The sign over some of the concentration camps during the Nazi reign of terror was the infamous “Work Will Set You Free” eponymously reflected in this post’s title. What does not seem clear at the moment is the connection and logical extension of the current work paradigm the world over from the events and psychology of the concentration camp.
In other words, whatever a person’s ideological bent the work world or labour today has the characteristics in many ways of what could be found in a concentration camp.
Exaggerated you say, as you quickly whip out your iPhone to set up the next appointment and worry about getting a three month annual bonus or worse, whether your mollycoddling of your superiors will allow you a larger cubicle and perhaps your own office space; never mind those who are not sure what Skype is and are waiting to load the next lorry with rocks from a quarry wondering how long they can do this past 40 years of age: and so many of us continue in this vein of wage slavery until death finally makes us part from it all. So we hope.
But there is more to all of the above than meets the eye.
[However, it needs be clear that this post is meant mainly for those who are familiar with the issues in it. It is also meant for those who may be familiar with most of the earlier posts on this site. For those who are, for want of better expression, reading stuff like this for the first time, it is understandable if you find much here that stretches your credulity. Even for those who have thought through some of the ideas here, there may be some resistance to what is discussed. But if readers are impelled from here to start doing their own research and finding out for themselves the truths about the world we live in, then writing this post has been worthwhile.]
Most of the references in this post are made to a ground breaking book entitled The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp by Wolfgang Sofsky, (English translation, 1999). When I first read this original book over 10 years ago, what overwhelmed me was not so much its courage and tremendous insights but the almost nauseating content due to its subject matter. It is well written and not exploitative at all as it is basically an academic (but highly readable) work. Yet despite the restrained disgust expressed by Sofsky and his clinical description and analysis of what took place in the concentration camps (CCs), one needs an intellectually strong stomach to endure reading it from beginning to end.
Needless to say, you cannot breeze through such a book as if a bestselling novel. I read it bit by bit with some trepidation of what else I would have to learn about human history. A lot of what I read -- I resisted -- and so didn’t quite absorb the ideas first time around. The book needed a second read but I did not have the strength to do so then. Ten years later and quite recently, I forced myself to read it again. It was still tough to go through but I was better prepared; and suddenly something clicked about what it said and the world we live in.
Also, we live in a world well versed with Abu Ghraib and its nefarious activities. Things like that prepare you better for reading through the horrors of the Nazi regime. Which brings me to one of the key ideas in this post: in a post-September 11 we-are-all surrounded-by-terrorists world, the need to re-visit the past to let it shed light on the present is not just a necessity, it is a duty.
I repeat – a duty.
If you have any doubt as to what happened at Abu Ghraib and what it stood for, read Philip Zimbardo’s fairly recent The Lucifer Efffect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil which is not only well researched and documented but clearly, brilliantly, and honestly written yet just as hard to read as Sofsky’s work (due to the subject matter).
The use of doublespeak by those who choose to enslave us and spread darkness as much as possible is legion. But few can have the watermark of irony and terror revealed by the choice use of words in the Nazi concentration camps’ motto “Work shall set you free” and that of the CIA’s “the truth shall set you free”.
One thing is certain, if Conrad wrote his magnificent The Heart of Darkness today, the last words of Kurtz would not be “the horror, the horror’, but “the terror, the terror” and in that he would be much closer in vision to the grand and unsettling work of H.P. Lovecraft.
Yet, we can take it as self evident that what man turns into darkness he can return back to the light.
Skulls and Bones
The basic points that Sofsky raises in The Order of Terror, revolves around the organized, bureaucratized and, in a sense, industrialized nature of the CCs. That they were created and managed not just by those who were pathological but those who in most instances were intent on running as efficient a machinery of torture and death as possible.
It is no secret that prototype IBM computer systems, or business machines, were used in cataloguing and managing the data of the internees and victims of the camps. They would have been used to manage the data of the staff and officers of the camps as well. This point is not raised by Sofksy but it is mentioned to highlight the well thought through organized structure the CCs were operating under: and that is a point Sofsky is at pains to make.
We can only wonder at this stage what computer systems and machines were used for similar purposes at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo -- though it can be imagined Apple users pointing one way and others saying, ‘Don’t look at me’. But no one can ever say that their products in data management are not tinged with blood. And most of us thought that the work of Terror was often an ad hoc thing – it isn’t. I don’t mean the crazies who go about blowing up things for a lark or a supposed Cause, I mean a systematic and systemic use of planning and calculation to unleash Terror on all of us.
