The following article forgets to mention that TERROR was (and is) created by clandestine state-agents. Google Keywords: false-flag terror, strategy of tension, gladio.
==========
The Semiwarriors
Andrew J. Bacevich
review | posted April 5, 2007 (April 23, 2007 issue) THE NATION
In books, essays and op-eds, complaints about presidential power run amok have once again become legion--with the still-unfolding saga of the Gonzales Eight the most recent, if hardly the most egregious, example. These complaints derive from a common source: the perceived excesses of the Bush Administration, perpetrated under the pretext of prosecuting the Global War on Terror. Yet as a close reading of the books considered here makes plain, "unchecked and unbalanced" presidential power is itself not the problem but merely its outward manifestation. The imperial presidency is not the disease; it is a symptom. To imagine that getting rid of Bush will cure what ails the body politic is akin to assuming that excising a tumor will alone suffice to cure cancer.
The real affliction is more insidious. For want of a better label, call it "semiwar," a term coined after World War II by James Forrestal to promote permanent quasi mobilization as the essential response to permanent global crisis. A man who saw demons everywhere, Forrestal was convinced that he alone grasped the danger they posed to the United States.
Forrestal was also a zealot, the prototype for a whole line of national security ideologues stretching across six decades from Dean Acheson to Donald Rumsfeld, from Paul Nitze to Paul Wolfowitz. Geoffrey Perret's acerbic description of Acheson applies to them all: His "mind turned to the apocalyptic as easily, if not as often, as other men's thoughts turn toward money or sex." For semiwarriors, time is always short. The need for action is always urgent. The penalty for hesitation always promises to be dire.
For Forrestal and other members of the emergent national security elite, fired by the need to confront a never-ending array of looming threats, the presidency served as an accommodating host. Semiwarriors built the imperial presidency. On behalf of the chief executive--increasingly referred to as the Commander in Chief--they claimed new prerogatives. They created new institutions that became centers of extra-constitutional power: the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the various agencies that make up the intelligence "community." When out of office, they inhabited think tanks, consulted, lobbied and generally raked in the dough, all the while positioning themselves for a return to power.
They also imprinted on the capital city a new style, one that emphasized perils without precedent, activism on a global scale and a preference for hard power. In 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt became President, the District of Columbia was merely a seat of government and the United States was still a republic. When FDR's successor left office twenty years later, Washington fancied itself the center of the universe, with the United States now the self-anointed Leader of the Free World. As Cullen Murphy observes in Are We Rome?, a mordantly funny essay filled with arresting observations, this transformation of status fostered large delusions: "that the world is small, that society is malleable, and that the capital's stance is paramount." To reside in the imperial city was to believe that "assertions of will can trump assessments of reality: the world is the way we say it is."
... the Pentagon hung Forrestal's portrait in the hallway, named an aircraft carrier in his honor ...
... (cynic US-centric crap deleted)The events of 9/11 endowed semiwar with a new lease on life. That the crisis touched off by the events of September 11, 2001, will continue in perpetuity has become an article of faith. Politicians now talk of peace the way cynical preachers speak of the Second Coming: Paying homage to the idea remains an obligation, but only rubes take such stuff seriously. No credible presidential candidate in either party has dared to question the wisdom or necessity of waging the Global War on Terror. Like the poor, apparently, the GWOT--or, as some style it, "The Long War"--promises to be with us always.
In Unchecked and Unbalanced, Frederick Schwarz Jr. and Aziz Huq tabulate the chilling byproducts of this sort of groupthink. Among the most egregious: Justice Department memos justifying torture; the blizzard of "signing statements" in which President Bush claims the prerogative of selectively disregarding the law; domestic surveillance implemented on a scale without precedent; the open-ended imprisonment of "detainees"--including American citizens--without charge; and a program of "extraordinary rendition" that secretly delivers suspected terrorists into the hands of foreign intelligence services for interrogation.
=======================An example of HATE PRESS in the USA:
Newton South stands by Noam Chomsky invitation
Noam Chomsky
Controversial professor to address students on Iraq war
Despite mounting pressure, Newton South High School has decided to allow controversial figure Noam Chomsky to address students about his perspective on Iraq.
Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, is known as a vitriolic critic of Israel. The (PRIVATE-BOUGHT PARTISAN) Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America stated that Chomsky met with leaders of the terrorist organization Hezbollah in May and received a “hero’s welcome.” CAMERA also reported that Chomsky supports the arming of Hezbollah (THAT IS A LIE), and pointed to an appearance on Al Manar TV in which he said that Hezbollah’s weapons were a “deterrent to potential aggression” of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon.
Regarding the rash of e-mails and phone calls from parents to the school in response to the scheduled presentation, Chomsky told the Advocate: “These things should be discussed, and I am happy to discuss them.”
Chomsky said he will speak about “the whole Middle East situation,” remarking that his views on Iraq happen to be “right in the political mainstream.” He noted that he will discuss in detail how American troops should withdraw from Iraq on a fixed timetable, and that he plans to touch upon the situation in Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And while many have expressed disbelief about his trip to Lebanon, taken only months before the war in Israel last summer, Chomsky added that he wants it known that he devoted a portion of his trip to visiting with Walid Jumblatt, a leading Hezbollah opponent.
“As for the right for Hezbollah to be armed … the question is: Does Lebanon have a right to a deterrent against an Israeli attack,” Chomsky said.
Salzer said he decided to permit Chomsky to visit the school after what he described as a lengthy examination process and consultation with “administrative leadership, school committee leadership and community leaders.”
“Our students are among the most intelligent, cultured, sophisticated and mature students I have worked with,” Salzer added in a statement. “They will bring thoughtful questions, healthy skepticism, remarkable academic preparedness, and the values their parents have instilled in them to listen to a philosopher, academician, linguist, and informed scholar. They will glean knowledge … and walk away wiser.”
Newton resident Victor Zak, whose 15-year-old daughter, Aliza, attends the school, said he feels Chomsky’s visit is not “a good idea at all.” While acknowledging that he doesn’t know exactly what the renowned linguist will say, Zak added that he is familiar with Chomsky’s “anti-Western, anti-Jewish and anti-Israel” record.
“What concerns me is that he has been brought to speak and contaminate the minds of our children,” Zak said. “The position of our school is that the school isn’t bringing him. [Rather, Chomsky was invited by a student organization.] I wonder what the school’s position would be if somebody tried to bring a speaker with a strong racist or anti-gay message.”
Alan Ronkin, deputy director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, said Chomsky’s visit to the school “is a problem,” especially since he is an expert in linguistics and “has no credentials” to speak about the Middle East. Ronkin added that at the moment the JCRC was not organizing any initiative to balance the event.
