Culture and Art
By Les Blough, Editor. Axis of Logic.
When most people think of attacks on other countries by the United States, their thoughts turn to missiles, bombs and soldiers. When they think of the victims of those invasions and occupations, their thoughts turn to the injured, the dead and some remember their grieving families. But what receives little press coverage are other kinds of invasion by the U.S., Britain, Israel and their international crime partners. These invasions are executed with the weapons of media.
Attacks on national economies by means of transnational corporations, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are one form of non-military attack on other countries. Another is the subject of this essay -the invasions of family and community structures, traditional values and culture. These are primarily carried out by the media, educational institutions and propaganda arms of NGOs.
Properly understood, all these forms of invasion emanate from the capitalist system. The capitalist system not only places a higher value on monetary profit than on social institutions, it also has an interest in their destruction. This can be seen in the capitalist destruction of traditional values abroad and even more thoroughly in the United States. We will first look at the latter of the two.
Targeting traditional values
This process of production and marketing necessarily has a corrupting influence on culture, systematically replacing traditional values with raw materialism. A Mennonite sociologist once wrote a book on the interior of Amish culture in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Because he was a Mennonite, he had a rare opportunity to conduct his research inside a thriving Amish community in Lancaster County. In one meeting with an Amish Elder the conversation went something like this:
“The English (i.e. non Amish) think it very strange that your community does not permit telephones, credit, pneumatic tires on vehicles, paint on your houses, electricity or even curtains on your windows. Why are these not permitted?”
The Amish elder responded with a smile,
“Well, if we had telephones, we would call one another on the wire and we wouldn’t take time to visit in our homes. We don’t have credit because we think usury is wrong and if we buy something on credit, it really doesn’t belong to us. If we had pneumatic tires, we would drive by a neighbor’s house at 50 mph and wave at them when passing as they sit on the front porch. In a horse and buggy, we stop and visit as we pass their house. Without electricity, we are off the grid and not dependent on people we do not know and we like the more relaxed pace and and ambience of lighting the oil lamps in the evening. If we began to paint our houses, we would begin to compete on whose house looks better, creating conflict in our community. As it is, keeping our houses and barns clean and in good condition and good work is sufficient for contentment in our lives. We don’t have curtains on our windows because we have nothing to hide from our neighbors. This way of living gives us a sense of freedom from things.”
Consumerism as a Religion
In the United States, materialism is the religion and shopping malls are the churches – all 46,000 of them. Consumerism is the liturgy and the prayer is the longing for more things. The worshippers earn the money and pay the bills when they come due. Finance capital makes the whole enterprise possible.
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