In other words – organized Terror.
With all that is organized, the time factor of things cannot be ignored. So unsurprisingly, one of the things that Sofsky looks at is the manipulation of time at the CCs. In a section that deals with the management of time in the camps and its effect on prisoners, he writes (italics and bold mine):
“Social time is an objective, imposed standard time of organization, but power can arbitrarily expand, slow down, or accelerate it. Camp time was more than the external compulsion characteristic of all social time. Camp power permeated inner time-consciousness, sundering all the internal band that laces together memory, expectation, and hope. Absolute power far surpasses the familiar forms of organized temporal control. It is not satisfied simply with synchronization and coordination of events. It destroys the continuity of inner time and severs the ties between past and future, locking people into an eternal present. Far from being satisfied with controlling human bodies, it seizes hold of biographical time and the motions of the mind.” (p73 Sofsky)
Who would believe that what applies to a Nazi CC is consonant with what takes place in the working world for so many people. The situation of time being controlled in a work place scenario and countless others involving organizations, reflects power play. There may be issues of respect and hierarchy involved which may be reasonable, but the focus here and elsewhere is to what is unreasonable and a matter of imposing oneself on another as part of a power play that involves denigrating someone or a group of people or entire societies and even countries. This is also known as the zero-sum game of those who overtly or insidiously subscribe to an absolute power paradigm.
Again, while statements will be made from hereon about how people are treated under the jackboots of corporations and other controllers, please bear in mind that it is with empathy towards those of us who are reasonable and responsible members of society rather than just malingerers.
So, take the example of a job interview in many cases. The prospective employee is made to wait sometimes for quite a bit of time, before being brought before the august interview panel to whom must be shown all due deference (and more). The interviewee has to consciously ensure, unless it’s one of those jobs that want someone with an attitude, that they kowtow towards those who may deign to employ them and help them have access to a bread basket.
From the start of how the time is controlled at an interview, what is made apparent is the relation of control being imposed. The relationship is unequal in which those who choose to see you make it quite clear that they are doing you the favour…and when they let you go for whatever reasons (profit margin, need to maintain fat bonuses for greedy top executives, etc) it should not be forgotten that after all, it was not what you contributed to the firm that matters, but your tacit recognition from the start that you are a being that was afforded employment assistance/opportunity; so who do you think you are when you are disposed of like a spent object from your firm? Get real.
Before more is said on this, look at a sample of what else is quote worthy from that section on time (italics and bold mine):
“Planning is one of the tools of social power…Schedules mark beginning points, end points, phases, transitions, linear sequences or cyclic returns…The fuller the schedule, the less time that remains for unplanned incidents, deviations, the wasting of time. The more dense the temporal grid, the more intensive the use of time. Planning determines the smallest moment; it knows only maximum rapidity, precision, effectiveness. Schedules guarantee effectiveness and provide a criterion for its monitoring. In its factorylike organizational form, the camp resembles other disciplinary institutions that gain stability by regimenting everyday temporal sequences.
But absolute power has only a limited interest in a rigid institutionalization of time. It regularly departs from the standardized time tracks it has instituted. As in any formal system, the regulation of time is an effective technology of power;…[but] Terror alternates between planning and disorder; between regulation and assault…By reserving for itself the choice of deviations and special times, power secures its rule over time. The temporal law of absolute power is not calculability, but the free variation of tempo, the shift between duration and abrupt suddenness, hectic rush and waiting, rest and shock.” (p73-4 Sofsky)
These words give a clearer context on the manipulation of time by those who control or are in a position of power over others whatever the situation it may apply to. Simply witness the way, in many instances, it is built into an employment contract that people can be made or ‘asked’ to work longer hours and do more than is required. It may be necessary in certain cases to do so and employees may understand that sacrifices must be made, but how often is it the case that employers exploit, bully and treat miserably those who are working for them (apparently
this aspect of the contract is written in invisible ink between the lines)?
The reason for this is because the employment and economic structure of the world is quite often one that is pyramidal in shape with an emphasis on a master-slave relationship. With computers, world wide communications and so-called globalization we have employers squeezing all arteries and veins of a person at any time of the day 365 ¼ days a year to make them serve the god-like corporation or boss man; or, to assuage their petty egos aspiring for some display of absolute power.
