'Terrorism' comes
in 'Terrorism' comes
in
many forms...
As is well known by the entire world by this time, a series of shocking, precisely coordinated terrorist attacks were inflicted on the United States of America on 11 September of 2001. The strikes that brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, and which damaged the headquarters of the US Military Command at the Pentagon Building in Washington (DC)--both of which resulted in a catastrophic loss of life and property--are reasonably certain to have been coordinated and executed by Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan-based terrorist group, Al Queda. At this time, nearly two months after the events in reference took place, the United States is experiencing a wave of bioterrorist activities (mailing of Anthrax bioagents in letters), the source of which is still uncertain, but which may or may not be related to the terrorist activities named above.
At this point, some facts have emerged that are reasonably undisputed: 1) the loss of life and property resulting from these attacks has been extraordinary; 2) the US economy has been shaken to its very core by the combined effects of uncertainty, anxiety, fear, and general confusion that have been direct byproducts of 11 September; and 3) the ordinary US citizen has understandably demonstrated a lack of confidence in present circumstances by severely constraining domestic spending on consumer goods and services.
The commonest and most noticeably immediate reaction to these horrific events (to this observer) has been a surge in old-fashioned flag-waving patriotism, accompanied by a collective knee-jerk exhortation to unleash the world's most formidable arsenal of advanced weaponry against one of the world's most pathetically impoverished and politically repressed nations on the mid-Asian continent. In concert with these effects, a plaintive outcry of emotional anguish by the good, God-fearing bourgeoisie of the USA (who just can't understand why anyone would hate the USA as much as the terrorists appear to...) has been expressed.
Although a few even-minded souls have dared to question the majority sentiment that this is a clear-cut case of the 'powers of good' (the USA) against the 'powers of evil' (Islamic terrorists), one view that has not been plumbed at all is that perhaps this is an excellent time to take a critical look at the whole American way of life (my apologies to our other American neighbors: I use "America" interchangeably with "USA" merely out of the convenience of common usage), that has apparently incited others to act as they have.
Before I explore this idea a bit further, let me make very clear that I have the greatest respect and admiration for the founding principles of my homeland, the United States of America; I have served with the armed forces of the United States during the Vietnam conflict (although I still maintain that our war in Vietnam was indefensible, morally wrong, and a great and tragic mistake) and regard the great American experiment of "Democratic Capitalism" as one of the most interesting political-economic systems ever conceived in the history of humanity--even if it appears on the verge of completely destroying "Habitat Earth". That having been made clear, I must take off the kid gloves and look at this whole matter of "us vs. them" a bit more critically (perhaps a bit more cynically, also) than most feel would perhaps feel appropriate.
In 1997 a fascinating program aired on the PBS (Public Broadcasting System) titled "AFFLUENZA". The program was a rather excellent documentary examination of what has been termed by enlightened social critics as the ubiquitous "American disease".... superabundant overconsumption. This program examined that period of exceptional American economic productivity stemming from the the end of the Second World War, that has extended through about 1980. This PBS program skillfully explored the subtle processes by which the citizens of the United States have in that period of time been successfully socialised (by the combined powers of corporate economic forces in league with the enhanced technology of modern advertising media) into little more than a reaction-specific mass of intellectually unreflective consumers of material excess--a threat to the preservation of all life forms on this planet that is without parallel in the history of the world.
Early this year (2001), a book was brought out, based upon the original program material, which included far more documentation than any television documentary could hope to encompass in a one or two hour long program. This book, which is available now (Affluenza: The All Consuming Epidemic, by John de Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas H. Naylor, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, San Francisco, 2001, ISBN 1-57675-151-1, hardcover), is a most worthwhile analysis of what has become, in its greatest and most terrifying context, a mindlessly rapacious reduction of the entire world's resources by America's economic powers into raw material for endless, unrestrained and unconscionable (also pointless) consumption by Americans.
