"Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them."
--Sigmund Freud
Frightening as it may be, the Earth’s fate rests in the hands of children. With incredibly formidable military firepower at its disposal, the United States could catalyze Armageddon at any time. And while they may be adults chronologically, our sociopolitical structure is dominated by emotional infants.
Nietzsche once pronounced God dead. In the United States, we have a more readily demonstrable (and perhaps related) problem. Our collective id has rendered its governing superego impotent, and perhaps dead. Our prevailing moral standards, as inconsequential as they have become, are of the Jerry Falwell variety. They are mean-spirited, self-serving, judgmental, narrow-minded, selfish, and belligerent. As far as US Americans are concerned, Christ may as well have preached the Sermon on the Mount from the lowest recesses of Death Valley.
Recall that our basic drives such as libido, hunger, and aggression flow from the infantile dimension of our psyche known as the id. In terms of psychodynamics, the superego’s role is to counter-balance the irresponsible, amoral, and essentially sociopathic nature of the id with a healthy degree of conscience and guilt. Yet in the United States, we are inculcated with a deep sense of our exceptionalism and entitlement from the moment we emerge from the birth canal, thus crippling our ability to empathize and seriously impeding the development of our superego.
Consequently, conscience, guilt, personal discipline, and delaying gratification are barely extant in the toxic cesspool of our sociocultural environment.
Let’s examine some of the spiritually corrosive social forces which have molded our malleable natures in such a way that our behavior as a nation closely resembles that of a depraved miscreant:
While counseling and therapy are essential tools to heal from psychic wounds, emotional disorders, and mental illnesses, many mental health professionals offer their patients palliative “ego strokes” rather than the remedial brutal honesty and tough love they truly need. Instead of giving their clients the tools they need to heal themselves, they enable their ids to continue running rampant, unfettered by that “nasty old superego” and its “toxic guilt.”
Even those who don’t seek professional help are absolved of the pangs of conscience by the high priests and priestesses of the corporate media. Prostitutes to the establishment like Oprah pat them on the head, reassure them that their pathological self-absorption is wonderful, and tell them to further immerse their minds in pernicious idiocy by reading instruction manuals on narcissism like The Secret.
Commit a crime? No problem. We have a legal system, not a justice system. If you have money enough to hire a shrewd attorney, you are unlikely to face the consequences you deserve, regardless of the egregiousness of your crime. Unfortunately, if you don’t have money, you will face the equivalent of electrocution for stealing a loaf of bread, which means several brutal, dehumanizing years in the most populous prison industrial complex in the world for “crimes” like self-medicating to escape your already miserable circumstances.
Lack the cash to buy the $2,000.00 flat screen you “have to have” to watch the obscenely commercialized and over-hyped Super Bowl? No problem. In the advanced stages of our savage economic system, finance capital reigns supreme. There are untold thousands of lenders prepared to let you use their money, provided you agree to pay their usurious interest rates.
Want it yesterday? Not to worry. We have fast food, one hour photo, instant credit approval, movies on demand, pills to chase the blues and blue pills to give you an erection, instant coffee, microwave meals, zero down loans, and a host of other means to satisfy the relentlessly impatient demands of our ids.
Feeling bored, lonely, or depressed? Turn on the television. Fill your mind with inanity, brain candy, infotainment, and potent affirmations that your tenacious adherence to the reprehensible "American Way” is justified, patriotic, and admirable.
Need a career, training, money for college, the indoctrinated belief that you are risking your life for a noble cause, and the false security that your government will support you once they are done with you? “Join the people who have joined the Army” (or Marines, Navy, or Air Force). Our moneyed elite (desperately) need willing pawns to wage their wholesale terror operations in Iraq and elsewhere.
While it may sound a bit conspiratorial, before we go dismissing the notion that the erosion of our moral restraint (superego) has been intentionally engineered and orchestrated, let’s consider the question, “Cui bono?”
Having stunted, retarded, corralled, or in some cases, disabled the superegos of the “unwashed masses,” there is almost no end to the malevolence our sociopathic plutocracy, upper level military careerists, “religious” leaders, AIPAC, and reactionaries can commit in our names (with our overt or tacit approval) to further enrich and empower themselves.
Jason Miller is a recovering US American middle class suburbanite who strives to remain intellectually free. He is Cyrano's Journal Online's associate editor (http://www.bestcyrano.org/) and publishes Thomas Paine's Corner within Cyrano's at http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/.
Thank you Mr. Miller. I always enjoy your writing. Keep up the pace.
Is George Bush a sociopath? Probably, to a greater or lesser degree. You can speculate whether he is or not, but there seems to be no doubt that his "demons" are sociopathic. And that is exactly what you reveal in your essay. The dominant spirit in America, which guides the powerful moneyed elite, feeds off of the fears and weaknesses lodged in the id. It's a mutually dependent system, closed and cut off from the world, until some external force eventually comes in to shake things up.
