Who ARE we The nega
Who ARE we? The negative metamorphosis of America’s cultural heritage
The cultural which originally made us a quality nation and our people a force for good has been greatly diminished. Use of the term culture does not connote the world of either art, literature, or refrigerator fuzz, although these things play a major role in how lives are lived and the things that are valued. In this context, culture encompasses our entire history and the way we got to this point of chaos and decline. Culture means:
How we think
What we know
Our vitality and will to create
Our view of ourselves and others within the larger universe
Our approach to problem identification and solving
Our treatment of others, regardless of age or nationality
What our children learn and how we teach them
Our understanding of intangibles (ethics, morality, courtesy, taste, judgment, joy)
Our application of those intangibles
There is a Quaker saying that encompasses all our culture: “Let your life speak for you.” All our lives are speaking to a much larger world today, but it is horrifying to realize what that life – our present culture – is saying. It isn’t as though we had no clues to our fall from greatness. All it takes is a close look at four items and our pettiness and cultural disintegration is obvious to even the most stubborn or bullheaded:
Social inequality – that wide chasm between rich and poor
Rapid loss of entitlements like Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid
Collapse of intelligence
Spiritual death (in this context, spiritual does not mean religion)
At this time, I don’t wish to address loss of entitlements or social inequality except for one point. When wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few, the return on that wealth is negligible. Rarely does any of that wealth to toward creating jobs, improving productivity, or funding ideas, creativity or opportunities. Such concentration further deprives the poorer among us. In terms of wealth disparity, the U.S. leads all other industrialized nations. As it gets harder for most Americans to make a living, it gets easier for a select few to make a killing, and signals a ‘seismic shift in the character of our society,’ according to Paul Krugman. It also signals a major change in our values and a significant loss of character. Where in 1962, JFK confronted U.S. Steel over price increases and forced it to back down, today upper echelon CEO’s would be invited to Crawford, Texas for a cookout.
The largest, and by far the saddest and most dangerous item in our coming cultural demise, is the Collapse of Intelligence which goes hand-in-hand with Spiritual Death. One visit to any chat room on the Internet will underscore the seriousness of this problem to our ultimate survival. There are approximately 40 million Americans who can’t read above a fourth grade level and are classified as functionally illiterate. Many people believe our President is among them, and curiously, this is the same guy whose mother made literacy programs one of her points of interest as First Lady under Bush One’s reign. Coincidence? That’s highly doubtful.
Is it surprising in our consumerist culture that basic conversation consists of one liners, slogans and bumper sticker thinking? Or is it surprising that on most commuter transportation, those males with newspapers turn to the sports section first? If you answered no to either question, it won’t surprise you to learn that although few Americans understand the degree to which Corporations have taken over their lives, statistics tell us that 70 percent of them believe in the existence of angels. Statistics also tell us that 47 percent of American adults can’t find Japan on a world map, and 40 percent (that’s over 70 million people) didn’t know Germany was our enemy in WWII, and 84 percent couldn’t tell you that Harry Truman was President at the start of the Korean War. Then there are the bright 42 percent of American teenagers who can name our three branches of government compared to the 59 percent who can name the Three Stooges.
Too well do we understand the phrase ‘dumbing down.’ Do we realize it applies equally to schools, teachers, parents, students, college and university standard setters, job applicants, job holders, political candidates and election winners, and on and on? The content of television programs assumes an audience of morons, and Hollywood capitalizes on the same standard while we laugh at our own idiocy, become a nation of dolts and wonder why our world is changing. McWorld has taken over the American brain, and it isn’t just intellectual failure. It’s moral failure, as well, and it definitely overlaps with spiritual death.
This is the most difficult to categorize because it is all intangibles, except in practice. Realize first, that we are living in a world of corporate consumerism, where the business of American is business and its mental toxicity permeates every part of our landscape. Think of the news – most of it is actually business news and even the perception of the president is not as a statesman but a corporate CEO. Shopping is entertainment for 98 percent of the population which never wonders if there isn’t something wrong about that. Business slogans appear in schools which accept ‘donations’ of goods and services in order to meet dwindling resources. New sports arenas, private, public, and school related bear the commercial names of their sponsor. Our fun, user friendly McWorld has no substance, it is all kitsch, hype, sloganeering and marketing ploys – and too few ask “Is that all there is?”