Chief among the many factors that have contributed to this truly scary state of affairs is a substitution of a perverse secular religion of materialistic excess for any higher spiritual awareness of the quality of human life, brought into being by the massive corporate forces that control the entire US economy (and to greater and greater degrees through expanded corporate control of other nation's economies, the entire planet). Most unfortunate, as well, is the fact that the greater mass of the American population is not given to intellectual speculation--in many cases lacking the basic wherewithal for this task--and have been brainwashed into buying unreservedly into the mythical Great American Dream of endless MORE!
While it may sound unpatriotic and perhaps even somewhat disloyal to suggest that contemporary American economic dogma is not just perversely skewed, but ultimately fatally hazardous to the health of the entire planet, the fact is that an economy--any economy--based upon endless consumption of resources produced solely for the purpose of being discarded and endlessly replaced with newer, more highly technologised, and more expensive consumer goods, is ultimately doomed just as surely as a genetic strain produced by excessive inbreeding. The problem is excessively compounded by the fact that these same economic powers that dictate the terms of our (American) lives have succeeded in nearly eliminating any sense of community that may still exist among our diverse populations in the country and isolated nearly all of us within the spectacularly insular confines of our homes (where we are kept in thrall, utterly subject to the massively regulated effects of televised media and advertising). Only in such small and 'inconsequential' pockets of residual intelligent thought (such as this one and others like it, scattered here and there) does awareness of the severely insidious nature of this wholly perverse state of affairs persist.
But to return to the events of 11 September, and if we may briefly overlook the grief and intense personal suffering that the terrorist attacks caused for so many innocent people, perhaps what we have here is an opportunity to reflect across all lines of class, status, ethnicity, and segmental partisan interests on precisely what a monster our American 'way of life' has actually become. While we have all been merrily buying more and more "things" that we neither need nor really want, as mindlessly consuming cogs in the great American economic materialist machine, all higher values save mindless consumption as a be-all and end-all social goal have been cast aside and are in grave danger of becoming extinct.
In the Chinese written language, the Chinese ideogram that signifies "risk" is made up from two subsets of idiogramatic characters; the first subset represents "danger" and the second represents "opportunity". It is worth reflecting, in this instance, upon the fact that risk (or hazard) may also pose opportunities for potential gain; at least this is the traditional Chinese response to monumentally catastrophic change and one that America may also adopt, if it chooses. By "America", of course, I mean the mass of our population who still are able to exercise the ability to think critically about the quality of their lives....NOT the corporate powers that would clearly prefer to have us all reduced to unthinking, uncritical units of raw consumption, so as to endless increase their profits and corporate wealth.
One of the most commonly heard expressions of disbelief, articulated in media reports subsequent to the 11 September events, was "How could these people possibly hate America and Americans so much as to resort to these terrible acts of terror?" As if it were somehow inconceivable that ANYONE could hate loveable, God-fearing, charitable Christian folks like us....? It certainly strains my credibility to know that such comments are uttered in all sincerity...that most simple minded American consumers (and I use the term pejoratively, to be sure) just cannot put their cell phones and other expensive high-tech toys down long enough to attempt to understand how anyone might hate the egregious excesses of the American capitalist materialist system. [As word of the so-called "humanitarian food drops" being carried out simultaneous with the air war against Afghanistan is made known, once again Americans wonder aloud just how anyone could possibly hate a nation such as ours that drops food for starving civilians practically on the same pallet as the blockbuster bunker bombs. Food for starving civilians? If you consider that all that air-dropped food, first of all, has been donated principally for rather considerable tax-breaks by corporations that need to unload food products that are about to pass their expiry date, or the fact that (secondly) the Afghanistanis not only are totally unfamiliar with things like 'Peanut Butter', but actually dislike the stuff, this can hardly be considered unqualified humanitarian largesse! But hey, who's looking closely at these 'little details'? No one in this nation, that's much is certain!] However, when one begins to see how far removed most "relatively" affluent American consumers (of all classes) are from the sort of misery that masquerades for "normal" life in a place such as Afghanistan, the sheer ignorance of the average American about life elsewhere in the world begins to become a bit more plausible.
