Propaganda as the New Idealism
Shibboleth of the ruling class...
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Isma’il is the author of Isma’il’s Substack — a challenging but most rewarding read — just like his many comments on my work here on the Quality of Life Resistance Movement. Below is our back-and-forth in the comments section of my article, The Truth About Addiction [anything in bracketed italics was added later by yours truly for clarification]. He wrote…
Peace Mr Einstein,
The quote from Jung is very telling. Certain Idealisms are of those things that once taken a hold of can never be satisfied.
[Here’s the Jung quote: “Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.”]
It reminds me of something I heard from Iain McGilchrist. He mentions that the inherent disembodiment of the left brain, literary mediated view is that which often leads to an exaggerated appetite for both food and sex. The right brain is much more embedded in the body in how it sees, relates and understands, and the body can be satiated in a way that an untrained imagination cannot. When book bound idealism takes over, and grounding in ancestry and home is lost, we must expect then that "addiction" as you define it becomes the norm.
Certainly "addiction as norm" is also designed and encouraged... but what motivates the designers but their own "addictions"?
Before colonial mercantilism ruled the world, most cultures left room for mercantile orientations and the inherent perfidiousness of it, but firmly subjugated by a more noble/warrior leadership. Chivalry/Bushido is inherently ascetic/renunciate in training, and it is this freedom from "addiction" or subjection to appetite that qualified this same class to be administrators and justices of communities of peoples. As Goethe outlines in Goetz Ironhand, perhaps only after such men are gone can we appreciate properly what they provided.
Peace.
And here was my response a few days later…
Peace to you, Isma'il, and thank you for your continued contribution. Absolutely: book-bound idealism is a gateway drug. Yes, once we crossed the [Enlightenment] threshold of idealism embodied in mass print media, ancestry and home [our spiritual memory] were lost — along with the compelled [and far more authentic] memory of oral tradition.
I once talked with a descendent of Black Elk [the legendary Oglala Sioux medicine man] who claimed to remember twenty generations of his family. [I remember thinking at the time how my mother never even mentioned her childhood.] Once we crossed the threshold of electronic media in the 20th century, however, idealism became a tool of the powerful and turned into something else: propaganda.
The idealism-to-propaganda cycle as a tool of the state has been repeated over and over again ever since. Consider the 1960s liberation movement radicals now ensconced in corrupt institutes of higher education as illiberal war mongers and avid defenders of the Deep-State status quo [the same institutions they vilified and condemned during the Iraq War] .
And yes, the designers likewise fall prey to their own addictions. Consider the MBA-driven Young Turks of the brief Dot Com Era of the late 1990s: Not since the Chinese Red Guards of the 1960s had we witnessed a more reactionary movement of young people convinced of their God-given right to upend society, destroy cultural memory — like all pop cultures do — [and rebuild the world] in their own image.
Of course, the current generation of social justice warriors shames them all, perhaps as a natural consequence of imbuing idealism-turned-propaganda with obscene power and wealth [vastly accelerated by trillions of microchips and thousands of server farms]. Naturally, the subjugation of idealism to ascetic disciplines — like oral tradition — is a tough sell in the Great Age of Addiction. [Anything that threatens to slow us down is a tough sell these days.] This at a time when our leaders all live and thrive in the densest media bubbles on the planet, and are — by definition — the biggest addicts with the least desire for discipline of any sort that doesn't directly enhance their power and wealth. Turns out that a right brain is a terrible thing to waste. Check out my call to action at the end of When All That Remains is Power. You stretch my mind and soul, Isma'il, and I'm grateful. Peace.
To which, Isma’il replied…
Mr Einstein, I was listening to Edward Bernays' "Propaganda" relatively recently, and am struck by how much at least he believes in the "justness" and necessity of the art he fathered and refined, given the extant mileau. If that is a viewpoint that is entertainable, then a deconstruction of the enabling mileau itself (eg. modernism, liberalism, etc) that leads not to further dis-integration, but a re-membering of past solidarities and their biases, becomes a viable option. Oral story telling is a particularly powerful spiritual medium. I understand that the dramatic stage was an outgrowth for the ancient Greeks of the altered consciousness inducing Mystery Cult rituals. It must be oral and with a grounding in lineage and place to be properly right brained I suspect. Shalom.
And I followed with…
Saalam, Isma'il. Whereas the oral traditions of our forefathers once prepared us to deal with the world and its institutions, large and small, the art and craft Mr. Bernays fathered prepared our institutions, large and small, to deal with us. The oral traditions of our ancestors originated in love and care as sacred ritual and obligation. The institutional traditions of Mr. Bernays originated in the 20th-century appetite for power and control in the absence of the sacred.
[When we were small, my father — a most gifted storyteller — told us stories at night about the time before memory when we were kidnapped by pirates. Fortunately, however, he and our dalmatian — Albert — would set sail in the rickety “Spotted Woofle” to rescue us at sea. Albert would always subdue the pirates with the fiercest of kisses. To this day, I can only imagine my fate in the hands of pirates without the heroics of my father and Albert…]
Deconstruction of the institutional mind — especially by other institutional minds — will only lead to chaos and mayhem unless, as you suggest, a remembering of past solidarities (eg. faith, family, and community) ensues. This remembering of past solidarities is precisely the remedy proposed by yours truly with the Quality of Life Resistance Movement.
