Tuesday, February 24, 2009

B is for Bourgeoisie!


Bourgeoisie
or, the Tyranny of the Hair Dryer
[adapted from George Orwell's Homage to Catatonia]

From Crimethinc's Days of War, Nights of Love

Does your father drift from one hobby to another, fruitlessly seeking a meaningful way to spend the little "leisure time" he gets off from work? Does your mother endlessly redecorate the house, going from one room to the next until she can start over at the beginning again? Do you agonize constantly over your future, as if there was some kind of track laid out ahead you—and the world would end if you turned off of it? If the answer to these questions is yes, it sounds like you're in the clutches of the bourgeoisie, the last barbarians on earth.

The Martial Law of Public Opinion
Public opinion is an absolute value to the bourgeois man and woman because they know they are living in a herd: a herd of scared animals, that will turn on anyone it doesn't recognize as its own. They shiver in fear as they ponder what "the neighbors" will think of their son's new hairstyle. They plot ways to seem even more normal than their friends and coworkers. They don't dare fail to turn on their lawn sprinklers or dress appropriately for "casual Fridays" at the office. Anything that could drag them out of their routines is viewed as suspect at best. Love and lust are both diseases, possibly fatal, as are all the other passions that could drive one to do things that would result in expulsion from the flock. Keep them quarantined to secret affairs and teenage dates, to night clubs and strip clubs—for God's sake, don't contaminate the rest of us. Go wild when "your" football team wins a game, drink yourself into oblivion when the weekend comes, rent obscene movies if you have to, but don't you dare sing or run or make love out here. Under no circumstances admit to feeling anything that doesn't belong in the staff room or at the dinner party. Under no conditions admit to wanting anything more or different than what "everyone else" wants, whatever and whoever that might be.

And of course their children have learned this, too. Even after the death matches of the grade school nightmare, even among the most rebellious and radical of the nonconformists, the same rules are in place: don't confuse anybody as to where you stand. Don't use the wrong signifiers or subscribe to the wrong codes. Don't dance when you're supposed to be posing, don't speak when you're supposed to be dancing, don't mess with the genre or the moves. Make sure you have enough money to participate in the various rituals. To keep your identity intact, make it clear which subcultures and styles you're aligned to, which bands and fashions and politics you want to be associated with. You wouldn't dare risk your identity, would you?

That's your character armor, your only protection against certain death at the hands of your friends. Without an identity, without borders to define the edges of your self, you'd just dissolve into the void... wouldn't you?



conform EVEN WHEN YOU DON'T SEE ANY people AROUND YOU. THE ONE YOU DON'T SEE MIGHT HIT YOU.
WHEN YOU ARE detached DECISIONS ARE SLOWER AND HARDER TO MAKE.
GOOD JUDGEMENT IS NOTHING MORE THAN compliance

The Generation Gap
The older generations of the bourgeoisie have nothing to offer the younger ones because they have nothing in the first place. All their standards are hollow, all of their riches are consolation prizes, not one of their values contains any reference to real joy or fulfillment. Their children sense this, and rebel accordingly, whenever they can get away with it. The ones that don't have already been beaten into terrified submission.

So how has bourgeois society continued to perpetuate itself through so many generations? By absorbing this rebellion as a part of the natural life cycle. Because every child rebels as soon as she is old enough to have a sense of self at all, this rebellion is presented as an integral part of adolescence—and thus the woman who wants to continue her rebellion into adulthood is made to feel that she is insisting on remaining a child forever. It's worth pointing out that a brief survey of other cultures and peoples will reveal that this "adolescent rebellion" is not inevitable or "natural."

This perpetual rebellion of the youth also creates deep gulfs between different generations of the bourgeoisie, which play a crucial role in maintaining the existence of the bourgeoisie as such. Because the adults always seem to be the enforcers of the status quo, and the youth do not have the perspective yet to see that their rebellion has also been absorbed into that status quo, generation after generation of young people are able to make the mistake of identifying older people themselves as the source of their misfortunes rather than realizing that these misfortunes are the result of a larger system of misery. They grow older and become bourgeois adults themselves, unable to recognize that they are merely replacing their former enemies, and still unable to bridge the so-called generation gap to learn from people of other age groups... let alone establish some kind of unified resistance with them. Thus the different generations of the bourgeoisie, while seemingly fighting amongst themselves, work together harmoniously as components of the larger social machine to ensure maximum alienation for all.

The Myth of the Mainstream
The bourgeois man depends upon the existence of a mythical mainstream to justify his way of life. He needs this mainstream because his social instincts are skewed in the same way his conception of democracy is: he thinks that whatever the majority is, wants, does, must be right. Nothing could be more terrifying to him than this new development, which he is beginning to sense today: that there no longer is a majority, if there ever was.

