Gandhi’s Followers: Barefoot Mahatma Followers Undermining Capitalism

Gandhi’s Followers: Barefoot Mahatma Followers Undermining Capitalism

RT (2019)

Film Review

This is an odd documentary that tours India “to hear from Gandhi’s modern day disciples.” The title is misleading. I honestly can’t see any way the groups the filmmakers visit are undermining capitalism, especially the group “Bikers Against Animal Cruelty.” The latter use Harley Davidson motorcycle tours to educate high school students about the life and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi.

In my view it’s more accurate to describe the activist groups depicted as working to undermine India’s devotion to global consumerism. All have a strong focus on voluntary simplicity and care of the poor – both heavily promoted by Gandhi.

I also question filmmaker claims attributing the British decision to quit India to Gandhi’s nonviolent campaign for independence. The nonviolent resistance practiced by Gandhi and his supporters occurred in conjunction with a parallel independence movement that included violent tactics such as bombing, targeted assassination, riots and looting. I suspect that latter were far more influential in persuading the British to leave.

Likewise the far majority of Gandhi followers in the film wear shoes.

 

 

Culture Jamming: The Grassroots War Against Mind Control

Culture Jam: Hijacking Commercial Culture

Directed by Jill Sharpe (2001)

Film Review

Culture Jam is one of my favorite documentaries of all time. It describes a guerilla movement which started in the 1970s and was popularized by the Billboard Liberation Front. The goal of culture jamming is to counter pervasive the consumerist messaging in contemporary society.

The movement came to wide public attention with the publication of Canadian anarchist Kalle Lasn’s 1999 book Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America and the launch of  Adbusters magazine

The main focus of the Billboard Liberation Front was to covertly “improve” on billboard advertising to help it more accurately reflect post industrial capitalism. Some examples below:

Other culture jammers featured in the film include a woman who operates solo pasting anti-consumerist stickers on cash machines and other high traffic targets and Reverend Billy from the Church of Stop Shopping. Filmmakers capture Reverend Billy and his flock praying with Disney Store customers in Times Square to help them resist their compulsion to purchase new Disney products.

The film, which can’t be embedded for copyright reasons, can be viewed free at Culture Jam

The Psychosis Called Consumerism

Consumed: Inside the Belly of the Beast

Richard Heap (2011)

Film Review

Consumed is a British documentary about the psychological basis of what the filmmakers call the “weird mental illness called consumerism” and “a kind of collective psychosis in which people value acquiring objects more than their children, partners or friends.” The film maintains that there are unique evolutionary features in the human species that make us uniquely susceptible to pro-consumption messaging.

The documentary begins by emphasizing the grave implications of “unfettered” consumerism on humankind’s ability to survive on this planet – both from the perspective of ecosystem destruction and growing resource scarcity.

They go on to analyze the primary biological drives that underlie most human behavior: the drive to survive and the drive to reproduce. Most marketing is deliberately aimed towards the latter. People who lack confidence in their ability to attract a mate are bombarded with messaging that they can increase their prestige and status by acquiring specific products.

As people get older, they realize this thinking is delusional: a new Porsche doesn’t make someone fall in love with you as a person. People who hook up with you for your car eventually get bored and leave.

Young people, however, are incredibly susceptible to the pro-consumption delusion. This is why billions are spent on marketing to kids from the moment of birth. Getting pre-teens and teens to think about mating early is also incredibly effective in capturing more of their money (as well as their parents’).

Consumed also examines our psychological disconnection from nature and why this has allowed us to become so indifferent to the environmental devastation caused by our consumption patterns.

The behavioral scientists Heap interviews differ on whether the sustainability movement can save the human species. They all agree it’s pointless to look to politicians – the very epitome of pathological narcissism – for a solution. Several are pessimistic that Transition Towns and similar sustainability-related groups can save us without addressing the root cause of the crisis: our psychology.

Others are more optimistic. Pointing to the 200+ million years humans survived without a multitude of consumer goods, they argue that learning to understand our psychological make-up can help us be less vulnerable to constant pro-consumption messaging.

Did Global Economic Growth End 15 Years Ago?

