pabst? No. Does anyone at Miller Brewing think that? No. It is another obvious and unremarkable lie, beneath the threshold of most people's awareness. But it contributes to a feeling of living in a phony world where words don't matter and nothing is real.
Here is another beer slogan, for Carlsburg: "Probably the best beer in the world." Obviously, the word "probably" has been chosen to suggest that someone devoted great consideration to this question, sampled all the world's great beers, and finally issued an impartial judgment. Of course, nothing of the sort happened. No one thinks it did. Everyone knows that actually what happened is a bunch of advertising pros thought up a slogan in an effort to create an "image." Isn't it remarkable that lies are still effective even when no one believes them? Unfortunately, when it hardly matters whether words are truth or lies, then words lose their power to convey the truth.
Continuing on my way, I drive past the Colonial Park Mall, a generic, boxy edifice amidst a vast expanse of concrete. There is no park here, nor is there actually any connection with anything "colonial," a word chosen to evoke an image of simple times, kind folk, and quality craftsmanship. The mall is home to a food court called "Café in the Park," a name chosen to evoke (who knows?) a Parisian café with outdoor tables under the shade of the trees. Basically, the entire name is a lie. No café, no park, nothing colonial. And this lie is, again, completely unremarkable.
Increasingly, words don't mean anything. In politics, campaigning candidates make statements that flatly contradict their actions and policies, and no one seems to object or even care. It is not the routine dissembling of political figures that is striking, but rather our near-complete indifference to it. We are as well almost completely inured to the vacuity of advertising copy, the words of which increasingly mean nothing at all to the reader. Does anyone really believe that GE "brings good things to life?" Or that a housing development I passed today - "Walnut Crossing" - actually has any walnut trees or crossings? From brand names to PR slogans to political code-words, the language of the media that inundates modern life consists almost wholly of subtle lies, misdirection, and manipulation.
We live in a ubiquitous matrix of lies, a sea of mendacity so pervasive that it is nearly invisible. Because we are lied to all the time, in ways so subtle they are beneath conscious notice, even the most direct lies are losing their power to shock us.
The most shocking thing about the lies of the Bush administration was that those lies were not actually shocking to most people. Why do we as a society seemingly accept our leaders' gross dishonesty as a matter of course? Why does the repeated exposure of their lies seem to arouse barely a ripple of indignation among the general public? Where is the protest, the outrage, the sense of betrayal?
It is certainly not to be found in the person of Barack Obama. Just as there is little difference between Coors and Miller, so also is there little difference in the policies of Bush and Obama. I realize that this statement will provoke outrage from many of my readers. Sure, there are some differences between them - enough to establish Obama as a new brand - but the basic course of empire, of finance, the military, medicine, law, education, of all the defining institutions of our society remains unchanged.
Significantly, during the campaign most of the media commentary on his speeches was about the image they created, their emotional effect, and not their content. Today, the content barely matters except for what image it creates. Words become merely emotive signs, not semantic ones. Therefore, even though I don't think Obama tells deliberate lies as did his predecessors, the change in the way we use and receive language makes it impossible for him to tell the truth either. Everything is heard through a filter of meta-interpretations; we hear not words but code-words, not semantic meaning but signals and "messages." Words don't mean what they mean. Speaking into such a listening, it becomes impossible to really tell the truth. Even if a politician speaks plainly, we hear an attempt to create an image of plainspokenness.
Thus it is that people detect a certain indefinable insincerity underneath Obama's words - insincerity is now built in to the language of politics. (It is also inherent in the contradictions of our civilization's deep ideology, but that is a different matter.) Playing by the rules of the political game, as Obama most definitely does, he can do naught but lie. His "hope" and "change" will be exposed as the brands they are. People will see that there is little cause to hope, and that not much has changed. The despair, cynicism, and sense of betrayal that will result will foment a dangerous crisis and, in the end, a profound renewal of public discourse that demands truth and has no patience with inauthenticity.
Above I asked, "Where is the indignation, the outrage, at the lies in which we are immersed?" Clearly, the answer lies deeper than the machinations of one or another faction of the power elite. It lies deeper than the subversion and control of the media. Part of our society's apathy arises from a subtle and profound disempowerment: the de-potentiation of language itself, along with all other forms of symbolic culture. Words are losing their power to create and to transform. The result is a tyranny that can never be overthrown, but will only proceed toward totality until it collapses under the weight of the multiple crises it inevitably generates.
As we acclimate ourselves to a ubiquitous matrix of lies, words mean less and less to us, and we don't believe anything any more. As well we shouldn't! We are facing a crisis of language that underlies and mirrors all the other converging crises of the modern age. Just as a growing profusion of material and social technology has failed to bring about the promised Utopia of leisure, health, and justice, so has the profusion of words and media failed to bring about better communication. Instead, the opposite has happened.
We are faced with a paradox. On the one hand, in a technological society, words are themselves actions. The entire modern world is built on language, on symbol. Any endeavor requiring the coordination of human activity beyond a very small scale requires language. You cannot build a microchip, run an airport or a government, wage a war, organize a peace movement, or build a wind turbine without a vast apparatus of codified instruction books, technical manuals, educational curricula, time schedules, planning documents, memos, instructions, measurements, and data. If the President decides to bomb Iran, do you know how he will do it? With words. He literally has the power to speak a war into being. Like the Old Testament Jehovah, we create the world with our words. Neither the President nor Congress really ever does anything but talk (and write). Unless you work with your hands as a carpenter or garbage collector, you are probably the same.
What are we to do, then, when words, our primary creative tool in the modern world, have become impotent? Surely political activists must ask this of themselves, as they shout the truth from the rooftops, loud and clear, to so little effect (yes there are some small victories, but the inferno rages on). We feel the urge to stop talking and get out there and DO something. But to do is to speak. An exception might be the activists who, impatient with all the talk, go out there and sabotage tractors and spike trees. Ironically, the main impact of such operations usually comes from their symbolic power, which has quickly diminished (in the public consciousness) to the status of gimmicks and stunts.
Something similar might be said of mass protests, which began to lose their power after the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s. Originally, marches and demonstrations were intended not only to attract media attention, but carried the threat of actual physical action. Their essence was, "We're sick of sitting around talking, we're going to do something about this!" But as protests turned into media events, whose success was defined by the amount and kind of coverage, they became just another form of talking: they "raise awareness" and "send a message." Not since Seattle in 1998 has the physicality of street action had much of an effect. (In other parts of the world it is a different story. In China, for instance, protestors in rural villages are wont to [literally] tar and feather corrupt local officials. In Europe, mass demonstrations paralyze commerce and government.) It is not that the symbolic aspect of such actions is unimportant, but when they become wholly symbolic, the symbol loses its connection to - and impact on - reality.
It is not only that the powers that be so completely dominate the narratives of our time that any dissent seems irrational or illegitimate. The words of the dominant powers are losing their potency as well! The primary method by which governments increase their control is by creating fear. In this atmosphere, it is easy to declare new wars, impose new restrictions on freedom, make people accept new sacrifices, etc. With this in mind, I was gratified to see the utter failure of the "terrorism threat level" color-coding system to instill panic. You may have heard the message in airports: "the Department of Homeland Security has raised the terror alert threat level to orange..." Does anyone say, "Oh my God, it is orange! That's just one step short of a red alert!"? No. The words impact us as the buzzing of a fly. Another example is the recent failure of government scaremongering about the swine flu, a fine opportunity to implement mandatory vaccination programs, build mass quarantine facilities, etc.
Perhaps the most significant failure of the language of the rulers is the futility of their rosy economic pronouncements to reverse the progressive unwinding of the global financial system. (For money, too, is a story, a system of meanings and symbols that assigns roles, focuses collective intentions, and coordinates human activity.) When governments fail, such as in the breakup of the Soviet Union, a terminal symptom is the failure of the credibility of their leaders' words. When reality conflicts more and more obviously with the pronouncements of leaders, then when they say, "This shall be," no one believes that either. Laws, authority, currencies, and so on are all systems of symbols. When they break down, what remains is as Chairman Mao described: "Power comes from the barrel of a gun." That is why I think the finale of the de-potentiation of public speech will be an interlude of rule by naked force.
