3-16-08, 9:05 am
'Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose.' (C. Wright Mills)
The United States mainstream media is a major tool in the hands of the power elite; it constructs images of reality that are subsequently widely believed in by the masses, images whose definitions ensure that inequality will continue without revolt or redress. A mythology, garbed in master symbols that contour perceptions of available life-chances regardless of objective fact: it determines relationships between races, ethnicities and nationalities; it makes people chase dreams that most can never attain. So powerful are its effects (as are often revealed by polls after major events, about which most people's only source of information is this media or people exposed to it), that realities of people's own lives, the objective facts that confront them on a daily basis, become subordinate to its contrived images.
Such efforts by the media are to control what are in fact the effects of an unjust social system, rife with inequality and racism, the alienating effects of which reduces everything human to its dollar equivalent in the 'market', for sale to the highest bidder. In such a society, 'little men (and women)' trapped as cogs in the machinery of capital, strive for, yet never attain goals that are themselves externally determined for them, the means to achieve which are unavailable, but the motivation to keep those goals alive are continually pushed as 'opium.' Having only 'use value' and not 'human value,' people lost in worlds they have not made, where leisure as well as work is rationalized to benefit others, living narrow lives that attain meaning only vicariously through the world of movies and entertainment (that is when they are not attempting to escape it through intoxication), all human relationships are thus setup for manipulation. The cause of such episodes as the Virginia Tech massacre (and the many others) is just such a social system, a society of people that are mentally homeless in the present, geared towards future dreams, living in an alien world that imposes itself on them for the purpose of domination, where the personality is saturated by distraction (through the media) making it blasé' and impersonal, uncaring and numb to the pain of others. Hence, human life acquires meaning and worth only in death. a perverse form of the 'worship of the dead' exists, but only if the dead happen to be 'worthy' victims, whose worth is determined by an elite that considers human life, other than their own or of their own kind, of little worth (as is empirically displayed in their countless wars and deprivation generating policies, at home and around the globe).
For most in such a system, there exists a fleeting life with narrow memories of a bureaucratically circumscribed, rule rigged, existence, which ensures a life lived for the corporation for which one works that best years of his or her life and for which one's leisure activities are rationalized and for whom one's kids are nurtured and educated. Under these circumstances it is inevitable that episodes like the Virginia Tech massacre would occur. In searching for its causes we need to look not at the labeled criminal, nor at the act but at the social system that produces such acts and the elite whose decisions (or lack thereof) maintains such a system. We also need to look at the 'higher immorality' of these elite as revealed by their policies around the globe and at home, an immorality that sets the standards on the worth of human life, which is then emulated by the 'little men (and women).'
As outrage among the masses is replaced by organized compliance, as desires for constructive change are replaced by survival and adaptation to the pressures of everyday living, as our work, our leisure and the institutions that describe our lives are increasingly detached from almost all independent decisions on our part, as narrow routines force us to lose the capacity for reflective thought, we need to ask ourselves whether we are truly free or in cheerful bondage. Culture among the masses is increasingly being shaped not by social tradition but by the media of mass communication and the organizational machinery generated from on high, resulting in mediocrity, standardization and complete boredom and alienation among the masses.
Meaningful group life is effectively destroyed, suspicion is institutionalized, human creativity and reflection that produces exceptional cultural products of art, architecture and literature are increasingly absent, as society's energies are converted to wasteful mass consumption. This gives rise to a gigantic advertising industry that seeks to create mythic symbols of emotional affinity between the consumer and material objects that are being offered for sale. An alienated individual, with weak family and group ties, makes the ideal consumer- the type sought by corporations for maximum profitability. To this they introduce planned obsolescence (including status obsolescence), knowing well the short timed nature of the emotional 'high' provided by these products, thus giving rise to the public's total enslavement to material objects. Alcoholism and obesity on a social level (given the large numbers) are just a couple of indicators of the alienation now so widespread in American society.
The salesperson ethic, with its polite, anonymous insincerity (and synthetic, plastic smiles) and its dominant values of money making, is institutionalized, resulting in a personality market and its standard 'outgoing personality' that is sought (for jobs) by companies that now control every aspect of our lives. Those who do not 'fit in' are marginalized; the pressures on the individual to conform are immense. Everything is for sale, as money becomes the measure of all things. Given the state of America and the actions and inactions of its Power Elite, at home and around the world, we cannot talk about taking things, which we ourselves have either lost or never truly possessed, freedom, democracy, and enlightenment, to other nations, or talk about the political immaturity of their people.
Few people understand the hoax of American 'freedom' that is massively advertised to the rest of the world. In a highly bureaucratized and automated society, in an advanced capitalistic stage, like America, the accumulation of advantages at the very top implants freedom of decision only to a small Power Elite. The mass society's bondage to the method of life generated from on high is so complete that the power of reflection itself is usurped from the individual- his work, his leisure and even the kind of personality he is supposed to have is implanted into him (or her), by the institutions that describe the routines of life, the mass media and those sectors of formal education that are increasingly market oriented. As a result there is political apathy; the few that diligently vote among the public are given extremely restricted choices, which are further restricted by being structured through mass-mediated information by privately owned media. Together with political apathy at home, there is organized indifference to the affairs of the world. To the United States public only those 'Third World' leaders gain prominence who are demonized by the government (people like Fidel Castro, Oil Sheiks, Saddam Hussein, Qadhafi etc.), the rest of the world remains largely invisible both in public consciousness and geographic/cultural awareness. The result is the emergence of a non-reflective, mass-consuming society that jealously guards what it feels is its 'privileged' position among the world's population. In this literally 'narrow' existence, the depth of social experience as part of life within a global human community is lost forever for the vast majority.
This lack of freedom in 'advanced societies' like the United States was what sociologist C. Wright Mills had in mind when he talked about the rise of the cheerful robot and the technological idiot. The same theme is found in Max Weber's writings on bureaucracy, power and authority. It is what the French sociologist Emile Durkheim described as the 'extrinsic coercion' upon the individual, a coercion that has objective existence as social fact, which when taken within a bureaucratic framework, becomes massive and complete. A lack of freedom that Karl Mannheim described as functional rationality that guides every behavior towards predetermined goals where chances for substantive reason and independent reflection are few.
We see the effects of this control and manipulation when the mass society in the United States, cheerfully agrees to its members being killed in the continuous military adventures of its elite, year after year (an abnormality to someone looking in from the outside) and asks no questions when massive deficit spending robs its future generations of wealth or when their tax money is squandered on useless military hardware, even though a good proportion of them (45 million) do not have access to basic healthcare or adequate nutrition (40 million), or when manufacturing jobs that have described their lives for generations are replaced by low paying service jobs, for the benefit of corporations that exploit labor everywhere, or when their family units are transformed and shredded in subordination to the economic. Not to mention the fact that the 'land of the free' has the highest per capita incarceration rate of any country in the world (750 inmates per 100,000 people). As facts are routinely divorced from their human consequences, 'inhumanity' – of which racism is but one indicator, has been institutionalized and made universal.
Freedom in America exists as a meaningless slogan that is itself generated from on high and designed to evoke almost 'religious' feelings of solidarity for the purpose of manipulation. Like all tools of manipulation, it grants no real utility to the ones who rally around it.
