Life,
Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Personal Gratification:
“Here There Be Monsters”
By Jason Miller
06 July, 2007
Countercurrents.org
“America does not
go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”
—John Quincy
Adams
While
it certainly was not his intent, Adams’ assertion serves to remind
us of a truth revealed by vast oceans of tears, torrential rivers of
blood, and formidable piles of human remains. Leaving murder, mayhem,
and misery in its wake, America does “go abroad,” but not,
as Adams noted, “in search of monsters to destroy.” What
Adams failed to perceive, despite living in the midst of the Native
American genocide and the abject evil of chattel slavery, is that America
is the monster.
Yet like most monsters that
exist outside the boundaries of imagination, the printed word, celluloid,
or digital imagery, the United States and its denizens ostensibly appear
rather harmless and mundane. In fact, it would probably be more accurate
to say that a fair number of people still perceive us as downright heroic,
cloaked as we are in our beguiling raiment of freedom and democracy.
“You need to ask why
is it that we’re so surprised when the alleged BTK killer [in
Wichita] ends up being someone who lives among us and works in our church
and is a Cub Scout leader,” says Daryl Koehn, an ethicist at the
University of St. Thomas in Houston and author of a new book, “The
Nature of Evil.” “We want evil to be monstrous,” she
says, “because if evil is monstrous, then by definition it doesn’t
look like us.”
—“Calling Evil
by Name” from the Christian Science Monitor (3/10/05)
While Jefferson penned the
words, “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” in our
Declaration of Independence, the notion actually evolved from Locke’s
“life, liberty, and the pursuit of estate” and Adam Smith’s
“life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.” Smith’s
version even found its way into The Declaration of Colonial Rights,
crafted by the First Continental Congress in 1774. We in the United
States act monstrously because in spite of Jefferson’s re-wording,
we did not divorce ourselves from Locke’s and Smith’s notions.
We perceive an inextricable link between our happiness and the degree
of material success we achieve.
Forged within the context
of capitalism, which has become savage beyond comprehension as it rages
against its inevitable self-destruction, our relentless devotion to
our “inalienable right” to “life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness” focuses primarily upon enhancing our own
lives (others be damned), filling our heavily-mortgaged homes to the
rafters with as much “stuff” as we can acquire, and satiating
every hedonistic desire the law will allow, and then some. We rarely
pursue the spiritual form of happiness to which Jefferson was probably
alluding. In a nation where “I” rarely defers to “we”
and property rights trump humanity, we US Americans tend to be all about
“me” and hell-bent on dying a winner by possessing the “most
toys.”
“About 24,000 people
die each day from hunger or hunger-related causes. Three-quarters of
the deaths are children under the age of 5.”
—-The Hunger Project,
United Nations; Fall 2003
“You can find your
way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses
stars.”
—Charles Kuralt
Think about that figure of
24,000 for a moment. Each day that passes, nearly three times as many
human beings succumb to malnutrition and hunger than the total number
of people we have lost in our illegal and murderous invasion of Iraq
that began in 2003. Yet as Charles Kuralt pointed out, there is no shortage
of victuals in the United States. Fast food restaurants, the progenitors
of numerous evils, including factory farming, Mcjobs, the corporatization
of culture, and the “throw away” society, are nearly ubiquitous.
We US Americans are “lovin’ it” and having it “[our]
way” so much that highway weigh stations stops may eventually
become mandatory for all motorists. 40 million of us are obese and 3
million more are morbidly obese.
Ironically though, we are
so selfish and self-absorbed, that not only do we use our immense military
and economic might to extort and force the rest of the world to supply
our tiny percentage of the world’s population with a shockingly
gluttonous one fourth of the Earth’s resources, we allow hunger
and homelessness to exist amongst our own people!
Television, which is both
our grossly distorted window to the world and a Siren’s call to
viciously lacerate our souls upon the jagged coast of the Isle of Avarice
where we ultimately find ourselves spiritually devoured by the beast
called Consumerism, acts as a powerful catalyst for America’s
pathological fascination with shopping.