Your time is not your own. Once you sign the Faustian pact with your boss man you’ve in effect sold your soul to them, and they make you pay for it over and above what they pay you. In fact, soon you will have to try and be like them to rise up the ranks of the boss men and women so that you can exercise similar master-slave paradigm roles/ functions over the other lower beings in the food chain.
How many people actually live in fear of what they say and do at the work place? Is it a work place or a CC? What is in place in microcosm is an Order of Terror. Countless times in various work scenarios, I have been told by people/colleagues how if they do this or that (usually that which is reasonable) and worse, do what is right or a matter of principle, they’re putting their ‘livelihood on the line’; other memorable phrases include ‘putting my head on the block’, ‘taking a real risk’ (as opposed to just a ‘risk’), ‘exposing my back’, ‘this could be It for me’, ‘they will hang me out to dry’ or ‘I’ll be out on the streets’ (many of which make nice titles for songs, the latter phrase in particular would make a good chorus these days).
Does this really sound like a workplace, never mind a healthy and pleasant work environment? It sounds like…exactly, ‘Sieg heil’ boss man.
Before proceeding further, we need to be clear about some terms. If the word ‘terrorist’ is used, it would refer to the usual villains who take people hostage, blow up things and have a pathological tenacity in causing harm to others. But the term ‘Terror’ (with the capital ‘T’) signifies a higher order of rapscallions who are using brutal and often subtle and sophisticated means of control, and fear instilling methods over people; in that context those who perpetuate such Terror are Terrorists. They consciously, or otherwise, engender the Order of Terror.
Yet when the terrorists operate purposively or subconsciously as part of Terror, then they too are part of the network of the higher order Terrorists.
The Order of Terror, unless it appears as part of a quoted text, will be represented throughout as OT.
Work as Violence
The groundbreaking work by the late Studs Terkel, especially his books Hard Times and Working, makes it quite clear that work/labour in most cases is a form of violence. It is a daily and unremitting violence inflicted on us just as we, unfortunately, inflict it on others. In many cases, we can see that the terms ‘work’ and ‘labour’ that refer to employment are usually references to the arduous nature and terrors of the workplace. Never mind the politicking and backstabbing, the exploitation and abuse that are never ending undercurrents of the workflow; just the work effort involved daily when it is continuous and relentless, irrespective of whether it is not so physical or literally back breaking, is enough to wear out the strongest amongst us.
The violence of labour is not just the act of producing something tangible or intangible. The violence also comes in the form of the physical, mental and emotional stress it can unleash on the individual engaged in almost any form of work including what they impose on others as they try to manage their loads and stay afloat – sadly in many cases at the expense of others. Violence in labour seems in-built in the way we do things: we are led to believe it is a systemic nature of the beast called humanity and that its nature is one that is indeed brutish, nasty and short lived in good will.
But back to our man Sofsky and the CCs (
italics and
bold mine):
“The camp invented numerous senseless tasks that had only one purpose: to drain and emaciate individuals, to grind them down. Absolute power strips labour of its purposive structure, expanding it endlessly. It has no interest in products or results. It is oriented to the process of working itself, to the duration of the suffering. It transforms hard effort and strain into a deadly pressure for annihilation. The social relation of power overlays the objective relation of labour, shaping it almost totally. Violence is not a means of labour; labour is means of violence. The prisoners did not belong to a slave class of outsiders. They were part of the class of the expendable and superfluous, the wretched and lost.” (p 172, Sofsky)
There is a dual meaning to what Sofsky says that applies to what is explored here. On one level it is the violence that is implicit in labour (which can lead to ‘productive’ goals), and the other which is an expression of (absolute) power over others. In some cases the two are conflated. But it is no surprise to most that a lot of the deployment of labour is a power game and while not always reaching that pinnacle of the pyramid, it is an attempt in some form of trying to embody absolute power.
While it would appear often times that showing up or speaking up against the boss man is a variation of cocking-a-snook against power, the offence to the boss man usually lies at a deeper level which is the perceived antagonistic stance of the sniveling subordinate towards the boss man’s sense of absolute power.
