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McPeople
Today I had occasion to tell a story from the person who made the movie "Supersize" me (the story is from the book written after the movie). The story tells of how the author and a friend of his had a little tradition of hiding food in each others offices which would of course eventually go bad and stink up the place. Sort of a dubiously funny gag, but the gist of the story is that one day the author hid a McDonald's cheeseburger in his friends office and....well...nothing ever happened. Months and months went by without its being noticed and the sandwich was only discovered by chance when his friend was packing up things to move to another office. Moreover, when it was found, the cheeseburger pretty much looked like it did on the day it was put there. The point of the story is that only real food--food that was alive and relatively good, can go "bad", while there are some things (the person I told this story to replied with a similar tale involving Twinkies) that, never having been real food, even bacteria have too much self-respect to eat.
After that interchange I got to thinking about human evil in some kind of analogous terms. I was thinking about obvious "criminals" and their equally obvious "crimes of commission" such as murder or some other explicit act of violence, as examples of what is usually the moral "stench" of obvious "rottenness", and comparing this to the kind of everyday "odorless" (and usually legal) evil that almost everyone participates in (for example the blythe production and consumption of, say plastic or slave-grown chocolates, or anything else that makes one complicit in violence and misery on a scale involving millions). I was also comparing the former, more obvious form of criminality with the ubiquitous "crime of omission" of passive and resigned participation in the system which indirectly and directly produces the situations that lead both to the more gross and smelly kind of rottenness which we sometimes see on the news and to even more insidious things. This latter form of criminality is the most odorless of all. Actually it can even be "artificially perfumed" since behaviour that has the ultimate effect of enabling a fundamentally unjust and unhealthy way of life, can dress itself up as "sustainable" or "green" and anything else that will sell...
Anyway, my thought was that the people unconsciously involved in these latter kinds of relatively mundane and "odorless" forms of evil are like the cheeseburger that cannot rot because it was never fresh--was never really even food--in the first place. These would be people who have no sense of guilt or responsibility because, although they are daily and willingly more involved in turning, nature, culture and the future into garbage than any person currently in prison, are so completely unconscious of the inherent relationships and responsibilities of existing in a shared world, as to be almost completely ethically and morally numb and disoriented. These would be individuals who can't really even be considered "evil people" because they never really reached the level of being "people" in the first place. Maybe you could call them "McPeople".
I suppose "McPeople" could just be my choice of moniker for the kind of human pseudo-personality described in books like Huxley's "Brave New World", Marcuse's "One Dimensional Man", "the Organization Man", "People of the Lie" or I suppose any number of others, but I think its worth while going into the matter to see what the differences and similarities might be. In my head a "McPerson" (as apposed, both to a mere "Bad Person") is rarely directly physically violent and certainly not openly so. They are often psychologically and emotionally violent, but even this may not be often obvious or overt. They are usually law abiding, obedient and efficient. Many very much identify with their job and are often managers or professionals of some kind or have somesuch asperations. The "Dreams" of McPeople are generally in harmony with the "American Dream" of individual "success" in whatever terms are most current. They are often evolved in some kind of McRelgion which extends their shallow and selfish dreams into the other world, though just as often they can be atheistic worshipers of some kind of McScience, often having pronounced social Darwinist implications. I suppose the overriding character trait of such personalities would be a faculty for denial, distraction and "other-directed" self-betrayal. Most of all, McPeople engage in a great deal of consumption, whether of, legal or illegal drugs, junk food, junk TV, junk technology, or junk "relationships", though many are "workaholics" and paradoxically consume "work" as their distraction of choice...
It is just now occurring to me that McPeople must be those that occupy the "McWorld" of Benjamen Barbers book "Jihad vs McWorld", a book which I have read but am just now relating to this McPeople idea. Since I pretty much agree with a lot of the general thesis of that book, I feel obliged now to consider "Jihaders" as well as "McPeople"{see footnote1}.
Presumably Jihaders are more or less at war with McPeople and the McWorld of corporate values and oblivious consumption that they represent. It makes sense to me that, just as there is McReligion and McScience, so there is "Jihad Religion" and "Jihad Science" (the latter would I guess describe the world view of certain forms of the ecology movement and the Scientific Jihads of Communism and the French Revolution before that). Of course in the case of the Greens, there can be "Green" McPeople and well as "Green" Jihaders).