While our multi-national
corporations rape and exploit developing nations, our insanely over-funded
death machine wages wholesale terror with a vengeance, our power-brokers
on Wall Street man the bulwarks of predatory capitalism, our almost
infinitely corrupt government protects and advances the interests of
a cynical plutocracy, and the corporate media cover their collective
asses, we US Americans disregard our consciences (which have been rendered
virtually impotent by the inculcation of the notion of American Exceptionalism
anyway) and pursue our “happiness” through serial retailing.
What better way to inject a dose of instant nirvana into our lives without
becoming another of the 300,000 non-violent drug offenders behind bars
in the US?
Aside from its legality,
shopping’s beauty lies in the ease with which one can attain the
high it offers. We merely arm ourselves with a fistful of readily obtainable
credit cards (remaining oblivious to the usurious interest to which
we are obligating ourselves), jump in our SUVs that were actually designed
to be used for public transit but somehow became modes of personal transportation,
and head for the nearest leviathan, cookie-cutter retail establishment.
(Who knew the stairway to heaven had only three steps?)
Once one arrives, there is
a high probability of having a profound spiritual experience, like this
for instance:
Entering the mall, you find
yourself captivated by a kiosk peddling expensive sunglasses. One pair
in particular demands your attention. Initiating a moment of narcissistic
bliss, you casually don the shades and catch a glimpse of yourself in
one of the many mirrors the vendor has generously provided. Smiling
with self-satisfaction, you tell yourself you look “killer”
in those $300.00 Dolce and Gabbanas. Madison Avenue’s indoctrination
has convinced you that you deserve them and that you need them to show
people who you are. So of course, you make them yours. You, my friend,
have just been elevated to a higher plane of existence in retailing
paradise.
On a really good shopping
day, we find ourselves in the midst of an enchanted world where the
line between reality and the American Dream becomes an indistinct blur.
An upscale mall in suburban America is THE place to be on a weekend
afternoon if you fancy yourself to be one of the “beautiful people”—white,
at least comfortable financially, attractive, and thus amongst the only
people who truly matter in this world.
Yet there is also plenty
of room for the rest of us—those who refuse to relax our death
grip on the losing lottery ticket that our magical thinking tells us
is a guaranteed winner. Why do we refuse to let go of a pipe dream?
Because we see ourselves as a nation brimming with Horatio Algers. “The
good life” is just around the corner, if we just work hard enough.
So potent is this pernicious lie, they will have to pry this metaphorical
lottery ticket from our “cold, dead hands.”
Posturing, preening, styling,
profiling, seeing, being seen, and best of all, exercising their patriotic
duty to God, country, and retailer, the “beautiful people”
set the trend for the rest of us. It’s hard to conceive of something
more “inspiring” than the most spoiled and privileged human
beings on the face of the planet filling their Hummers with bags emblazoned
with the likes of Abercrombie, Neiman Marcus, the Limited, Nordstrom,
and Saks so they can stay ahead of the fashion curve, play with the
latest electronic toys, best the neighbors, and to have more contents
to dampen the echoes reverberating throughout their relatively empty
McMansion domiciles, which are large enough to house fifty people but
often afford shelter to only a few.
Whether we are amongst the
“blessed elite” of humanity or not, as US Americans it is
our patriotic duty to shop. Shopping was our first “counter-terrorism
measure” after 9/11, remember? Our very way of life depends upon
our wallets and our willingness to open them.
If we falter in our sacred
duty to over-indulge our desires at the expense of humanity and the
Earth, dear reader, our world as we know it will be lost to the “Islamic
hoards”, “Godless Communists”, and “Hispanic
invaders.”
As long as greed, self-absorption,
selfishness, and consumerism are so deeply woven into our sociocultural
fabric, we who comprise the collective in the United States will exist
as a living testament to Victor Hugo’s observation that, “Adversity
makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.”
Jason Miller
is a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed himself intellectually
and spiritually. He is Cyrano’s Journal Online’s associate
editor ( http://www.bestcyrano.org/)
and publishes Thomas Paine’s Corner within Cyrano’s at http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/.
You can reach him at [email protected]
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