93 lines
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Plaintext
93 lines
5.0 KiB
Plaintext
SOCIETY
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So-ci-e-ty n. from L. socius, companion. 1. an organized aggregate of
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interrelated individuals and groups. 2. totalizing racket, advancing at
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the expense of the individual, nature and human solidarity.
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Society everywhere is now driven by the treadmill of work and
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consumption. This harnessed movement, so very far from a state of
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companionship, does not take place without agony and disaffection.
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Having more never compensates for being less, as witness rampant
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addiction to drugs, work, exercise, sex, etc. Virtually anything can be
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and is overused in the desire for satisfaction in a society whose
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hallmark is denial of satisfaction. But such excess at least gives
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evidence of the hunger for fulfillment, that is, an immense
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dissatisfaction with what is before us.
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Hucksters purvey every kind of dodge, for example. New Age panaceas,
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disgusting materialistic mysticism on a mass scale: sickly and
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self-absorbed, apparently incapable of looking at any part of reality
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with courage or honesty. For New Age practitioners, psychology is
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nothing short of an ideology and society is irrelevant.
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Meanwhile, Bush, surveying "generations born numbly into despair," was
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predictably loathsome enough to blame the victimized by citing their
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"moral emptiness." The depth of immiseration might best be summed up by
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the federal survey of high schoolers released 9/19/91, which found that
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27 percent of them "thought seriously" about suicide in the preceding
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year.
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It could be that the social, with its growing testimony to
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alienation-mass depression, the refusal of literacy, the rise of panic
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disorders, etc.-may finally be registering politically. Such phenomena
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as continually declining voter turnout and deep distrust of government
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led the Kettering Foundation in June '91 to conclude that "the
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legitimacy of our political institutions is more at issue than our
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leaders imagine," and an October study of three states (as reported by
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columnist Tom Wicker, 10/14/91) to discern "a dangerously broad gulf
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between the governors and the governed."
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The longing for nonmutilated life and a nonmutilated world in which to
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live it collides with one chilling fact: underlying the progress of
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modern society is capital's insatiable need for growth and expansion.
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The collapse of state capitalism in Eastern Europe and the USSR leaves
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only the 'triumphant' regular variety, in command but now confronted
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insistently with far more basic contradictions than the ones it
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allegedly overcame in its pseudo-struggle with 'socialism'. Of course,
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Soviet industrialism was not qualitatively different from any other
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variant of capitalism, and far more importantly, no system of production
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(division of labor, domination of nature, and work-and-pay slavery in
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more or less equal doses) can allow for either human happiness or
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ecological survival.
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We can now see an approaching vista of all the world as a toxic,
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ozone-less deadness. Where once most people looked to technology as a
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promise, now we know for certain that it will kill us. Computerization,
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with its congealed tedium and concealed poisons, expresses the
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trajectory of society, engineered sleekly away from sensuous existence
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and finding its current apotheosis in Vrtual Reality.
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The escapism of VR is not the issue, for which of us could get by
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without escapes? Likewise, it is not so much a diversion from
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consciousness as it is itself a consciousness of complete estrangement
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from the natural world. Virtual Reality testifies to a deep pathology,
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reminiscent of the Baroque canvases of Rubens that depict armored
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knights mingling with but separated from naked women. Here the
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'alternative' technojunkies of Whole Earth Review, pioneer promoters of
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VR, show their true colors. A fetish of 'tools', and a total lack of
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interest in critique of society's direction, lead to glorification of
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the artificial paradise of VR.
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The consumerist void of high tech simulation and manipulation owes its
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dominance to two increasing tendencies in society, specialization of
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labor and the isolation of individuals. From this context emerges the
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most terrifying aspect of evil: it tends to be committed by people who
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are not particularly evil. Society, which in no way could survive a
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conscious inspection is arranged to prevent that very inspection.
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The dominant, oppressive ideas do not permeate the whole of society,
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rather their success is assured by the fragmented nature of opposition
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to them. Meanwhile, what society dreads most are precisely the lies it
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suspects it is built upon. This dread or avoidance is obviously not the
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same as beginning to subject a deadening force of circumstances to the
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force of events.
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Adorno noted in the '60s that society is growing more and more
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entrapping and disabling. He predicted that eventually talk of causation
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within society would become meaningless: society itself is the cause.
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The struggle toward a society-if it could still be called that-of the
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face-to-face, in and of the natural world, must be based on an
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understanding of societv today as a monolithic, all-encompassing death
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march.
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