America Is in Need of a Moral Bailout
By Chris Hedges | Mar 23, 2009
Truthdig.com
In decaying societies, politics become theater. The elite, who have hollowed out the democratic system to serve the corporate state, rule through image and presentation. They express indignation at AIG bonuses and empathy with a working class they have spent the last few decades disenfranchising, and make promises to desperate families that they know will never be fulfilled. Once the spotlights go on they read their lines with appropriate emotion. Once the lights go off, they make sure Goldman Sachs and a host of other large corporations have the hundreds of billions of dollars in losses they incurred playing casino capitalism repaid with taxpayer money.
We live in an age of moral nihilism. We have trashed our universities, turning them into vocational factories that produce corporate drones and chase after defense-related grants and funding. The humanities, the discipline that forces us to stand back and ask the broad moral questions of meaning and purpose, that challenges the validity of structures, that trains us to be self-reflective and critical of all cultural assumptions, have withered. Our press, which should promote such intellectual and moral questioning, confuses bread and circus with news and refuses to give a voice to critics who challenge not this bonus payment or that bailout but the pernicious superstructure of the corporate state itself. We kneel before a cult of the self, elaborately constructed by the architects of our consumer society, which dismisses compassion, sacrifice for the less fortunate, and honesty. The methods used to attain what we want, we are told by reality television programs, business schools and self-help gurus, are irrelevant. Success, always defined in terms of money and power, is its own justification. The capacity for manipulation is what is most highly prized. And our moral collapse is as terrifying, and as dangerous, as our economic collapse.
The "Cult of the Self"...
...is oxymoronic nonsense.
The essence of cultism is selflessness -- surrender your ego to Jesus, The State, Jim Jones, The Dalai Bama -- anything outside of the self. Moral bankruptcy is the inevitable result of a lack of intellectual clarity.
Try to remember that a thing is itself, and that no matter what you call it it retains its fundamental character. Magical thinking is the first step toward social calamity. "I wish it, therefore it is."
N____r B____r D_____e Q___r
LXXI BC: Ego sum Spartacus // MDCCCLVII: I am Dred Scott // MCMVL: Ich bin Anne Frank // MMX: Je suis Assange // MMXI: Ik ben von NotHaus
'Cuse me, but you're wrong!
Some thinking is magical and dangerous (new age, for instance), but some acknowledges a higher power (Jesus Christ, Son of God and Second Person of the Blessed Trinity) which has the potential to raise human understanding to a supernatural level.
Of course, with thousands and thousands of Protestant faiths, some people seek the truth but more and more they concoct their own Jesus, who happens to think just like they do. Their Jesus is all for homosexuality, abortion, shacking up, serial adultery, stealing, abandoning their family, (or fill in whatever sin comes naturally to them, personally). In reality, they are practicing the "cult of the self." What else would you call it when people follow a figment of their own imaginations?
I care not a twit about this damnable state or Jim Jones, or anyone else you cast stones at. But don't create a straw man out of Jesus Christ, Who suffered and died for you and me. His saints -- Aquinas, Augustine, Bonaventure, Bernard, Francis, Dominic, Bellarmine, and thousands more like them -- could wipe the floor with our attempts at philosophizing.
The fact is that there is Truth and it can be known. It resides in Jesus Christ and His Church. You can join it, ignore it or hate it, but that is the starting point of moral responsibility or moral bankruptcy. Some day you will be called to account for how you accepted or rejected the Truth.
Your argument is illogical. Whether a person realizes it or not, he has some sort of "god" ... a philosophy of life ... which he follows. It's one of the things that separates him from the lower animals. Unfortunately, people worship money, power, good looks, intelligence, acclaim. Those, too, worship the cult of self.
Belief in Christ is not wishful thinking ... there are abundant proofs of His life on earth and His claims to be God. You just have to have the intellectual honesty to check them out, and be clever enough to see through the sham arguments against Him. Once you attain some intellectual clarity, you'll be able to cut right through the lies.
I also suggest that you look up the word "selfless," assuming you can still find it in an English dictionary. If not, try a Catholic dictionary.
This sounds like a Communist lamenting a Fascist win ... Boo Hoo
He doesn't realize that "liberal" professors ... and I don't mean liberal arts professors ... did more than their share to bring down the culture. The culture is down ... we are onto the final phase. Notice how liberal professors are being marginalized. Well, the doting useful idiots served their purpose and now must go. Bye, bye! Good riddance!
Actually, I do believe that communism will be our last state (even though corporate fascism appears to be thriving at the moment). The same people who promoted and protected liberal professors in their day will give us brutality and prison camps and God knows what else, today.
Pray hard! We don't deserve to be saved because we swallowed the liberal professors' swill and abandoned God and His law ... the Ten Commandments. Now we reap the whirlwind.