I note as an aside that it is not only public language that is losing its power and suffering a crisis of meaning. The same is happening to all symbolic communication. To quote from The Ascent of Humanity, "Another symptom of the breakdown of semantic meaning is the routine use of words like 'awesome,' 'amazing,' and 'incredible' to describe what is actually trivial, boring, and mundane. We are running out of words, or words are running out of meaning, forcing us into increasingly exaggerated elocutions to communicate at all."
We might say that the crisis of our civilization comes down to a crisis of language, in which words have seemingly lost their ability to create. We have all the technology and all the knowledge we need to live in beautiful harmony with each other and the planet. What we need is different collective choices. Choices arise from perceptions, perceptions arise from interpretations or stories, and stories are built of words, of symbols. Today, words have lost their power and our society's stories have seemingly taken on a life of their own, propelling us toward an end that no sane person would choose and that we seem helpless to resist. And helpless we are, when all we have are impotent words.
It is as if, as in The Emperor's New Clothes, the boy has cried, "The emperor is completely naked" and everyone hears him but no one cares. The parade marches on, an increasingly contrived and ruinous spectacle that no one, not even its leaders, truly believes in.
What, then, are we as writers, as speakers, as humans, to do? Shall we stop writing? No. But let us not labor under any illusions. The truth has been exposed again and again, but to what effect? What have forty years of correct analysis of the environmental and political state of the world brought us? The reason that the entire staff of Counterpunch, The Nation, and Truthout is not in a concentration camp is that it is not necessary. Words themselves have been robbed of their power. Thoreau said, "It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak and another to hear." Who hears now but the already-converted?
A picture is worth a thousand words - perhaps the image can rescue us from the crisis of language. Unfortunately, it cannot. The same air of unreality has come to infect the realm of images as has debilitated the power of words. In an age of virtual reality, immersive video games, on-line interactive worlds like Second Life, computer 3D animation, and routine graphic depictions of violence on screen, images of real atrocities are losing their power to shock. For the viewer, there is little observable difference between images of real violence and its on-screen simulation - both are just a set of pixels and neither impacts the viewer's off-screen reality in any tangible way. It's all happening in TV-land. Perhaps this explains the absence of any national sense of shame or soul-searching in the wake of Abu Ghraib. For many, it was just another bunch of images, just as 600,000 Iraqis dead is another string of digits.
Like words, images have become divorced from the objects they are supposed to represent, until the very word "image" itself has taken on connotations of inauthenticity: a corporate image, a politician's image. In a world of lies and images, nothing is real. Immersed in such a world, is the political apathy of the American public so difficult to understand?
The danger when we operate wholly in a world of representations and images is that we begin to mistake that world for reality, and to believe that by manipulating symbols we can automatically change the reality they represent. We lose touch with the reality behind the symbols. Grisly death becomes collateral damage. Torture becomes enhanced interrogation. A bill to gut pollution controls becomes the Clear Skies Act. Defeat in Iraq becomes victory. War becomes peace. Hate becomes love. Slavery becomes freedom.
The Orwellian ambition to render language incapable of even expressing the concept "freedom" has nearly been fulfilled. Not by eliminating the word, but by converting it into a mere image, an empty shell, a brand. How can the voices of protest be effective when everyone discounts all speech as image, spin, and hype? Whatever you say, it is in the end just words.
Take heart: the evisceration of the language that makes our tyranny impregnable also ensures its eventual demise. The words, numbers, and images over which it exercises complete control are less and less congruent to reality. Such is the folly of the infamous "Brand America" campaign, designed to burnish America's "image" abroad. The image has become more important than the reality. Bombs blow up innocent civilians to send a "message" to the "terrorists." No matter that this message exists only in the fantasies of our leaders. They are, like those they rule, immersed in an increasingly impotent world of symbol and cannot understand why the world does not conform to their manipulation of its representation, the pieces on their global chessboard.
However we play with the statistics to cover up the converging crises of our time, the crises continue to intensify. We can euphemize the autism crisis away, the obesity epidemic, the soil crisis, the water crisis, the energy crisis. We can dumb down standardized exams to cover up the accelerating implosion of the educational system. We can redefine people in and out of poverty and manipulate economic statistics. We can declare - simply declare - that the forests are not in precipitous decline. For a while we can hide the gathering collapse of environment and polity, economy and ecology, but eventually reality will break through.
As we rebuild from the wreckage that follows, let us remember the lesson we have learned. The power of the word, like all magical powers, will turn against us or wither and die if not renewed by frequent reconnection to its source.
Abstracted too many levels from its source, language maroons us in a factitious fantasy world, an unconscious story that turns us into its victims. Those of us dedicated to creating a more beautiful world must not lose ourselves in abstraction. Let us not imagine that we are more intelligent than the Neo-cons in their think tanks or the liberal professors in their universities. They are just as clever as anyone else at manipulating logic. All they say follows logically from their premises. It is the premises that are at fault, and these cannot be reasoned out. Remember that the Neo-cons too believe they are creating a better world. Only arrogance would say that we, being smarter than they are, can do better. Indeed, it is arrogance that defines them, and the opposite of arrogance is humility, and to be humble is to constantly open to new truth from the outside, from the real world and not one's interpretation of it.
That is the only thing that can keep us honest. Horror results when we get lost in a world of axioms and ideals. Many before us on left and right have reasoned atrocity out to a nicety. We stay honest by grounding ourselves again and again in the reality outside representation. When environmentalists focus on cost-benefit analyses and study data rather than real, physical places, trees, ponds, and animals, they end up making all the sickening compromises of the Beltway. Liberal economists with the best of intentions cheer when a poor country raises its GDP; invisible to their statistics is the unraveling of culture and community that fuels the money economy. Visit a real "mountaintop removal" operation and you know that there is no compromise that is not betrayal. Visit a real third-world community and the vacuity of free-trade logic is obvious. See the devastation of a bullet wound or a bomb strike, lives strewn across the street, and the logic of national interest seems monstrous.
Increasingly isolated in a virtual world, the people fear authenticity even as they crave it. Except in the young, the fear usually prevails over the craving until something happens to make life fall apart. Following the pattern experienced by Cindy Sheehan, the fundamental corruption of first one, then all of our civilization's major institutions becomes transparent. I have seen this many times in various areas of activism. Someone discovers that the pharmaceutical industry, or the music industry, or the oil industry, or organized religion, or Big Science, or the food industry is shockingly corrupt, but still believes in the basic soundness of the system as a whole. Eventually, in a natural process of radicalization, they discover that the rot is endemic to all of these and more. Each institution supports, affirms, and draws its own legitimacy from the others. So we discover eventually that the wrongness permeates every institution, and we desire to find and uproot its source.
As activists for the truth, we are midwives to this process. It is not quite true that no one heeds the boy's cry that the emperor is naked. Those who are ready to hear will hear, and they are made ready when their world crumbles. The exposing of all that is wrong serves an important purpose in guiding people from the old world to the threshold of a new - but only to the threshold, not across it. To enter into the new world requires that we recover the tools of world-creation: first and foremost, the power of word.
A nicer term for a "ubiquitous matrix of lies" would be a "ubiquitous matrix of stories." I am not suggesting that we abdicate the creative power of language. Language is an essential means to coordinate human activity, for beauty as well as for destruction. The stories we tell with words unite masses of people toward a common goal, and assign the meanings and roles necessary to attain it. To be sure, images, music, and art, both representational and non-representational, contribute to the weaving of a story, especially evoking the emotional energy that powers it, but information is indispensable as well. In a new world we will not cease to tell the story of what is and what shall be, but we will become conscious of our storytelling. The sequel to this essay will explore what I call "storyteller consciousness" on a cultural and personal level, so that we may prepare to tell the story of a more beautiful world, and to speak that world into existence as presidents and kings have spoken wars into existence for thousands of years. As these old stories fall apart, the time ripens for new ones. And the old stories are indeed falling apart, of which our increasing immunity to political and commercial speech is a symptom. No more or less significant a symptom is the crumbling of our great social institutions - education, politics, medicine, money - that are themselves built of a matrix of stories. When stories fall apart, the world falls apart.
