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gaming in real life bohemian fashion

VOL. 1 WINTER 2012

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CREATIVE TYPES New Articles Photography Art & Graphic Imagery Fiction & Memoir

pg. 2

n a h t r e g n o r t s

p s a

g n i eed

t e l l bu

If you think you got you some interesting ideas, thoughts, provocations, moments of lucid enlightenment…we want to see it! We are especially interested in students’ work, though we are open to any artists’ endeavors. At this time, we probably won’t be able to pay you much, if anything (depends on how much money we raise for the next issue), but at least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve contributed to the Zeitgeist of your generation. We will of course give you a copy of the magazine to show off proudly to your jealous friends. Please send all files as doc or jpeg. Limit 1,500–ish words or three

images. Black and white imagery is easier for us to put in the print issue, whereas color availability is very limited (we may put it on the webpage).

Hard copies can be sent to our PO box.

E–files should be sent to the editor at:

editor@modernsuccess.org DEADLINE: DECEMBER 7TH 2012

all media accepted to the print magazine or webpage will become the property of Focal Point Media Group, LLC.

pg. 3

A U T H O R S !

&

CONTENTS

A R T I S T S

!

!

! J ES S IC A P OIGN A R D lives in Lille, France. Inspired by her father who was an amateur photographer, Jessica went to the University of Strasbourg to study photography full time. Nowadays, she spends much of her time doing freelance work for various artists and designers, including Eric Claridge of the band, The Sea and the Cake. She resists the label of ‘artist’ and prefers to be thought of as “just someone trying to share what I see with others.” Because of how she does that, we asked her to shoot the fashion spread.

! !

! ! M I N K A S T O YA N O VA is from New Orleans. She is a founder and codirector of the Unfinished Picture Project. This past summer, her shows were exhibited in Glasgow, London, Paris, and Prague. A revolutionary optimist and expert procrastinator, Minka subscribes to Wheaton’s Law, and believes that brie and red wine will solve most of life’s problems. Her media, artwork, photography, and projects can be seen at minka-art.net.

! !

C H R I S H E D G E S worked for The New York Times as an

international correspondent for fifteen years, mostly in the middle east. Hedges won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for his coverage of global terrorism, and the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights that same year. His articles have appeared in Harpers, Granta, Foreign Affairs and many others. His weekly online blog can be read at Truthdig.com.

! !

MICHAEL EDELSTEIN was awarded Author of the Year for his selfhelp book, Three Minute Therapy. His latest book, Stage Fright, includes interviews with Robin Williams, Jason Alexander, Maya Angelou and others who discuss their wisdom about overcoming performance anxiety. Dr. Edelstein is on the board of advisors for the National Association of Behavioral-Cognitive Therapists.

He can be reached at ThreeMinuteTherapy.com.

! !

D E R R I C K J E N S E N was recently named Press Action Person of

the Year. He won the Eric Hoffer Award in 2008 and was named one of Utne Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.” He is the author of the best-selling book Endgame, as well as The Culture of Make Believe and A Language Older Than Words. He tours and lectures extensively throughout the United States and can be contacted through his namesake website.

!

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Cognitive Dissonance

6

The editor’s version of a letter of introduction to Modern Success, he discusses the psychological difficulty we experience when confronted with Newness or Difference.

The Trouble With Self–Esteem

8

Dr. Michael Edelstein writes about a new(ish) and truly helpful way to build self–esteem and gain confidence. And the method may come as a bit of a surprise to you.

Bohemian Fashion

14

Jes Poignard shows us what the cool cats are wearing in Middle Europe.

Dump Civilization

22

A retrospect of a talk given by author Derrik Jensen last spring here at the University. We didn’t want you to miss it.

Barstool Philosopy

28

Minka Storyanova’s rendering of gaming theory and situatioinist agency... via cartoon!

End Game Strategys

29

Journalist Chris Hedges gives us his take on the big picture.

Fasten your seat–belts for this one.

School of the Real

34

Our to–be–regular column that gives you references on some of the ideas and topics discussed in the magazine.

(Like you didn’t have have enough stuff to study already.)

Modern Success

www. modernsuccess.org

Senior Editor: Graphic Design/Layout: Cover Photographer: Cover Model: Printer: Number of copies in circulation:

Michael Wilson Brittany H. Flavia C. Stella Sherwood Press 400

P O Box 260171 Madison WI 53726–0171

editor@modern.sucess.org

www.sherwoodpress.com

pg. 5

Cognitive Dissonance A Kind of Letter of Introduction from the Editor

Welcome to the premier edition of Modern Success. Let it be quickly understood that we are not your usual magazine. Most magazines tend to focus on human deficit: you are not attractive enough, skinny enough, wearing the right clothes enough, cool enough, going to the right parties enough, etc etc. This magazine is not so concerned with that stuff, and we are not here to treat you like Target Consumer Type A, or however other magazines reduce their readership to target sales.

