On Culture and Commodification

i. Culture manifests and imprints itself across all segments of society. The past contains many shared perceptions which may be built upon for Maximum Advantage. A common example is evoking Hitler to justify foreign intervention, even when few parallels exist, to successfully quiet opposition.

ii. Intellectual and material achievements are often unearthed from a nostalgic past to rationalize reactionary policies and movements. Things were so much better in the past. The single largest mistake was probably leaving the trees, but only a few bring sentiment so far by espousing all civilization a lie. The herd needs a reason to believe getting up for work is worth it. Hopes should not be too specific. Sacrifice must seem worthwhile. War dead is probably one of the most powerful tools to this end. Horror has to mean something... Values need to be defined and require common acceptance. The system will grind to a halt if the herd was encouraged to mindlessly mill about. Nothing must appear to be something. Propaganda has its limits. The irrational is difficult to harness, but represents true power by those that manage to do so. Backlash sentiments are easiest to invoke and exploit among opponents.

iii. Commodification is a social weapon. Consumerism is a faith. Material objects bring fulfillment. The glittering new malaise is preferable to the old malaise. The opportunist should never underestimate public stupidity. Conformity can even become rebellion. Official positions are shown in the best light. Major media outlets know who butters their bread. Well paid journalists are players in the economic order. Anyone heavily invested will necessarily support the entire economic order. Their money is their only freedom (whatever that means). Economic clout represents the path of least resistance. Money does not mean everything. "Maximum" may always be redefined....

(From a work in progress...)

Leadership Is Dead

From Americans’ Confidence in Its Leaders Hits New Low:

The 2011 National Leadership Index indicates that Americans’ confidence in its leaders has hit new low points: the overall index has fallen from 101.4 in 2005 to 89.4 in this month’s survey, even below the 2008 level in the midst of the financial meltdown. (100 is the normative level of confidence.)

The index is highly reliable as it is based on interviews of 1,065 Americans and conducted by the Center for Public Leadership, headed by Professor David Gergen at Harvard Kennedy School. These results are very worrisome to me, as without trust and confidence in our leaders, America cannot recover the energy and optimism required to restore its domestic economy and global leadership.

The survey indicates that 77% of Americans believe the U.S. has a leadership crisis. Without better leaders, America will decline as a nation, according to 77% of those interviewed. Seventy-six percent disagree with the proposition that our country’s leaders are effective and do a good job.

Among leadership categories, military and medical leaders continue to top the list, scoring at 112 and 105, respectively. At the very bottom are Congressional and Wall Street leaders, with ratings of 73 and 71, both down sharply from the upper 90’s in 2005. Business leaders fare slightly better at 87, with the White House at 84.5 and media at 84.

Although the results are not unexpected (what the hell is wrong with the other 23%?!?), the editorializing about the results is the typical tripe one has grown accustomed to the last few years.  (It gets worse than the above quote.)  For one thing, the angst about the decline of America fails to take into account that supposed better "leaders" in the past, since World War II, ran the country into the ground by supporting the domination of the military-industrial complex, allowing infrastructure to decay, sent jobs overseas, debased public eduction, nurtured the financial system to become a blood-sucking parasite, etc.  The current crop of "leaders" is the end result, not the cause of these policies.  It also fails to ask the one question that cannot be answered: where are the supposed better "leaders" to be found?  The answer, of course, is that they do not exist.  The climate will not allow their development, and only a complete idiot would think otherwise.  Hence, anyone who is not a craven coward pining away for someone to come and tell them what to do, and has given it some thought, will conclude that people will need to do things for themselves.  This thought scares the weak and feeble minded.

One of the reasons the OWS movement is viewed with trepidation is its rejection of "leaders" and demands of "leaders".  This is an example of true cultural evolution, and should not be taken lightly as the inevitable backlash is authoritarianism.  Thankfully, there are no "leaders" who are in a position to take advantage of it, but, like any decadent instinct, it can still be destructive as it degenerates into nihilism.

Commodified

Only when it loses its soul may spirit be commodified.

I Hate Art

I freely (albeit grudgingly) admit that I am an artist, but obviously not a professional one.  I have absolutely no interest in selling my art, and I don't respect those who do any more or less than I respect someone for getting paid to clean a toilet. (Although the janitor is doing something that is far more in my basic interests, namely sanitation, than any artist could possibly do.)  It's a job and that's it.  Unlike the janitor, what I really dislike about professional artists--by which I mean someone making a tidy profit off their so-called "art" (not just breaking even)--is their attitude that they do something more worthwhile than the rest of us.  Frankly, I don't buy it (pun intended).  Pandering to a lowest common denominator is not something worthy of respect.  The product is not great, nor even good, but rather dull.  A century from now, if it even exists, their art may shed some light on the mediocre time for which it was made, but otherwise nothing lasting beyond the paycheck to the artist.  The culture industry is not praiseworthy.  It's not even culture. It's just crap. I hate art.