In concrete terms what does this mean. It would include:
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Instilling the sense of who is boss man or woman. This is not so much to maintain a semblance of stability in an organization with some kind of meaningful hierarchy, but just the obverse of absolute power. In an unobvious manner this could include a formal way of addressing someone. Some boss men are informal, but many want to see some form of humility if not subservience shown to them
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Knowing that you should not argue with someone not because they have conclusively shown why your idea was idiotic or not as effective as theirs, but because the boss man shouldn’t be contradicted (especially in front of others). This involves the secret and not-so-secret meetings among the lesser human staff after the main meetings with the boss men; this is to clarify what the hell exactly boss man or woman wanted (absolute power usually reflects shrewd manipulative thuggery as opposed to actual natural intelligence and common sense). Not a good idea to disagree with boss man, especially in front of others, because it can be seen as a railing against absolute power (in case your mother didn’t tell you…)
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Whatever is produced may have value, as in a safety feature for a car, but the act of the labour itself in its mechanized and industrialized form is devoid of value as it is devoid of human sincerity in it: it is an act of sheer manufacturing and fabrication. Once someone in an assembly line has become robotic and is ‘producing’ in a meaningless manner, they have been subjugated by the work flow and the boss men supervisors into a situation, as Sofksy says, of one that “overlays the objective relation of labour, shaping it almost totally” (a line that would have made Marx and Engels proud). So there may be an object produced through labour, but labour itself is ultimately valueless as it is mindlessly performed by a labour automaton exemplifying a power relationship of control and fear between worker and boss man and the work flow itself
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Each time a person leads an overtly ‘productive’ life, through what is described in preceding paragraphs, they are a showcase for labour as violence. Take the teaching profession, where countless tasks of apparent quality control, mind numbing meetings (for the sake of holding them as a work plan for a boss man/ individual staff member/department who have a matrix of objectives that must be ticked in a box using Adobe Acrobat to show that you’re actually working). The filling of class time with dingbat activities for the sake of giving a sense of conforming to the rules of the boss man or work matrix, even if the class proper/lesson of the day is over. The constant electronic and paper form filling as part of the pretence of achieving work objectives; falsifying and exaggerating management, professional or instructional goals so as to justify one’s teaching record; mollycoddling students to ingratiate them into getting good feedback scores which shows how popular an instructor you are; assiduously providing grade inflation to pass as many as possible or make sure that there is a failure or two to fit into some form of ‘bell curve’ – euphemistically known as ‘moderation’. All this is endemic, with the necessary adjustments, to most modern forms of work these days.
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What doesn’t seem apparent is that violence is being done to us and we are doing similar violence to ourselves and others too. In this process we become “expendable and superfluous, the wretched and lost” wherein we now have to endure spiritual distress over and above everything else. Even for the agnostics and atheists amongst us, the moment we forgo a moral and ethical dimension to our working world and our daily lives, we have begun the downward plunge into spiritual degradation. How many do we know whose health has been ruined by their work and work environment. This applies to not just those whose labour is potentially dangerous like the construction industry, but just being a check out girl at the supermarket, a food stall holder, an office executive or a telephone operator. All this adds to the stress that comes from the use and abuse of power (with intimations of absolute power) including what is transferred back by, let’s say, customers (who reflect back to others their own daily labour and spiritual trauma). So in numerous cases of such daily violence and unpleasantness, people end up succumbing to debilitating illnesses
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How many have even died from the stress and unhealthiness of the work environment and the type of work they do. I have known people and ex-colleagues who contracted cancer from the anguish, angst, pent up rage and frustration of their daily grind (compounded by other personal issues). But the greater part of our lives is our work world and the serious illness that we procure in this way is largely a sign of our spiritual dysfunction. We have become separated from all that is meaningful, valuable, holy, humane and decent in our daily lives that make up the essence of each human being. No economy that claims to be robust is healthy when its workforce is unhealthy and undergoing torments of the kind we normally associate with the nether regions of the spiritual world.
The wretched of the earth are not just the obvious ones who have been exploited and treated as chattel throughout the ages, these wretched ones are in many cases those of us who look ourselves in the mirror while fine tuning the make up or straightening that new fangled polka dotted tie.