“I haven’t read [Chomsky’s] views about Iraq, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he thought that the solution [to it] was the dissolution of the Jewish state or the end of occupation,” Ronkin said. “A person like Chomsky believes that Israel is the root of all evil in the Middle East.”
David Fisher, a junior at the high school and co-president of the Social Awareness Club, said in a statement that Chomsky’s presentation is worthwhile, as listening to others’ viewpoints on divisive issues helps students to develop their own perspectives.
“When I hear something I clearly disagree with it helps me to take a step back from my own perspective and understand more thoroughly why I believe what I do,” Fisher added.
As an educator, Salzer said it’s important for students to learn from “a variety of different people in a variety of ways.”
Added Salzer: “We have to learn to have trust in our children.”
=======================
FROM THE NECESSARY ILLUSIONS PAGE
http://wwwdsp.ucd.ie/~daragh/chomsky.html
| Title: | The Big Idea - Interview with Noam Chomsky |
| Aired by: | British Broadcasting Corporation, February 1996 |
| Source: | Transcribed by Daragh McDonnell (daragh@tesla.ucd.ie) |
| Keywords: | |
| Synopsis: | Chomsky defends his Propaganda Model |
| See-also: |
The following is a transcript of "The Big Idea" - a half hour interview between Noam Chomsky and British journalist Andrew Marr, first aired by the BBC in February, 1996.
Marr:
Professor Chomsky, could we start by listening to you explain what the "Propaganda Model", as you call it, is. For many people, the idea that propaganda is used by democratic, rather than merely authoritarian governments, will be a strange one.
Chomsky:
Well... the term "propaganda" fell into disfavour around the Second World War, but in the 1920's and the 1930's, it was commonly used, and in fact advocated, by leading intellectuals, by the founders of modern political science, by Wilsonian progressives and of course, by the public relations industry, as a necessary technique to overcome the danger of democracy. The institutional structure of the media is quite straightforward - we're talking about the United States, it's not very different elsewhere - there are sectors, but the agenda-setting media, the ones that set the framework for everyone else (like the New York Times and the Washington Post, and so on), these are the major corporations, parts of even bigger conglomerates. Like other corporate institutions, they have a product and a market: Their market is advertisers, that is, other businesses; their product is relatively privileged audiences, more or less...
So they're selling audiences to...
They're selling privileged audiences - these are big corporations selling privileged audiences to other corporations. Now the question is, what picture of the world would a rational person expect to come out of this structure? Then we draw some conclusions about what you would expect, and then we check, and yes - that's the picture of the world that comes out.
And is this anything more than the idea that, basically, the press is relatively right wing, with some exceptions, because it's owned by big business - which is a truism, it's well known?
Well, I would call the press relatively liberal. Here I agree with the right wing critics. So, especially the New York Times and the Washington Post, which are called, without a trace of irony - the New York Times is called the "establishment left" in say, major foreign policy journals - and that's correct, but what's not recognised is that the role of the liberal intellectual establishment is to set very sharp bounds on how far you can go - "this far, and no further".
Give me some examples of that...
Well, let's take say, the Vietnam War - probably the leading critic, and in fact one of the leading dissident intellectuals in the mainstream, is Anthony Lewis of the New York Times, who did finally come around to opposing the Vietnam War about 1969 - about a year and a half after Corporate America had more or less ordered Washington to call it off, and his picture from then on is that the war (as he put it) began with blundering efforts to do good, but it ended up by 1969 being a disaster and costing us too much - and that's the criticism...
So, what would the "non-propaganda model" have told Americans about the Vietnam War at the same time?
Same thing that the mainstream press was telling them about Afghanistan. The United States invaded South [Vietnam]... had first of all in the 1950s set up a standard Latin American-style terror state, which had massacred tens of thousands of people, but was unable to control local uprising (and everyone knows - at least every specialist knows - that's what it was), and when Kennedy came in, in 1961, they had to make a decision, because the South [Vietnamese] government was collapsing under local attack, so the U.S. just invaded the country. In 1961 the U.S. airforce started bombing South Vietnamese civilians, authorised Napalm crop destruction... then in 1965 - January, February 1965 - the next major escalation took place against South Vietnam, not against North Vietnam - that was a sideshow - that's what an honest press would be saying, but you can't find a trace of it.
Now, if the press is a censoring organisation, tell me how that works - you're not suggesting that proprietors phone one another up, or that many journalists get their copy "spiked", as we say?
It's actually... Orwell, you may recall, has an essay called "Literary Censorship in England" which was supposed to be the introduction to Animal Farm, except that it never appeared, in which he points out "look, I'm writing about a totalitarian society, but in free, democratic England, it's not all that different", and then he says unpopular ideas can be silenced without any force, and then he gives a two sentence response which is not very profound, but captures it: He says, two reasons - first, the press is owned by wealthy men who have every interest in not having certain things appear but second, the whole educational system from the beginning on through gets you to understand that there are certain things you just don't say. Well, spelling these things out, that's perfectly correct - I mean, the first sentence is what we expanded...
This is what I don't get, because it suggests - I mean, I'm a journalist - people like me are "self-censoring"...
No - not self-censoring. There's a filtering system that starts in kindergarten and goes all the way through and - it doesn't work a hundred percent, but it's pretty effective - it selects for obedience and subordination, and especially...
So, stroppy people won't make it to positions of influence...
There'll be "behaviour problems" or... if you read applications to a graduate school, you see that people will tell you "he doesn't get along too well with his colleagues" - you know how to interpret those things.
I'm just interested in this because I was brought up, like a lot of people, probably post-Watergate film and so on, to believe that journalism was a crusading craft, and that there were a lot of disputatious, stroppy, difficult people in journalism, and I have to say, I think I know some of them.
Well, I know some of the best... best-known investigative reporters in the United States - I won't mention names - whose attitude toward the media is much more cynical than mine. In fact, they regard the media as a sham. And they know, and they constantly talk about how they try to... play it like a violin: If they see a little opening they'll try to squeeze something in that ordinarily wouldn't make it through. And it's perfectly true that this is a crusading profession, adversarial, "We stand up against power", very self-serving view. On the other hand, in my opinion, I hate to make a value judgement but, the better journalists, and in fact, the ones who are often regarded as the best journalists, have quite a different picture and, I think, a very realistic one.
How can you know that I'm self-censoring? How can you know that journalists are...
I don't say you're self-censoring - I'm sure you believe everything you're saying; but what I'm saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting.
We [the UK] have a press which has, it seems to me a relatively wide range of views - there is a pretty schmaltzy Conservative majority but there are left-wing papers, and there is a pretty large offering of views running from the far right to the far left, for those who want them. I don't see how a propaganda model...