The American public can no longer distinguish quality from garbage – not in entertainment, sports, politics, business, or education. Intelligence, like history, is something to dismiss. Intelligence is precarious at best in the world of Oprah, Brittany, Girls Gone Wild, Fear Factor, Dr. Phil or Chopra when the dumb, titillating or self-absorbed is the standard of value.
Can individualism, taste, and judgment survive in a world that worships celebrity, buffoonery and shamelessness? Can decency survive in a world that answers serious questions with emotionalism or with the bigotry, intolerance, and exclusion demanded by supposed spiritual leaders? Can we survive a spiritual or cultural collapse when we seem unable to relate to each other with a modicum of courtesy or awareness? We don’t hold doors for each other, don’t answer messages, don’t say please or thank you, or we disappear from each other’s lives without reason or regret, betray one another without thought or apology and refuse to discuss it. After all, in a singular world with no cultural awareness, I is the only important word or consideration. Rudeness is the coin of our realm.
Existence is populated only with little yellow smiley faces instead of real involvement with risk and vulnerability and caring. People live in isolation with no community but soap opera characters or chat room buddies as friends. Cyberspace and virtual reality are more readily maintained than the world outside our windows. Infantilism is an ideology, all that counts are ‘my feelings,’ and road rage is epidemic. Manners, the arts and the humanities count for nothing when compared to commerce, entertainment and therapy.
Take some time and take a good look around the landscape of your life. Do you like what you see? Are you comfortable inhabiting a world in which our political, business, educational and cultural leaders cannot be trusted? Can you trust the hearts and minds of the bulk of our own population? Haven’t we grown to be much less than we could be and are too wrapped up in our real and imagined enjoyments to notice? Doesn’t it mean that by condoning manipulation and self-delusion we have assisted in making our world pathetic, painful and sad? Hasn’t our disconnect and ignorance sent our nation on its downward slide to oblivion?
The cultural which originally made us a quality nation and our people a force for good has been greatly diminished. Use of the term culture does not connote the world of either art, literature, or refrigerator fuzz, although these things play a major role in how lives are lived and the things that are valued. In this context, culture encompasses our entire history and the way we got to this point of chaos and decline. Culture means:
How we think
What we know
Our vitality and will to create
Our view of ourselves and others within the larger universe
Our approach to problem identification and solving
Our treatment of others, regardless of age or nationality
What our children learn and how we teach them
Our understanding of intangibles (ethics, morality, courtesy, taste, judgment, joy)
Our application of those intangibles
There is a Quaker saying that encompasses all our culture: “Let your life speak for you.” All our lives are speaking to a much larger world today, but it is horrifying to realize what that life – our present culture – is saying. It isn’t as though we had no clues to our fall from greatness. All it takes is a close look at four items and our pettiness and cultural disintegration is obvious to even the most stubborn or bullheaded:
Social inequality – that wide chasm between rich and poor
Rapid loss of entitlements like Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid
Collapse of intelligence
Spiritual death (in this context, spiritual does not mean religion)
At this time, I don’t wish to address loss of entitlements or social inequality except for one point. When wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few, the return on that wealth is negligible. Rarely does any of that wealth to toward creating jobs, improving productivity, or funding ideas, creativity or opportunities. Such concentration further deprives the poorer among us. In terms of wealth disparity, the U.S. leads all other industrialized nations. As it gets harder for most Americans to make a living, it gets easier for a select few to make a killing, and signals a ‘seismic shift in the character of our society,’ according to Paul Krugman. It also signals a major change in our values and a significant loss of character. Where in 1962, JFK confronted U.S. Steel over price increases and forced it to back down, today upper echelon CEO’s would be invited to Crawford, Texas for a cookout.