As the crises of our age converge and infiltrate the fortresses we have erected to preserve the virtual world of euphemism and pretense, the world is falling apart for more and more people at once. The stories that have defined us and bound us are dying. We sense, as counterpart to the existential anxiety that comes as the old world and our identity within it disintegrates, an invigorating newness close at hand. So let us cease to be afraid as we stand at the threshold. It is time to learn the technologies, linguistic and otherwise, of world-creation.
Images by Jeremy Clarke, used courtesy of a Creative Commons license.
Tweet- 6-24-09
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Comments
Time to raise our own level of personal dialogue
Charles,
Your essay will hopefully serve as a wake-up to many as we face the need to raise our own level of dialogue with the world.
I'm considerably troubled by the reliance of American minds on brands and branding. When the GOP was thrashed in the last election, their first response was to re-brand. AIG receiving public outrage decides that the primary solution to become AIU. Because we lack connections to stable situations and deep conversations we are dissected into psychological pieces susceptible to easy manipulation through marketing.
We flock towards brands, hold faith in them and our world is altered by them in mysterious ways. Our perception of taste is altered by the branding on the package we received it in. Despite the illusion of variety, the brands around us are controlled by a few large multi-national corporations.
As those brands dissolve we must face the reality behind the promises we trusted. We will lose the promise of job security, we will lose the promise of retirement, we will lose the promise of independence from community.
Let's start making that change in every conversation we have tomorrow.
I wholeheartedly agree.
On the other hand, good conversations make no definitive statements or positions, but simply share themselves with others. There is a certain courage in that, and I don't expect, nor do I believe it would be entirely healthy to, open everything to everyone, but it is important in all communication to leave room for wrongness, or for ideas one hadn't even considered. To let the other person know they are a participant, that you value them, their ideas and the synergy between you.
What Charles has hit upon is how little of our daily conversation is even conversation; much of it is a talking-at, not talking-with. It's the difference between saying, "I will tell you what that is and you will wait to tell me what that is." and simply saying, "Look."
Relief, Resilience!
I feel so glad we can still say ' let's leave room for wrongness' and to the extent ' a suchness of this moment ungraspable yet ever happening, in joy and sadness.' - David
Thank you all
funeral directors
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Romance and Christmas go hand in hand. Most guys are terrible at romance and even worse at buying the right gift for their spouse on Christmas morning. In the beginning of a relationship there is a great deal of pressure in trying to find that something special for your new bride or wife of 25 years.
funeral directorsBrilliant
Brilliant and thought provoking as always, Charles. I'm sure the irony has not escaped you that as a writer, you are using words to convey the ever increasing meaninglessness of words. The difference, though, is that your words actually DO have meaning.
I wonder how many will hear? How many will read this essay, ponder it for a few moments and think, "He is absolutely right," and then turn to their partner or friends and have a vacuous conversation about what to watch on TV tonight?
Thank you, Charles, for reminding me that words are the mortar of creation.
A river of blessings to you,
*sTeviE*
Have you hugged your enemy today?
Storycology
Mm -- reminds me of Tom Atlee's Storycology concept. I still think it's a good idea.
I've been using the word "Legenschema" ("Legend" + "Schematic") to describe "the sense of reality" that is interwoven with our daily interactions, other people, and so on.
We are under the influence of a spell; What's more, I don't think anyone's really consciously in control of the spell. I don't believe any conspiracies, or even a head, are required for it to function.
I believe the spell is roughly synonymous with what Western occultists call an egregore.
To take territory from the spell will require, (I believe,) very intense efforts, including:
(*) putting communicative distance between ourselves and the spell, and
(*) casting new spells of our own, as they are revealed to us from within our hearts and conscience.
This way, the theory goes, we can clear the air, the soul can return into the room, and we can make way for hope, inspiration, love, freedom, work, and spiritual society, and get back onto a time track with a beautiful future.
part 2
Ah, Lion, you have anticipated Part 2 of this essay with your comment that we must begin to cast spells of our own. I call it, "telling the story of a more beautiful world."
Charles
Analytic Subjectivism
Hearts and Minds
great example
To win hearts and minds. Sickening, isn't it? That is a good example of the cynicism and distance embodied in our political discourse. Even if a politician goes up there and says, "We should do the right thing just because it is right," people will hear it cynically, and think, "He is just trying to win hearts and minds" or "He is just trying to project an image of morality or sincerity." This happens even if he is indeed sincere. Thus it becomes impossible to communicate.
Charles
more general questions
I'm always outraged especially by the antidepressant commercials ("where does depression hurt? everywhere... who... everyONE" - someone quite serious created, approved, and aired it, and went home to wife and kids!! and nobody cares!!! and what can i say except "where i come from, you are crazy" so it i'm glad to hear another express these thoughts, so very articulately - thank you)
More generally, I am wondering about how US is going to behave in the next few years, but even more so I am wondering about other countries - both governments and the population. I live in Kazakhstan. That reminds me, we have a banned book that will land you in prison - how comfortingly old fashioned, in the light of your article! But I am wondering if the government is going to use the "naked gun", and whether in case of a food crisis people are going to loot. You see, here we don't have people like the readers of reality sandwich, just vaguely informed discontent teenagers. If anyone has any thoughts about the WORLD during the next few years, I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks,
Dmitri
Very true!
conversation is becoming so strained. Nothing really means anything anymore. I find it nearly impossible to communicate what I feel in a genuine, meaningful way, through speaking. I do still have good conversations every so often, but usually it is after the fact, when I have unlimited time to analyse and ponder what was said, that I actually can absorb the information. When I don't feel talkative, it isn't because I am grumpy, tired, or antisocial that day. It is because I really don't see the point. I guess I just regurgitated this article in my own response, but this is how I feel as well.
This response means very little. Everyone must be feeling the same, but what can we do?
Time to shift
other modes of communication
Mental telepathy, yes... but this is misunderstand in the popular culture as a kind of radio that transmits words. We already have that kind of remote communication -- it is called text messaging. But when I think of mental telepathy and other modes of communication, I think about voice as opposed to word, and eye contact, and sound, and color, and movement... all of these are infinite, "analog" as opposed to the finiteness of text communication, which can be reduced to just so many zeros and ones.
One thread I have been developing in my work is the "lingua adamica", the original human language that is not a representational, semantic language, but rather communicates meaning by sound, the cries of the human animal, and lives on underneath the surface, and in words such as "wow" and "aha".
Charles
you can't lie when singing (can you?)
Interesting, Charles.
Reading your article the thought "one can't lie when singing" popped into my head. I don't know if that's true, but it resonates with your comment about sound.
The blantancy of lies
The Truth About Lies
We are all only ourselves to blame {to different degrees} We have witnessed, gradually so many of our sources of truth become subjected to "misnomer"
Religion, Philosophy, Science, Government etc etc.
All versions of truth telling over decads, centuries, have been exposed to be infiltrated with hypocrisy ... again to different degrees.
Of course we "always" take our present opinions to be what guides our own recognition of truth ... 'lest someone elses reign supreme.
I guess this is where powerful Entheogenic substances have value. They overtake our trivial minds ... on either side of the opinion game ... and "force" a transcendental viewpoint beyond the opinionated mind alone.
Lies about Truth ... telling the truth about lies ... oh when, oh when will the human mind give it all a rest
Not until one actually "sees"
No Untruth in Silence
A second comment ... like "reading between the lines" ... the silence between sounds/words/concepts ... the very zero point of quantum projection{communication} ... is what allows for actual context.
Knowing is only "realized" in silence.
Speaking from a place of silent contemplation is all that is missing.
Mere pitting of words against each other as sheer "reactionism" ... 'tis but inertia personfied ... just like all of our deterministic/mechanistic scientific viewpoints ...