As I recall, in Barbers book, Jihadists are paradoxically involved with and even dependant in some ways, on the products of the McWorlders and can behave in ways that paradoxically, ultimately strengthen the grip of McWorld. At any rate Barber doesn't credit his Jihadists with being much of an improvement on their enemies. As I recall, this is owning to their decidedly factional, totalitarian, self-righteous (see footnote2) and anti-democratic tendencies. In fact Barber decries the anti-democratic tendencies on both sides of this division.
Well I don't know if I would completely agree with Barbers conception of Democracy, but, insofar as these kinds of highly stereotypical ruminations have any validity or do any good (a question I intend to return to), I can certainly see his general point. More likely than not Jihaders, when they "win the franchise" so to speak, will just become McPersons just as McPersons who happen to lose their jobs will tend to become Jihaders (since McWorld currently has the upper hand, it is only Jihaders who are likely to be imprisoned and thus put in the category or your normal "criminal"). Anyhow, from my own point of view, neither group approaches Individual-Personhood with its factional-identity-and -alienated-worldview-transcending consciousness of fundamental togetherness and the need for both inner and outer healing...
I don't think our culture has fully perfected the recipe for McPeople, (or for Jihaders either) but the main ingredients common to both are surely a cosmology of apartness, identity-politics or apartness, rituals of apartness, and infrastructures of apartness, whether these take traditional (Religious) or modern (Scientific) forms (or even "Postmodern" forms). As is the case with confusion and war of any kind, the only real future, (or authentic present) lies in possibility of creatively transcending the assumptions behind the whole culture war dynamic and so courageously demonstrating in ones own life, the meaning and beauty of real Peace, (which, in its way is an adventure more harrowing and glorious than war ever was or can ever can be...)
Anyway, as I said, I am quite leery of all of these labels I am bandying about. My only excuse is that people can't seem to help bandying about labels, and its possible that some good can come from the above bandying, provided that it's understood that all the "types" in question are just "Ideal Orienting types" as the sociologist say, that is; very limited abstractions consciously being used in a limited way to get a handle on a certain kind of phenomenon. (Though I must say that I think the concept of "Individual-Person" as I understand it is in a somewhat different category than this). Suffice to say that nobody is essentially or fundamentally either a "Jihader" or a "McPerson"(or a "Criminal" either for that matter) and that, in my opinion, everybody is fundamentally and essentially an Individual-Person, whether they are conscious of this or not.
Maybe the main use of this little post is to inform those who see no real options in the world other then being what amounts to a McPerson or a Jihader (or a Criminal of the more traditional sort) that there is indeed another choice; that of moving toward Individual-Personhood and a culture of paradox-affirming togetherness. Since my life is about exploring and developing this very possibility, and since I feel currently pretty damn alone in the attempt, you can be very sure of being sincerely welcomed if you should truly want to participate in this enterprise.
Welcome and Thanks,
I-P
{footnote1: I am following Barber in using the term "Jihad" but I feel the need to be fair to Islam (according to me there is good and evil in everything) by saying that I know the concept of Jihad does not always, or even usually, refer to some holy war against others, but, at least in its highest sense,to the struggle of a person with their own stupidity and pride. In that sense, especially if one includes narrowmindedness and rigid dogma in the list of that which is to be struggled with, then the more "Jihad" the better. My use in the above essay refers to the shadow-side of the Jihad only.}
{footnote2. It occurs to me that I am probably sounding pretty self-rightous myself in parts of this entry. At least I think that, within the context of the dominant, hypercompetative culture, my frustration could easily be understood that way. I could (and should) devote a whole essay to how the childish competativeness of such an assumption as well as the false logic around it is part of the problem (As though the point was not to change the collective situation but just to "make points" by bragging about how I dont participate in this or that aspect of it or as though, in order to name the problem of greehouse gases one had either to stop breathing or admit to being a hypocrite). Suffice to say for now, that I am not at all claiming not to participate in aspects of sick culture (how can one not participate in some aspects of it?) nor am I trying to one-up anyone who happens to participate in some way that I don't. What I know is possible, (and what I want to make my posts a gesture toward) is collectively diagnosing the sick culture that we are All involved in in one way or another (to varying degrees at differents times and in different circumstances), and collectively comming to terms about, practicing, (or at least making the world safe for), Healthy Culture. Willingness to do this counts as goodwill in my book. Just as extreem dissatisfaction with the current inner/outer status quo, (rather than either oblivious unconsciousness or self-righteous and compassionless denial and distain) counts as Good Taste. Faith in the reality of primary togetherness and in the possibility of moving toward its realization is what I would call Good Faith. And finally, Good Sense is the sensibility that can not only acknowledge participation in both sick culture and healthy culture, but see that acknowledgement as part of the first concious step toward cultivating the latter. It is these things; Good Will, Good Faith, Good Taste, and Good Sense that keep one from McPersonhood or "Jihadism" and not some mythical perfection regarding ones own (or anyone elses) outward participation in sick culture...}