The largest, and by far the saddest and most dangerous item in our coming cultural demise, is the Collapse of Intelligence which goes hand-in-hand with Spiritual Death. One visit to any chat room on the Internet will underscore the seriousness of this problem to our ultimate survival. There are approximately 40 million Americans who can’t read above a fourth grade level and are classified as functionally illiterate. Many people believe our President is among them, and curiously, this is the same guy whose mother made literacy programs one of her points of interest as First Lady under Bush One’s reign. Coincidence? That’s highly doubtful.
Is it surprising in our consumerist culture that basic conversation consists of one liners, slogans and bumper sticker thinking? Or is it surprising that on most commuter transportation, those males with newspapers turn to the sports section first? If you answered no to either question, it won’t surprise you to learn that although few Americans understand the degree to which Corporations have taken over their lives, statistics tell us that 70 percent of them believe in the existence of angels. Statistics also tell us that 47 percent of American adults can’t find Japan on a world map, and 40 percent (that’s over 70 million people) didn’t know Germany was our enemy in WWII, and 84 percent couldn’t tell you that Harry Truman was President at the start of the Korean War. Then there are the bright 42 percent of American teenagers who can name our three branches of government compared to the 59 percent who can name the Three Stooges.
Too well do we understand the phrase ‘dumbing down.’ Do we realize it applies equally to schools, teachers, parents, students, college and university standard setters, job applicants, job holders, political candidates and election winners, and on and on? The content of television programs assumes an audience of morons, and Hollywood capitalizes on the same standard while we laugh at our own idiocy, become a nation of dolts and wonder why our world is changing. McWorld has taken over the American brain, and it isn’t just intellectual failure. It’s moral failure, as well, and it definitely overlaps with spiritual death.
This is the most difficult to categorize because it is all intangibles, except in practice. Realize first, that we are living in a world of corporate consumerism, where the business of American is business and its mental toxicity permeates every part of our landscape. Think of the news – most of it is actually business news and even the perception of the president is not as a statesman but a corporate CEO. Shopping is entertainment for 98 percent of the population which never wonders if there isn’t something wrong about that. Business slogans appear in schools which accept ‘donations’ of goods and services in order to meet dwindling resources. New sports arenas, private, public, and school related bear the commercial names of their sponsor. Our fun, user friendly McWorld has no substance, it is all kitsch, hype, sloganeering and marketing ploys – and too few ask “Is that all there is?”
The American public can no longer distinguish quality from garbage – not in entertainment, sports, politics, business, or education. Intelligence, like history, is something to dismiss. Intelligence is precarious at best in the world of Oprah, Brittany, Girls Gone Wild, Fear Factor, Dr. Phil or Chopra when the dumb, titillating or self-absorbed is the standard of value.
Can individualism, taste, and judgment survive in a world that worships celebrity, buffoonery and shamelessness? Can decency survive in a world that answers serious questions with emotionalism or with the bigotry, intolerance, and exclusion demanded by supposed spiritual leaders? Can we survive a spiritual or cultural collapse when we seem unable to relate to each other with a modicum of courtesy or awareness? We don’t hold doors for each other, don’t answer messages, don’t say please or thank you, or we disappear from each other’s lives without reason or regret, betray one another without thought or apology and refuse to discuss it. After all, in a singular world with no cultural awareness, I is the only important word or consideration. Rudeness is the coin of our realm.
Existence is populated only with little yellow smiley faces instead of real involvement with risk and vulnerability and caring. People live in isolation with no community but soap opera characters or chat room buddies as friends. Cyberspace and virtual reality are more readily maintained than the world outside our windows. Infantilism is an ideology, all that counts are ‘my feelings,’ and road rage is epidemic. Manners, the arts and the humanities count for nothing when compared to commerce, entertainment and therapy.
Take some time and take a good look around the landscape of your life. Do you like what you see? Are you comfortable inhabiting a world in which our political, business, educational and cultural leaders cannot be trusted? Can you trust the hearts and minds of the bulk of our own population? Haven’t we grown to be much less than we could be and are too wrapped up in our real and imagined enjoyments to notice? Doesn’t it mean that by condoning manipulation and self-delusion we have assisted in making our world pathetic, painful and sad? Hasn’t our disconnect and ignorance sent our nation on its downward slide to oblivion?
posted by kaz at 3:30 PM
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