Well the world of Quantum Physics leaves all that hanging on 'but the perpetuation of it's own misnomer.
The very wanting of words/language to be determinational is what pits us against each other.
Wanting policy to take precedent ... wanting money to have actual value ... wanting empirical mech-tech sci-fi whatever to contain "revelation"
We will speak until "silenced" ... one way or another my friends ... 'lest we remain silent until we actually have something to say.
cynicism
I don't see what I wrote that could be interpreted as cynical. I do not feel cynical, I feel optimistic, and more than optimistic. I think Obama is a basically honest and very intelligent man with a good heart, who is trying his best to create a better world from within his operating paradigms. The tragic part of it is that his understanding of the origins and nature of the crises of our time do not go deep enough.
Charles
The Obama Deception
Any objective analysis of Obama's actions - not his words, which carry no meaning whatsoever, but his all-important actions - to date, leads to the conclusion that he is every bit the puppet dictator that Bush was. The only difference is that he's more articulate, at least in front of a teleprompter, and of course much more charismatic.
He hasn't put an end to Iraq: he's drawn down troop levels (slightly) ... whilst increasing troop stregnth in Afghanistan by approximately the same amount. His much ballyhooed health care reform is a joke, proposing to borrow massively in order to pay, whilst simultaneously introducing provisions for denying care to those who are too old or infirm to (in the doctors' view) benefit ... euthanasia, a practice endorsed by a certain other dictatorial regime that seized power in a democratic country, not so long ago. His Food Safety Modernization Act aims to destroy small organic farms whilst giving over the last elements of agriculture to such paragons of 'food safety' as Monsanto. Closing Guantanamo? Look closer and you'll see that it's a maybe, perhaps in a year, and either way it will be accompanied by the opening of similar facilities on the American mainland.
I could go on, but I like to think you've got the point.
He's not a messiah, that's for sure. Nor a savior. But he's certainly been presented as one, and the uncritical, hysterical enthusiasm with which he's been embraced by the American people shows that vast numbers of them have accepted that image at face value.
I suppose I'm being cynical. Very 'old paradigm' of me, I know. After all, he's just a man, with a good heart, but confused. Right?
Sure he is.
Watch this, 'The Obama Deception':
Link to trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od8bcCvX3jU
Link to movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw
There's more to freeing your mind than entheogens.
The Revolution is Within
Retrospectoscope
I would like to know what you have to offer except another helping of cynicism. Obama has fulfilled his campaign promises by withdrawing troops from Iraq, closing Gitmo, ending torture, campaigning for health care reform with a public option, and opening a dialogue with so-called unfriendly nations including overtures to Muslims throughout the world."
How hollow this seems now, in 2011. Obama, now more than ever is clearly a captive of the momentum of previous administrations.
Why evn have 2 political parties if their actions when in government are indistinguishable?
Thanks for re-calling attention to this
David Eggleton
www.appliedecologics.com
blog at woburnite.com
Making Words Direct and Expressive
Thank you again, Charles, for this wonderful and articulate article.
Two ways I've been thinking about making words impactful lately:
1) Say what you are going to do, then do it.
The correllary to this is don't say you are going to do something if you aren't sure that you can or will. The other correllary is be prepared to apologize, renegotiate the commitment, or otherwise make up for when you mess up.
It's becoming increasingly rare for "one's word" to be meaningfully connected to one's actions, but it's very simple to reconnect the two.
This connects words with will.
2) Express emotion through "nonverbal" aspects of communication (tone, body language, metaphor, etc.).
This is akin to your "original language" idea. Dr. Zhi Gang Sha (among others) teaches people how to do this in an enormously popular book Soul Wisdom. Unfortunately Sha is an enormous narcissist, but I do see it as good news that people are practicing glossolalia, spontaneous expressive movement and singing, and other more direct ways of communicating.
This new expressive practice could run the risk of reinforcing inauthenticity if not taken into the places that it truly is important however. But overall I see it as a positive trend.
In my work as a coach, I find that my main job is to bring people out of the trance of words devoid of emotion into direct experience and expression. I do this by myself entering into direct experience and expression and encouraging my clients to follow me.
Reconnecting with expressive, emotional language could help connect words with heart. The arts can be enormously helpful here too when heartfelt.
When words are heartfelt and connected with action, we will find true liberation from the matrix of lies.
http://twitter.com/duffmcduffee
Read George Orwell's "The Politics of Language"
George Orwell identified this threat to language in his 1974 essay “The Politics of Language.”
We have only ourselves to blame since so many people use language for just about every purpose other than communication. More often then not language is just an accessory to be over used by academians who think too much of themselves, mis-used by marketers (which includes politicians) who don't think too much of us, or under used by people who don't think at all. www.sniffcode.com
so much to say about this..
But this is your article and you are going down the same path. There's a lot to say about this from the standpoint of cognitive and behavioral psychology, but I think that Brett Dennon sings it better, and the intro is particularly relevant to this article:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F58TfYHqLak
In a beautiful synchronicity I'd been wearing that brand of shoes exclusively for about a month when I first saw the video.
ass O she ate ions of lan g u age
An acceleration in evolution would require a revolution
in language
-I read your article for it is gay-
but (used to bring consciousness to the butt)
I = human eye
read = a color
your =denoting possession
for=4
it is gay = the article being homosexual
"it is gay" meant to say it is not negative as in it is "positive" "good" or a
"cool" piece of art
for gay once had no association with sexual preference
"We" "you" "I" "us" "they"
no "people"
live a world of babel
words via meta physics and the logic functions of the brain have infinite quantum associations
When a person asks me the common "how are you"
I reply with the almost expressionless word "fine"
for it rhymes with nine the most objective number of this current year.
For in math there is truth
People respond with mood expressive words like "good" with little meaning.
As if it was an automatic response programmed by the daily routine of question and answer we find in greetings. A routine that craves spoken words to drown out the silence of a simple smile or hand gesture.
Themanwithnoname12.blogspot.com
Orwell, Berry, more responses
Spot on my friend
~illuuminuus~ myspace.com/illuuminus
Is LOVE enough
lies
In a way, all words are lies, especially nouns, since as representations or maps they correspond imperfectly to that which they represent. However, if we use them with the awareness of their imperfection, they can work magic.
As for using lies to divert our attention from the pain etc., another way to look at it is that the lies protect us from too much truth too soon, which would abort the journey of separation we have entered into.
Charles
Music
Fine article, Charles
I’m often struck by the incomprehensibility of the language of today and its resulting confusion. Since I contrast today’s language with that of hundreds of years ago, as portrayed in period piece dramas like those recently developed and televised by HBO, I must conclude that, among other things, a contraction of our attention span has demanded a corresponding compaction of words for the transfer of a thought from one mind to another. (Also, look at how I have to separate these thoughts into short paragraphs, lest readers reach the limit of their own short attention span!)
Modern language usage forces me to formulate a mature civilization of thought into a mere child of words. (While it is true that these word-children mature eventually into civilizations of their own, I’m referring to the civilization of today, not that of yesterday, or of tomorrow.)
Since our attention/word span is now so short, and a full meaning cannot possibly be communicated within the proscribed word count, we are forced to render an interpretation for ourselves using our own state of consciousness instead of admitting the thought along with the state of consciousness of the person who’s communicating with us.
In addition, since we are at the apex of reductionist and dualistic thinking and are individually being herded into one of two camps of thought (Liberal vs. Conservative as an example), the interpretations we assign to everything we read or hear become loyal to the camp to which we belong. Since the herding of our consciousness into either of these two camps is unconscious, we believe that our opinion is the only reasonable reality.
I’m looking forward to the total breakdown of modern language because only in the utter uselessness of something, can an alternative arise naturally and spontaneously, like a Phoenix, from the ashes.
Musical sounds evolved to grunts (The communication of needs-emotions to needs-objects). Then grunts evolved to words, which communicated objective meaning. Then meaningful words were gathered and condensed into more meaningful words. Now these condensed and more meaningful words are imploding gradually back to grunts (the incomprehensible state of language today) and grunts will eventuate back to music. (Something I believe is already happening.) With such a view, as flawed as it must be, this pendulum can be seen as a whole in its complete arc.