Our society is so fragmented, so diverse, that at this point it is absurd to speak of a "mainstream." This is a myth partly created by the anonymity of our cities. Almost everyone one passes on the street is a stranger: one mentally relegates these anonymous figures to the faceless mass one calls the mainstream, to which one attributes whatever properties one thinks of strangers as possessing (for the smug salesman, they all envy him for being even more respectable than they are; for the insecure bohemian rebel, they must disapprove of him for not being like they all are).

They must be part of the silent majority, that invisible force that makes everything the way it is; one assumes that they are the same "normal people" seen in television commercials. But the fact is, of course, that those commercials refer to an unattainable ideal, in order to keep everyone feeling left out and insufficient. The "mainstream" is analogous to this ideal, as it keeps everyone in line without ever actually making an appearance, and possesses the same degree of reality as the perfect family in the toothpaste advertisement.

No one worries more about this absent mass than the bohemian children of the bourgeoisie. They bicker over how to orchestrate their protests to gain "mass appeal" for their radical ideas, as if there still was a mass to appeal to! Their society is now made up of many communities, and the only question is which communities they should approach... and dressing "nice," proper language and all, is probably not the best way to appeal to the most potentially revolutionary elements of their society. In the last analysis, the so-called "mainstream" audience most of them imagine they are dressing up for at their demonstrations and political events is probably just the spectre of their bourgeois parents, engraved deep in their collective unconscious (collective psychosis?) as a symbol of the adolescent insecurity and guilt they never got over. They would do better to cut their ties to the bourgeoisie entirely by feeling free to act, look, and speak in whatever ways are pleasurable, no matter who is watching—even when they are trying to advance some political cause: for no political objective reached by activists in camouflage could be more important than beginning the struggle towards a world in which people will not have to disguise themselves to be taken seriously.

This is not to pardon those insecure bohemians who use their activism not as a means of building ties with others, but rather as a way to set themselves apart: in their desperation to purchase an identity for themselves, they believe they must pay for it by defining themselves against others. You can recognize them by their self-righteousness, their pompous show of ideological certainty, the ostentatious way they declare themselves "activists" at every opportunity. Political "activism" is almost exclusively their sphere, today, and "exclusive" is the key word... until this changes, the world will not.

Marriage... and Other Substitutes for Love and Community
Reproduction is a big issue for the bourgeois man and woman. They can only have children under very precise circumstances; anything else is "irresponsible," "unwise," "a poor decision for the future." They must be prepared to give up every last vestige of their youthful, selfish freedom to have children, for the mobility their corporations demand and the strain of vicious competition have destroyed the community network that long ago used to share the labor of child-rearing. Now every family unit is a tiny military outpost, closed and locked to the outside world both in their hearts and in the paranoia-turned-city-planning of their suburbs, each one an isolated emotional economy to itself where scarcity is the key word. The father and mother must abandon their selves for the prescribed roles of care-giver and bread-winner, for in the bourgeois world there is no other way to provide for the child. Thus the bourgeois couple's own fertility has been made a threat to their freedom, and a natural part of human life has become a social control mechanism.

Marriage and the "nuclear family" (the atomized family?) as chain gang have survived as a result of this calamity, much to the misfortune of potential lovers everywhere. For as the young adventurer, who keeps her lusts strong and her appetite whetted with constant danger and solitude, knows well, love and sexual desire cannot survive overexposure—especially in the dull and lifeless settings that most married partners share time. The bourgeois husband sees the only lover he is permitted under only the worst possible circumstances: after every other force in his world has had the chance to exhaust and infuriate him for the day. The bourgeois wife learns to punish and ignore as "unrealistic" and "impractical" her every desire for romance, spontaneity, wonder. Together, they live in a hell of unfulfillment. What they need is a real community of caring people around them, so parenthood would not force them into unwanted "respectability," so they would still be free to have the individual adventures they need to keep their time together sweet, so they would never find themselves so lost and desperately lonely.

In just the same way, their steady supply of food, of conveniences, comforts, and diversions avail them not. For as every hitchhiker, every hero, every terrorist knows, these things gain their value through their absence, and can offer real joy only as luxuries happened upon in the pursuit of something greater. Constant access to sex, food, warmth, and shelter desensitize a man to the very pleasures they afford. The bourgeois man has given up his chance to pursue real stakes in life for the assurance that he will have these amenities and securities; but without real stakes in his life, these can offer him no more real joy than the company of his fellow prisoners.

The Joys of Surrogate Living!
You can take a quick tour of all the unacted desires of the bourgeois man just by turning on his television or stepping into one of his movie theaters. He spends as much of his time as he can in these various virtual realities because he instinctively feels that they can offer him more excitement and satisfaction than the real world. The saddest part is that, so long as he remains bourgeois, this may actually be true. And as long as he accepts the displacement of his desires into the marketplace by paying for imitations of their fulfillment, he will be trapped in the empty role that is himself.

