From the Onion. A humorous look at the Bush years, through our tears.
This review will increase the pressure for more than 2 term presidencies for sure…
(Be warned: 2 or so uses of the F word in seemingly mild context, not anger.)
Dec 1, 2008 … Oh, America. Eight years went by so fast, didn’t they? I feel like I hardly got to know you and methodically undermine everything you once …
This is a political post, but I will be talking about symbiosis.
If you are a regular gardener, you may have noticed that certain ants raise cattle. They heard aphids onto some juicy plant parts, and go on to milk them.
Now, in a demented way, even slavery can be called to be to mutual benefit, in fact, the corporate world has a propaganda based philosophy that programs us into the ego fulfilling joy of being dependent on them. One may assume that the aphids receive some benefit as well. The ants might protect them from some enemies, and, or, the aphids do not have to worry about looking for food. The ants see to it that they can eat, as long as they produce for them.
I think that overall, this ant to aphid relationship is the one we have here and in most of the world. It particularly seems to apply to the philosophy exposed by actions from the political right, since they are quite wedded to an anti common spirituality of asymmetrical human relationship.
As bad as we might know slavery was, especially the more overt kind that was subjected to some Americans during the era of slavery, those who favored it seemed to think of it as a mutual blessing. They felt, through their asymmetrical mental paradigm, that some humans were not really human, and so quite incapable of surviving without them. In return for slavery, these chattel, or cattle, were “protected” and given a life if they kept producing. Many a slave owner felt entitled to their good life, and entitled to punish their slaves as they saw fit. In some profound ways, the US is now “succeeding” because people in China are so abundant and paid so little overall. Wonderful?
It may be very politically incorrect to acknowledge this truth; but many slaves, (threatened with death, and or, a seriously problematic future attempting to be free in a culture that determined they were subjects of another race), that many slaves were complacent and resolved to their systemic imprisonment. If it is a politically “wrong” notion, I am sorry, but it nevertheless is our own current state of affairs. No. We are not hauled out and killed for being “against” the corporatist perception of the servant to master head mask for the human mind, but we will be excluded, and essentially left on our own without an established support system if we do differently.
Society has long been this one way street of affairs; the wealthy have the institutions set up to service them. Just look how wrong yet biased this perception actually is, yet you likely never think of it; companies raise their prices to offset their cost. Duh! Right? Do you have a same right to raise your wage to offset your cost? Duh! Right? I’d like to see you, as an employee, raise your wage every time you need to. You would be abandoned to your own devises, and this is the asymmetrical relationship of slavery. No. Not as blatant as that one old fashioned kind.
How many demonstrations or strikes actually had the law enforcement on their side? Only “technically” since strikes and demonstrations are at times dissolved “for your own good” by authority structures. But make no mistake about it, as they say, we live in an Ant herding tiny aphid’s world. This is why many human rights are atrophying under the class war onslaught of corporate rights over the rights of the individual. Yet many voters are fooled again, and again by wedge issues, into supporting the dominator class, while they sell off their own rights.
The so called “party of the people” read the power zeitgeist and has stared to fall into corporate line as well. The Democratic convention of 2004 had its own “free speech zone” like the conservative power party, removed from the convention site, so it could be soundly ignored. Business was determined to be more important than rights, and the nation itself as a free speech zone proclaimed by the constitution was revoked. Always for your own good. Freedom is that easily dumped for aphid like security.
As in overt slavery, the issue for the general population is the same; there is no support system for thinking outside the chattel box, except for trying to be a “master” oneself. We are often chastised that that is what freedom is all about; you do not like being someone else’s slave? Then become a master of your own affairs, self employed somehow or a boss of you own making. This still essentially continues the one way street of perception and human imagination regarding alternative futures.
Humans were and are an integral part of life on earth. This privatization of Creation, is an attempt to be as God. The perception, based on actions, is that we no longer have a right to exist that seems endemic to life itself. Instead; the perception is being instilled that it is a privilege to exist, being that we are allowed to exist if we essentially follow the Ownership of Creation ideology. You have money or else you are allowed to “fail”. Opportunist have turned this one way street into the measure of the “man”. You do it and are so judged, as if God is pleased if you succeed at a Darwinianized concept of successful separation from the whole.
We each are as original peoples once were, spiritually shocked into these alien notions that tell us we divide and conquer Creation and parcel it out to those who have the money. Tribes in the Americas, for instance, thought the European invaders insane for thinking they can posses the land as a personal attachment no longer available to others. Yes. These same tribes may not have noticed that they generally do not let other tribes just run all over them and their “territory”.
As with the Ant’s and aphids, many unconscious structures “work” for survival without necessarily being “conscious”. But we presume ourselves to be conscious. And as the Algonquin Confederation added its influence to the US Constitution via Thomas Jefferson, humankind at times becomes conscious enough to understand how common individual rights come to benefit all of a diverse society. Consciousness if the key humans can have to return to collective enlightenment.
This is the issue I am raising before you of here. How many of the wealthy are concerned that their carbon footprint, if understood under the Golden Rule or Categorical Imperative, that their lifestyle would terminate humankind, including their own families and futures? They are living on opportunism and not conscious enlightenment. They are “getting away” with their life for now, just because they can. They are, however, writing humankind’s suicide note yet feeling quite the “success” in doing so.