Weak
Because it does what the critics here have said--continues the same adolescent "right vs. left" paradigm, which we know is nothing more than a ruse--which evidently still works for this writer. As an example, to whine that the university is no longer a "democratic" sphere reveals the writer's attachment to a supposed ideal that is in fact the very problem with the "university". How in the name of God can one argue that democracy should infuse the university? I mean, how freakin' backward is that???? Education, investigation, opinions, viewpoints--"approved" by a majority??? I guess that's how you get writers such as the Boston Globe's Ellen Goodman equating those who question the "facts" supportive of global warming with denial of the Holocaust... But because there's a majority (i.e., democratic) opinion on both, it's good???
I couldn't agree more with the idea that America does need to reexamine its moral base--or lack thereof--but enough already with "left vs. right"!!!
They need to dig
a little deeper, who owns most of the media, Fed, banks, hollywood,etc
http://www.iamthewitness.com/books/Andrew.Carrington.Hitchco...
Cows think they are free, this is no bull, the beast must be Fed, with pitchfork instead
Cows think they are free, this is no bull, the beast must be Fed, with pitchfork instead
what the hell?
"Any form of learning that is not strictly vocational has at best been marginalized and in many schools has been abolished."
What? No way. Any form of learning that is strictly vocational was marginalized. that was my undergraduate experience, anyways. My school turned out a bunch of self-important talking heads (myself included) who couldn't do a single useful thing in life.
Look at BHO
Well, look at Obama, you can be head of the Harvard Law journal, but it doesn't prove squadush. Maybe to become the best car salesman ever.
#$#We need to build political strength and political will&**&
We need to build political strength and political will.
Agreed.
This article started off sounding a bit right, but then digressed into plain falsehood. My whole university "experience" was a vocational nightmare as every class was full of liberal indoctrination and propaganda while I learned very little technically that would prepare me for doing real work in the real world. What this author praises as the old days of higher education is the bastion of uselessness that I wish I would have avoided in favor of a technical school where I could have been trained to do real work. I stopped reading this article for its utter uselessness after the first page.
Good article...
But it seems to be biased toward liberals and leftists, like they are the only moral people left standing. I know plenty of so-called Liberals who support the military-industrial complex, not mentioning the President of the United States. -Signed confused
Yes, my "liberal" friend sent it to me
He's the kind of liberal who agrees with just about everything that Ron Paul says, but in the end says, "But I could never support RP because he's a Republican."
But this is a case in point about the levels of agreement.
It is not about left/right. It is about freedom vs. tyranny. There is lots of room for agreement among people across the phony political spectrum.
That is why this guy who sent me the article is still my friend. I hope that we can all be compassionate to one another, in spite of political beliefs.
'Liberals' vs 'Conservatives'
Agreed, zrih1,
I got a problem with this pretend blame game too, where the 'left' blame the 'right' and vice versa; and both deny the reality of the welfare-warfare state, cause both are sucking on it's teats. The left highlight the 'warfare' state, and the right highlight the 'welfare' state; and both are correct; but the welfare/warfare state ain't two different things, they depend on each other. And both sides, want their benefit 'whether handing out welfare, for power'; or using 'warfare as power'; and neither want to get beyond that, and FUCKING GROW UP.
And heaven forbid you say this, to the fundamentalist conservatives or fundanemtalist liberals, whose purpose for their lives, appears to be HATE LIBERALS' or HATE CONSERVATIVES; and simply ignore the realy root cause of the issues, ego problems, addiction to power (as a result of emotional and psychological insecurity), and population policy as the foundation of all other policies stuff.
So, one day when more people wake up to the fake controlled opposition blame game, you may find more impartial news; cause the writers of the news are emotionally and psychologically more capable of standing for impartiality, than theya re in beating up the other side, like dogs with rabies, addicted to their hate.
It's really sad and pathetic, but if you don't get too emotionally entangled in it; and too convinced you can actually get these HATE ADDICTS to confront the relaity of their addiction, then you just start taking a back seat and you realise they are driving civilisation over a fucking cliff... but what the fuck can you do.... what does it matter if civilisation dies, and humanity goes extinct?? you think 'god' or the universe gives a shit???
Maybe, I don't know.... Anyway.... that's my two cents, if you were interested...
JMCSwan
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"Luther was a profoundly spiritual thinker who was driven to revolt by worldly and incompetent Popes." + "Roses are red. Violets are blue. I'm schizophrenic and so am I" = Practicing Radical Hon(our)sty ColtLaw...
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Cape Republic of Good Hope: Secession & Relocalization Info
went to the movies the other day
The previews made me ill. Comedies are looking for the lowest possible "shock" type of humor, and the dramas/thrillers are soooo dark, it is like they are berthed from evil itself. No class. All trash. Makes me think of Gerald Celente talking about the class of americans compared to his parents generation.
A freer economy
A freer economy would unleash the power that Hollywood has over our lives. There would be more local media, and, perhaps, a more vibrant source of entertainment and news.
#$#We need to build political strength and political will*&*&
We need to build political strength and political will.
Excellent quote. I love it.
Excellent quote. I love it.
Nice quote
Of course, the person who uttered it was a moron who thought he was president when Reagan got shot...
Truth exists, and it deserves to be cherished.