Lessons From Barcelona

Barcelona, the city which was at the epicenter of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT-FAI before and during the Spanish Civil War, has a few lessons worth listening to with respect to organizing movements without (the hindrance of) leaders. I've long maintained that the only true political difference is not Right and Left, but rather authoritarians and anti-authoritarians.  In most cases, the former boils down to the presence of politicians and centralization, whereas the latter does not. Unfortunately, during the blood-drenched Twentieth Century, only the Iberians seemed to understand this fundamental difference and even then they fell into the trap of aligning themselves with so-called "progressives" like Stalinists, who quickly set about the undermine the revolution of 1936.  (It ended, during May 1937 in Barcelona.)  Since the 1930s, Barcelona has seen a number of other movements with an anti-authoritarian bent, so the older generations there indeed have something worthwhile to pass on (as opposed here with geezers droning on and on about boring stories of peace, love and acid).  Since May 15th, the citizens of Barcelona have organized along neighborhood lines, and appear to have developed means of keeping any political leaders from emerging.  Here an excerpt from Reflections for the US Occupy Movement that anyone involved in OWS should reflect upon:

All of these movements constitute lessons learned that can be passed down to aid future struggles. So often, the mistakes that defeat a revolutionary movement are repeated. The neighborhood assemblies in Barcelona serve as spaces where people from different generations can share their perspectives, where those with experience in past struggles can collectivize that experience and turn it into communal property. In the beginning, the organizers of the 15M movement presented their protest model as something ultra-modern, with more references to Twitter than to the country’s rich history of social movements. This model was rejected by many in Barcelona, especially older people or those who had already participated in a previous movement. People preferred to build off their own tradition of struggle, while taking advantage of the new situation and adapting certain features of the 15M model to their use.

The historical memory of past instances of bureaucratization, co-optation by grassroots politicians, and pacification have already served to help the ongoing movement avoid a number of pitfalls. Despite attempts to centralize them, the neighborhood assemblies remain independent and decentralized, allowing for a broader, freer participation, and meaning that politicians who attempt to take advantage of these spaces are at a disadvantage because they cannot operate openly without being kicked out of the assemblies.

As groups like MoveOn.org and former civil rights activists turned politicians attempt to co-opt OWS for the Democratic Party, the lessons of Spain offer much needed wisdom to keep vile, disgusting politicians at bay.  (Certainly the original founders of the Tea Party and many of those suckered into voting for Obama might have also benefited from such advice, but that ignores the reality that far too many are authoritarians and therefore crave being told what to do.)

The piece goes on to identify further problems with the 99% concept that is worth reading:

The United States is also a country with inspiring histories of popular struggle. But it is a country with a case of social amnesia like no other. It seems that to a certain extent, the Occupy Wall Street actions exist more as a trend than anything else. The slight extent to which they draw on, or even make reference to, earlier struggles, even struggles from the past twenty years, is worrying. The fact that a present awareness of US history would shatter certain cornerstones of the new movement’s identity, for example this idea of the 99% that includes everyone but the bankers in one big, happy family, is not a sufficient excuse to avoid this task. The historical amnesia of American society must be overcome for a struggle to gain the perspective it needs.

There will always be reactionaries, not to mention authoritarians, and ignoring this certainty is done at one's peril.  However, this comment is telling in that most Europeans simply do not understand the cultural and social realities of US society and its cities in particular.   In Barcelona, neighborhood represent a force.  In the US, due it nature as a country of transients, most neighborhoods are just a collection of buildings.  It's a little hard to organize along such local lines when most do not even bother to know most of their neighbors.  Since much of what OWS is about is establishing tribes, as discussed in prior posts, the 99% tactic is a means of drawing people with common concerns and interests into a centralized focus.  It's about connections.  Technological means, like social media, are a poor substitute for face to face contact, but there are few other means for establishing relationships.

Anyway, ignore the past at your peril, but also do not try to make it fit your current circumstances.   The way is forward.

Periodic Maintenance

Absent periodic maintenance even the strongest link will fail.

Calm

The calm after the storm is a sign of exhaustion.

Cultural Diseases

Cultural diseases have subjective severity.

An offense to one is almost never an offense to all.  Most people simply do not care.

Any Societal analysis that fails to consider cultural impacts is inherently flawed.  Reference frames always matter.