The Living Dead
The working men and women of the world are in many instances reduced to the walking dead. Sofsky tells that many of the inmates of the camps were reduced to nothing more than living corpses known as Muselmanner (bold and italics mine):
“It was no accident that the Muselmanner [‘walking/waking dead’] were reminiscent of the “living dead”. They were only shadows of their former selves. Their actions had sunk below the animal minimum for survival. They hardly heard or saw anything, and reacted only when shouted at or prodded. When action is extinguished, life implodes, contracting to mere existence. In action, people mark a beginning to some sequence, show who they are, express themselves, communicate to and with others. Action is the medium of identity and sociality. A person robbed of action is a nonentity, a no one...Like the pile of corpses, the Muselmanner document the total triumph of power over the human being. Although still nominally alive, they are nameless hulks...The Muselmanner is the central figure in the tableau of mass dying – a death by hunger, murder of the soul, abandonment; dead while still living.” (p199-200, Sofsky)
These are telling lines about our daily struggle to survive. Ask anyone who is living at subsistence level and just managing their loans and children’s education among a host of other things and it will be described as the struggle to survive. During difficult economic times as we are living in now many are just barely scraping by, if at all, and one has to wonder whether this is what being a human being is about.
Ask ‘how’s it going’ to those in the US which is supposed to have a rising class of poverty where one in seven people are poor. A country that despite the better inclinations of many of its citizens is busy going into further national indebtedness and still trying to play ‘soldier-soldier’ in some parts of the world. It is almost as if a nation that promoted democracy and freedom has been hijacked by those intent on using it for their own purposes to control the world as much as possible, and run everything including the host body (America) this ghastly virus (the controllers) has inhabited into the ground leaving the world itself as a monument to the living dead.
So many of us just do not have the time to think through many things, nor sit down and have a decent, or intelligent, conversation with anyone about the issues of the day that in effect determine our lives. We have abrogated our abilities as human beings to fulfill our potential by surrendering such important things to others, be it the government (who has some responsibility to cover this gap for people) or ‘intellectuals’ (usually those with a string of academic degrees), neither of whom can be relied on solely without a check and engagement from the populace.
The people on planet Earth are not in charge of their lives in so many ways, certainly not their societies, and sure as heck not their countries. The economic system of wage slavery which is the epitome of the capitalist structure has put some of the most dishonest, disgraceful, egomaniacal, bloody minded and immoral people on any planet in positions of so-called authority and, of course, power (all the time edging towards absolute control). We have given up in being able to actively engage the most important people in our lives like our loved ones, never mind our social and national responsibilities (unless it is fulfilling some task as part of the mindless muddling through of daily life as the living dead).
The common, and understandable, excuse most of us give about barely speaking up and taking part in the life of our communities, society and country is that we don’t have the time; how can we have the time when apart from personal and family issues we have to earn our daily bread with our faces forced into the grind stone? Our heads are sometimes so close to the ground eking out a living that we can become hostile to suggestions to look up and see what is being done to us, or be completely dismissive of alternatives and deliberately place ourselves in ignorance mode, rather than face what is truly happening around us.
True, some of us may be just lazy and not want to take the extra effort to confront what’s wrong in our world, but usually we ‘don’t have the time’, and how can we when we have – or rather allowed – our faces to be forced squarely into the trough and made to sound grunts of complaints or surrender to this-is-how-it-is scenario, and be just grateful to continue to see what we can find in the trough.
And how convenient this situation has been, is and will continue to be, and how much it would facilitate their attempts at control, for those who seek to dominate people and keep them at the base of a pyramid as they continue to exploit everyone by staying on top of it all.
Then there is the constant apprehension of workplace reprisal for doing what is ‘wrong’. Sofsky tellingly writes (bold and italics mine):
“Terrorstraffe (terror punishment)…Punishment is the final link in a chain of situations strung together via the social mechanism of sanction. This chain begins with a threat that forces the actors to decide among alternative paths for action: if they do what is demanded they incur no penalty; if they violate the required norm, they trigger a sanction in response…Absolute power operates in a quite different manner. It creates a “jungle of punishable offenses,” a condition of constant punishability, in which even obedience is no guarantee for avoiding sanctions, and power can intervene at will...To compound matters, many prohibitions had been kept nebulous so that supervisors could arbitrarily define what was an infraction. This absolute power to define the situation used another method: it made demands that could not possibly be met, extending the perimeters of threat to the point that behaviour in accordance with the prescribed norms was sheer impossibility.” (p215, Sofsky)
Most us would resonate with the accuracy of the words here on the use of fear tactics to ensure dominance over others in the workplace. In many contracts there are clauses that stipulate how things can be adjusted in terms of hours required, scope of work, where you are transferred to and how much responsibility can be piled upon you in a manner that is almost always in favour of the employer; and if it is ever in favour of John or Jane Doe there will be some way to circumvent that and insist that you sell your humanity to the corporation/employer for whatever pittance they pay you (pittance because your soul is priceless but there would be those who disagree).