Yes, storytelling in the oral tradition is a particularly powerful spiritual medium, precisely why I concluded my essay When All That Remains is Power with, “So when life imitates bad art and all that remains is power, do one thing: tell your story. Tell it to the ones you love. Tell it to your kids. Tell it to your friends. Tell it to your neighbors. Tell your story and the story of your family and the story of your town to anyone who listens. When all that remains is power, your story is the greatest story ever told.”
I suspect your story is properly right-brained, Isma'il. Saalam again.
Shalom and saalam and aloha for now to you as well…
New(i)Dealism? Under this sun? There have never been the I’s necessary to aye that proposition. It has mostly been, will remain, Donne’s clods of the continental ayeland.
Walkaganda, horseaganda
(A Man Called Hiorse … Richard Harris, singing “MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark, All the sweet green icing flowing down, Someone left the cake out in the rain, I don’t think that I can take it, Cuz it took so long to bake it, And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh no…”),
wheelaganda, propaganda, turbopropaganda, jets&rocketsaganda ….
Faster, is all.
Dunno if benzedrine is addictive. But it is predictive.
And the hand (the red right one, but also the black one, & the sinister left one all make constant appearances in Peaky Blinders) is always faster than the ayes.
Remember Speed? Keanu Reeves back when he was just a wickersnapper. His wargaming solution (with his older/mentor partner Jeff Daniels) was to “shoot the hostage.” To save the hostage. And the world (think global, act local … dem bones be all connected … all the way back to that very first good old day … which, just as Billy Joel sings, in Keeping the Faith,
You can get just so much
From a good thing
You can linger too long
In your dreams
Say goodbye to the
Oldies but goodies
Cause the good ole days weren't
Always good
And tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems).
Some passages (Time Passenges - speed: the older I get, the faster the time goes & the more apparent changelessness becomes - Al Stewart) from This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons In Greenland, Gretel Ehrlich):
“… While Jens & Niels talked quietly I thought about how Inuit communalism was an old necessity that had arisen from long & frequent bouts of famine. Now these men choose to be subsistence hunters in a modern world larded with Danish goods, where, in the event of a bad hunting season, the helicopter would bring food & supplies. Which in no way trivialized their pursuit; it simply moderated the consequences of failure.
Throughout the community meat was still shared as it had always been, but the oppressive edge of starvation & the rigorous societal rules that go with subsistence hunting had been relaxed. Part of Jens’s work as a representative of all the hunters in the north was to keep those rules from being completely erased. Traditional hunting was the key: if dogs were traded in for snowmobiles, as they had been in Canada, dependencies shifted from oneself to paper money & the industries that produced machines & petroleum. “You can’t get a can of gas with a harpoon,” Niels said. And if there were no dogs to feed, there was no reason to hunt every day. Once the link to the world of animals was cut, the thread pulled loose & the moral compass began to bend, who knew which way?”
“Then he said that bad things are happening to them up here. Green peace came & got the price of sealskins slashed to almost nothing. “They did not understand that we hunt to live, not to sell skins. It is our necessity. Eskimo never take vitamin or eat vegetable. We get all that from liver, brain, & fat of the seal, walrus, whale. We eat the meat, use the hides, make clothes from them. Then, if we have some extra skins we sell them - but it’s a very small number. But in 1983, the selling of sealskins in Europe & America was banned. All our extra income - money we bow need for telephones & other bills - disappeared & there is no way for full-time hunter to make money. We can feed ourselves but we cannot exist in the modern world. Greenpeace thinks they know it all, but there are seven million ringed seals in these waters, & we, who live on what we hunt, would never harm the population because we would be the first people to die. When what you hunt is all you eat, you do not make mistakes. We decide among ourselves how much, how long, & how many animals we shall take. And we take only what we need.
He looked out the tent door across the ice toward Ellesmere Island. “It looks so clean here, but do you know we have some of the worst pollution problems in the world? Yes, it is so. The pollution of America, & Canada goes up into the Arctic Sea & enters the polar bears’ & seals’ bodies. We can measure the PCB & DDT in them & in us. The contaminants in the mother’s milk of Eskimo women are five times higher than in America. So we are taking on their pollution problems, the ones they create but don’t solve. Only the peaceful Eskimo tastes it. That’s why I am unhappy now.”
“I am a hunter & I live the Eskimo life. It was not mine, but I made it so & now they don’t remember that I am Japanese. I miss Japan sometimes, but it is very far away from me. Eskimo life is very busy so I don’t have time for homesickness. Everyone should live in the place where they want to be. I chose this place, not Hokkaido, Kyushu, America, or France, but by chance, Siorapaluk in Greenland. My parents understand my way of life & say ‘Just do it,’ because I was very weak when I was young & they did not expect me to survive. That I am still living is enough for them.