According to London Broker, Global Economy is Shrinking

The main premise of Life After Growth: How the Global Economy Really Works – and Why 200 Years of Growth are Over  is that global economic growth has ended. Western governments conceal this fact through debt creation, inflation and clever manipulation of statistical economic indicators. According to Tim Morgan, leading analyst at the London financial brokerage Tullett Prebon, economic growth ended in 2000 and the economy has been shrinking ever since.

Morgan attributes the end of global economic growth to the high cost of fossil fuels.* This is because the real economy (which many people confuse with the financial economy) is a direct function of surplus energy. In pre-agricultural times, there was no energy surplus: human beings derived exactly the same amount of energy from their food as they expended acquiring it. With the advent of farming, they managed to produce a small surplus of energy that enabled a small minority to engage in work other than food production.

In the 18th century the invention of the heat engine enabled surplus energy (and the real economy) to grow exponentially over the next 200 years. Now that the cheap fossil fuel has been used up, our energy surplus is declining. This, in turn, is reflected in the gradual shrinkage of the global economy.

Measuring Surplus Energy

Energy surplus is measured as EROEI (Energy Returned Over Energy Invested), the ratio between the energy produced and the energy consumed in the extraction or production process. 1930s oil fields had an EROEI of 100:1. Once the easily accessible oil was used up, the EROEI began to decline. It was 30:1 in 2000 and it declines by about 2% a year. In 2014 it stood at 14:1. Unconventional oil sources have an extremely low EROEI (eg tar sands and fracked shale oil have an EROEI of 3:1).**

Declining EROEI’s are always accompanied by a spike in oil prices. This translates into higher prices for everything, due to the energy required for food production and manufacturing. Owing to higher prices, people consume less and the economy slows.

Globalization Has Been Extremely Damaging

Morgan is highly critical of politicians who fail to distinguish between the real economy of goods and services and the shadow economy of money and finance. He also feels globalization and rampant consumerism have been extremely damaging to the real economy. The mistake western countries made with globalization was reducing their production without reducing consumption. Instead they increased consumption levels by increasing borrowing and debt. Globalization was extremely beneficial for banks, due to the voracious demand for their product (loans). Meanwhile the diversion of large sums from production to the finance sector – aggravated by consumerism and the rise of consumer debt – hastened the decline of the real economy.

This wholesale debt creation and the widening split between the real economy and the financial economy is largely reflected in inflation and the destruction of the value of money. The US dollar lost 87% of its purchasing power between 1962 and 2012, which the government systematically conceals through misreporting of key economic indicators.

All economies function best when the financial economy coincides with the real economy. At present the primary methods of debt destruction are quantitative easing*** and inflation (it’s always easier to repay debts with devalued money). Other methods in the wings are cuts in pensions and Social Security payments and eventually bank failures and government defaults. Morgan feels that resource poor countries like Japan and the UK are at highest risk for default.

How Governments Lie with Statistics

My favorite chapter details the decades of statistical manipulations that have made government indicators of inflation, growth, output, debt and unemployment totally meaningless. John Kennedy was the first to exclude “discouraged” workers (who weren’t actively seeking work) from the unemployment rate. Johnson was the first to conceal the size of the government deficit by including the Social Security surplus in the federal budget. Nixon was the first to exclude energy and food costs (which rise the fastest) from core inflation calculations.

I was most shocked to learn that 16% of GDP consists of “imputations” or dollars that don’t actually exist. The largest single imputation the US government adds is “owner equivalent” rent. This is an amount equivalent to the rent all rent homeowners would have to pay if they didn’t own their own home. In 2011, this added up to $1.2 billion (out of a total GDP of $12.7 trillion).

The second largest imputation involves non-cash benefits employers give their workers (medical insurance, meals, accommodation, etc) and free banking services.

The US Government is Technically Bankrupt

This over-reporting of GDP, combined with under-reporting of inflation, makes it appear that the US economy is growing when it’s not. .

Morgan estimates that as of 2011 true US debt (government, business and personal) was 449% of GDP. Technically this means the US is insolvent as collective liabilities far exceed any realistic prediction of future income.