What arises, in this Phoenix, will probably be accompanied by the coalescing of human consciousness from its current materialist/dualist state into a new state which transcends and incorporates that which the majority of humanity today experiences. In fact, the resulting new form of communication will arise naturally from this evolved state of consciousness.
I’ve been given a taste of what it’ll be like, as I guess many of you have (we’re herein debating this as variations of reading ones thoughts and emotions, etc. because of our own minor experiences). The true nature of this change will be revealed, with some surprise to us all I’m sure, as soon as its necessity is ready.
In addition, I believe (sure, call me crazy if you want) that those waiting to contact us from off-planet are waiting for this arc to reach completion so that our interpretation of their motive and purpose will be unambiguous. A communication of such great consequence must not be left to arbitrary human interpretation as it exists within today's consensus consciousness and language.
They’ve been ignoring our language ever since it evolved because of its potential to obfuscate (and because of the interim nature of its sweep within the arc, in the wider scope of the evolution of human consciousness and communication).
What have they been listening to with great interest during all this evolutionary time? That which has preceded, and has also been contemporary with language; that which has reliably communicated our state and stage of consciousness over tens of thousands of years; that which accurately communicates our messages to them, and their messages to us. (And, of course the only reliable communications we send to our selves and to each other)
Music.
The next time you get high, place yourself within that subtle musical conduit which connects us with them; imagine the conversation, listen to the exchange. You might just agree with my interpretation of their motive as being one of utmost loving care.
After words have been transcended; after their temporary usefulness has been accomplished, music will continue to express universal truth. But instead of being the only thread of honesty alongside the inherent potential dishonesty of language, it will be a wondrous accompaniment to messages exchanged between evolved human beings within whatever method of evolved communication we develop.
transcending language
I think that we won't ever abandon language altogether, but we will return it to its proper place, and other modes of communication will recover their proper place as well.
I loved your description of song to grunts to words to grunts to song. Although I don't think that primitive language was grunts.
Charles
Academic Footnoting
academic
No doubt it would be more rigorous. Someone other than I will have to create an academic version of this though, because I haven't read any of those thinkers you mention. Except some Wittgenstein in college and maybe one essay by Arendt. Sometimes I think maybe I should get some intellectual training. But life has overtaken me.
Charles
perfect irony
In a post titled "Promoting fictions" howard16 suggests that Obama has actually "fulfilled his campaign promises by withdrawing troops from Iraq, closing Gitmo, ending torture, campaigning for health care reform with a public option, and opening a dialogue with so-called unfriendly nations." Apropos of the subject of Mr. Eisenstein's well-written article, this is an extreme confusion of words with deeds. "Promoting fictions" is a perfect description of howard16's message.
Obama has not withdrawn troops from Iraq but merely promised that he will do so (by 2011!). He has not closed the Guantanamo Bay detention center, but merely signed an order that (theoretically) temporarily suspended proceedings and promised to close the center within the year. A Guantanamo judge rejected Obama's "order" to suspend proceedings just one week later, and the Senate voted 90-6 in May to block funds to release Guantanamo prisoners, providing good reason to doubt the magic power of Obama's words. There is no convincing evidence that Obama has effectively ended all torture, only that he has signed an executive order and made a promise that under his administration "the U.S. does not torture" (however the ever-changing army interrogation manual may define that increasingly empty word). It's a good start, but even if this were completely successful, not continuing the most unpopular and inhuman of the last administration's policies is the least we should expect. Has the barbarity of the Bush-Cheney regime really set the bar that low for all who follow? The last two items on howard16's list are even on their face "just talk": campaigning for health care, and talking with leaders. It's a real sign of the times if Obama is considered to have fulfilled his campaign promises just by making more promises.
On the flipside, a look at some real-world physical actions of Obama's government show some interesting contraindications: he has sent an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, he has expanded the use of Predator drones to bomb people in Pakistan in violation of the impotent words of international law (including most recently, people at a funeral for victims of an earlier drone attack), he has expanded the use of the "state secrets privilege" to deny trials regarding U.S. government torture and extradition, and he has formally petitioned the court for the censorship of hundreds of photos of torture at U.S. overseas prisons.
A news story today (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/26/AR200906...) says that Obama is planning an executive order to grant himself the power to continue indefinite detention without charges, and one of his officials actually had the gall to say this is in the wishes of civil liberties groups! ("Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order.") And on the level of words with consequences, Obama has promised that nobody who engaged in torture as part of their job will be prosecuted, effectively granting immunity to all those Americans "just doing their jobs," in the true spirit of Nuremburg. Obama said: “This is a time for reflection, not retribution" and "nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.”
In other words, this is a time for talking about justice, not actually working for it. This might one day rightly be called the Obama Doctrine.
I, for one, AM cynical. Or is it just that I can call a spade a spade, and can tell when I am being lied to? I know it's a radical proposition in these deceptive times. But the last administration taught me a lesson or two about the depths of political deceit that I will not soon forget. In the wise words of George W. Bush: "Fool me once, shame on you... Fool me–you can't get fooled again."
Many community members here
I was just getting ready to post the same comment...:)
...with respect to Abram's "The Spell of the Sensuous", which I am enjoying right now. Perhaps as we re-establish our sense of place within the greater ecology/cosmos, we will "naturally" be inclined to fuse our speech/language (as our forebearers did) with that of the animate landscape and sentient beings around us...
Thanks for a great articels and interesting responses. I look forward to Part 2.
Someone recently posted
Someone recently posted this quote by Bradford Keeney in response to another RS article. Thought it's worth sharing here...
"What is most important has little or nothing to do with words and linguistic understanding. As the Bushmen say, words can trick us into believing anything. With word trickery, we may end up worshipping a pile of elephant dung or a heap of metal. Somewhere between the early cradle of civilization and the internet, our species made the colossal mistake of proclaiming that words, theories, and understandings are the roads to salvation and happiness. If this is true, or even partially true, then it means that we have been misled for over a thousand years. The word games have led us to posit one form of gender, race, culture, nation, or religion as superior to others - thereby justifying any and all acts of arrogant greed, war, and destruction of life and planet.
Religions and philosophies can never deliver the truth we most deeply desire. Our born destiny is the same as the first humans - to release our bodies, our whole beings, into feeling and expressing the deepest joy and ecstasy. In other words, dancing our selves into heaven, enlightenment, peace, and love. If there is anything history teaches, it is that words and understandings aren't taking us anywhere but more of the same bullshit. We need to start up the wild drumming and shake off the words and stuck thoughts.
If we don't free ourselves to be ecstatically tuned and happy, we may continue going to hell while taking the planet down with us. It's time to turn to our species' deep collective past, held by the embodied wisdom expression of the ancestral culture. They teach us that the revolution we need cannot be voiced through lyrics or words, but through spirited rhythms and music. The Gods only speak through music. Anyone who says they have talked to God is a liar. Words only have value when they help liberate us from any over-seriousness, either/or thinking, and any form of fundamentalism from the Christian right wing to the Buddhist left wing and the New Age no wing. All are word games. Unless the Dalai Lama and the Pope are willing to trade costumes for a week and thereby truly contribute to the big breakup and meltdown of the differences that hurt others, they are unable to liberate us. We need to shake ourselves free from the shackles of over-serious words and totalizing meanings."
Well said
Lets Begin with Beer
http://www.nationalroadsafety.org Under the free traffic safety programs link is a film called "sex lies and profits" check it out!
I don't think that everyone knows it's a lie. It's very real and so is impact on your life.
"Dont tell me that words don't matter" Obama
A Word or Two More
One has to realize, at some point, that words are primarily sound.
Sanskrit, [Deva Nagari alphabet] {mother of all language some scholars say}, bases it's whole premise on "the actual sound of each syllable.
Humans without language is like birds without song ... never as complete or fulfilling.