That's not quite true. I mean there have been good studies of the British press and you could look at them - James Curran is the major one - which point out that, up until the 1960s there was indeed a kind of a social democratic press, which sort of represented much of the interests of working people, and ordinary people and so on, and it was very successful - I mean, the Daily Herald for example had not only more... it had far higher circulation than other newspapers, but also a dedicated circulation. Furthermore, the tabloids at that time - the Mirror and the Sun - were kind of labour based. By the '60s, that was all gone, and it disappeared under the pressure of capital resources. What was left was overwhelmingly the... sort of... centre to right press with some dissidence - it's true, I mean...
We've got I would say, a couple of large circulation newspapers, which are left of centre and which are putting in neo-Keynesian views which - you call them elites - are strongly hostile to.
It's interesting that you call neo-Keynesian "left of centre" - I'd just call it straight centre. "Left of centre" is a value term...
Sure.
... there are extremely good journalists in England, a number of them, they write very honestly, and very good material; a lot of what they write wouldn't appear here [the US]. On the other hand, if you look at the question overall, I don't think you're going to find a big difference, and the few (there aren't many studies of the British press), but the few that there are have found pretty much the same results, and I think the better journalists will tell you that. In fact, what you have to do is check it out in cases. So let's take what I just mentioned - the Vietnam War. The British press did not have the kind of stake in the Vietnam War that the American press did, because they weren't fighting it. Just check sometime, and find out how many times you can find the American war in Vietnam described as a US attack against South Vietnam, beginning clearly with outright aggression in 1961, and escalating to massive aggression in '65. If you can find 0.001% of the coverage saying that, you'll surprise me, and in a free press, 100% of it would have been saying that. Now that's just a matter of fact - it has nothing to do with left and right.
Let me come up to a more modern war, which was the Gulf War which, again, looking at the press in Britain and watching television, I was very, very well aware of anti-Gulf War dissidence...
Were you?
The "no blood for oil" campaigns, and I have the...
That's not the dissidence...
"No blood for oil" isn't the dissidence?
No. Saddam Hussein's attack on Kuwait took place on August 2nd. Within a few days, the great fear in Washington was that Saddam Hussein was going to withdraw and leave a puppet government, which would be pretty much what the US had done in Panama. The U.S. and Britain therefore, moved very quickly to try to undercut the danger of withdrawal. By late August, negotiation offers were coming from Iraq, calling for a negotiated Iraqi withdrawal. The press wouldn't publish them here, they never publish them in England. It did leak however...
There was a great debate about whether there should have been a negotiated settlement...
No, sorry, no there was not a debate - there was a debate about whether you should continue with sanctions, which is a different question... because the fact of the matter is, we have good evidence that by mid- or late-August the sanctions had already worked, because these stories were coming from high American officials in the State Department - former American officials like Richard Helm - they couldn't get the mainstream press to cover them, but they did manage to get one journal to cover them - Newsday - that's a suburban journal in Long Island, the purpose obviously being to spook out the NYT, cause that's the only thing that matters. It came out in Newsday and this continued (I won't go through the details), but this continued until January 2nd. At that time, the offers that were coming were apparently so meaningful to the State Department, that State Department officials were saying that "Look, this is negotiable, meaningful, maybe we don't accept everything, but it's certainly a basis for a negotiated withdrawal". The press would not cover it. Newsday did. A few other people did - I have a couple of op-eds on it, and to my knowledge - you can check this - the first reference to any of this in England is actually in an article I wrote in the Guardian, which was in early January. You can check and see if there's an earlier reference.
Okay - let's look at one of the other key examples, which you've looked at too, which would appear to go against your idea, which is the Watergate affair...
Watergate is a perfect example - we've discussed it at length in our book in fact, and elsewhere - it's a perfect example of the way the press was subordinated to power. In fact...
But this brought down a President!
Just a minute - let's take a look. What happened there... here it's kind of interesting, 'cause you can't do experiments on history, but here history was kind enough to set one up for us. The Watergate exposures happened to take place at exactly the same time as another set of exposures; they were the exposures of COINTELPRO.
Sorry - you'll have to explain that to us.
It's interesting that I have to explain it, because it's vastly more significant than Watergate - that already makes my point. COINTELPRO was a program of subversion carried out, not by a couple of petty crooks, but by the national political police - the FBI - under four administrations. It began in the late Eisenhower administration, ran up until...
This is the end of the Socialist Workers Party in America?
The Socialist Workers Party was one tiny fragment of it. It began... by the time it got through (I won't run through the whole story), it was aimed at the entire New Left, at the Women's movement, at the whole Black movement; it was extremely broad - it's actions went as far as political assassination. Now what's the difference between the two? Very clear. In Watergate, Richard Nixon went after half of US private power, namely the Democratic Party, and power can defend itself. So therefore, that's a scandal. He didn't do anything... nothing happened - look, I was on Nixon's enemies list. I didn't even know, nothing ever happened. But...
Nonetheless, you wouldn't say it was an insignificant event, to bring down a President...
No, it was a case where half of US power defended itself against a person who had obviously stepped out of line. And the fact that the press thought that was important shows that they think powerful people ought to be able to defend themselves. Now, whether there was a question of principle involved happens to be easily checked in this case. One tiny part of the COINTELPRO program was itself far more significant in principle than all of Watergate; and if you look at the whole program, I mean, it's not even a discussion. But you have to ask me what COINTELPRO is. You know what Watergate is. There couldn't be a more dramatic example of the subordination of educated opinion to Power, here in England, as well as the United States.
I know you've concentrated on foreign affairs, and some of these key areas...
I've talked a lot about domestic problems.
Well, I'd like to come onto that, because it still seems to me that, on a range of pretty important issues for the Establishment, there is serious dissent...
That's right.
... Gingrich and his neo-conservative agenda in America has been pretty savagely lampooned. The apparently fixed succession for the Republican candidacy at the Presidential election has come apart. Clinton, who is a powerful figure, is having great difficulty with Whitewater. Everywhere one looks, one sees disjunctions, openings.
Within a spectrum so narrow that you really have to look hard to find it - let me give you...
Can I just stop you there, because you say that the spectrum is narrow, but on the one hand...
Let me illustrate...
... We've got flat tax...
Can I illustrate?
... flat tax Republicans, right the way through to relatively big state Democrats.
Find one - find a big state Democrat. The position now is exactly what Clinton said: "The year of big government is over, big government has failed, the war on poverty has failed, we have to get rid of this entitlement business" - that was Clinton's campaign message in 1992. That's the Democrats. What you have now is a difference between sort of moderate Republicans, and extreme Republicans. Actually, it's well known that there's been a long standing... sort of split in the American business community; it's not precise, but it's sort of general, between high-tech, capital-intensive, internationally-oriented business, which tends to be what's called "liberal", and lower-tech, more nationally-oriented, more labour-intensive industry, which is what's called "conservative". Now, between those sectors, there have been differences and in fact, if you take a look at American politics, it oscillates pretty much between those limits (there's good work on this incidentally - the person who's done the most extensive work is Thomas Ferguson, he's a political scientist...)
