Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Chris Hedges – Welcome To The Asylum

There is absolutely no doubt that our corporate leadership and political leadership values in this country have been crumbling for decades.   There is no greater enemy than ourselves. 

We are a chronically unhealthy nation.  Our minds are incredibly unhealthy and our bodies are the sickest of any nation on earth.   The mind and the body are both driven by the same dynamics.  Some by the deregulation of prescription advertising that has created a pharmageddon as it was recently called and the unintended consequences and unknown toxic effects of massive prescription drug use.  Some by the poisoned, nutritionless food we eat.  Some by the toxic environment we live in.   Some by the toxic packaging of our food.  Some by the unknown effects of electromagnetic radiation.  Some by the destabilizing effects of endless war.  But all of these dynamics and more are the creature of the corporate state.  A state that views citizens as disposable napkins.  A state that often perpetuates social values of greed, violence, divisiveness and hatred.  In other words, social values of the self before community.  

The invisible hand of self-interest that is unregulated capitalism has destroyed our society and our democracy.  This isn’t some great revelation.  Teddy Roosevelt talked of this more than one hundred years ago.  And, so have countless others throughout history.  Unregulated capitalism is akin to playing a game of football without a referee and with rules that can be rigged.  What team is going to win a game with no rules or no referees?   Well, that’s quite simple.   The team willing to cheat the most.  The team willing to play the dirtiest game.   Those most willing to do anything to someone else to win.   Our country’s leadership positions in government, corporations and even religious institutions are often filled with lunatics.   As we have noted before, the lunatics are running the asylum.   This dynamic has given rise to the corporate state.  And, now that corporations and elites control all of the money and our economy, they are able to pick the bought and paid for political toads to run it.   In the process, they are able to destroy democracy and our rule of law.

As we have discussed countless times, the state of our society is reflective of the minds who created it.   We are living through the instability that exists within their minds.  That instability manifests itself through dubious policy decisions and social values.   Essentially, our society in some ways could be described to be in a constant state of crazymaking (I just found this blog while looking up a source for crazymaking, and I would highly suggest this article as reading.)  as unstable minds project their chaos upon the rest of us.   The instability of our leadership has made the rest of us unstable.

Social values are transient.  Throughout history they seldom represented any form of universal truth.    Why do you think people came to this country in droves as immigrants?  (Something that no longer happens except from the most heinous and brutal countriesAin’t no one leaving Finland to move to the U.S.)  To escape corrupt social values and associated persecution.  I had a discussion the other day with a friend about the topic of rampant gang violence in our country.  It is important to understand that people in society will do whatever they must to survive.  People are just people.  The rampant gang violence in our country is a creature of the state.  People make choices based on information available to them for survival.   That starts in our childhood.   The odds have been tipped in favor of making choices that offer better odds of survival.  And, those choices are not reflective of human values but, instead are reflective of social values that are driven largely by the state.   I wonder how many people of means in this country would be any different were they born into a different environment.  It surely doesn’t make gang violence anything but criminal but the values of the state play a major role in the values of our society.   Al Capone didn’t rise up to become a community hero for many because we had a virtuous government and outstanding social values.   He was able to provide for people what our government was not.  That is, he provided food, shelter and safety to his community.  He fed and helped the poor who were forsaken by society and the state.  And, he then used that as a form of protection for his criminal activities. 

Human values, on the other hand, are innate.  They are not learned as are social values.  When we as human beings are of sound mind and connected to our higher power, they exist in all of us.  They are timeless.  They are without borders.   Those values are community, dignity, compassion, acceptance, honesty, respect, kindness, equality, trust, love, selflessness, etc.  They are the values of truth.  They are the values of democracy    They are the values of a society that has citizen government rather than a ruling class of power-mad, controlling minds and corporate bureaucrats driven by greed, power and as much of an corporate empire as they can create by growing larger and larger at any cost. 

How many human values do you see reflected in the motive of profit over service?  Corporate capitalism over democracy?  War over peace?  Violence over compassion?

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 11:49 AM