Chris Hedges: Retribution for a World Lost in Screens

[marmar]

from truthdig:




Retribution for a World Lost in Screens
Posted on Sep 27, 2010

By Chris Hedges


Nemesis was the Greek goddess of retribution. She exacted divine punishment on arrogant mortals who believed they could defy the gods, turn themselves into objects of worship and build ruthless systems of power to control the world around them. The price of such hubris was almost always death.

Nemesis, related to the Greek word némein, means “to give what is due.” Our nemesis fast approaches. We will get what we are due. The staggering myopia of our corrupt political and economic elite, which plunder the nation’s wealth for financial speculation and endless war, the mass retreat of citizens into virtual hallucinations, the collapsing edifices around us, which include the ecosystem that sustains life, are ignored for a giddy self-worship. We stare into electronic screens just as Narcissus, besotted with his own reflection, stared into a pool of water until he wasted away and died.

We believe that because we have the capacity to wage war we have the right to wage war. We believe that money, rather than manufactured products and goods, is real. We believe in the myth of inevitable human moral and material progress. We believe that no matter how much damage we do to the Earth or our society, science and technology will save us. And as temperatures on the planet steadily rise, as droughts devastate cropland, as the bleaching of coral reefs threatens to wipe out 25 percent of all marine species, as countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh succumb to severe flooding, as we poison our food, air and water, as we refuse to confront our addiction to fossil fuels and coal, as we dismantle our manufacturing base and plunge tens of millions of Americans into a permanent and desperate underclass, we flick on a screen and are entranced.

We confuse the electronic image, a reflection back to us of ourselves, with the divine. We gawk at “reality” television, which of course is contrived reality, reveling in being the viewer and the viewed. True reality is obliterated from our consciousness. It is the electronic image that informs and defines us. It is the image that gives us our identity. It is the image that tells us what is attainable in the vast cult of the self, what we should desire, what we should seek to become and who we are. It is the image that tricks us into thinking we have become powerful—as the popularity of video games built around the themes of violence and war illustrates—while we have become enslaved and impoverished by the corporate state. The electronic image leads us back to the worship of ourselves. It is idolatry. Reality is replaced with electronic mechanisms for preening self-presentation—the core of social networking sites such as Facebook—and the illusion of self-fulfillment and self-empowerment. And in a world unmoored from the real, from human limitations and human potential, we inevitably embrace superstition and magic. This is what the worship of images is about. We retreat into a dark and irrational fear born out of a cavernous ignorance of the real. We enter an age of technological barbarism. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/retribution_for_a_world_lost_in_screens_20100927/

[Dr.Phool]

1. Hedges nails it again.

"We confuse this happy talk with hope. But hope is not about a belief in progress. Hope is about protecting simple human decency and demanding justice. Hope is the belief, not necessarily grounded in the tangible, that those whose greed, stupidity and complacency have allowed us to be driven over a cliff shall one day be brought down. Hope is about existing in a perpetual state of rebellion, a constant antagonism to all centers of power. The great moral voices, George Orwell and Albert Camus being perhaps two of the finest examples, describe in moving detail the human suffering we ignore or excuse. They understand that the greatest instrument for moral good is the imagination. The ability to perceive the pain and suffering of another, to feel, as King Lear says, what wretches feel, is a more powerful social corrective than the shelves of turgid religious and philosophical treatises on human will. Those who change the world for the better, who offer us hope, have the capacity to make us step outside of ourselves and feel empathy."

[Larry Ogg]

2. Eloquently speaking to the brainwashed psyche of western culture,

yet still, the mystery of the masses living out of context with nature lies with the architects of mass illusion, for their disease has stolen the minds of generations and made people of conscience perilously narcissistic.

Narcissism is the effect psychopaths have on people of conscience, and it is a contagious pathology / character disorder that causes its victims to constantly seek pleasure, aka narcissistic supply, and it is usually at the expense of others and offers little or no concern for consequences, and when that pleasure is denied, or bad behavior is pointed out, narcissistic injury and rage ensues. And depending on ones wealth and influence that rage can be catastrophic, with severe repercussions.

[L.Torsalo]

3. I have come to the conclusion that,

the strongest antidote to this malady is an ethic of rejection. The condition of consumers is the condition of constant temptation, fed by advertising.
Buddhism offers the insight that desire is the source of our worldly suffering. Now, I am not a Buddhist, but an ethic of rejecting the temptations the world offers can build personal strength of will. Much of what is offered does NOT pertain to me (partly because I reject "the public" in "the private"). Muc h is offered but it is ALL extrinsic.
We could all do with a bit of this tonic. We don't need to be "in touch with all the latest news, sports and weather" or with each other. We certainly don't need anyone to help us be "fair and balanced", as long as our focus is the world proper to us. A slogan and I'm off...Think Locally, Act Locally...Peace

[Shireling]

4. I have been reading Hedge's book

Losing Moses on the Freeway. Excellent. This guy speaks the truth and most people could care less.