Politicians Need to Stop Lying

Morgan maintains that industrialized societies urgently need to living with less surplus energy. Rather than continuing to delude themselves (and us), our political leaders must face up to the reality that our claims on future energy surpluses (aka debt) are totally unrealistic.

They need to end globalization and rampant consumerism and enact policies (support for renewable energy, public transport and strong local economies) that will help people adapt to the new economic reality.

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*Most analysts predict oil prices will return to $100+ a barrel in June 2015, once the US surplus is used up.
**Some other EROEI’s (for the sake of comparison):
• Coal 8:1
• Solar PVC panels 8:1
• Solar concentrating power: 17:1
• Large hydro generation: 22:1
• Small hydrogenation 32:1
• Landfill/sewage gas cogeneration 40:1
• Onshore wind 20:1
*** Quantitative easing (QE) is an unconventional form of monetary policy where a Central Bank creates new money electronically to buy financial assets, like government bonds. This differs from conventional money creation, in which private banks create money out of thin air as new loans (see An IMF Proposal to Ban Banks from Issuing Money).

Also published in Veterans Today

How Communities Awaken

Community: The Structure of Belonging

By Peter Brock

Berret-Koehler Publishers, Inc (2008)

Book Review – Part I

“How Communities Awaken” is the title of a master class I’m taking through a local Maori social services agency. Our main textbook is Peter Brock’s Community: The Structure of Belonging. We meet every two weeks to do small group work around six “conversations” Brock prescribes as essential to transforming fragmented communities.

Peter Brock is one of a growing number of community strategists dedicated to reducing alienation and apathy by getting people more involved in their communities. In Community: the Structure of Belonging, he maintains that 1) our collective loss of power in contemporary society is a direct result of the breakdown of our communities, 2) the only way to regain this power is to restore citizen engagement in community life and 3) most groups and agencies designed to relive “political suffering” (i.e. poverty, inequality, unemployment and the multiple crises involving housing, education transportation, drug abuse, binge drinking, family violence and at-risk youth) fail because they buy into the patriarchal consumer model imposed on us by wider society.

Brock asserts that the consumer society causes most people to see themselves as passive consumers rather than engaged citizens – that this causes them to see their political and community leaders as delivering a product, with their own role limited to critiquing the product. The purpose of this book is to lay out specific strategies to lift us out of our role as passive consumers of government.

While I partially agree with premises two and three, I totally disagree with premise one. I find to hard to ignore substantial evidence that Wall Street Banksters, the Koch brothers, the Walton family (who own WalMart) and other corporate players have colluded to deliberately strip us of this power. Brock makes absolutely no mention of this. In fact, he dismisses activists who complain about “external” causes of powerlessness as playing the “blame game,” which he describes as a “delightful escape from the unbearable burden of being accountable.”*

I‘m also concerned by his glaring omission of the role the corporate public relations industry plays in constantly bombarding us with fearful, competitive, individualistic and pro-consumption messaging (see The Science of Thought Control).

In my view, this constant barrage of propaganda and disinformation – and the pernicious passivity and apathy resulting from it – is the main obstacle we face to organizing against corporate fascism. That being said, I strongly agree with Brock’s view that the only way to overcome this passivity and apathy is by re-engaging in the community groups and activities – both political and non-political – that our parents and grandparents enjoyed.

I haven’t found New Zealand that much different than the US in this regard. Although there are huge advantages to not living in a military empire (see The Sacrifices of Empire), most New Zealanders seem to be trapped in the same cycle of consumption, debt and overwork. Like Americans, they are depressed, anxious, apathetic and disengaged from community life and the political process. Voluntarism has declined steeply, particularly among young people, and a growing number of Kiwis don’t vote.**

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*Turnout remains much better here than in the US. In NZ 77% is considered a poor turnout. In the US 60% is considered a good turnout.
** Brock’s equally dismissive of organized protest and “speaking truth to power,” which he belittles as a “complaint session in evening clothes.” He adds, “Any time we act in reaction, even to evil, we are giving power to what we are in reaction to.” I can agree that it’s more effective to focus on building positive institutions than reacting to negative ones. However we are all trained, as part of our indoctrination, to blame ourselves if for our personal, social and financial failures. The only way I know to get people to quit blaming themselves for the misery they experience in corporate society is to demonstrate that their so-called “personal” problems have a social and political cause.
To be continued with a critique of the specific strategies Brock proposes.