If the boss man decides to promote you, he will. If he doesn’t want to, he will find some reason to justify it. You are entirely at the mercy of the boss men and they intend that you see it that way despite the pretence otherwise. Someone I know who has been with an organization for some years has been criticized for not doing enough or broadening the scope of his responsibilities and range of his work despite the boundaries he pushed, and the quality of his work. On the other hand, when he does well within the demands of the boss men/women (and the boundaries they create) he is criticized for having done things like a ‘well-oiled machine’ and not having messed up enough in his performance which would have shown that he was taking ‘risks’ and going beyond the comfort zone of his basic work load: you’re damned whichever way you look at it.
The point of this Kafkaesque situation is that you are right and doing well when the boss men tell you so. Not only is this a corollary of deciding arbitrarily what is an infraction, but also that the range of what is acceptable for you can never be determined other than what the boss men decide on a whim. This is, sometimes unbeknownst to the perpetrators, an attempt to exercise absolute power.
In case it’s still unclear, absolute power is essentially to try and have the ability to control you body, mind and soul…and destroy you one way or another if controllers so desire.
In fact, the bizarre world of Kafka’s The Trial and The Castle is far from strange considering that it is a reflection of our everyday world. It is recorded that when Kafka read drafts, or parts of the works mentioned, to his friends/co-workers (if I recall rightly) they burst out laughing knowing full well that it was also a satirical take on the bureaucratic world they existed in (as can be applied to almost any workplace).
A ridiculous bureaucracy with silly, contradictory and outright outrageous ‘rules’ and ‘decrees’ in many workplaces is but part of a system meant to exercise control over people. It is an attempt to reduce entropy through the misguided notion of many dictators and wannabes that they are in charge of the universe. That they can stop change and evolution of a person or a group of people as that change would render them, the controllers, obsolete. Then what would happen? Meaning, what would happen to them. If they can't have livelihoods as controllers, they would then have to starve as most exploiters rely on someone else’s efforts and lifeblood to survive on. They suck up the energies of others.
They are the vampires of our world and a stake needs to be driven through their ideas of edging towards absolute power before they turn more of us into the zombified living dead that they want so as to enhance their control.
This type of blood-sucking bureaucratic system is a parallel to that which pervaded the CC as Sofsky clearly points out.
It becomes clearer what Sofsky is trying to say: that not only was the whole CC idea carefully planned and executed as best as possible with bureaucratic ‘efficiency’, but that in order to systematically control, put fear into and organize mass torture and extermination, you need some form of bureaucratic control. The OT demands that there is a systematic structure of control, surveillance, monitoring and fear mongering and anxiety spreading everywhere that can be instituted and codified such that not only can you boss people around as atrociously as possible, but you dehumanize them and destroy whatever authenticity, decency or resistance they can possibly offer. This is the kind of Terror that becomes even more difficult to spot because you are indoctrinated and socialized into it from birth (some people call it being ‘normal’ or ‘the-way-things-are’).
It also becomes even harder to shake off this indoctrinated worldview of fear and need to appease controllers when the other nutcake (higher order synthesis of nut cases and fruit cakes) terrorists are busy blowing us and themselves up as part of their dramatic-statement pyrotechnics: the hyping of which allows many mainstream journalists to make a ‘living’ (through our dying).
If all this is still called ‘normal’, granted that it can be called ‘the-way-things are’, then we need to know what is the difference between this and being the living dead. George Romero’s Living Dead, day or night, is a tame reference to the world we call ‘normal’. We have been socialized into being workplace zombies, social Muselmanner, and decidedly non-vegan type consumers of our fellow beings to ‘survive’ in the world. In fact, that is what the so-called vision of a capitalistic driven world strives for: consumerism of the worst order. We consume everything, including the planet, ourselves and one another apparently to create ‘growth’; but all the while we are enacting acts of violence through our ‘productive’ activities that ensure a tragedy without the catharsis.
More importantly, we have been programmed and propagandized by most social strictures and structures with the abetment from much of the world’s mainstream media that engenders the undiscerning conformist mentality of ‘be-like-us’ through manufactured consent: where no one can defy being a zombie or show signs of being contrary to the Living Dead lifestyle (cell phone, obsession with TV, excessive social networking site usage, following the corporate diktats of advertising/marketing, etc).