One more example, which will have some resonance in Britain and Europe, is the great argument over the North American Free Trade Association - the NAFTA argument - where...
This is an interesting one.
... if there is something which one could describe as a global opposition movement, that is, trade union-, environmental-, community-based, then it was certainly present in the anti-NAFTA...
Shall I tell you what happened?
Well...
Shall I tell you what happened?
What I was going to say is that...
Never reported...
... those arguments were well... we were well aware of those arguments.
No! That is flatly false. They were not permitted into the press, and I documented this. I'll give you references if you like.
We read all about it in Britain is all I will say.
No you did not; for example...
I'm sorry, but we did...
Well, let me ask you: Did you read the report of the Office of Technology Association of Congress?
Well...
Sorry - did you read the report of the Labour Advisory Committee?
Well, I don't get these reports, but I read...
Sorry, that's...
... I read many articles about the anti-NAFTA argument that's very...
I'm sorry. Well if you're interested in the facts, I'll tell you what they are, and I'll even give you sources. The NAFTA argument was signed more or less in secret by the three presidents, in mid-August, right in the middle of the presidential campaign. Now, there's a law in the United States - the 1974 Trade Act - which requires that any trade-related issue be submitted to the Labour Advisory Committee, which is union-based, for assessment and analysis. It was never submitted to them. A day before they were supposed to give their final report, in mid-September, it was finally submitted to them. The unions are pretty right wing, but they were infuriated. They had never been shown this. Even at the time that they had to write the... they were given 24 hours to write the report... they didn't even have time to look at the text. Nevertheless, they wrote a very vigorous analysis of it, with alternatives presented, saying "Look, we're not against NAFTA, we're against this version of it" - they gave a good analysis, happened to be very similar to one that had been given by the Congressional Research Service, the Office of Technology Assessment - none of this ever entered the press. The only thing that entered the press was the kind of critique that they were willing to deal with: Mexico-bashing, right wing nationalists, you know, and so on. That entered the press. But not the critical analysis of the labour movement. Now...
But somehow, by a process of osmosis or something, I picked up quite a lot of anti-NAFTA arguments, on the basis of worker protection, environmental degradation...
May I continue? This goes on in the press, right until the end... there were big popular movements opposing it - it was extremely hard to suppress all of this, to suppress everything coming out of the labour movement, out of the popular movements, and so on - but they did. At the very end it had reached such a point that there was concern that they might not be able to ram this through. Now, take a look at the New York Times and the Washington Post - say the "liberal" media and the national ones in the last couple of weeks - I've written about it and I'll tell you what you find. What you find is a hundred percent support for NAFTA, refusal to allow any of the popular arguments out, tremendous labour-bashing...
Can I come back, to make sure that I understand the point about the liberal press as against the conservative press because, in Britain over the last 2 years, politicians I come across are deeply irritated, ranging on furious, about attacks on them in the press, day after day, on issues which have come to be known as "sleaze". They feel that they are harassed, that they are misunderstood and that the press has got above itself, is "uppity" and is destructive: That's the message that they are giving to us. Now, are you saying that that whole process doesn't matter, because it's all part of the same...
It's marginal... Same thing is true here - when the press focuses on the sex lives of politicians, reach for your pocket, and see who's pulling out your wallet, because those are not the issues that matter to people. I mean, they're very marginal interest. The issues that matter to people are somewhere else, so as soon as you hear, you know, the press and presidential candidates and so on, talking about "values", as I say, put your hand on your wallet - you know that something else is happening.
But it's been much more than... certainly with us, it's been much more than "bed-hopping", it's also been about taking money, it's been about the corporations paying for political parties...
Corruption, sure... corrupt judges - fine topic...
Corrupt parties?
Yeah - corrupt parties. Big Business is not in favour of corruption, you know, and if the press focuses on corruption, Fortune Magazine will be quite happy, they don't care about that - they don't want the society to be corrupt, they want it to be run in their interest - that's a different thing. Corruption interferes with that. So, for example, when I was, let's say... I just happened to have come back from India: The Bank of India released an estimate - economists there tell me it's low - that a third of the economy is "black", meaning mostly rich businessmen not paying their taxes. Well, that makes the press, because in fact, certainly trans-nationals don't like it. They want the system to be run without corruption, robbery, bribes and so on - just pouring money into their pockets. So yes, that's a fine topic for the press. On the other hand, the topics I've talked about are not fine topics, 'cause they're much too significant.
What would a press be like, do you think, without the Propaganda Model? What would we be reading in the papers that we don't read about now?
I've just given a dozen examples. On every example - it's only you've picked, I haven't picked, I mean I could pick my own, but I'm happy to let you pick 'em - on every one of those examples I think you can demonstrate that there's been a severe distortion of what the facts of the matter are - this has nothing to do with left and right as I've been stressing - and it has left the population pretty confused and marginalised. A free press would just tell you the truth. This has nothing to do with left and right...
And given the power of Big Business, the power of the press, what can people do about this?
They can do exactly what people do in the Haitian slums and hills - organise - and Haiti, which is the poorest country in the hemisphere, they created a very vibrant, lively civil society, in the slums, in the hills, in conditions that most of us couldn't even imagine. We can do the same, much more easily.
You've got community activists in America...
Yes we do.
... I'm not talking about the so-called "Communitarian" movements, but I'm talking about the local community activists and writers, all over the place....
All over the place... all over the place... take say, a city like Boston, with all sorts of people: They don't even know of each other's existence. There's a very large number of them. One of the things I'll do consistently is run around the country giving talks; one of my main purposes, and the purpose of the people who invite me, is to bring the people together, people in that area, who are working on the same things and don't know of each other's existence, because the resources are so scattered, and the means of communication are so marginal, there isn't just much they can do about it. Now, there are plenty of things that are happening. So take say, community-based radio, which is sort of outside the system...
I was going to ask you about that, and about the Internet, which has certainly got pretty open access, at the moment.
Well, the Internet, like most technology, is a very double-edged sword. Like any technology, including printing, it has a liberatory potential, but it also has a repressive potential, and there's a battle going on about which way it's going to go, as there was for radio, and television, and so on.
About ownership and advertising...