Sadly, in order to fill the spiritual vacuum that our form of 'vacuous' materialism perpetuates, most of these uncomplicated people seek some sort of explanation for the seemingly 'gratuitous' violence of 11 September by turning to their particular divine deity of choice for comfort. Regrettably, seen from the cold, clear light of awareness that dictates that belief in ANY sort of a God is a manifestation of sheer infantile fantasy, this is mechanism almost as appalling as the basic failure of consumers to recognize the economic quicksand that they are all mired down in. In further exploration of this particular aspect of the current terrorist acts, ostensibly perpetuated in the name of a radical form of Islamic belief (I say ostensibly because I am knowledgeable enough about mainstream Islam, from my years spent in the Middle East, to know that the radical form of Islam expressed by bin Laden's Al Queda is very much divergent from predominantly 'conventional' Islamic beliefs), it is highly ironic to note that almost every severely antisocial act ever committed by one group of people against another, from the dawn of human history, has been carried out in the name of some "God" or another. In my opinion, this is just another slamming indictment against all forms of religious belief, since one of the central tenets of just about every religious belief is exclusivity of divine favor bestowed upon the adherents of that religion (and no one else)......which is further evidence of the sheerestsort of ignorance, in my opinion.
However, the irony of religion's involvement with yet another attack against reason aside, what is desperately needed in the United States at this time is a vastly expanded and far more enlightened outlook on the impact of America's interactions with the rest of the world. As the world grows increasingly smaller, thanks to the questionable advancements of our relentless science and technology juggernaut, there is no longer room for the sort of old-fashioned and intensely myopic concept of patriotism that inspires Americans to reactively grab the flag and start queuing up for battle. What is needed is recognition that we Americans are citizens of the world first (the brotherhood of humanity) and citizens of a specific set of strictly limited economic and sociopolitical principles last. In other words, what is direly needed is a wiser and more comprehensive "global view" of all life on the planet and how we Americans fit into it. What we need to get through the skulls of all those thick headed corporate executives is knowledge that what is good for General Motors is not necessarily good for the rest of America, and DEFINITELY not good for the rest of the world.
Unfortunately,
there is immense potential profit for these same corporate powers to be found in the
products of war, as well as the golden opportunity to keep the war drums thumping and
divert attention away from the biggest single threat to America and the rest of the world:
the cancerous and consumptive nature of the American way of life. Therefore,
given the fact that American citizens are now so successfully isolated from meaningful
interaction, so as to prevent any sort of consensual understanding of these facts, it
appears unlikely that anyone will use this 'wake-up call' that the 11 September events
effectively constitutes to take a careful, measured, and calm look at the the gravest
danger yet faced by America: unconstrained corporate economic exploitation of the
world's resources and the rampant American style materialistic consumerism that has the
potential to drive us all to extinction.
Did I mention that traditional American capitalists are presently exploiting that old fashion American style patriotism to generate millions of dollars of profit for producers of American flags, red, white, and blue bumper stickers, and countless other examples of pseudo-patriotic kitsch, thanks to the terrorists' recent excesses? Did I mention that everywhere we look Americans are being exhorted to "SPEND, SPEND, SPEND" to get America's economy back on track? Can it really be that the new meaning of patriotism has now been reduced...ipso factorium...to the simple economics of ceaseless reactive spending?
In light of all the unimaginable lunacy that passes here for conventional wisdom, I have to believe that if an alien spacecraft somehow REALLY did have an interest in this miserable little planet and actually did land to observe our native rituals from a closer perspective (a particularly laughable thought, if they were truly an advanced civilisation--unlike ours), they would have to think that the entire planet was in danger of being contaminated by the the epidemic American affluenza that threatens to make the entire world simply one large open ward for the morally and ethically insane.........
Be well citizens.....and remember: never fail to actively use your intelligence to unceasingly question the dominant paradigm! The mind you save may be your own....
November 2001
(Illustration credit: Mary-Lou Hewlett)
