Dan O'Neill cartoon from the Jefferson Airplane CD Volunteers
We
all want to believe everything is going to be OK. So when things are
going badly, the hucksters of phony miracle cures and reassurances come
out in droves like worms after a heavy downpour. We get overweight, a
thousand quacks will sell us diets that 'worked' for a small sample of
people only because they were so desperate that anything would have
worked for them, for awhile. We get sick, everyone from Big Pharma to
faith healers will sell us something that will heal us, their cures'
efficacy based on doctored trials and hawked by disgraced physicians in
white coats.
We get depressed, organized religion will pounce
on us in our fragile state with promises, for a tithe, of absolution
for our negative thoughts and deeds, salvation in the next, perfect,
eternal life, and a community of uncritical people who will embrace us
even when we loathe ourselves, and wacko psychologists will fleece us
into paying for their wondrous theories and never-ending therapies, and
cults will show us, if we give them everything including our minds, the
one true way.
And in order to sell their patrons' flawed and
dangerous products, the whores of the corporatists will lie to us and
prey on our desperate desire to believe that global warming won't
happen, that our beloved SUVs are better for the environment than
hybrids, that ethanol and nukes will safely, cleanly provide all the
energy we will ever need, and that the only thing that's preventing a
'victory' in the Middle East is those Iranians, Syrians, and
Palestinians, who need to be bombed into behaving properly.
So
we get Exxon and Monsanto and other pathological corporatists paying
scads of money to incompetent and greedy people to write phony books
and articles, and then spending scads more to promote these fraudulent
works, and to get morons in the mainstream media to mindlessly
propagate the propaganda (and to shamelessly broadcast, as
'advertising', these same criminals' deceptions -- such untruths that,
if they were directed against shareholders or investors rather than
mere consumers, would land the perps in prison for life).
And we
put up with it -- the greenwashing ads and the fraudulent 'scientific'
reports and the massive publicity given to the junk science and
fictitious research put out by phony 'think tanks' and 'foundations'
that are simply anonymous fronts (with Orwellian names like 'Citizens
for a Free America') for these same corporatists -- because we want to believe.
If we believe that we don't have to do anything, or that nothing we do (or cease doing) will make any difference anyway, then we are free to do nothing,
to go on doing what we were doing before. We do what we must, then we
do what's easy, and then we do what's fun. There is already so much we
must do, to stave off the fear of not having enough, to meet the
ever-increasing expectations of the boss, the family, the lawyer, the
doctor, the police, the government, and nearly everyone else, that when
someone tells us "you don't have to do anything
about that, it's all a misunderstanding, we're taking care of it" we
will accept it no matter the source or its lack of credibility. One
less thing to do, to worry about. More precious time for the easy and
fun stuff.
It is just too much to ask us to be informed, and to
think critically. Informed, critical thinking is the road to disbelief,
to greater personal responsibility, to having to do more that we don't
really want to do. There is just so much stress in our lives already,
we don't want to know. We don't want to think.
The
corporatists, of every stripe, and their whores, understand this. They
are playing us perfectly. We are now consumers instead of customers,
disengaged cynics instead of citizens. We are not responsible. The
corporatists don't tell us what we don't want to know. They tell us
reassuringly what we don't have to do. So, dumb and complacent, we
don't know, and we do nothing. And so we can't complain. It's our own
fault, but now we're helpless.
Funny thing about information,
though. It's like a genie that won't go back in the bottle. You learn a
little, you can't unlearn it. You start to pay attention, and that gets
you thinking, imagining, wondering. Pretty soon you don't believe what
you're hearing, what you're being told. You stop feeling helpless, and
blaming yourself, and start to feel responsible, compelled to learn
more, to become more informed and think more critically, to do
something.
The ads don't work anymore. You abandon the
mainstream media for information sources that are still credible. You
find yourself buying less, buying more critically. You discover that
learning more creates stress but also makes you happier, more alive,
more self-sufficient.
You no longer don't want to know. You know. You are no longer free to do nothing. You're free to do something.
Some
of the people you know seem to get this. They've been going through the
same thing you have. But what about everyone else? Daniel Quinn would
tell us there's no point in trying to persuade them, argue with them,
until they're ready. Until then we have to just wait.
But there's so many of them.
What do we do? Can we afford
to wait, while so many people remain the victims of whores in five
thousand dollar suits, the apologists and front men and hucksters and
lawyers and politicians of all major parties and dirty trick squads of
the corporatists whose pathology ruins our world, and who keep so many
in their thrall?
If people won't understand until they're ready, how can we help them be ready, help them set themselves free?
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