Right - and about just what's going to be in it, and who's going to have access to it. Remember, incidentally, that the Internet is an elite operation. Most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call, you know, so that's certainly not on the Internet. Nevertheless, it does have democratising potential, and there's a struggle going on right now as to whether that's going to be realised, or whether it'll turn into something like a home marketing service, and a way of marginalising people even further. That discussion went on in the 1920s (it was Radio) - that's interesting how it turned out - it went on over Television, it's now going on over the Internet. And, that's a matter of popular struggle. Look: We don't live the way we did 200 years ago, or even 30 years ago - there's been a lot of progress. It hasn't been gifts from above. It's been the result of people getting together, and refusing to accept the dictates of authoritarian institutions. And, there's no reason to think that that's over.
You've been portrayed, and some would say, occasionally portrayed yourself, as a kind of lonely dissident voice - you clearly don't feel lonely at all.
I say nothing like that. I certainly do not portray myself that way. I can't begin to accept a fraction of the invitations from around the country: I'm scheduled two years in advance. And at that, I'm only selecting a fraction...
And you're speaking to big audiences.
Huge audiences. And these are not elite intellectuals either. These are mostly popular audiences. I probably spend 20 or 30 hours a week just answering letters, from people all over the country, and the world. I wish I felt a little more lonely. I don't. Of course, I'm not in PR, you know, I wouldn't be in the mainstream media, but I wouldn't expect that. Why should they offer space to somebody who's trying to undermine their power, and to expose what they do? But that's not loneliness.
Professor Chomsky, thank-you very much.
====================
Media Lens Cogitation: Mind Training - Part 1
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Laughing At The New Generation I am fascinated by the differences that separate peoples and cultures. If human beings are the animal for which life is a problem requiring an answer - liberated, as we are, from the autopilot of instinctual programming - then what could be more interesting than answers to life developed by radically different cultures over thousands of years? Other cultures, after all, provide us with an entry point for investigating the nose-on-our-face problems, the nose-on-our-face mistakes, that bedevil us individually and as a society. In one of his most telling observations, Thoreau wrote: "Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new." (Thoreau, Walden, Penguin, 1983, p.68) When we encounter, and quite possibly laugh at, foreign cultures, the precious opportunity also arises of laughing at our own. This is a laughter of liberation - not just from the disco flares and bowler hats of “the old fashions“, but from the worship of the flag, of the “fatherland”, from hatred of the official ‘enemy’. As I will discuss below, it is also an opportunity to laugh at our notions of how best to make ourselves happy. The Internationally Famous Cabbage Dish In late 2005, I visited South Korea for the first time. I was delighted to sit on floor cushions around low restaurant tables to be confronted by dozens of small dishes of food, most of it unknown, almost all of it devilishly spicy. Equally delightful were the loud noises made by my endlessly polite and kind Korean hosts as they slurped their noodles and guzzled their soup. The part of me that remains forever ten-years-old felt at last vindicated by the fact that a whole society deemed civilised and polite the same behaviour that had earned me fierce looks as a child. Thoreau again: “The greater part of what my neighbours call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behaviour. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?” (Ibid, p.53) I also enjoyed slurping the mysterious, traditional herbal teas with curious objects bobbing about in them; the fruits I’d never seen before; the ornate rice cakes and other mysteries of the ancient Korean culture. I feel there is something heart-warming about seeing difference and thinking: ‘That’s how they like it - that’s what they enjoy,’ even when what they enjoy means nothing to me. I find it wonderful that Koreans are deeply proud of their spicy pickled Chinese cabbage, ‘kimchi’, the national dish. A guide book declares with typically supercharged Korean enthusiasm: “Visitors cannot really say they have been to Korea if they have not tasted kimchi, the internationally famous cabbage dish... These days kimchi is gaining popularity worldwide for its nutritional value and disease-prevention effect.” In Seoul there is even a kimchi museum! (http://www.kimchimuseum.co.kr/english/information.htm) A few years ago I went with my Japanese girlfriend to an English pub for the first time. As we sat down, she took out two small, folded towels and placed them next to her glass on the table - one to wipe her glass, as required, and one to dab her face. The joy of seeing that little ritual carried out in the middle of a spit-and-sawdust pub is exactly what I have in mind. Difference reminds us of the uniqueness of others, of their preciousness, transience, and in fact of their fundamental aloneness in the world. A sense of fellow feeling and compassion can also be found in a sense of unity beneath difference - others may do things differently, but we can understand what it is they like about it; we can empathise with their happiness in doing things ‘just so’ in a way that makes them feel more comfortable in the world. By contrast, there is something depressing and dehumanising about the thought of people as anonymous crowds, as blank “masses” of humanity. I’ve always recoiled from the title of John Carey’s book, The Intellectuals and the Masses. Regardless of the contents of the book, the title always reminds me of the sense, which many “intellectuals” seem to have, that a select few brainy types are real, serious individuals, while the rest of us are mere “masses”, “proletarians”, a kind of human porridge. But what exactly is an “intellectual”? If someone describes themselves as an “intellectual”, I cringe, much as I do when I hear someone describe themselves as “a celebrity” or “famous”. I greatly enjoyed reading this description of an intellectual upper class in H.G. Wells’ novel The First Men In The Moon: "These beings with big heads, on whom the intellectual labours fall, form a sort of aristocracy in this strange society, and at the head of them, quintessential of the moon, is that marvellous gigantic ganglion the Grand Lunar... The unlimited development of the minds of the intellectual class is rendered possible by the absence of any bony skull in the lunar anatomy, that strange box of bone that clamps about the developing brain of man, imperiously insisting 'thus far and no farther' to all his possibilities." (H.G. Wells, The First Men in The Moon) By some quirk of fate, Wells’ description finds amusing and contradictory echoes in Noam Chomsky’s analysis of the role of liberal intellectuals in our own society: “... what's not recognised is that the role of the liberal intellectual establishment is to set very sharp bounds on how far you can go - ‘this far, and no further’”. (Chomsky, The Big Idea, BBC2, 1996; http://www.zmag.org/Chomsky/interviews/9602-big-idea.html) In opposition to individual and cultural arrogance, it seems to me a far happier and more rational thing to recognise that the world is full of interesting ways of being - possibilities that may well be improvements on our own - than to think that our culture has all the answers, all the best solutions. It is brutal and foolish to look down on others, to dismiss their ways of living and loving developed over millennia as ’primitive’. Surely all human cultural responses to the extraordinary problem of living - even those we find unpalatable - are worthy of our interest and respect. Certainly, when it comes to evaluating foreign cultures, little is as it seems to our prejudiced eye. During the Vietnam war, the American GIs referred to their Vietnamese enemy as ‘Gooks’, a term that has become synonymous with dehumanising racism. How tragic