One can dress a a fool up as a knig or sage ... yet it is only when he speaks that his true "maya" becomes revealed
Or a poor wandering beggar will not be recognized as a Sage until he speaks ... revealing "words" only to communicate causal principles.
All script is but subordinate to actual "sound vibration" ... hence the mysticism of "mantra" ... which exists before the more visual "tantra" / thanka etc... or the more workable karma or "yantra".
A time before written representations of sound ... most of our mis commnuication, especially here on the web, has to do with not hearing the more intimate sound associated with the expression.
In this information age of empiricism ... seeing has taken over hearing
Modernistic "seeing is believing" verses ancient "story telling"
Jesus left only a few parables ... Lao Tsu left only 81 stanza's ... the Buddhas actual words of teaching relatively sparse.
In Sanskrit the OM contains the rest of language or sound variation.... similar to how all color is there in white light.
The original Vedas are just "sloka's" .. one or two lines of summation ... then whole scriptures beak each down into further expresasion .. like taking do re mi into furthered song.
My born again christian cousin once told me how many books on the bible there were in the Theological universities ... all "about the Bibile" ... how many sects evolved out of a few parables
The closer one gets to causal principle the more quantum compression is contained there in ... more meaning in less expression
Silence is not the absense of sound ... it is the epitiome of sound.
Stillness is the epitome of movement ... and not the absense of movement
There is more "potential" energy in a Zero Point Field State "the sixe of a mickel, than in millions and millions of tons of uranium {Astro Physics}
The more data ... the less knowlege ... the more science ... the less insight
The more "media" ... the less "revelation" }key point}
There is never any problem with language, just our ability or inability to recognize causal principle in relation to sound
In one sense silence itself is actually also contained within the OM
The words and the space between ... hence the extensive emphasis for proper meter in Sanskrit ... how the words and silence exist in relation to each other determine what is actually communicated.
The Tao of Zen ... the Zen of Tao ... there is never a point of not knowing .. just infinite "variation" and "pause"
Their very relationship ... the art of communication.
All of these categories teach us something Sound is primordial ... next is touch ... then sight ... then taste ... then smell
Aether/akasha - sound
Air - touch
Fire - Sight
Water - taste
Earth - smell
This is the sucessive progression of our "knowqlege" aquiring senses in relation to "mind" relative to categories of matter {our own senses of matter themselves}
One can have entheogenic visions... but until one develops a "language" for it {Mckenna} the lack of the more intimate sound of knowlege will keep one further away from ultimate clarification.
Many trippers have seen wonderous visions ... but not until they found revelation through communication could such things be integrated into a larger context.
Hearing is ones most intimate knowlege aquring sense
Each syllable of language/sound is it's own self manifest causal principle ... just like do re fa so la ti do ...
To think of language as not an intrinsic aspect of communication ... well who out there who has actually had an Entheogenic experience, and has not found as much "mind expansion" within sound .. as within vision ... or other senses
The whisper in the ear will always be closer to the heart than the brightesr light.
Breaking Free from Lies and Severance of Citizenship
I wanted to share this powerful message with the R.S and Evolver community. When do we as sovereign peaceful beings wake up and draw the line in abolishing our ties to what is supposed to be a "servant" government that constantly lies to us and enslaves us by means of deception?
Declaration of Renunciation and Severance of U.S. Citizenship by Jeff Knaebel, Sovereign Individual of the Earth This Declaration, made at New Delhi, India on 19 June 2009, WITNESSETH:
To the people of this Earth, my fellow human beings, my brothers and sisters, in memory of Black Elk and Chief Joseph, and with special respect to the Grandmothers and Elders of all indigenous communities, I, Jeff Knaebel, hereby make this Declaration of Severance and Dissolution of all bonds between myself and the Government of the United States of America. I renounce my birth certificate – I renounce my citizenship – and reject all claims of whatsoever nature made by the United States against me. I am not government property, and I am not a criminal. I am a peace-loving human being who is finished with being a slave to the Corporate Warfare State. I am not a citizen of any Government. I renounce all of them. I hereby destroy my United States passport by which the United States government claims control of my movement upon this earth, and thus lays claim upon my right to exist. I will place the shredded remains of my passport upon the monument of Mahatma Gandhi. I have chosen this monument because it is a symbol that all mankind can recognize: of nonviolent resistance to immoral, corrupt, and violent Governments.
By this deliberate act of rebellion and sedition, I hope to free myself and alert mankind to the dangers it has created by obeying Governments of the world. My refusal to remain a tax-compliant accomplice to State murder will be considered treason against the United States. The choice is this, or treason against human life itself. My life is not about supporting the cold-blooded murder of women and children. No permission is required to renounce that which I never sought in the first place, for which I never entered a contract, and which is imposed upon me against my will. Having declared myself not a citizen, I am therefore not a citizen. Citizenship is either voluntary, or it is forcible slavery. The United States government is incomprehensibly malevolent and destructive. It takes our money, our identities, and our lives. It gives us back corruption, war, heinous crime, and lies. This government has no moral right to exist. It ought to be abolished without further human bloodshed. The Nation State is a criminal organization which must be opposed in its very concept.
It is impossible to reform a system that is built upon a foundation of lies and violence – one whose health and continuance depends upon endless war. The system must be altogether abolished. It is irredeemably evil. The State represents a terminal disease of human consciousness that is anti-life, anti-ethics, and suicidal for the human species. It is a sick addictive co-dependency between its citizens and parasitic lying murdering psychopathic politicians. Blind obedience to incompetent, deceitful, violent and morally depraved authority is a clear case of mental disease. Eckhart Tolle, Gopi Krishna and other morally advanced beings have diagnosed the United States government as pathologically criminally insane. All political authority is arbitrary: arbitrary as to the form it takes; arbitrary as to the boundaries it establishes; arbitrary as to the limits of its jurisdiction; and arbitrary as to the taxation it collects.
If one refuses to bow, to obey, to pay one's taxes, to use Government travel documents, one will ultimately be placed in jail, or die resisting arrest. Even in its most equitable form, it is impossible for government to disassociate itself from evil. The State has been conceived in violence and is maintained by lies and violence. Its every act can only be criminal. Unless the right to ignore the State is recognized, its citizens become tainted accomplices in its deeds. From the most democratic to the most totalitarian form of government there is ultimately no difference among the powers they exercise. The essence of the State is the threat and use of deadly force against those who choose not to comply with its edicts. No Government rightfully owns the territory it monopolizes. It has stolen possession of whatever land it lays claims to. Everything it has, the State has stolen or plundered.
It prevents peaceful people from establishing their own voluntary cooperative economic and social relationships. The purpose of assigning nationality is to control a mass of captive taxpayers in order to maintain the large military establishment required to keep a citizenry in a state of fearful submission to the Power Structure of money. Why should a system of structurally compulsively violent political authority be preferred to a cooperative system in which human beings live according to the Natural Law of equal liberty?
A coercive government has no legitimate authority over me. None. Its only authority comes through the barrel of a gun. Is the arbitrary "legal" construct of the Corporate State more precious than life? Is this guns-and-steel lifeless structure more precious than living, breathing beings? This killing machine fabricated of cunning deceitful words of legally piggily on corporate parchment... Are we living beings or abstract symbols to be manipulated by the Money Power? What is the "National Interest," other than the transfer of wealth and influence to the power elite? What about humanity's interest? I write against the oblivion of humanity. I act in quest of goodness, beauty and truth, that we may yet live.
I am not Government property. I bid farewell to the United States Government and to the citizenship it has imposed upon me against my will. I love life too much to be forced to participate in its murder. The United States government is a stain upon humanity. It is a grotesque distortion of human relations and the human conscience. It is ugly beyond the power of words to describe. Only its end product speaks clearly for what it is and what it does. "Shock and Awe" death raining from the sky. Children's blood flowing in the streets. Body parts strewn across wedding festival grounds. A human genome corrupted by depleted uranium and Agent Orange. Hiroshima. Los Alamos Lab. The science of death versus the art of life. Torture. Rape. Ecocide. Endless heinous crime. The most terrible Merchant of Death in human history. Human species suicidal.
