Posts Tagged ‘ Power Complex ’

External Forces are Now In Control

What do I mean by this? I mean people are no longer in control of their world – instead, their world controls them. We can no longer imagine what inside forces or internally-directed individuals or social movements, could be. Because these have been destroyed completely. Everyone lives in fear of being discovered – just the opposite of the normal situation.

In this situation it is worthwhile to consider what is real and what is not. Not too long ago this would have been a foolish question: what is is simply what is and it is bombarding us with its presence continuously. But most of these sensory and emotional impacts are no longer felt; we have restricted ourselves to one kind of input: the image on a screen or display.

Everything else is seen as happening on a virtual screen in our minds. Only it is real, and there is nothing behind it. People have become consumers, reacting to these images.

It is instructive to trace this development, which started with the invention of photography in the middle of the 19th Century. Immediately photographs became more real than the reality they imaged. Reality had been condensed into an image on a surface – automatically! This was much better than a painting, which was produced by a human. The external force (a technical process which controlled human events) had made its first appearance.

This was soon combined with printing, and every newspaper had to have its photograph, front and center. One photograph could be reproduced millions of times. This was power! People noticed, and were influenced.

Moving pictures were next – and their influence was hypnotic. People could sit for hours in a darkened theater and watch the image on the silver screen – bigger that life! The addition of sound made it much more powerful – and the lives of their movie stars became more important than their own. The external force had become a world of its own – the real world, as they saw it.

But this was nothing. The advent of television quickly took over – and soon became the new reality – and is still our dominate one. McLuhan said “The medium is the message,” and the medium was the television screen. As far as the public was concerned, there was nothing behind this screen, and this seemed perfectly natural. As far as business was concerned, it was perfect way to manipulate the masses – and they set about doing just that.

But this was nothing, by comparison to what came next – a something that is still happening. The computer/software/internet made a new power structure possible.

Here again, as far as the masses are concerned, everything happens on a magical surface – that of a computer display (preferably a hand-held one).

Behind these displays, powerful (even global) interconnected forces are at work – but they too are controlled by forces they do not understand.

2011
05/08
CATEGORY
Business
Economy
Entertainment
Technology
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The Good Society, or the Powerful Society?

There is no question which one we prefer –  we are not even sure if a good society is something we should work towards – if there isn’t any way to do such a thing, why even try to do it?

When it comes to power, however, we are clearly in favor of it – whether we can understand it or not. Power is simply power over someone else  - which we are eager for, morality or not.

Humanism was one of the founding principles of modern society. Basically, it felt that everyone was valuable in their own right. And society should help everyone to develop his abilities without discrimination. Naturally there would be conflicts, but these could be worked out by reasonable people.

Instead, society has become stratified – with a few getting the most. This is most clearly seen in the new structures of power which have taken over society: business (a hierarchical society in spades) has taken over everything. It has all the power.

The people have lost their power without realizing it – at the same time they lost their interest in a good society.

2011
05/06
CATEGORY
Morality
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The Modern Face of Evil

I am watching the movie Inside Job, and I am learning from it. I am watching the handful of guys who wrecked the world’s economy profess to be innocent as lambs. What I couldn’t see was the millions of people who let them get away with it.

The modern face of evil is helplessness in the face of power – and people who are only interested in themselves. People who have lost the ability to be good – or to care for others. People who have ceased to exist – because this is what the loss of moral ability amounts to. People whose minds have ceased to function.

The movie provides a startling example: Iceland. Here was a people with everything – but the ability to see this modern form of evil. Have they learned their lesson? If so, I haven’t heard about it. This inability has become so widespread it has become invisible – which gives it complete protection.

Its first act on assuming power was to destroy its natural enemies: moral people. People sold their souls to the devil to obtain a temporary economic advantage here, and a temporary economic advantage there. Advantages that were never relinquished. They traded themselves for better jobs, new cars, a home in the suburbs. Above all, the chance to be like everyone else. And considered it a good bargain.

Something else was involved too: technology. It made the power complex (the modern expression of evil) possible. People and their technologies are the same thing, both effect each other in ways impossible to understand. But the end result is easy enough to understand: the end of the world.

They destroyed the world in the hopes of getting a better one – which never materialized. In the process they lost something they could not recover: their selves.