and poignant that American use of the word in fact originated in the Korean war - ’guk’ is a Korean word which means ’people’. The Koreans call themselves ‘Hangukin’, which means ‘the people of the Han river’. Or to consider an extreme example, could anything be more alien to Westerners than the act of suicide bombing? Although it has almost never been reported, there had never been a suicide bomb attack in Iraq before the 2003 invasion. The UN’s IRIN news network reported on March 8 that a 41 year-old Iraqi woman, Um Abdallah, was learning how to turn herself into a suicide bomber. Revulsion, horror, incomprehension - isn’t her decision the epitome of the ‘alienness’ of foreign culture to many Britons? And yet IRIN fills in some of the background: "Um Abdallah is one of thousands of Iraqis who have lost their relatives in the past four years. Her two boys and one girl were killed during a US military attack in her neighbourhood. "'My husband was killed four months ago by Iraqi forces. Killed alongside him were my son-in-law and his two children. I cannot even remember how many bullets the children had in their bodies,' she said. "She does not know exactly when she is going to detonate herself but she is sure she will be ready whenever she is asked." (IRIN, ‘Killings drive women to become suicide bombers,’ March 8, 2007) Is Um Abdallah really such an alien being? She has lost her sons and daughter, her husband, and other loved ones besides. She has lost everything. Is her response really so impossible to comprehend? Is not our response to wish we could somehow do something to relieve her suffering and protect her from her own plan precisely because her suffering is so comprehensible? And yet, if our media are to be believed, our reaction should simply be one of loathing for this ‘alien’ product of an ‘alien’ culture. So much of what we are taught to hate is actually the product of suffering - real, comprehensible and very human - rather than of some weird, mystical phenomenon called ’evil’. And far too much of that suffering originates with our own lack of compassion, our own system of domination and exploitation preaching hate. As Nietzsche said so well: “Mistrust all in whom the urge to punish is strong!” West Is Best.... Ignored! In 1955, the British governor of Kenya, declared: "The task to which we have set our minds is to civilise a great mass of human beings who are in a very primitive moral and social state." (Quoted, John Pilger, 'Iraq is a War of National Liberation,' The New Statesman, April 15, 2004) In "civilising" the country, the British army killed 10,000 Kenyans for the loss of 32 European lives. In a March 2000 Guardian article, Polly Toynbee wrote in similar vein:
Unfortunately, this arrogance appears to be a common theme among the “beings with big heads, on whom the intellectual labours fall”. Happily, the people that Westerners deem in a “very primitive moral and social state” do not share their view. Historian John Bodley reported: “According to Captain Cook’s account of his first landing on the Australian mainland, Aborigines on the beach totally ignored both his ship and his men until they became obnoxious... a complete lack of interest in white people’s habits, material possessions, and beliefs was characteristic of Aborigines in a variety of contact settings.” (John Bodley, Victims of Progress, Mayfield Publishing, 1982, p.16) In his book Re-Enchantment, Jeffrey Paine described a common Asian view of Westerners in 1912: “Many Asians then thought that white people, though wizards at technology, were otherwise mentally deficient.” (Paine, Re-Enchantment, Norton, 2004, p.31) If ever there was a shocking challenge to some key nose-on-our-face assumptions about the world, then this surely is it. Aren’t Third World people supposed to share Toynbee’s view of the magnificent West? Alas, there is more bad news. Paine added of a particular group of Asians: “Tibetans had tended to view Caucasians as idiot savants, preternaturally good at, say, constructing engines but otherwise dumb to the subtleties of the spirit.” (Ibid, p.56) Tibetan Buddhist teachings, in particular, were deemed completely beyond us: “One does not teach the precious dharma to Westerners,” was the operating assumption. (Ibid p.59) Big ships, big engines, big buildings - small impression! This might seem remarkable at first sight, but actually the reasoning is not so strange - Tibetans appreciated that Westerners were more or less completely bewildered when it came to matters of psychological understanding. Consider, for example, the issue of psychological health and happiness. The Internationally Famous Cabbage Dish In late 2005, I visited South Korea for the first time. I was delighted to sit on floor cushions around low restaurant tables to be confronted by dozens of small dishes of food, most of it unknown, almost all of it devilishly spicy. Equally delightful were the loud noises made by my endlessly polite and kind Korean hosts as they slurped their noodles and guzzled their soup. The part of me that remains forever ten-years-old felt at last vindicated by the fact that a whole society deemed civilised and polite the same behaviour that had earned me fierce looks as a child. Thoreau again: “The greater part of what my neighbours call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behaviour. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?” (Ibid, p.53) I also enjoyed slurping the mysterious, traditional herbal teas with curious objects bobbing about in them; the fruits I’d never seen before; the ornate rice cakes and other mysteries of the ancient Korean culture. I feel there is something heart-warming about seeing difference and thinking: ‘That’s how they like it - that’s what they enjoy,’ even when what they enjoy means nothing to me. I find it wonderful that Koreans are deeply proud of their spicy pickled Chinese cabbage, ‘kimchi’, the national dish. A guide book declares with typically supercharged Korean enthusiasm: “Visitors cannot really say they have been to Korea if they have not tasted kimchi, the internationally famous cabbage dish... These days kimchi is gaining popularity worldwide for its nutritional value and disease-prevention effect.” In Seoul there is even a kimchi museum! (http://www.kimchimuseum.co.kr/english/information.htm) A few years ago I went with my Japanese girlfriend to an English pub for the first time. As we sat down, she took out two small, folded towels and placed them next to her glass on the table - one to wipe her glass, as required, and one to dab her face. The joy of seeing that little ritual carried out in the middle of a spit-and-sawdust pub is exactly what I have in mind. Difference reminds us of the uniqueness of others, of their preciousness, transience, and in fact of their fundamental aloneness in the world. A sense of fellow feeling and compassion can also be found in a sense of unity beneath difference - others may do things differently, but we can understand what it is they like about it; we can empathise with their happiness in doing things ‘just so’ in a way that makes them feel more comfortable in the world. By contrast, there is something depressing and dehumanising about the thought of people as anonymous crowds, as blank “masses” of humanity. I’ve always recoiled from the title of John Carey’s book, The Intellectuals and the Masses. Regardless of the contents of the book, the title always reminds me of the sense, which many “intellectuals” seem to have, that a select few brainy types are real, serious individuals, while the rest of us are mere “masses”, “proletarians”, a kind of human porridge. But what exactly is an “intellectual”? If someone describes themselves as an “intellectual”, I cringe, much as I do when I hear someone describe themselves as “a celebrity” or “famous”. I greatly enjoyed reading this description of an intellectual upper class in H.G. Wells’ novel The First Men In The Moon: "These beings with big heads, on whom the intellectual labours fall, form a sort of aristocracy in this strange society, and at the head of them, quintessential of the moon, is that marvellous gigantic ganglion the Grand Lunar... The unlimited development of the minds of the intellectual class is rendered possible by the absence of any bony skull in the lunar anatomy, that strange box of bone that clamps about the developing brain