If you, people of the world, wish to support Government, then so be it. But leave me alone. As a peaceful individual I reject your authority imposed by violence. I reject all Government claims of legitimacy. You and your Government do not have the right to do the things that you do. Foremost among these tax-and-public debt financed activities are the waging of war; the conscription of soldiers; and the expenditure of citizens bread labor upon armaments which by now can destroy our earth many times over. I call for an end to these activities. I will not support such activities with my life, my money, or my energy. The laws of our natural world, the laws of the Great Spirit, the five precepts of the Buddha, are morally and practically superior to political laws. You must not kill and I must not kill. We must not support killing. We must love our neighbors as we love ourselves. As the Hopi have said, "From this one commandment, to respect and revere life, come all the other commandments: to tell the truth, to share with others, to life together in mutual support, to take care of our children and old people, the sick and strangers, friends and enemies, to abstain from intoxicants and adultery, not to cheat, steal, or covet." It is up to the individual to discern his duty to his fellowmen and to act accordingly.
No other can know my moral conscience, let alone "represent" it in decisions of war and peace. How can another "represent" me in voting to murder children? The first duty of love is to do no harm. Therefore my duty of love is to renounce the State, to withdraw from it, to quit it, to abandon it, to refuse to pay its taxes, to refuse participation in its charade of corporate money controlled elections, and to live my own life in search of truth and righteousness. What do you do when you awaken to the awfulness of the lies of the State and the State of the lie? How does one negotiate with pathological liars? How does one come to peace with his tax payment hiring of cold-blooded murder for oil and money? Against whom, then, shall I commit treason? The brotherhood of man? My rational mind and common sense? My moral conscience? Or the United States government? I prefer treason against the arbitrarily imposed rule of an organized crime syndicate to treason against humanity.
To suffer in tax compliant silence the heinous crimes against humanity perpetrated by the United States would be to negate whatever is within me that can be called human. The shredding of my government permission-to-exist documents is offered as a prayer that the government of the United States – perceived to be a criminal organization of incomprehensible scope – may be without bloodshed dissolved and abolished from this earth forever. I no longer have a Government name; I have no country, no travel papers, no passport, and no Government identification. Under the law of every Government, I am an illegal human being. Against this arbitrary "illegality" I claim my right to exist as a free and sovereign individual.
What man – or group of men – can declare another to be "illegal?" Such men, who cannot give life, would yet take it, as lying murderers in God's own temple. For Power, there is no tomorrow. There are no grandchildren. Of the good earth, there is none. There is only Power. Persons who aspire to this are degraded, deranged, diseased. We are insane to submit to rule by the depraved. What shall be done with me?
If deported to the United States, the Government will subject me to draconian penalties. Having destroyed my passport, having renounced my citizenship, having made this Declaration, I have become a seditious rebel to the United States Government. The United States will have no choice but to harass, persecute, and ultimately jail me for speaking truth to power. On the one hand, the natural wish to live, to grow, to move about, to be free, to act as a man. On the other hand, in order to live in this manner with the ordinary amenities of livelihood, I am forced by taxation to finance the murder of children who have a sacred right to life – innocent small children who cannot conceive of the wish to harm me.
There comes a time when the abuses are so great, the mindless destruction so wanton, the suffering so stupidly unnecessary, that one must resist the Power of rulership with his life. I love Life too much to participate in its murder. I bid you farewell, those who would remain in voluntary bondage. Go about your life peacefully, respecting yourself, all others, and the earth upon which we live. Remember that means is to end as seed is to tree. A violent means can never produce a good end. The truth shall set us free.
My efforts shall not have been in vain. Right always overcomes might, even though I may not live to see the day. Whatever happens to me, may you remember my message: Awaken from your slumber. Realize that Government depends upon your consent. You control yourself. You can withdraw your consent. We must recover Respect – for life, and for each other. Civilizations that get off the Path of Respect do not last, because when a people get off the path, they also remove themselves from the circle of life. My prayer is to love and to serve.
From my heart I seek to act in a good way, in a sacred way, for the benefit of many, in support of life, that the seventh generation of children may yet live and be happy. The "why" of what I do is put completely to rest by the statement, "I love." The final answer to any question about my actions is "I love." What is the value of human life – this is the real question.
Executed at New Delhi this 19th day of June 2009 Jeff Knaebel June 29, 2009 Jeff Knaebel [send him mail] is an expatriate American domiciled in India since 1995. He formerly practiced as a registered professional engineer, having been trained at Cornell Univ. and the Colorado School of Mines. Visit his website. http://www.freeofstate.org/new/?page_id=4
here here!
Perhaps...
Upon a closer second and third read, I think I do have a few thoughts which I hope will be beneficial and add to your work.
I think an excerpt from Neither Wolf Nor Dog speaks powerfully to this topic. This section is part of an oration by an anonymous Indian elder (referred to as Old Dan in the book) to author Kent Nerburn:
"I grew up speaking the language of my people. It wasn't until school I had to learn English. They just marched us into the classroom and started talking in English. We had to learn.
"I remember how funny it sounded when I first heard it. There were so many words. The teacher could talk for an hour and not stop. She could talk about anything. She didn't need to move her hands, even. She just talked. Some days I would sit and watch her just to see all the words she said. One other boy once told me he thought she said as many words in a day as there were stars in the sky. I never forgot that.
"When I learned English I realized it was a trick. You could use it to say the same thing a hundred ways. What was important to Indian people was saying something the best way. In English you had to learn to say things a hundred ways. I never heard anything like it. I still watch white people talk and I'm surprised at all the words. Sometimes they say the same thing over and over and over in different ways. They are like a hunter who rushes all over the forest hoping to bump into something instead of sitting quietly until he can capture it.
"I don't mind this, mostly. But I don't like it when it is used to hurt us or other people. Now I'm going to tell you some of those things that hurt because of the way people say them. I wonder if you ever thought of them.
"The first one is battles. Whenever the white people won it was a victory. Whenever we won it was a massacre. What was the difference? There were bodies on the ground and children lost their parents, whether the bodies were Indian or white. But the whites used their language to make their killing good and our killing bad. They 'won'; we 'massacred.' I don't even know what a massacre is, but it sounds like dead women and little babies with their throats cut. If that's right, it was the white people who massacred more than we did. But I have hardly ever heard anyone talk about the white massacres. I don't like it when people use that word only about the killing we did. It makes our killing seem uglier than yours, so it makes our people seem worse than yours.
"Here's another one: uprising. You use that word to talk about anytime our people couldn't stand what was happening to them anymore and tried to get our rights. Then you should call your Revolutionary War and uprising. But you don't. Why not? There was a government taking freedom away from you and you stood up against it. But you called it a revolution, like maybe the earth was turning to something better.
"When we did it, it was called an uprising, like everything was peaceful and orderly until we 'rose up.' Well, maybe we should make those words backwards and call those 'downkeepings,' because to us, we were being kept down all the time. I'd like it a lot better if history books said, 'Then the Indians were kept down again,' rather than 'Then the Indians rose up again.'
...
"But those things are things from the old days, and you probably don't think they are real any more. Well they are.
"My little great grandson came home one day and told me they were studying the frontier in American history. I asked him what it was. He told me it was where civilization stopped. I almost told him he couldn't go back to that school any more.
"Just look at that! They were teaching him that civilization only existed up to where the white men had reached. That means everything on the other side of that line was uncivilized. Well, we were on the other side of that line. We had governments and laws too. Our people were better behaved than the people who came into our lands. We thought we were at least as civilized as the white man. But here is my little great grandson coming home from school talking about the frontier and civilization. It was like we didn't exist.
"Every time you talk about the frontier you are telling us that we don't matter. I looked up the word. It means the edge between the known and unknown. Whenever you use it you are saying that our people are part of the unknown. You are teaching your children and our children a history that says that Indian people were part of a big, dangerous, empty space on the other side of the line where people had laws and culture. It is like there were wildcats and poisonous snakes and Indians, and they were all the same--just something unknown that made the land dangerous.