 

None But Ourselves Can Free Our Minds

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds – Bob Marley, “Redemption Song”

Bob Marley tells us to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, and it appears people are finally taking his advice. Throughout the industrial world, young people especially are refusing to be sucked in by the constant individualistic pro-consumption messaging. It turns out this ideological strait jacket (see Public Relations, Disinformation and Social Control) we all wear to some extent is incredibly superficial. Given the right circumstances, it totally unravels. The corporate elite is fully aware of the global awakening that is undermining their ability to control us ideologically. In my view, this explains their growing reliance on the military and militarized police to suppress dissent.

Why Now?

One of the most valuable lessons I learned from emigrating to New Zealand concerns my own indoctrination with American individualist, exceptionalist ideology. When people are exposed to different cultures, ethnicities and philosophies – through education, travel or community engagement – it doesn’t take long to realize that all the pro-capitalist jingoism that’s been rammed down our throats is nothing but a pack of lies.

Intense personal crisis can also lead people to reject their basic ideological programming. A continuing economic crisis leaving millions struggling with joblessness, homeless, depression, suicide ideation and marital breakdown has been a major force leading people to reject the pro-corporate ideology that’s been drummed into them.

Civic engagement and community building activities that Susan Clark and Woden Teachout write about in Slow Democracy: Rediscovering Community and Bringing Decision Making Back Home can have a similar effect. In Sacred Economics, Charles Eisenstein writes of a profound inner emptiness that can never be satisfied – an emptiness stemming from the breakdown of social networks human beings have relied on for most of our 250,000 year existence. People respond to pro-consumption messaging in a desperate attempt to fill this void.

The global relocalization movement Clark and Teachout refer to directly addresses this emptiness by working to rebuild neighborhood and community networks. Here in New Plymouth, it has been totally awe inspiring to watch the natural high people experience from engaging in group effort for the first time. In case after case, the biological reward for collaborative effort far exceeds the fleeting pleasure of purchasing yet another consumer product, no matter how expensive or glamorous.

New Plymouth’s Relocalization Movement

Here in New Plymouth, a loosely knit Community Circle of 50 or so “active citizens” has taken up the challenge of rebuilding our neighborhood and community networks and civic organizations. Working through a variety of local groups, our projects range from organizing neighborhood barbecues and street parties, to simple street reclaiming projects (to reduce car traffic) to assisting specific neighborhoods in building Superhoods by setting up food, tool-sharing and cooperative childcare schemes and neighborhood crisis management plans (for emergencies such as earthquake, tsunami, floods, and flu epidemics) preparedness.

The Superhood neighborhood rebuild on Pendarves Street received financial support from New Plymouth District Council (thanks to a government grant NPDC and stakeholder groups applied for to increase walking and cycle). In another Superhood, like-minded neighbors actively recruit friends and acquaintances to purchase empty homes as they go up for sale.

Below an Australian example of neighbors working together to build a Superhood:

photo credit: danny.hammontree via photopin cc

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Public Relations, Disinformation and Social Control

Edward Bernays

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds – Bob Marley, “Redemption Song”

Public relations is the polite term for the systematic dissemination of propaganda and disinformation by corporations and the corporate-controlled state. The crude psychological manipulation in most advertising, which appeals to deep insecurities, is ridiculously obvious. TV viewers are told constantly that they’re lonely and sexually frustrated, as well as too old, too ugly and too fat, to pressure them to buy products they neither want nor need.

People are less likely to recognize that all mass media (e.g. movies, TV programming, newspapers, magazines, etc) employs subtle psychological messaging that shapes shape the way we view ourselves, other people and the world at large.

To be effective, any movement seeking lasting political change must address the ideological strait jacket all of us wear to some extent. The good new is that the pro-capitalist indoctrination we’re meant to live by is surprisingly superficial. Under the right circumstances, it can totally unravel. At this very moment young people throughout the industrialized world are waking up and refusing to be taken in by it.