Americans have a superego. They do suppress the healthy pleasure-seeking id within in order to serve some purpose larger than themselves. It's just that they have a very strange idea of what that larger purpose is.
The rabbi once said:
"What does it benefit a man to gain the whole world, but sacrifice his soul?"
That's quite the sacrifice. Talk to a soldier suffering PTSD. Losing an arm or a leg is pretty horrible. But losing your "soul" -- ?!!! My god.
We've heard it said many times that the majority of people in America live like domesticated animals. They follow the herd, moo when frustrated, and never bother to consider what the latch on the gate is for. In this context, America's moneyed elite must feel completely justified in butchering a few "man cows" every now and again. They must figure "why not?"
'It's commonly believed that serial killers cannot stop, because their compulsion is so strong that they're literally addicted to murder. In addition, they feel no remorse so they have no reason to refrain from indulging their hunger for blood - or else they're just plain psychotic. In fact, to assist in the defense of Wayne Adam Ford, a psychiatrist stated that no serial killer had ever before turned himself in.
'On that point, he was wrong. Both before and after Ford surrendered in 1998, there have been cases of men who have stopped themselves from killing again by going to the police to confess. Some actually express remorse, and might indicate that they'd been on drugs or were in some other state of diminished mental capacity during their crimes. They might also have come to the realization that, try as they might, they cannot stop themselves.
'The most famous example of this is William Heirens in 1945. While he did not actually turn himself in, he did leave a message on the mirror of one of his second of three victims, written in lipstick: "For heaven's sake catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself.' In other words, he appeared to be horrified by what he was doing when he shot and stabbed Frances Brown, leaving her body draped over a bathtub. However, he then went on to strangle and dismember a 6-year-old child, dumping her remains in such a way that it would be difficult to pin the crime on him. Soon a police officer chased Heirens down after a burglary and he did stop; he was put behind bars, where he is today. While he did not surrender voluntarily, he made it clear with his message that he wished to be free of his terrible compulsion to kill.'
If even a sociopathic serial killer can feel this way, then I assert that it's possible for the inhabitants of the Great American Pyramid of Power to feel this way, as well. Who knows? Maybe in the secret places of their hearts, they actually mourn the stupidity and cowardice of the American people. I mean, can you imagine what it feels like, believing that the vast majority of people, who share 99.9% of your own genetic makeup, are little more than a herd of animals?
What I'd like to raise is the question of whether we, who are active thinkers, of the people, can change the game such that the moneyed elite have cause to actually respect and value the people's lives and dignity? What can we the people do, to help America's power elite, retain (or regain) their humanity, and their connection with all life - our lives? Rather than us being passive, or us simply returning "force and fraud" with more "force and fraud", is it possible for we the people to conquer the evil with the good? Can the American demons be replaced with American angels?
Comments? (Star Wars analogies?)
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Zen Master So so (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 20 comments)
on Monday, June 25, 2007 at 1:27:13 PM
Another excellent essay from Jason Miller. As to how to pre-empt the Armegedon these "crazies" are steering us toward, I can only suggest that those of us who KNOW, those of us who not only sense danger, we're cringing in horror; we have to speak up. Write "Impeach Cheney First" on every dollar bill that leaves your wallet. Or "911 = Police State". I'll be marching on the Kennebunk home of the criminal Bush family July 1, when Vladimir Putin visits. Put an "Impeach" sticker on your car, on your front door, mailbox. There are a lot more of us than you might think, especially if you spend more than 2 minutes a day watching MSM "news".
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dalton (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 17 comments)
on Monday, June 25, 2007 at 8:52:09 PM
Forgot to mention the most important weapon we have: stop buying their shit. Literally. Giving up recreational shopping is effortless when you move out of the hell that is suburbia into a walkable community. O.K., not everyone can do that. But we can stop supporting the PE's need for more of the pie. Don't buy their stuff, laugh at the ads that tell you which disease you have that requires their medicines, eat less of the bad processed food that offers no nutrition but stimulates your appetite, drive less, I could go on and on. Basically reject their version of what your life should look, feel, taste and cost. In fact, they can keep their damn pie. Let's make our own. Commercial-free, fear-free. THEY will have to adapt to us, bullying will be considered aberrant behavior for which they will be shunned. Imagine that world, huh??!
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dalton (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 17 comments)
on Monday, June 25, 2007 at 9:07:13 PM
You say "they will have to adapt to us". That's the attitude. The sociopathic profit-mongers don't have the kind of power they try to make you think they have.
As the Beastie Boys once said: "Don't believe the hype."
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Zen Master So so (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 20 comments)
on Monday, June 25, 2007 at 9:40:32 PM
