RES: [syndicate] Culture of Lies

[Alan Sondheim]

please explain first, thanks, alan -


On Thu, 12 Jan 2006, Guilherme Kujawski wrote:

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> acute analysis.
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> one of the best I've seen.
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> US has two choices nowadays:
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> 1- do a reenactment of cybernetics of second order (apud Von Foerster)
> 2- face what china is becoming and follow suit
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> period.
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> -----Mensagem original-----
> De: Sympa Owner [mailto:sympa at kilby.copyleft.no]Em nome de Alan Sondheim
> Enviada em: quinta-feira, 12 de janeiro de 2006 14:17
> Para: syndicate at anart.no
> Assunto: [syndicate] Culture of Lies
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> Culture of Lies
>
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> I was listening to the Colbert Report the other night; Carl Bernstein was
> on. He answered briefly and to the point. His take on Bush and company:
> lies. His take on current politics in this country: bought.
>
> These are corporate behaviors, or behavior-sheaves, interconnected modes
> of action. Corporations live them; lies are brought and formulated in the
> workplace as everyday matters. Ethics is compartmentalized and doesn't
> apply. Skip to Hiaasen's 60 Minutes interview and you'll find more of the
> same analysis.
>
> I lived within this culture when I taught at Florida International a few
> years ago. I was dismissed and the tenure-track line canceled as well. I
> was told by the department head the cut-back was financial and came from
> the dean. I was told by the union representative that the cut-back came
> from the department. When I took the job I was told that there was
> suitable equipment and funds for the position. When I arrived there wasn't
> any. My partner was told that a museology line was in place. There wasn't
> any. I was told I'd be given fund-raising contacts. There weren't any. The
> department announced to the local paper that it had built a new multi-
> media classroom; it hadn't. I was told my situation was my fault; was the
> dean' fault; was the department chair's fault; was the governor's fault.
> Whatever happened there, and I don't know to this day, I behaved ethic-
> ally (but neurotically); the surrounding culture didn't.
>
> It's easy to live according to the cover-up and the world's technologic-
> ally smarter than it was in Nixon's day. Lies are distanced through the
> media; you can believe you're behaving ethically because otherwise you're
> just speaking through a microphone. The public here buys into that; a
> recent poll for example shows that 56% of those interviewed favored
> government wire-tapping if needed. This is fundamentally against the
> principles of America, as is the notion of the collusion of religion and
> government, as well as military pre-emptive strikes. Growing up here means
> growing up through WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Libya, Nicaragua, Granada, Iraq,
> and hosts of other conflicts. We live within a militarism that has no need
> to pay attention to the local verbal conflicts here. The majority of
> Americans favor gun laws; we won't get them. The majority favors health
> care; we won't get it and we're told on one hand that seniors are given
> additional choices - at the same time the safety net is being eroded to
> nothingness. We're told we have a crisis of social security at the same
> time we're paying exponentially-increasing health-care costs and doctors
> and drug companies are getting richer. To give you again an idea from
> personal life - we live here in Brooklyn on around $18,000/year. My father
> pays my health care, or most of it. It's the rock-bottom at $6000 a year.
> There's also 'co-payments' every time I see a doctor or get medicine;
> there's a $100 deductible on drugs yearly. This is obscene; we're so far
> below the poverty level it's ridiculous, and at the same time, there's no
> safety net - yet we pay taxes to fund Halliburton and an outrageous deadly
> war in Iraq.
>
> In an idea world, Bush Inc. would be held accountable; he won't be. The
> culture closes, forecloses, on itself. It's everyday business, just like
> Nazism was everyday business. But this is in for the long run; these
> people are self-preserving. The scandals make no difference at all; the
> truth is always seen as contestable, just as Darwin or weapons of mass
> destruction are contestable. The culture of lies depends on one hand on a
> population willing to put up with autocracy, desiring autocracy, as the
> safety net disappears; it licks its masters because there's no other game
> in town, except religion, already bought and sold and integrated. The
> culture of lies depends on the other on a verbal sophistry which is based
> on a notion of the insignificance of truth; truth is reserved for one's
> inner soul, for the Rapture, for the back-room - men are like that. The
> lie is possible because the language of finance, not personal and verbal
> language, carries the greatest weight; it's not for nothing that we have
> expressions like 'the buck stops here' and 'the bottom line.' This is also
> the reason, by the way, that American political rhetoric is so filled with
> sports talk; the game plan is to win at any cost. Sublimating truth into
> the arena of arenas backs up a culture of gambling, the killer play (not
> unlike the killer app) - a culture in which ontology has shifted from the
> oath and linguistic performativity to stock-market performance. This is
> fundamental, however trite it is (i.e. 'money talks' which just about sums
> it up); the culture of lies _is_ a culture, and needs the security and
> stability of big money for those who play, or those who hope to play, it.
> It ensures it's the only game in town.
>
> On the farther end of the spectrum is the rest of us, lying as well for
> that matter, just as embedded. We're the embedded reporters in fact who
> bring back from Iraq what the government and military want us to hear;
> we're the 'crackers' and everyone else just getting by, moving through an
> increasingly implosive world of drought, extinctions, and information,
> leaving us behind. The superstructure has finally succeeded in taming the
> base; the base is whatever the superstructure says it is, until famine
> sets in, and then war - required as well by the superstructure. It's a
> different ball-game.
>
> There's no end to this analysis which has been told over and over again,
> and we continue to tell it, just was empathetic magic is based on
> repetition. It's no use, except for self-comfort late at night; the
> culture of lies will bring us increasing war, violence, violation of human
> rights, and poverty - all in the name of fighting terrorism, playing on
> the internet, living the good life, betting on the Superbowl, making sure
> we have 'no child left behind,' counting on the 'village' it takes to make
> a child, waiting for the Rapture, fearing the hyperbolic hyperviolent God
> fundamentalists purvey, and buying mostly on credit, houses, cars, SUVs,
> cable television, high-definition TV, Ipods, camcorders, computers,
> Internet connections, Caribbean cruises, ecotourisms (which are not that
> 'eco'), factory-'farmed' meats, hunting expeditions, fishing trips,
> visiting the natives, mega-speakers, cell phones, camera phones,
> text-messaging phones, video phones, back yard pools, swing sets, personal
> trainers, gym memberships, fashionable clothing, anti-fashionable
> clothing, guns, knives, sex-tapes, miserable health-care, processed foods,
> the latest cosmetics, unbelievably bad school systems, Bibles, church
> memberships, Wired magazine, Fortune magazine, Time magazine, Sports
> Illustrated, Reader's Digest, plastic toys, plastic toy guns, skate-
> boards, off-road vehicles (which tear up the wilderness), jet skis (which
> pollute the water), power-boats (which have wounded every single manatee
> still alive), yachts, cruise-control, lawsuits, and just about everything
> else that keeps the American public way down (and falling) on the quality-
> of-life index. This is the new world of freedom, as Absolut as it's going
> to get, and we'll do everything we can to get to the finish line.
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