Have We Been Willing Slaves?
“In this country sometimes
we forget that we have the capacity to shape our
own destiny.”
—Birch Bayh, Lafayette,
Indiana 10/5/08
Choosing hope means conscious
risk: it means looking at the ideas that govern
us. While it is easy to condemn terrorists who
justify the destruction of themselves and others,
a much greater challenge is to ask: Do we, too,
hold ideas that end up placing other values before
life? What belief systems allow people to tolerate
day in and day out, for example, the devastation
of nature and other species as well as the starvation
and early deaths of millions of innocent people,
[in order to benefit from] cheap food, fuel, and
finery…?
—Hope’s
Edge, Frances
Moore Lappe – p.
4
Americans are too domesticated.
Our domestication is based on a self-centered world
view that places all of nature at our disposal for
our pleasure as a God-given right. This has made
us like puppies wagging our tails for treats. At
worst it makes us like cattle fattening in the feedlot
for slaughter. Our “goodness” and
loyal domesticity has resulted in our being used and
manipulated by hypocrites that feed our vanities and
pride in order to keep us “comfortable.” That
is the worst enslavement because we are under the delusion
that we are free and have made our own choices.
If this characterization of contemporary
Americans seems harsh, it has been proven by the
fact that we have elected leaders of our government
who have trashed our core values and repeatedly lied
to us while ignoring our most basic needs. They have
accomplished this by pandering to our desires, fears
and sincerely held beliefs to gain power and wealth
for themselves. Why, for example, do we swallow their
sound bites and slogans as truth? In our blind faith
and passive acceptance we become the worst hypocrites
and don’t even
see how our own values are being exploited. For example,
why would someone consider himself or herself “pro-life” and
not object to war, torture, the death penalty, poverty,
restrictions on firearm sales to criminals, and the
devastation of nature? Our slavery has been a result
of our voluntary abdication of critical thinking,
our aversion to having rebellious thoughts, and our
desire to see the world as we wish it to be.
Unlike the unwilling slaves of
our early history we have not been “seasoned” into
obedience by torture, but by our willing addictions
to the excesses of “our way of life.” The
feedlots providing the required “fix” have
been the big box stores where we can shop patriotically,
cheap gas to provide freedom and fun, and the bubble
of belief that “America is Number One!” (In
the meantime we are propping up and enriching the economies
of China and the oil producing companies and countries,
becoming their colony as a debtor nation!)
The old news is that we have
consistently voted against our self-interests whether
at the ballot box or with our pocket books. The “rabble-rousing” Michael
Moore used humor, outrage and entertainment in his
book Stupid
White Men: ...And Other Sorry Excuses for the State
of the Nation! to try to shake
us up and wake us as he takes our chosen leaders to
task for their blunders, either maliciously pre-meditated
or as the result of incompetence. For the more intellectually
inclined, psychologist Drew Western believes his book, The
Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the
Fate of the Nation proves that voters
respond emotionally and will subconsciously ignore
facts and other information that contradict their selection
or preference, thereby often voting against their own
self interest.
Today, as our economy implodes and political candidates
use different ploys to try to get our vote, we need
neither a satirist nor a psychologist to tell us that
in the past we have blindly supported people and institutions
that subsequently put our well being at risk. Disasters
tend to open our eyes and give us a sense of objective
perception that helps us recognize our chains. Suddenly,
the reality helps us see the condescending manipulation,
hypocrisy and lies by which we have long been controlled.
Suddenly, the bubble of our illusion bursts and we
become angry.
For many of us the first pinprick in our bubble of
imagined well-being was the fraud in Florida elections
and the subsequent decision by a Republican friendly
Supreme Court that cancelled the recount and named
Bush president in 2000. This made some doubt the very
legitimacy of our democracy. The bubble of our complacency
was further rent by the terrorist attack on 9/11, and
the subsequent erosion of our leadership in the world.
Rather than being a wake-up call shaking us up from
a dangerous sleep, our masters used the occasion to
solidify our chains through the enslaving emotions
of fear and blind patriotism. We found ourselves in
a contrived war based on lies that started to suck
our country of its life-blood. The masters of our nation
further empowered themselves with myths that justified
acts against our core values and moral leadership,
but the majority went along and reelected them. The
accumulated mismanagement of our nation came to a head,
as the threat of global warming became a clear and
present danger, as hurricanes and natural disasters
ripped at our aging infrastructure. The tsunami of
our collapsing economy finally struck with a vengeance
this September, and the subsequent bailout has failed
to substantially save our sinking ship.
Choosing hope is a risk, because we
must reevaluate the values and myths with which we
have been living. Change is stressful, but change is
the result of taking the responsibility for our future
in our own hands. It means having a healthy skepticism,
and truly investigating the claims those who would
want to shape our opinions and country in the future.
Sometimes we may find that we have been wrong, and
admitting our ignorance is a great step forward psychologically.
Finally, perhaps in the stress of social and economic
crises we will take a new look at the choices we made
and recognize our past slavery. Thus may we develop
a more free outlook and renew our optimism.
© 2008
Richard V. Sidy
