Relistening to the show, I was surprised by how much of it I had internalized even if I had not remembered Mr. Hedges’s name, I had internalized its content. In conversation with this Hedges enthusiast, I had brought up the idea “I discovered on Open Source” about totalitarianism and image based states. When my grandmother tells me stories of rationing in the United States during the second world war, I try to ask questions that can help me better understand what changed between the war and Jimmy Carter encouraging the use of sweaters.

The decline of the American empire is why I am abroad. I went to be able to learn to live abroad in case my family or anyone I came to know online needed help. I came to the Philippines specifically in the hopes that I might better understand both the Spanish and American empires, and to understand why a once rich country has become so poor. I went to learn to live without things I would have assumed I needed while I lived in the United States. I went because I thought I might be able to find ways of helping America’s empire wind down more peacefully, make the shift in America’s position easier to accept for my fellow American, when I come back to the United States.

Like the commenter “Vilcxjo BLANKA,” this show reminded me of something I want to share. During the 2008 election, I was reading the second edition of Ernest Becker’s “The Birth and Death of Meaning,” which was published in 1971. But I found a passage I felt could have been written when I was reading it.

“Whole societies which fail to act on real priorities for their own survival can be said to be psychotic. Take, for example, a society which puts on one side of the decision-sheet the following priorities: potential environmental collapse, possibilities of atomic and germ war on a global scale, possible economic collapse, rumbling social revolutions by dispossessed minorities, actual collapse of the traditional hero-system; and on the other side of the sheet, escalation of a life-sapping and losing war costing billions of dollars per year, in a small, unimportant country of no real strategic value. The psychotic choice in this matter would be on the second side of the sheet and for the past half-dozen years we have seen one of the greatest world powers annually make a choice which completely fouls reality and puts into jeopardy its own survival and well-being.”

Becker, in his final books, tried to address this question of why an empire would be completely unable to address its real problems.

It’s a bit more than I’m actually prepared to do tonight to summarize Becker’s approach to psychoanalysis, and how it can help us understand much of the problem America faces. I like writing these comments at night, but I keep on finding myself needing to sleep before I have said all I wanted (and feel up to the task of proofreading). I also really want to write a comment on the Taleb show (which was fantastic), but to say everything I want to say I would actually need to make about a dozen comments, I probably won’t get to that tonight either. So, for tonight, let me just thank you for always offering such wonderful opportunities to think.

It’s so daunting to find a line to make these ideas really clean and clear because it’s so hard to untangle untangling the politics from the media from the consumerism from the corporatization of everything.

And at the root of all this nonsense is the pervasive sense that people are wasting their lives while they harm others and the planet. I’m not one to go for talk of souls, but let’s give a shout out to Aristotle’s urgent attempts to call humanity ever toward eudaimonia, or a life-which-flourishes.

There’s a military component to this conversation that might be satisfied by reading/listening to Charlmers Johnson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalmers_Johnson).

But I really came back to say thank you for mentioning and praising the Robert Frank exhibit at the MMA in NYC -we are headed there and I had forgotten we wanted to see that very much.

Also I agree about the thumbs up for Ha’aretz.

Chris Hedges, upon my meeting him after his reading of “American Fascists” at Wellesley College, when I informed him he probably would find the city where he attended seminary very changed indeed. That’s all I said. Didn’t mention Harvard at all.

So — which is it, Chris? Harvard, or OUR delusions, that are most powerful? Or are the delusions foisted upon us by defense contractors such as Harvard and MIT the real enemy here? Charles Ogletree said Barack and Michelle Obama were “conservative” students of his, but Cambridge was SWARMING with Obama supporters, who told us he was the antidote to the Bush regime. And now, in the public discourse, all we see is opposition to him as a socialist (when he’s really as big a tool as Reagan, Bush, Sr., Clinton, and Bush, Jr.). I’m still waiting to have that conversation — with you, or Chris Lydon.

What after all is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown song whose 1st note is sounded by death? Was there ever a man whose happiness was not threatened by stormy fates, whose illusions were not tattered, whose altar was not destroyed by deadly lightning ray.

But still, when the trumpet’s alarm is heard he hurries to the forefront of the battle and regains his feelings of strength and self.

—————–

I agree with much of what Chris Hedges says about where we are today from insight that came out of his war experiences. I choose to not want to live so apart and hopeless about inevitabilities. We die, empires and civilizations die. We need our illusions to go on. We need acceptance to go on.

Those who have been so traumatized, especially from war, are changed people forever and if they can’t quite integrate into our world of illusions/delusions so easily maybe they all should be Cassandras. But did the Greeks listen?

Wikipedia says about her She is a figure both of the epic tradition and of tragedy, where her combination of deep understanding and powerlessness exemplify the tragic condition of humankind.

Greek tragedy this may all be. Globalization, the rise of corporations and their networks, global warming, scientific advancement, war and the use of advanced weaponry– those can’t somehow stop or manifest only through “desirable” aspects of human nature. What do you do with the observation (or law) that suffering and destruction forces awakening?

The other day while following links on the internet, the wonders of the internet, I discovered a fascinating talk given in 1974 by historian Lewis Hanke, about the beginnings of modern historical writing, an appreciation of a missionary, a Franciscan, Bernardino de Sahagún, who, after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, in the mid to late 1500’s immersed himself in the study and writing about Aztec culture with great interest and I would say love, which grew to respect and concern for it’s, Indian culture’s, survival. This was the first oral history project in America:

The result was a carefully organized mass of text and 1,850 illustrations on the spiritual and material aspects of the life of the ancient Mexicans as the Indians remembered them. It was decidedly not, like so, much of the transatlantic literature of the period, a European view masquerading as a description of far-off peoples, but a remarkable collection of oral literature that expressed the soul and life of the Aztec people at the time of their greatness, one of the finest sources known for ethnohistory.20 While some other Spaniards were fanatically destroying Indian culture, Sahagún methodically brought together documentation on the functions, ceremonies, legends, and traditions of the many gods of the Aztecs, on astronomy, astrology, the calendar, and the calculation of the recording of time, which was of great importance to them. Sahagún also included their superstitions, rhetoric, philosophy, ideas of mortality, songs to the gods, and hymns to the sun, the moon, the stars, and the wind. The ancient rulers received much attention, as did their merchants and judges. The education of the children in the home and school was treated, as well as information on botany, zoology, and the animal and plant life of Mexico, mineralogy, agriculture, the preparation and preservation of edible plants, sculpture, painting, melting of metals, the jeweler’s trade, house building, the raising and care of domestic animals, road building, and temple construction. The final book described the conquest of Mexico as seen by the conquered.

http://www.historians.org/info/AHA_History/lhanke.htm

This is also how we meet, unfortunately through war and conquering… a very bad, increasingly bad, habit.

(Casandra)

In the snapping air, he comes home.

Blindly running through the early dusk made earlier by the rising land.

Past puppets asleep in the trunks against which he

Smashes his fists, arms, face.

“Wake up! Wake up! You are dying!”

His howl rebounds, jumping back to him

From the unsurprised gray face of the valley.

Above the thrashing toy.

The sigh of red, yellow, brown

Deepens. Expands.

And the branches unshoulder their load.

Softly covering the weeping boy.

Curled upon the ground.

Thank you!

He reminds me of the peak oil guys. I agree we are going to run out of oil. The question is what can we do about it? If your answer is – nothing, I don’t need a whole book detailing how bad it’s going to get. No doubt I’ll find out in good time. If there are alternatives, that’s what we should be looking at.