These desires are not always pretty to see played out in Technicolor and SurroundSound: the bourgeois man's dreams and appetites are as infected by the fetishization of power and control as his society is. The closest he seems to be able to offer to an expression of free, liberated desire is the fantasy of all-consuming destruction that appears again and again at the black heart of his wildest cinematic fever dreams. This makes sense enough—after all, in a world of nothing but strip malls and theme parks, what honest thing is there to do but destroy?

The bourgeois man is not equipped to view his desires as anything but unfortunate weaknesses to be fended off with placebos, because his life has never been about the pursuit of pleasure—he has spent several centuries achieving higher and higher standards of survival, at the cost of everything else. Tonight he sits in his living room surrounded by computers, can openers, radar detectors, home entertainment systems, novelty ties, microwave dinners, and cellular phones, with no idea what went wrong.

The bourgeois man is only possible by virtue of the blinders he wears that prevent him from imagining that any other way of life is possible. As far as he can tell, everyone from the impoverished migrant workers of his own nation to the monks of Tibet would be bourgeois too, if only they could afford it. He does his damnedest to maintain these illusions; without them, he would have to face the fact that he has thrown his life away for nothing.

The bourgeois man is not an individual. He is not a real person (although if he was, he would probably live in Connecticut). He is a cancer inside all of us. He can now be cured.

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Monday, February 23, 2009

The High Cost of Living


The High Cost of Living
by Ima Gardener

NBC's “Today Show” about a woman who dies, untreated, on an Emergency Room floor while others watch. Matt Lauer simply sighs, shakes his head and resumes business as usual. (Youtube link)

This is a secret transmission from one human heart to another, from one soul to another, from one human being to another. Human to human, heart to heart. It is an appeal for you to feel with your heart rather than ignore it. To see through the lens of shared experience, empathy and compassion rather than bitterness, resentment and apathy.

I write to you now with a busted leg. I'm not entirely sure what is wrong with it but I haven't been able to walk in three days. I have been unable to leave my small apartment, to work or do any chores. Since I am unable to walk I am essentially helpless to take care of myself. Three days ago I fell wrong on my knee and there was a loud popping sound and a wave of excruciating pain—from this I have guessed that I have a sprain, perhaps a second degree sprain or a third degree sprain. That means that one of my ligaments is either partially or totally torn; an extraordinarily uncomfortable experience which rendered my leg totally useless for all intents and purposes. Without proper medical care, which may include a cast or even surgery, I may not be able to walk correctly for months to come or even for the rest of my life. It's an injury that was entirely a freak accident and it could happen to anyone, even you. It could happen at any time, when riding a bike, walking or playing with friends. It is only a small example of all the possible misfortunes that can strike any one of us at any moment—a problem which is very easy to fix and yet, if untreated, could have repercussions for the rest of your life. I am lucky, however. I did not cut an artery or break a bone (to the best of my knowledge); I did not have the type of accident where I would die quickly if it was left untreated. Those types of accidents are very possible for all of us, too.

Unlike millions of Americans I actually have some health insurance. The problem is that I have the lowest and cheapest health insurance available, as it is all I can afford. After calling literally dozens of hospitals and doctors in my area (all of whom asked for my health insurance information before even asking my name) I found that my best option was to wait weeks. This would be a serious problem for anybody with any level of insurance. Even "Walk-In" clinics are so full that you would be lucky to be treated the same day you needed help. But my real problem is more common: though I have a low co-pay for a doctor's visit, I will have to pay up to $1500 out of my own pocket to get an x-ray or MRI. $1500, even $300 or $200, is an unacceptably high amount of money for me to pay. The economy is down and we're all living more hand to mouth now. It would be better for me to not get the x-ray and hope that my leg heals without knowing exactly what is wrong with it on the inside. In a single moment my life may have been changed forever... at this point I am not sure, but the social and political issues surrounding this are clearer than ever for me. And they can be for you, too, if you just use your imagination and think about yourself in a situation perhaps different than your own. Perhaps it isn't different at all, and what is happening to me is exactly what will happen to you. And what is happening to me is far better than what has happened to literally millions of human beings in this country. Human beings with souls, who laugh and cry and love and hate just like you. Human beings who are just like you.

We have to ask ourselves—right now—whether this is something we find acceptable or not. Each one of us has helped build a national wealth that is almost unparalleled in the world, and yet we all exist under the threat of illness or injury that is too expensive for us. As a society we have put price tags on human beings, an action which is, in every religious and/or ethical thought process, evil and wrong. We call ourselves a Christian nation and yet we act in the most singularly un-Christian ways humanly possible.