Yes, asymmetrical human relationship is nothing new, but in the spiritual sense, it is a profound violation of the underlying truth of the universe–that all things are connected. The divisions are intrinsically superficial, and to base all our awareness on superficiality has us miss the common forest for the trees seeming to obstruct our view. We, in our mechanically surface oriented perception, are actually taking the God (Ultimate Unity) out of our view. Making It into an abstraction. Then pretending this Oneness is mental and debatable as to Its existence. We have become slaves to the limitations of our own cosmological paradigm, a paradigm at odds with Creation Itself. We have attempted to leave the actual universe, and live in one of our own imagination. Not being a responsible part of reality means; we are constructing our own exclusion!
Many might think; what is the problem? The problem is the earth will not support this mass consumption society indefinitely. We are receiving ample warnings of environmental infrastructures nearing collapse. Yet for most of us apparently; what can one do? Well. this is when things do become black and white. Some right wing ideologues do not even support a public response to the nations collapsing infrastructures. They are so against community response to common need, seeing it as a step down that slippery slope to socialism. What they do not see is; they have poked out their own eyes and bypassed their own hearts to believe we cannot do things together with one mind and intention to solve a problem. What magical answer do they have in their ideological crystal ball that is going to fix all the deteriorating roads and bridges? God will give us flying cars?
We decide to be part of the solution by being conscious of our decisions in a relationship and a global sense, or we remain part of the problem. Like those hungry aphids facing a long term drought. It does not mater how “secure” the Ants make us feel and tell us we are, nor how the commercials say they are aware and getting on the problem. The wildfire is just a matter of time. Private interest is as private interest historically does; they will milk the rest of us, then abandon you when they see fit to save themselves. That is the slaves trustful bottom line. What will we all do when these cotton fields dry up?
In democratic societies, where votes are still relevant (we trust), stopping thought processes, diverting them, or better yet, preventing them from occurring, is the most valuable thing to power interest to continue to have an unfair advantage in systems designed to give each citizen an equal say.
This means pre-existing bias to not know the world, or not to know what is attempting to go on behind the scenes to rig the system to events favored by the powerful few, is held to a premium. Those institutions and ideals that lend themselves to non objective conclusions are then the easiest vehicles for public manipulations. These will be promoted by predatory and manipulative elites to control cultural development.
There is a reason why in general, the more educated one is, the more liberal one tends to be. The nuance and complexities of life are comprehended, along with the dangers of subjectivist based group-think. This does not mean that liberals cannot be fooled, and quite easily, it is more of an indication of the liberal tendency to grant that leaping to judgement, particularly over personal behavioral issues, is intrinsically immature. Liberals should know that the reasons for behavior are a factor to be reckoned with, and not just denied, blamed, or controlled as if their influence does not extend beyond physical manipulation.
It is immature to just react to dysfunction and think the cause is addressed, for we are not each the sole god of creation, nor able to judge each others actions as irrational, in the sense that we would not have done the same thing if in “their shoes”, even if the act is obviously wrong. If one believes in a rational universe and or Creator, one acknowledges that events occur for a reason. Yes, even if that reason is a convoluted, twisted mess of subjective rationalizations. This brings up the requirements for empathy, compassion and forgiveness even amidst great harm. Otherwise, one takes in and magnifies the dysfunction by empowering its negative hold and appeal to the dysfunctional. Much ancient wisdom understood this. Politics, however, seeks to erase deeper knowing for surface judgements.
And so liberals tend to believe in growth and reconciliation and not necessarily in the deterministic view that once you have done something, it cannot be addressed for the better. We can have the odd reversal of beliefs where, while liberals believe in rationalism, they may well be forgiving, while conservatives who may well believe in a smorgasbord of subjectivist philosophies, tend to have a might makes right view towards addressing human behavioral dysfunctions.
In the US, the conservatives are most always negative based; if it isn’t the plague of crime and “sin”, it is terrorism and endless threats. While some of these concerns may have a certain validity, they can be used as a foil to forever maintain societal structures that impinge on both individual freedom and justice–the right to live not based solely on how much money one has or favor with hierarchical power structures.
This, then, is where the conservatives gather; they tend to demean “intellectual elites” while ceaselessly promoting ad-hominem leaps of judgemental faith. They are this way even when many have religious beliefs that are highly liberal, instead they select out, or cherry pick that which reinforces a cosmological view that tends to grant themselves much leeway and favor, while condemning many who act or look or believe differently.
They are used by those interested in an inherently antidemocratic societal calibration, that does not favor equality or justice, but instead, sees the world of privilege as some kind of Divine or just outworking for the rich and powerful. Again, this is at odds with democracy and freedom at fundamental levels. Yet the emerging corporate control of the state and the commons is seen as some inevitable and irreversible force. all of life’s necessities become relegated to have or have not–money and or connection to its privilege.
We are witnessing now as I type, the power interest adjusting public perceptions and understandings, all mostly quite under the radar. News of Iraq and Afghanistan have dropped precipitously off the media radar screens, even though Afghanistan is having major conflict arise and more troops died their in May than in Iraq.
This is not a coincidence given that it is both an election year, and the more conservative party is controlled by predators of the commons who have everything but equal rights and access in their minds and hearts. This is how ignorance gains its value; by not having all the facts, (as many as can be had), the public is much more likely to jump to the desired conclusions of the power groups controlling society and the information medias. All these groups tend to be intertwined and know what philosophy, or lack of objective awareness, keeps them on top of you.
This will be the campaign of control, to attempt to keep the public divided, to keep rumor and innuendo afloat, and to release theory as fact, and selected facts, as the proof to the presumed insecurity zeitgeist intended to swing enough of the unknowing to side with authority in times of stress. Which often approx. 70% of population do, and do at their own and others peril. The power of what is kept from view is phenomenal.
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