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Mcpeople 2 (slavery)
It occurs to me after some reflection that the whole issue of McPeople and Jihaders, has a lot to do with Slavery. By Slavery I mean any directly or indirectly coerced fear-based mal-employment, as determined both by the kind of work involved and the way in which the work is done. This definition includes dept slavery, wage slavery, as well as chattel slavery...and yet I would also like to explicitly include the kinds of psychological slavery that are involved in all of the above but that might also translate into less orderly, systematic and/or economically significant forms of abuse and coercion. I'd also like to make the clarifying point that, in my definition of a "Slave" this inner, psychological slavery is a necessary ingredient. What I mean is that a Slave is only really a Slave for me (rather just a person trapped in a slave system), to the extent that the person has internalized a coercion/ fear-based way of thinking and feeling.
What I am trying to make explicit by this way of looking at it is the fact that Freedom is like Happiness, in that, just as person who is happy wants everyone Else to be happy, so a person who is Free wants others to be Free and that, correspondingly, the impulse or desire to enslave others is nothing more than a sign of ones own enslavement. Thus a "master" is basically a form of "higher-ranking" slave (I speak here from the slaves point of view since from the point of view of freedom what is essential is the condition of slavery itself, distinctions of rank being only relavent within the slave mentality itself). Thus a slave who has assimilated the regime of slavery (this being the only true kind of slave) will in turn seek to become a "master", if not officially by moving up in the coercive hierarchy and becoming a foreman for example, then informally by brutalizing, manipulating or enslaving whoever or whatever they can).
I want to make clear that its not the feeling of being coerced or afraid that creates the slave but rather, it is the act of incorporating into oneself (and assimilating oneself to) the extant regime of fear and inner and outer coercion itself that makes for enslavement. Those still alive to the struggle for inner and outer freedom will never actually be slaves in my view, whatever their outer situation. Ironically, the negative assimilation that makes for "slavehood" happens more readily when the fear itself is repressed and denied, so as to enable the illusion that "mastery" is the opposite of slavery rather then just a part of it. For instance, in the moment where a larger or more poweful slave, or perhaps a slave foreman, is oppressing (or even just thinking about oppressing) another slave, the former is likely indulging in some false illusion of such ostensibly one-sided "mastery" over the latter. In that moment, such a person will have lost any sense of their authenic selfnature (and the Freedom to Be and express that SelfNature that real Freedom is), and instead will be able to conceive of "freedom" only as "freedom to onesidely oppress and control" (which is not a freedom at all but a delusion). It is with such impulses toward "mastery" that slaves confirm and renew their existence as institutionalized slaves--assimilating, rather then creatively adapting to and challenging, the regime of inner and outer coercion that slavery essentially is.
Since, from this point of view, people reveal themselves as slaves (or better, betray themselves into slavery) by inwardly assimilating to any form or regime of coercion, it can be claimed (very much beyond the usual ironies of masters/owners being bound by what they "own") that to be--or even want to be-- a "master" is to actually confirm oneself a slave, in that such a desire indicates an assimilation to a fear-based inner and outer order of things. By this definition, (which is unusual only because it is both broad and deep rather than because it is unreasonable), it seems clear to me that the whole of the culture we live in is "slave culture"; IE; a culture of inner and outer coercion.
Ok. So now I want to relate all of this slavery talk to this McPeople Business. From this angle its clear that the a McPerson is simply someone who is a Slave in the sense that they have internalized and assimilated themselves to regimes of inner/outer coercion to such an extent that they can conceive of nothing more than "moving up" (or at least no moving down) within the regime, having totally lost sight of, and being no longer able to imagine much less work toward, anything else. I regard this as essentially a kind of unconsciousness/numbness-enabled denial. What i mean is that all the mal-consumption I attributed to Mcpeople in my previous description amounts to the necessary consumption of various kinds of numbing anesthetic and denial-facilitating distractions; distractions from the reality of the McPerson's inner and outer Slavery and from the existential pain of their ultimately meaningless and meaninglessly destructive lives. In a sense, private "ownership", even of inanimate objects, can be understood as a kind of transferred "mastery" in this way of thinking and so must indicate some degree of assimilation to the regime of slavery on the part of the "owner/master". Not surprisingly, the object "owned" is usually produced though some form of economic slavery/mal-employment, a circumstance which further confirms that conclusion.