"See this is part of the big story that you don't even see. You teach about the frontier. You talk about wilderness and how empty the land was, even though to us the land was always full. You talk about civilization like we didn't have any, just because we didn't try to haul big chairs and wooden chests across the desert in a cart.
...
"See, to us, American history is how the big sea became little ponds and whether those are going to be taken from us or not. It doesn't have anything to do with thirteen colonies and some covered wagons going west. Our land was taken from us from every direction. We can look at the same facts as you and it is something completely different. But you build your history on words like 'frontier' and 'civilization,' and those words are just your ideas put into little shapes that you can use in sentences. The big ideas behind them are weapons that take our past away from us.
"I think that's a lot of where our people went wrong with your people. We didn't see the big ideas behind the words you used. We didn't see that you had to name everything to make it exist, and that the name you gave something was what it was. You named us savages so that made us savages. You named the place where we lived the wilderness, so that made it a wild and dangerous place. Without even knowing it, you made us who we are in your minds by the words you used. You are still doing that, and you don't even know it is happening.
"I hope you'll learn to be more careful with your words. Our children don't know the old language so well, so it is your English that is giving them the world. Right now some of your ideas in your words are wrong. They are giving our children and yours the world in a wrong way.
"There was an old man who told me when I was a boy that I should look at words like beautiful stones. He said I should lift each one and look at it from all sides before I used it. Then I would respect it.
"I think he gave me good advice. You people have so many words that you don't respect them the way you should. There is always another one, so you just throw them out there without thinking.
"I think you need to be careful. Those words are like stones. Even if they are very beautiful, if you throw them out without thinking, they can hurt someone."
(Excerpted from Neither Wolf Nor Dog, by Kent Nerburn, a fantastically powerful book that all should read.)
Old Dan says things that agree with your analysis completely, but he also goes deeper, to the part where I think I disagree with your thesis that words are becoming less powerful. On the surface, words certainly seem to be growing less meaningful today, as all of your examples show. But I think your essay misses the fact that the lying words of advertisers, politicians, and media still have incredible power over our unconscious cognition--the "big ideas behind the words" are still there, and still moving people whether we realize it or not. Those lies still drive people's behavior.
For example, "probably the best beer" didn't imply the same thing to me that it implied to you, even though I read it for the first time in your article, even though I read it as your example of untruth. My first reaction was "Hmm, I should try that to find out." That struck me as odd, so I thought about it. It turns out, I believe, that to me it said, "It's probably the best, but you're a pretty damn good judge of beer so you should *probably* make that decision for yourself." But, then again, I have a history of alcohol abuse, which means that I'm more likely to be their target audience. I've drank a lot of beer trying to forget the way I felt about the world after 2 tours in Iraq, and much of it "very good" beer since I deserved it after what I've been through, and find that "probably" to be a contestible claim. Whatever the reason for an alcohol abuser to have become such, from their perspective, if I, the abuser, agree that it is in fact "probably the best," then in the future I'll likely buy a lot of it. But the only way I'm going to know is by buying a sixer, in which case they've still convinced someone who has never drank their beer before to try it, and and to try it in an open way to truly judge it's quality, thus becoming familiar with it in a way that will likely lead to more purchases in the future. Win-win, lie and all. To you it is an example of language losing power. To me it is an example of the power of lies to affect unconscious behavior and cognition. They, through you, have snuck into my mind, and will affect my beer buying behavior in the future, even though all of us involved know it to be a lie.
There is so much more to say on this topic about the effects of our modern language and culture on unconscious cognition, but I really can't get into it without writing something as long as what you wrote. I'm not sure that your thesis "Our civilization is facing a crisis of language when our words no longer mean anything," is supported by the evidence you give, and I'm not even quite sure I agree with the fundamental veracity of it. I think I might be true, I think there could be evidence for it, but I'm not sure because I can see reasons to disagree, at least for now. Perhaps it will become more obvious as more of our stories dissolve. Perhaps you are thinking further into the future than I am.
However, I do agree that it is time to start speaking the new world into existence, so I won't add any more of my thoughts because I prefer the beauty of the world you speak, and I don't want to speak more ugliness into existence.
One thing I must say though, is that it is of the utmost importance that we consider the big ideas behind our words before we throw them out there. Have they paid you for helping to sell their beer? Because you have.
There is so much that must be said at this point of transition, but if we say it wrong we can still do more damage. Your words have much beauty in them, but they hold a lot of power as well. Don't forget to be mindful of the big ideas; not everyone has the depth of understanding you do and some of your words can be misunderstood out of context, as I did when I first wrote to you.
I am an enormous fan of the vast majority of your work and am deeply grateful for the healing power your words have had in my life. But the ugliness of the world we inhabit is evidence that it is too easy to speak damage into the world, even with the best of intentions. "We the people..." was supposed to be something beautiful as well, after all.
"I'd rather know a lot and say a little than know a little and say a lot." Robert Persig, in Lila
I agree with everything you say
And everything you say is completely meaningless :)
"Words are losing their power to create and to transform. The result is a tyranny that can never be overthrown, but will only proceed toward totality until it collapses under the weight of the multiple crises it inevitably generates."
To this I'd simply say: Sure. But has it ever been otherwise? Was there ever a time when words meant something more than they mean now? When hegemonic powers didn't try to co-opt language and put it to the task of subjection? This is a primary function of hegemony, without which hegemonies couldn't exist and self-enlarge. And when they get large enough, they collapse. That's how it goes.
What we're witnessing isn't so much the collapse of signification as the collapse of English. Consider that our language is the language of a hegemony that's been rising since the early Middle Ages. Like the Borg, it absorbs the languages that have been dominated by those who speak English, and though it occasionally will borrow words from those subjected peoples, and allow them to retain place names (like rivers and lakes), even feint at respect by naming the paved streets after indigenous gods (as they do here in Hawaii, where I live), the fact is that English is the language of Empire. The empire is in its baroque phase, during which it fights its most expensive wars of acquisition and builds its grandest monuments, but during which said empire is already in its decline. Our language is now being put to the task of misdirection (perforce). To tell the subjects that all is well, nothing to see here, return to your homes and places of business. But the effort to control language masks the reality that things are swiftly spinning out of control. And none too soon, IMHO.
But none of this is anything to worry about. It is the natural progress of civilizations that are built on violence and exploitation, as ours is. As it collapses, the language will be reclaimed, or more accurately, put to the use of describing the more immediate and honest experience of reality that's about to come down on all our heads (and is already). Like the little mammals in the rocks when the dinosaurs dropped dead, the language will survive, evolve, radiate and change. That's what languages do.
To say that words are meaningless is correct, but that doesn't obviate their power. Language has the power to shape a consensual reality (not describe an absolute or objective one). It is logomancy ... the act of creation by speaking it. Words are thought-forms, and thought forms are fundamentally creative. This, of course, says nothing about the way things are, but words have never had the power to describe things as they are. Possibly because "things as they are" are available only to a subjective observer, which is itself a fictive identity built on language. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain; there is no curtain, there is no man.
But we can have a hell of a lot of fun with our words, weaving these realities. I'm a poet myself, and I've never balked at using the very same words that you hear in politics and marketing. And while the dominant Western episteme tries to reduce words to meaningless strings of sound, we can still go ahead and claim what words we wish, use them how we wish, and build a different consensual reality with those very same sound strings.
That is, after all, what we're doing here, isn't it?
A Dream Matrix Perhaps....
Flailing for Our Attention
Another interesting point: the messages from the institutions have become increasingly self-effacing. We routinely see stories on TV that analyze the role of TV. Modern absurdist comedy, a big part of the media landscape, makes fun of the stupidity of the media.
It seems like the establishment is desperately flailing for our attention, and the only hold on any authenticity is to mock and ridicule itself. It rings of impending collapse.
language is a virus
Wow, Harlan Wallner
virus/meme
for more on that idea, Susan Blackmore did a powerful talk on TED:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes.htm...