of man, imperiously insisting 'thus far and no farther' to all his possibilities." (H.G. Wells, The First Men in The Moon) By some quirk of fate, Wells’ description finds amusing and contradictory echoes in Noam Chomsky’s analysis of the role of liberal intellectuals in our own society: “... what's not recognised is that the role of the liberal intellectual establishment is to set very sharp bounds on how far you can go - ‘this far, and no further’”. (Chomsky, The Big Idea, BBC2, 1996; http://www.zmag.org/Chomsky/interviews/9602-big-idea.html) In opposition to individual and cultural arrogance, it seems to me a far happier and more rational thing to recognise that the world is full of interesting ways of being - possibilities that may well be improvements on our own - than to think that our culture has all the answers, all the best solutions. It is brutal and foolish to look down on others, to dismiss their ways of living and loving developed over millennia as ’primitive’. Surely all human cultural responses to the extraordinary problem of living - even those we find unpalatable - are worthy of our interest and respect. Certainly, when it comes to evaluating foreign cultures, little is as it seems to our prejudiced eye. During the Vietnam war, the American GIs referred to their Vietnamese enemy as ‘Gooks’, a term that has become synonymous with dehumanising racism. How tragic and poignant that American use of the word in fact originated in the Korean war - ’guk’ is a Korean word which means ’people’. The Koreans call themselves ‘Hangukin’, which means ‘the people of the Han river’. Or to consider an extreme example, could anything be more alien to Westerners than the act of suicide bombing? Although it has almost never been reported, there had never been a suicide bomb attack in Iraq before the 2003 invasion. The UN’s IRIN news network reported on March 8 that a 41 year-old Iraqi woman, Um Abdallah, was learning how to turn herself into a suicide bomber. Revulsion, horror, incomprehension - isn’t her decision the epitome of the ‘alienness’ of foreign culture to many Britons? And yet IRIN fills in some of the background: "Um Abdallah is one of thousands of Iraqis who have lost their relatives in the past four years. Her two boys and one girl were killed during a US military attack in her neighbourhood. "'My husband was killed four months ago by Iraqi forces. Killed alongside him were my son-in-law and his two children. I cannot even remember how many bullets the children had in their bodies,' she said. "She does not know exactly when she is going to detonate herself but she is sure she will be ready whenever she is asked." (IRIN, ‘Killings drive women to become suicide bombers,’ March 8, 2007) Is Um Abdallah really such an alien being? She has lost her sons and daughter, her husband, and other loved ones besides. She has lost everything. Is her response really so impossible to comprehend? Is not our response to wish we could somehow do something to relieve her suffering and protect her from her own plan precisely because her suffering is so comprehensible? And yet, if our media are to be believed, our reaction should simply be one of loathing for this ‘alien’ product of an ‘alien’ culture. So much of what we are taught to hate is actually the product of suffering - real, comprehensible and very human - rather than of some weird, mystical phenomenon called ’evil’. And far too much of that suffering originates with our own lack of compassion, our own system of domination and exploitation preaching hate. As Nietzsche said so well: “Mistrust all in whom the urge to punish is strong!” West Is Best.... Ignored! In 1955, the British governor of Kenya, declared: "The task to which we have set our minds is to civilise a great mass of human beings who are in a very primitive moral and social state." (Quoted, John Pilger, 'Iraq is a War of National Liberation,' The New Statesman, April 15, 2004) In "civilising" the country, the British army killed 10,000 Kenyans for the loss of 32 European lives. In a March 2000 Guardian article, Polly Toynbee wrote in similar vein: "In our political and social culture we have a democratic way of life which we know, without any doubt at all, is far better than any other in the history of humanity. Even if we don't like to admit it, we are all missionaries and believers that our own way is the best when it comes to the things that really matter." (Toynbee, ‘The West really is the best,’ The Observer, March 5, 2000) Unfortunately, this arrogance appears to be a common theme among the “beings with big heads, on whom the intellectual labours fall”. Happily, the people that Westerners deem in a “very primitive moral and social state” do not share their view. Historian John Bodley reported: “According to Captain Cook’s account of his first landing on the Australian mainland, Aborigines on the beach totally ignored both his ship and his men until they became obnoxious... a complete lack of interest in white people’s habits, material possessions, and beliefs was characteristic of Aborigines in a variety of contact settings.” (John Bodley, Victims of Progress, Mayfield Publishing, 1982, p.16) In his book Re-Enchantment, Jeffrey Paine described a common Asian view of Westerners in 1912: “Many Asians then thought that white people, though wizards at technology, were otherwise mentally deficient.” (Paine, Re-Enchantment, Norton, 2004, p.31) If ever there was a shocking challenge to some key nose-on-our-face assumptions about the world, then this surely is it. Aren’t Third World people supposed to share Toynbee’s view of the magnificent West? Alas, there is more bad news. Paine added of a particular group of Asians: “Tibetans had tended to view Caucasians as idiot savants, preternaturally good at, say, constructing engines but otherwise dumb to the subtleties of the spirit.” (Ibid, p.56) Tibetan Buddhist teachings, in particular, were deemed completely beyond us: “One does not teach the precious dharma to Westerners,” was the operating assumption. (Ibid p.59) Big ships, big engines, big buildings - small impression! This might seem remarkable at first sight, but actually the reasoning is not so strange - Tibetans appreciated that Westerners were more or less completely bewildered when it came to matters of psychological understanding. Consider, for example, the issue of psychological health and happiness. Living Life To The Full Contemporary Western culture assumes that happiness can best be achieved by gathering to ourselves as many pleasurable experiences as possible. When we talk of “making the most of life” and “living life to the full”, we mean a life filled with pleasure. Our focus is therefore, of course, very much externally directed. The psychologist Erich Fromm asked: "What is meant by happiness? Most people today would probably answer the question by saying that to be happy is to have 'fun,' or 'to have a good time'... What does this fun consist in? Going to the movies, parties, ball games, listening to the radio and watching television, taking a ride in the car on Sundays, making love, sleeping late on Sunday mornings, and travelling... we might say that the concept of happiness is, at best, identified with that of pleasure." (Fromm, The Sane Society, Routledge, 2002, p.194) What is so remarkable is that, as we are doing all this, we give barely a thought to the condition of the inner, psychological ‘receptacles’ into which these experiences are, as it were, poured and in which we hope happiness will arise - our minds! How sophisticated would we judge a farmer who eagerly planted seeds without giving a thought to the quality of the soil in which those seeds were sown? Up until quite recently, many people in the West gave little thought even to the importance of physical fitness for health - the concern struck many of us as an effete indulgence, a symptom of hair-shirted hypochondria. But how many people today recognise the need, or even possibility, of maintaining psychological fitness and health beyond taking time out to relax? How many of us even believe it is possible to train our minds, much less for some version of mental or emotional fitness? Neuroscientist Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison comments: “There is a tremendous lacuna in our worldview, where training is seen as important for strength, for physical agility, for athletic