We have two options: either we work extremely hard and wash the best years of our lives down the drain to help build a wealth and a society which does not care for us and only cares about the bottom line or we don't. We either contribute to a system of violence and negligence—a cold, beurocratic monolith which truly serves only the interests of a sickeningly small minority of people, or we don't. Either we scramble after as much money as we can in an attempt to have the best health insurance possible, playing along with a system which is damaging to that very same health, our psychological wellbeing, our emotional wellbeing, our environment, and our friends and loved ones, or we don't. Either we sell our souls to the All-Mighty Dollar Bill and literally BUY IN to the factory death machines, the war machines, the exploitation and rape of the earth and its inhabitants, or we don't.

The wealth of this nation is huge—think of it as a huge mountain of gold. Each one of us has slaved away in our jobs, whether they are retail or manufacturing, small business or corporate... we have all worked so hard and so long to build this capital, this huge mountain of gold. But then, when we need a little of that gold to mend our broken wings we are refused, because, though we have worked so long and so hard at such great sacrifice to ourselves and others, it does not, in the end, belong to us. It belongs to less than 3% of the population of this nation. The rest of us are out in the cold; confused, frustrated and scared. And in this society we were all born afraid—and with only one solution: work! Work, work, work!

This reality is so clear but so few of us can clearly see it. We have so many distractions... so many flashing screens and unrealistic desires. Though our society and our lives are exactly what we make of them—they are external projections of our internal states. Do we accept the evidence we see around us? The preventable death, the preventable suffering, all of it unnecessary? Do we accept those things as who we are? Because we are all causing them.

And many of us are actually Christian, or at least consider ourselves to be. Or we are Hindu, or we are Muslim, or we are Buddhist. Has any of our religious icons, our spiritual leaders, our moral examples... would any of them--Christ, Krishna, Shiva, Muhammad, Buddha—would a single one of them have turned someone back who needed help? Did Christ ask for payment before healing the blind? Did Buddha require a subscription fee before helping others ease their own suffering (his only solution to ending personal suffering is compassion, by the way)?

Is this the society that you want? Are these the forces and pressures that you would choose to bear down on you? We have all been hoodwinked... we've been told that this is the only way it can happen when in reality we are choosing for it to happen and are empowering it. And that mountain of gold still exists, and we continue to shovel money into other people's pockets, even when we ourselves are faced with a medical situation which could potentially alter our end our lives forever.

Now we have this new president. A young, black man which promises change along true ethical and moral grounds. But what will change? Will the Free Trade Agreements be repealed, ending the sufferings of untold millions across the world, including small children worked to death in sweatshops? Will we actually find ourselves free from the constant stress of our own health, knowing that our work will come back to us and our communal efforts as a society will work for us instead of against us? What change will we actually see? What moral standard is actually going to be applied? A human standard, which takes into account every preventable case of suffering? Or a standard which still allows for the greed and exploitation on behalf of the elite owner class? Obama is a symbol which has placated the masses and we will see no substantial change.

But how will you feel when you have a leg which no longer works and the future is uncertain? When you aren't even sure if you'll be able to walk correctly again? Will the same cynicism that you wrap around the suffering of others consume your own situation? Will you say about yourself, “That lazy (insert racial, sexist or class slur here) should just work harder” about your own self? Or, when it's your life and happiness at stake, will it seem totally different to you? Will you see that your work and effort did indeed go out into the world only to be grabbed and held greedily in other people's bank accounts as opposed to coming back to you in the form of health care services? Though you manufactured the doctor's equipment or sold him his food, will he return his services to you? Though the poor was used to grow and pick his food, a thing necessary for his survival, will he help them with their survival? Even though both are being paid, is it truly fair? And, if you were to truly face judgment, how would you be judged? Will you plead with God and use the Nuremberg Defense? Will you try to explain to God that you were only following orders or that you did the best you could for yourself though you knew millions were dying? Though you believe that Christ died for your sins, do you really believe that that means God doesn't care if you DO sin?

Or are you too concerned about right now to do anything, too busy working every single day, to notice? So eager to relax during your two days of rest a week (if you're lucky) that you drown your woes in alcohol desperately searching for this mysterious concept called “fun”? You can't be bothered with this all right now, you have accepted this as a “kill or be killed” world of haves and have-nots. What greater sickness could possibly afflict your soul?

The stock market is down, the recession is deepening, and even now, after all our work, all of our decades and centuries of work, there are so many poor and dying human beings in our own country. What, after all, did we believe we were working for? Have we collectively put in so much effort to see so much misery in the world? This country was called a “Great Experiment.” When will we step back and assess the results of this capitalist experiment? If we're all going to be working so hard anyway, why not be working for something rather than so eagerly putting in such effort towards digging our own graves?

It's all quite possible that my leg will be fine. I simply don't know. But even if my leg completely heals, or your leg completely heals and we are OK for now, does that change any of these questions, really?

We need to think about more fundamental issues and stop living hypocritically if we are to live with any meaning at all and cease our mindless marching towards oblivion.