We believe in human dignity and intelligence and we are here to speak to that. We believe that you are intelligent enough to not be handed a bunch of palliatives or outright lies. We are here to speak truthfully. Further, we believe that humans should be given the facts so that they may deal with reality instead of shunning it or denying it to themselves. The fact of the matter is, with so

DELUSIONAL: The psychologically-exhausting maintenance of a belief structure despite overwhelming evidence which reveals the structure to be illusory.

See ‘fronting.’

Cognitive dissonance is a phrase used in psychology to describe the emotional and physical discomfort caused when attempting to maintain a belief or value in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Such as when apocalypse prediction followers find themselves very much alive the day after the predicted apocalypse date (a very mundane and normal

pg. 6

much crap going on (drone warfare, climate change, drought, daily species and eco-extinction), the question we want to ask at the magazine is: How is one expected to be suc- cessful in view of the challenges that we are facing today? Surely it is no longer cogent to call success simply ‘the acquisition of wealth and toys.’ That’s your old man’s definition, a defi- nition of the generations before who’ve gotten us into this mess. But the new generation must be smarter and wiser about success.This will require changing definitions of success, which also requires discussing unique concepts which may be challenging to your sensibilities.

To that end, I, the editor, would like to briefly discuss the concept of cognitive dissonance. After all, some of the articles and imagery you see here will challenge your beliefs and opinions. So it might be worthwhile to talk about that very moment when there is a challenge to your beliefs.

And that moment is called Cognitive Dissonance.

day, to be sure), or when a theoretical scientist is confronted with evidence that destroys a theory to which she has devoted half her life, or when a follower of Biblical creationism finally decides to allow himself permission to pour through the massive amount of evidence which lays waste to the very foundations of his beliefs. In the very discomforting – even embarrassing – moment of cognitive dissonance, one has two options. One is to go into denial and form a delusion. To do this, one must say that the evidence is not overwhelming or that it is inconclusive (though it clearly is not) in order to placate the discomfort created when a person's beliefs or values are undermined or threatened

during cognitive dissonance. This belittling of evidence, known as 'discounting' in social psychology (for example, when someone who is clearly an alcoholic to everyone, who already has one or more DUIs, boasts that he doesn't have a drinking problem, or when abusers tell their victims to “toughen up”) can lead to a state of irrational cognizance, known as delusion. Children have many many delusions, most of which we, perhaps accidentally, give to them through imaginary stories about trolls and Santa Claus and God, and we as adults spend our time helping children adjust to the realities of the world slowly, as their development allows it.

However, some delusions do not get adjusted as one moves into adulthood, and can even be reinforced by institutions such as the church, the prison system, the military, Hollywood, and the automobile industry, to name a few. And when delusions become institutionalized, the internal disconnect can lead to personality disorders such as anxiety and bulimia, abu- sive or victimizing behavior, depression, and so on.

The amount of institutionalized delusion in a society tends to be the guide by which one can sense the amount of irrational thoughts permeating that society at any one moment. (Derrik Jensen elaborates upon this idea in the ‘Dump Civilization’ article.)

There is a second option when presented with the discomfort of cognitive dissonance. It’s called acceptance. In this option, one chooses to accept that the evidence is over- whelming and/or valid, and then one adjusts to that knowledge, though at first it may be difficult and strange. An alcoholic must first admit they are an alcoholic in order to begin their personal journey to recovery, however that may look. A child must deal with the fact that there is no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny, no Superman, no God, no PowerPuff Girls coming to save her and rectify the world’s wrongs. The racist must come to terms with the fact that people unlike him are not all bad or lazy or whatever, but just regular ol’ humans. Many women must deal with the fact that they are daily de-valued and lied to by the fashion and cosmetics industry.

Nearly all men must realize that women are their equals.

Though difficult at first, the process of acceptance – moving through the discomfort of cognitive dissonance (which is the same process used to deal with grief and loss, with its stages of denial, minimizing, bargaining, and so on)

– will eventually produce significant rewards. For example, as the evidence continues to pour in, it will re-affirm your new beliefs and ideations, making you feel stronger, more confident, and secure, knowing that you are largely right (though remaining open to reviewing new or contrary in- formation), instead of constantly jumping through the daily anxietyhoops of attempting to rebuild and reaffirm your delusions, always loudly, and with nothing much more than airy emotion to back it up.

We love to point out the past and “how silly everyone was back then.” How they believed the world was flat. Or that the earth was the center of the universe. Or that birds flew because they floated on invisible waves of aether. Yet to- day we still hold many strange beliefs which are clearly not in line with the evidence. Columbus discovered America. The world was created and is maintained by a God or gods. The U. S. government does not engage in international war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Hundreds of millions of Native American humans were not killed by the European settlers and later, the U. S. government. We can carelessly consume limited resources limitlessly.

What will future generations think of us, and our ridicu- lously silly beliefs?

And are we willing to maintain our delusions, knowing that future humanity will look at us as simpletons, mere tools of propaganda and corporate ad vertising? Or are you ready to get on with it?