“I was very shy as a child. Now I am interviewed all the time by television people & by many magazines. Actually, I’d like to be left alone. When I look up at the night sky I see satellites. Now I hear about the ones that are so strong, they can see a car license plate. But I still read by kerosene lamp & listen to the radio. I live as a hunter & do the oldest job. I still get my food with a harpoon, same as the hunters a thousand years ago. This makes me wonder what the satellite sees: on one side of the world it sees Tokyo & on the other side it sees me standing at the ice edge dressed in polar bear pants & holding a harpoon. What does this make the satellite feel? Maybe confused & broken.
After living in nature for so many years I understand that we are just a small dot. We are very small beings. But I want to say that this small life has the same importance as one in Tokyo. There is a soul in every sentient being - in the ant, the walrus, the businessman, the baby, the farmer, the hunter, the seal. Each one counts. That is what my life as a hunter helps me to know.”
I thought of the old shaman who had warned Rasmussen against “living brokenly.” To live “wholly” in the late twentieth century was almost impossible. At best, it meant stitching together an almost random piecework, & doing it precisely. Too many people in the developed world now come into comfort & riches with no intermediary apprenticeship in the natural world. They are hardened neither to the lushness of existence nor to the rigors of enlightenment.
…I’d suffered a bout of loneliness since returning from our trip. It had less to do with the absence of company than with the cessation of movement. Waves of restlessness swept over me: I hated living indoors. Out on the ice I was conjoined with ice, dog, wind, sled, & snow. Everything else was superfluous, & anything less was poverty. Any town, even Qaanaaq, meant consuming with no consummation, mobility without movement, communication without comprehension. Who needed it? To the south were towns where the speed & fracture of modern life ate you.
In Rasmussen’s time, less than eighty years ago, weather & the movement of animals controlled every aspect of life. The hunting life required emotional strength, physical agility, & a keen intelligence. Those who were weak-minded & physically awkward didn’t last long in a place where one or two mistakes or missteps meant death.
Now, Jens had to cultivate a strong, unified mind to counteract the disparate landscapes, societies & conditions. He jumped from a monthlong spring hunt to a helicopter that would take him to Nuuk to testify in front of Parliament. On behalf of the Hunters’ Council, he was working hard to ban the use of snowmobiles & prohibit fishing boats in Inglefield sound, where the narwhal calve & breed in summer. Jens lived by the harpoon, which meant he could feed himself & his family by hunting. He & Ilaitsuk could tan hides, sew skins, & cook, train, doctor, & care for dogs; he could see in the dark, fog, & snow; he could build snow houses, read ice, water & weather, go sleepless, & defy death by meeting all adversity with a hard hand, a calm mind, & a belly shaking with laughter. “Snow storms, bad ice, going hungry - that’s easy compared to fighting for the right to live this way,“ he told me.”
“Niels teased Jens about having to run the mayor’s office while the mayor was out of town. Jens hated desk work, but by necessity, he had become a political man in order to preserve his tradition. It took a lot of work & a tolerance for paradox: “I’m not asking for money, a new house, or food,” he said. “I only want to be able to go out on the ice with my family to hunt. Everything we need is right here. We’re asking, almost, to be allowed to be poor. You would think the world would be glad to have us. No handouts, no snowmobiles, no petrol. We have petrol.” He pointed to seal meat hanging on a line to dry. Then, patting his large belly & grinning, he said, “And this is my bank account.”
The crystalline hardness of life, before snowmobilepaganda, & after it, too, is reality. All that has ever varied is the speed (including of Perception).
The false compartmentalization that puts “hard” in the external “out there” is slowP & does it ever hurtle towards hell … parliamentary procedurally.
But like “Jeremiah Johnson” said: “I’ve been to a town.”
Speaking of speed, my affinity for which remains intact, & snowmobiles, heroic speed-demon Ken Block, was killed in a snowmobile accident recently. No roll cage on snowmobiles, mores the pity.
The hand is always quicker than the aye. Some Ken, blowing doors /perception/ clean off (can you hear the Dirty Harry in that? ❄️):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZTDfqX7ZxU
What a wonderful and insightful discussion - precisely what is no longer permitted by our betters or the MSM. Also needed is your ongoing fleshing out the overwhelming and blatantly (but scrupulously un-articulated) addictive aspects of western (sic) societies. The pervasiveness of addictive behaviors, I believe, is rooted in our very human ontology. Our survival instincts, when out of control and proportion (best summarized as the Seven Deadly Sins), turns us into addicts, pursuing each instinct to its destructive end point. For example, some lust is necessary for propagation of our species, some gluttony for nutrition, some anger to resist manipulation/intimidation. Pride, though, has become most destructive for society, as Jung said of "idealism", which today is really pride on steroids. The "woke" get a powerful and long-lasting rush in their wide-eyed, spittle-laced, hyperventilating, feverish ravings. This is especially powerful when amplified by groups acting in concert agains the "enemy" - those who may think differently (diversely!) or merely refrain from being poseurs of virtue. It is no different from religious ecstasy and it is, as I see it, civilization's most destructive force at work today.