2011
04/26
CATEGORY
Economy
Morality
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Democracy Without People

If there are no people, as I indicated in my last posting America is No Longer For the People, democracy is another matter. It becomes a negotiation (sometimes a struggle) between the forces that are left. Forces that have always existed, but were subordinate to the forces of democracy when it was in existence. Forces that eliminated the people first so they would then be able to reassert themselves.

I have made them more intelligent than they were. In practice, the process was simple: they gradually became more and more powerful (the railroads, for example), and people became used to this shift in power. How could they stop it?  They did try, anyway. Government action against the business trusts was brisk, and the union movement was strong.

This ended late in the 20th Century with the onslaught of the latest technologies: television and the computer (actually, the computer/software/internet). Television controlled the masses, and digital technology integrated all organizations into a massive power complex: a monarchy without a monarch.

Power had become so well organized it could function without one. It could purchase all the intellectuals it needed, and plenty of temporary movements and leaders were eager to support it – including organizations, such as the Democratic Party – who continued to talk the right talk, while walking the wrong walk.

The people cannot see the power complex, even though it is staring them in the face. They still think they are in power, when they are not. They no longer exist as a political force.

2011
04/17
CATEGORY
Business
Economy
History
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America is No Longer For the People

And the people in it do not find this alarming. Importance has moved elsewhere, and they find this natural. After all, they are not important, in themselves. They are only important as part of something larger – something closely associated with money and its making – and with the exercise of power.

Americans are the first people in history to concentrate on other things so much they forgot they were people – and don’t realize what a shocking situation this is.

They say people are important (of course) – but other things are too. Making people more important than these other things would be dangerous. Without specifying what these other things are – or what the danger is.

What I believe they are saying (without coming right out and saying so) is that people are now less important than almost anything else – and that we should not worry about them.

2011
04/16
CATEGORY
Business
Economy
History
Morality
The Self
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Small Power

Small forms of power, of any form, have virtually vanished in America – the land where everything has to be BIG to exist at all.

The extreme example, which used to be common, was the small business. Every small town was full of them (mom and pop grocery stores, for example) – and in the country too, with its family farms. This was a way of life many people liked very much: economic independence in an community of other economically independent people.  This was the American Way of Life, as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson. What happened to it?

No one knows – somehow it just disappeared, and people don’t want to know why, because that kind of knowing would be too painful.

What happened, as I see it, was this:  not only did the small businesses disappear, but the persons who ran them have also disappeared – because they no longer fit into the new structure of power: the power complex, which is HUGE – and hugely destructive of independence itself.

Let me approach this subject from two angles: from my father’s perspective as a small businessman in a small town in the Fifties – and from what is going on at the opposite end of the spectrum: in the chaotic world of Silicon Valley at the present.

My father was a small businessman – he had to be, because he could never work for anyone else. He would rather die first. As a young man, he became interested in photography, and ended up buying a photography studio in his home town back in Iowa in the Thirties. I was a Depression baby, and Dad rode a bicycle back and forth from our home to his studio every day.

Then WWII came along and made him rich – along with many others. We could afford the best automobile available: a Mercury station-wagon. But times were changing, and small businesses were disappearing – as did Dad’s studio. A photography studio back than was a different kind of business: the photographer did everything, mixed his own chemicals, developed his own film and paper, and even made his picture frames.

My uncle owned the Ft. Madison Feed and Seed and he did everything too, as did another friend who owned a hardware store. All of which were thriving in the Forties – but no longer exist. A whole way of life has disappeared, and Ft. Madison became part of the Rust Belt, where people have to scramble to get any job they can. Quite a contrast to a town that had several major industrial employers (lots of jobs) – and small businesses of every kind. A place where anyone with any hustle at all could do well.

I am now going to change the scene to what is going on in Silicon Valley now – where a greater contrast could not be imagined. Hustle is all over the place, but independence has vanished. In theory, everything is the same: clever entrepreneurs are getting ahead. In practice, everything has changed: entrepreneurs are working their butts off, trying to build companies and getting nowhere. The big companies keep getting bigger, and the small companies (and even many of the big ones) are vanishing.

You can drive down a road in any industrial park – and if you have been there long enough, you can recite the occupants for most of the buildings – one company after the other. The great and powerful have fallen – and everyone else too. Workers flit from job to job, lucky to stay for more than a few years. Being in-between-jobs is a common condition – and some people have just given up and gone back home.