ability, for musical ability - for everything +except+ emotions.” (Quoted, Sharon Begley, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, Ballantine, 2007, p.231) As it turns out, for all the accumulation of pleasurable experiences, the Western crop of happiness is blighted by psychological weeds, toxic mental soil and ideational frosts. For the truth is that the untrained human mind is almost guaranteed to be filled with suffering - a statement of obvious fact for many Asians, but an almost meaningless comment in the West. Psychologist Oliver James reports that almost a quarter of Britons currently suffer from serious emotional distress, such as depression and anxiety, and that another quarter are on the verge of such conditions - that‘s half the population! James believes that much of this emotional distress is rooted in what he calls “affluenza”: “It entails placing a high value on acquiring money and possessions, looking good in the eyes of others and wanting to be famous.” (James, Affluenza, Vermilion, 2007, p.vii) These values, in turn, are all oriented towards external pleasurable experiences. So to what extent do they deliver happiness, for example for people who are maximally ‘successful‘? One survey found that over one-third of a sample of super-rich people (those with net wealth of £70 million or more) were less happy than the national average. A second study found no difference between the happiness levels of lottery winners and comparison samples of people with average incomes, or even of paraplegics. (Ibid, p.34) In truth, as the statistics make very clear, we in the West are tormented by the fact that our minds are more or less out of control. Who amongst us has not been kept awake at night by a storm of angry, fearful, craving, jealous, or grieving thoughts? From the moment we wake up, to the moment we fall asleep, day after day, thoughts can completely tyrannise the mind. Our emphasis, in response, tends to be on ‘action’ - by which we mean external action. We believe that doing something, going somewhere, seeing someone, drinking something, can bring peace of mind, control. Quite often none of this really helps. I think one of the most shocking realisations we have as we reach adulthood is the dramatic power of the uncontrolled mind, the sheer intensity of psychological suffering, in the event of some kind of crisis. The feeling that nothing can be done, that we are helpless in the face of our own thoughts - often interpreted in the West as a belief that there’s nothing we can do about ’life’ - is a cause of incalculable misery. But it seems to me that our suffering is pointing us towards a solution. Indeed, I think this is a perfect example of how we can benefit greatly from opening our minds to non-Western cultural solutions. As ever, doing so requires the humility to see that we are not all-powerful, that we do not stride the world as giants among intellectual and cultural pygmies. If we are tormented by uncontrolled thoughts, then perhaps answers can be found by asking the obvious question: Can some kind of control be gained over destructive thoughts? Can something be done? Part 2 will follow shortly... Contemporary Western culture assumes that happiness can best be achieved by gathering to ourselves as many pleasurable experiences as possible. When we talk of “making the most of life” and “living life to the full”, we mean a life filled with pleasure. Our focus is therefore, of course, very much externally directed. The psychologist Erich Fromm asked: "What is meant by happiness? Most people today would probably answer the question by saying that to be happy is to have 'fun,' or 'to have a good time'... What does this fun consist in? Going to the movies, parties, ball games, listening to the radio and watching television, taking a ride in the car on Sundays, making love, sleeping late on Sunday mornings, and travelling... we might say that the concept of happiness is, at best, identified with that of pleasure." (Fromm, The Sane Society, Routledge, 2002, p.194) What is so remarkable is that, as we are doing all this, we give barely a thought to the condition of the inner, psychological ‘receptacles’ into which these experiences are, as it were, poured and in which we hope happiness will arise - our minds! How sophisticated would we judge a farmer who eagerly planted seeds without giving a thought to the quality of the soil in which those seeds were sown? Up until quite recently, many people in the West gave little thought even to the importance of physical fitness for health - the concern struck many of us as an effete indulgence, a symptom of hair-shirted hypochondria. But how many people today recognise the need, or even possibility, of maintaining psychological fitness and health beyond taking time out to relax? How many of us even believe it is possible to train our minds, much less for some version of mental or emotional fitness? Neuroscientist Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison comments: “There is a tremendous lacuna in our worldview, where training is seen as important for strength, for physical agility, for athletic ability, for musical ability - for everything +except+ emotions.” (Quoted, Sharon Begley, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, Ballantine, 2007, p.231) As it turns out, for all the accumulation of pleasurable experiences, the Western crop of happiness is blighted by psychological weeds, toxic mental soil and ideational frosts. For the truth is that the untrained human mind is almost guaranteed to be filled with suffering - a statement of obvious fact for many Asians, but an almost meaningless comment in the West. Psychologist Oliver James reports that almost a quarter of Britons currently suffer from serious emotional distress, such as depression and anxiety, and that another quarter are on the verge of such conditions - that‘s half the population! James believes that much of this emotional distress is rooted in what he calls “affluenza”: “It entails placing a high value on acquiring money and possessions, looking good in the eyes of others and wanting to be famous.” (James, Affluenza, Vermilion, 2007, p.vii) These values, in turn, are all oriented towards external pleasurable experiences. So to what extent do they deliver happiness, for example for people who are maximally ‘successful‘? One survey found that over one-third of a sample of super-rich people (those with net wealth of £70 million or more) were less happy than the national average. A second study found no difference between the happiness levels of lottery winners and comparison samples of people with average incomes, or even of paraplegics. (Ibid, p.34) In truth, as the statistics make very clear, we in the West are tormented by the fact that our minds are more or less out of control. Who amongst us has not been kept awake at night by a storm of angry, fearful, craving, jealous, or grieving thoughts? From the moment we wake up, to the moment we fall asleep, day after day, thoughts can completely tyrannise the mind. Our emphasis, in response, tends to be on ‘action’ - by which we mean external action. We believe that doing something, going somewhere, seeing someone, drinking something, can bring peace of mind, control. Quite often none of this really helps. I think one of the most shocking realisations we have as we reach adulthood is the dramatic power of the uncontrolled mind, the sheer intensity of psychological suffering, in the event of some kind of crisis. The feeling that nothing can be done, that we are helpless in the face of our own thoughts - often interpreted in the West as a belief that there’s nothing we can do about ’life’ - is a cause of incalculable misery. But it seems to me that our suffering is pointing us towards a solution. Indeed, I think this is a perfect example of how we can benefit greatly from opening our minds to non-Western cultural solutions. As ever, doing so requires the humility to see that we are not all-powerful, that we do not stride the world as giants among intellectual and cultural pygmies. If we are tormented by uncontrolled thoughts, then perhaps answers can be found by asking the obvious question: Can some kind of control be gained over destructive thoughts? Can something be done? Part 2 will follow shortly... www.medialens.org |
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