I suppose that from this point of view "Jihaders" could be described as "slaves in revolt". I say "slaves" in revolt, rather than "individual-persons in revolt" because I think what makes a "Jihader" a "Jihader" rather than a consciously individual-person is precisely a lack of having fully healed from the slave/master denial and dissociation mentality. Unconsciousness of this lack of healing (which effects both the end they strive for an the means they choose to achieve it) is usually responsible for the self-righteousness and or fanaticism of the "Jihader" who very often unconsciously wants their own brand of inner and outer "mastery" rather then real inner/outer health and freedom for themselves and others. Such an attitude is facilitated by the lack of an "Integrative" (see a previous blog) by which the one-sidedness (and the one-sided assumptions) of most kinds of activism can be transcended and through which ones own "piece of the Lie" can be acknowledged and challenged at the same time the external status quo is also being addressed. The lack of such an Integrative (and the healthy world view, identity-politics and practice that goes along with it) is, I think the basic reason why historical Jihadist reform and revolutionary movements (whether religiously or "humanistically" motivated) result in variations on, rather than transcendence of, the theme of Slavery{ see footnote 1}
All of this more or less equates the slave culture that produces both Jihaders and McPeople with what I call Sick Culture...at least slave culture can be called the main "socio-psycho-economic" manifestation of sick culture. This means that, as is the case with sick culture in general, we all have been initiated into this culture of misery, oppression and denial. Thus to be a conscious individually healing person cannot mean to be totally free of this master/slave mentality (this is not even the case with children), but to be able to challenge and heal it because one is has conscious awareness of both its existence and its nature in oneself and others . Another way of saying this is to say that no one is so much a slave as someone who is unconscious of their own propensity toward inner and outer slavery; such unconsciousness is part of the Slavery itself just as true consciousness (which I maintain is "consciousness of Togetherness") is itself a manifestation of and prelude to, greater freedom.
Like most things in Healthy Culture then, to be a conscious Individual-Person involves living a paradox. In this case it is the paradox (which also frees the individual person from the inner tyranny of self-righteousness and ego) that they are free only to the extent that they remain conscious of (and so not the unwitting victim of) the sick/slave culture which they are in, and which, to some degree is also "in them" since it is the culture that they have been initiated into from birth. One could say that freedom itself is not so much a static finished state but a conscious movement in the direction of greater and greater manifestations of itself both inwardly and outwardly and that this movement can only be maintained if motivated by aware acknowledgment of, and also progressive engagement with, the tendency toward inner and outer coercion which is always ready to take over again and, (usually through the enticements of "mastery"--See footnote 2), turn us back into unconscious slaves (which is the only kind of slave there is really).
{footnote 1: I feel it to be a kind of duty not to betray the future of intentional community by letting people assume, since i chose to live in one, that this movement is, as I have experienced it, at all exempt from this analysis of Jihaders--or from that of McPeople either--,on the contrary, I could back up what I am saying with many many examples from my past and current experience in that movement. The reader can refer to some of them in the "neighbor" posts in my other blog lifedancelog.motime.com to glean a few of these examples. if the experiment of intentional community is ever to really succeed, it will have to be honest about its failure thus far and the reasons for it.}
{footnote 2: I suppose there are some who would like to maintain a idea of positive "Mastery"; perhaps to make a distinction between "false Mastery" and real Mastery". I have thought about this and really don't find the need to do so. I think that even the idea of "spiritual Mastery" just tempts one to a kind of spiritual materialism that just feeds the ego and enslaves the soul. Rather than Mastering oneself or others, or this or that skill, I would like to substitute the idea of "Friendship" and of "Befriending" (in the sense of listening to, supporting, and challenging) oneself, or this or that skill or art. This feels much better to me. To quote a song of mine: "Whenever there is Mastery, there is Slavery, and when you're thinking like that my Friend, you will never be Free"}
--I-P
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