When Silicon Valley began, success stories were common – Hewlett-Packard being a prime example – and jobs (high-paying jobs) were everywhere. No longer. I know plenty of engineers who tried to start their own business – but didn’t even get to First Base. Startups come and go like wildflowers in the Spring. Everyone is trying desperately to get rich (sometimes by the most devious means imaginable) but getting nowhere. Like Alice in Wonderland: you have to run like hell just to stay in one place. Wages are going down – not up. And everything is being outsourced.

To reiterate what should be obvious: economic independence is impossible – completely impossible. People who do come up with their own take on things are snapped up – and then dropped. There are exceptions of course, there always are, but in general you have to have a thick skin to survive. This is no place for the sensitive and perceptive – the people who are needed most to end the madness.

But the big, big problem is this: people are realizing that this way of life (running on a treadmill as fast at they can) is not getting them anywhere. They are asking “Is this life?”

2011
04/16
CATEGORY
Business
Economy
History
Technology
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Incompetence is Built into the Power Structure

Americans usually unaware of the existence of the power structure that rules their lives. If I start talking about it, all I get is blank looks – which, in turn amazes me. How can they be uninterested in power – who has it, and where it is, and how it operates?

Perhaps history has an answer. America was formed in response to the European monarchies – the power structures of their time. They were keenly aware of them at the time – and proud of their break with them. But have since forgotten everything about them, and assumed that they just disappeared.

What happened was inevitable: America developed its own power structures to replace them. Society cannot exist in a power vacuum – as every politician and businessman knows. They all competed to get the most power – using whatever methods they could – often not so savory ones. The Railroads at one time were America – as Lincoln, a successful railroad lawyer, knew all too well.

I am listening to a book about the Civil War: 1861. What struck me, and everybody else, was the spectacular incompetence of the Northern Military to deal with the war that was looming. The Northern generals, once the war started, were useless. Most of the talent, including General Lee, had defected to the South. Corruption in the North was spectacular by any standards.

The North had only two things: more industry (more money, that is) and the determination of Lincoln.

What, you might ask, has that to do with now? Everything – except we now have a power structure that includes everything: the military contractors (as always), the Pentagon, the rest of the government, the media (completely owned by the corporations, who also have all the jobs), the educational establishment, the Financial Industry (the banks), and the penal/security apparatus (that houses a fair number of the population, and is spying on everything that is going on). This is power with a capital P.

One of its insidious effects was that people felt overwhelmed by all this power, and were afraid to oppose it and assert their existence, and their rights. They were no longer individuals, but consumers.

What happens in this power structure (a power complex, really) is the same thing that always happens: power struggles. The people who win these power struggles are good at one thing: winning power struggles. But usually not anything else.

The result: nearly universal incompetence.

2011
04/15
CATEGORY
History
Sociology
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The Ubiquity of the Social Network

My scripture this morning is from James S. Hans’ The Question of Value, page 162. This is my third pass through this section, and I am determined to get it down.

I have two criticisms of this guy, the brightest person I know: (1) he doesn’t appreciate the impact of technology – something Lewis Mumford is much better at; and (2) he doesn’t realize that people no longer exist. To be fair, I have a hard time with this last point myself – and keep asking myself: if they are not people, what are they? I cannot come up with a word that satisfies me. It will no doubt take future generations to understand this phenomena - and to name it – if there are still generations around.

It seems to me, to make an extreme simplification, that Computers Have Taken the Place of People . And this should be the realization we should start from.

But we should also make it clear how this technology has affected society in two ways: (1) by integrating all the power structures in the more advanced countries to make local power complexes and (2) integrating all the economies in the world (globalization). The social network has been replaced by the Internet, a technical network. In the process people have disappeared, because they are no longer necessary – or even desirable. It takes some work to dig this out of Hans. The following is an example of his brilliant writing (on page 165):

We are masters of the anxious moment, the aporias of boredom, the never-ending sequence of disappointment and reversal; we have probed the interstices of these orientations like true devotees and pride ourselves on our ability to bear the pain we have engendered and so fully exploited…We make use of them simply because they are an essential aspect of the narcissism through which our values have come to be defined.

Ouch! It is hard for me to admit he is right. But I have a contribution to make too – as I said above.