Edward Bernays: Father of Public Relations

Thanks to Edward Bernays, known as the father of public relations, an artificial capitalist ideology has emerged that enables the corporate state to use psychological manipulation, rather than brute force, to control us. This competitive, individualistic pro-consumption ideology is totally at odds with biological programming that has hardwired us to be social animals.*

Competitive individualism holds that all human achievement results from superior individual effort, which directly contradicts historical evidence revealing that all major inventions and discoveries stem from cooperation and collaboration. We’re also conditioned to believe that concepts such as class, society and community are nonexistent – that all social problems, such as poverty, joblessness and homelessness stem from individual failings. Because America is the richest, cleanest, fairest country in the world, any problems we experience must be of own doing.

We are simultaneously bombarded with messaging sowing distrust between young and old, between men and women, between different ethnicities and between straight and gay. Messaging that encourages us to blame convenient scapegoats for economic and social problems – Muslims, feminists, welfare queens, Jews and red necks. Instead of the true culprit: a corporate elite that’s robbing us blind.

Our Fabricated Lifestyle

After nearly a hundred years this careful mental programming, reinforced by schools, universities and middle class helping professionals, has facilitated the breakdown of family and social networks. A traditional lifestyle centered around close family and community has been replaced by a fabricated lifestyle based on continual consumption, low wages and debt-slavery, as people work ever longer hours to pay off debt.

With the breakdown of traditional family and social networks, people must purchase services (e.g. child and senior care, meal preparation, mending, simple repairs) friends and neighbors used to provide for free. Social isolation and loneliness have become epidemic as people struggle to survive in the absence of social connections we’re biologically programmed to seek out.

The PR industry plays on our feelings of emptiness and discontent by trying to sell us yet more products. In Sacred Economics, Charles Eisenstein writes of a profound inner emptiness that can never be satisfied – an emptiness born out of the breakdown of social networks human have relied on for most of our 250,000 year existence.

Taking the Risk Out of Democracy

As the late Australian psychological Alex Carey describes in Taking the Risk Out of Democracy, Woodrow Wilson first hired Bernays in 1914 to convince a strongly anti-war American public that they should commit sons and tax dollars for a European war that had no direct impact on their own lives. His success in selling World War I led Bernays to coin the term public relations and set himself up as a public relations counselor. Among others, his clients would include corporate giants like Standard Oil, General Electric, the American Tobacco Company, United Fruit Company, CBS and Proctor and Gamble. As Carey describes, in 1919 the National Association of Manufacturers hired him to (successfully) reverse strong pro-union sentiment when steel workers struck for the right to bargain collectively.

Bernays published his seminal book Propaganda in 1928. During the 1930s he assisted Alcoa Aluminum in persuading American doctors and dentists that the toxic waste sodium fluoride improved dental health. In the mid to late thirties he was deeply influenced by the work of Hitler’s Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. In 1954 Bernays’s propaganda campaign for the United Fruit Company laid the groundwork for the CIA overthrow of Guatemala’s democratically elected government.

 The Rise of Consumerism

The work of Bernays and his successors would also lead to the rise of American consumerism – the transformation of Americans from active involved citizens to passive consumers. As Betty Friedan describes in the Feminist Mystique, the earliest pro-consumption messages were directed towards women. Working class women have always contributed to household income – if not through formal employment, by renting out rooms, taking in laundry or performing children. Moreover working class families tended to share washing machines, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and other home appliances when they first came on the market. The PR industry had to discourage this trend to promote sales. They did so be creating a feminine mystique that measured a woman’s femininity by her ability to attract a man wealthy enough to provide her with her very own home appliances. And a color TV, hi-fi stereo and new family car every year.

*Within the human brain, complex neural networks reward us with powerful “feel good” substances, such as endorphins and oxytocin. Thanks to these substances and “mirror neurons” (believed to be the biological basis of empathy), human beings have met their basic needs through close knit social networks for most of their 250,000 year history.

To be continued, with signs our ideological programming is starting to break down.

photo credit: Stéfan via photopin cc