2011
04/14
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
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Our Escape From Equality

Man has lived in unequal (stratified) societies for most of his existence. It seems to be his normal way of life, and he longs to return to it. True, he often resents this inequality, and may even fight against it on occasion. But an equal society has proved too difficult to maintain, and he is abandoning it.

In the past, Americans had an optimistic view: one that maintains that man is ever improving, and ever more willing to improve the lot of the whole of mankind. This is obviously not the case. Man is not capable of much improvement, and may even be in the process of destroying himself.

The history of America in the 19th Century, which included the Civil War, was a good example of this. America’s ideals were compromised; the Philippines were colonized; and industrialization was rampant.

In our better moments, ideals such as equality have great appeal. But these moments pass, and normal conditions return. The rich get richer, and the poor have children.

The drive towards inequality is powerful, fueled by the rich and powerful – and by the many who see an easy way to power by joining them (the military, for example). And by those who want someone above them to admire and worship.

The drive towards equality is difficult; it is opposed violently by the powerful, which are well-organized. And its benefits are easily forgotten.

But most importantly, the present power complex has assumed power so gradually and insidiously, and has eliminated the people in its power so completely, that no one is capable of noticing what is going on. The people who are reading this are no doubt asking themselves “What is this power complex Hal is ranting about?” And go right ahead with business as normal.

They may have vaguely uncomfortable feelings that something is wrong – or even passionately involved in fighting against some evil or other. But they are incapable of looking inside to see what is going on there.

And even those who can do this (I am thinking of Buddhists here) are powerless to stop the drive to destruction that is everywhere.

2011
04/01
CATEGORY
History
Philosophy
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People are Inhuman

Perhaps I should have said this differently: “People are Evil.” I certainly would not be saying anything new. People are both good and evil, and this has been known forever.

But we seem to be losing this balanced perspective. People have become conscious of their positive side – to an exaggerated degree. And buried their negative side in their unconscious. The result is a personality that barely exists on its own – divided as it is by hostile camps. This gives their negativity a huge advantage, since they are not aware of it. The result is a society intent on destroying everything, including itself – but is aware of nothing.

Let me see if I can put this in even grimmer terms. The most shocking thing about 20th Century society was the mass elimination of its undesirables – its death camps. Historians have pointed out that this also occurred in the Middle Ages – but that is not really important. Mass exterminations have been with us for quite awhile – there are even Biblical examples.

But in our times these have been directed at a new target: the majority, not the minority. The result has been the greatest mass extermination in history – but one that has not been noticed. There are no real people left.

I am listening to The Brothers Karamazov, in an excellent audio version:

After spending four years in a Siberian penal settlement, during which time he underwent a religious conversion, Dostoevsky developed a keen ability for deep character analysis. InThe Brothers Karamazov, he explores human nature at its most loathsome and cruel but never flinches at what he finds.

The Brothers Karamazov tells the stirring tale of four brothers: the pleasure-seeking, impatient Dmitri; the brilliant and morose Ivan; the gentle, loving, and honest Alyosha; and the illegitimate Smerdyakov: shy, silent, and cruel. The four unite in the murder of one of literature’s most despicable characters – their father. This was Dostoevsky’s final and best work.

Hardly a bed-time story for children! But perhaps I underestimate the young, they can be cruel too – for no good reason, just as part of their child’s play.

But what strikes me most about the story is the importance people have in it. Evidently, his readers had no trouble keeping track of all the characters (with multiple names) and all the interacting subplots – which baffle us now. This was still a society what was still very much alive. But one that was destroyed by oncoming events no one could stop.

It is my belief that something similar has happened in the West – primarily in America, the leader on popular culture. These events were complicated – or to be more exact, complex: the interaction of many forces and actors. The favorite whipping boy is technology, but it is equally true that people changed themselves to make them more compatible with the latest technologies.

Two things (at least) are involved are involved here: people’s love of power, and their identities. Technology enhances both of them. In the US, a person’s identity is bound up with their house – which must be as elaborate and expensive as possible – quite to the amazement of other cultures, who can get along with much less. The same is true of their car: a status/power symbol that has attained universal status.

To summarize, these have become a complex, which has taken on a life of its own. Everything (and everyone) in this complex affects the others, and all are changed by it. The whole thing is often referred to as technology (since this makes a good story, and we have no understanding of complexity science) but this is a misnomer.

2011
03/22
CATEGORY
History
Sociology
Technology
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