As Thomas Pynchon wrote in Against The Day, there comes a point when a person has to decide how much he is willing to take from those that continue to rule and ruin his life. There comes a point when he has to decide if he will continue to take it for the rest of his days, or if he will stand up and say, “Enough.”

As for me, I’m done with silly ideologies and those that daily churn them out for profit at the expense

to our health, our sanity, our security, and our freedom. I stand up and say, “Enough.”

I want my children’s children to be proud of me, like I am of my grandfather, the only one in the family to question religion, the rocket scientist who considered our insignificant position in the vast cosmos and developed a genuine humility because of that very realistic and non-delusional perspective.

As I say of my grandfather, I want future generations to be able to say of me: “There was someone who was trying to figure stuff out.”

And that gives me great comfort.

— Michael Wilson Legal and fine print

Modern Success magazine is owned

by Focal Point Media Group, LLC, in Madison and is printed on 100% recycled paper. The magazine is circulated in such a way as to maximally support the local economy of Madison (e.g. offering reduced advertising rates to independentlyowned Madison businesses, staying away from international banking regimes like US Bank andVisa, etc).

The association of editors, artists, and contributors affiliated with the production and physical publication of content herein shall retain copyright of their material (text and/ or images), and should be contacted if you wish to reprint more than 250 words or 1 complete image of their material in other publishing media,including but not limited to news papers, magazines, zines, journals, and on-line news blogs.

However,we have developed a copyfriendly binding. Pages can easily be slid from the plastic binder so that articles and images you like — even the whole magazine — can be quickphotocopied to be given to friends, family, or you can put up images on your dorm wall or wherever you’d like. We do not believe that important information should be owned. Enjoy!

pg. 7

The Trouble With Self Esteem High self–esteem is now viewed much as cocaine was in the 1880s — a wondrous

new cure for all ills, miraculously free of dangerous side–effects.

Self–esteem is both the sacred cow and the golden calf of our culture.

Nothing is esteemed higher than self–esteem, and no self–esteem can be too high. Nathaniel Branden, a leading exponent of self–esteem, raises the question: "Is it possible to have too much self–esteem?" and gives the resounding answer: "No, it is not, no more than it is possible to have too much physical health." 1

What is Self–Esteem?

To esteem something means to have a high opinion of it. To have high self–esteem means holding a high opinion of oneself. This high opinion is usually based on a high overall rating of oneself as a person, and this high rating is in turn based on evaluating one's actual performance. There are two popular views of self– esteem. One is the theory that it's good for people to feel good about themselves, irrespective of how well or badly they have actually performed. If they esteem themselves highly, they will automatically do better — and even if they don't do better, well, they'll at least feel happier. This theory has been applied in recent years as an educational technique, the "self– esteem curriculum," devoted to convincing students that they are wonderful and "special."

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Educationally, it has yielded disappointing results.

The other approach to self–esteem seems to be popular with libertarians.

This approach views self–esteem as something earned. If we perform better, we will then feel better about ourselves. We will rate ourselves more highly, and this will cause us to feel better. Feeling better is therefore our psychological reward for performing better. Usually, it's also supposed to cause us, in turn, to perform even better.

At first glance, these two approaches seem to have little in common, but on closer examination, the first approach usually turns out to be a variant of the second. The teacher who tries to cultivate high self–esteem in her students usually does not say: "Feel good, no matter how badly you do!"

Instead, the teacher deliberately lowers standards, so that the students get lots of praise for very minor achievements, while poor or mediocre work is accepted as adequate or better. And the proponents of earned self–esteem, when they confront the fact that many individuals make themselves needlessly miserable by comparing their

by Dr. Michael R. Edelstein

performance to some ideal, also advise those individuals to lower their standards, so that they will feel better at a lower threshold of achievement.In practice, therefore, both approaches to building self– esteem have a common thread: a person judges his performance to be good, then he forms a higher opinion of himself, not just his performance. Then he basks in the glow of contemplating what a terrific person he is. Then, he feels happier, and performs even better.

Doubts about High Self–esteem Psychiatrists, politicians, educators, and religious leaders have all been drafted into the movement to make people feel good about themselves.

High self–esteem is the enchanting magic powder which will bring sobriety and civility to the teenage gangsters of the inner cities as well as bliss and fulfillment to depressed suburban housewives.

A multitude of therapists and gurus are quick to identify low self–esteem as the root cause of emotional disturbance, addiction, poor relationships, failure to learn in school, child abuse, and a host of other ills. Yet the evidence points in the other direction.

Studies on issues from smoking to violence, along with comprehensive reviews of the entire self–esteem literature, not only cast doubt on the benefits of high self–esteem

but suggest that it might even be These researchers considered harmful. the possibility that in such cases observable high self–esteem was a Psychologists at Iowa State University have linked high self– disguised form of low self–esteem, but were unable to find any corroboration esteem with the failure to quit smoking. “People with high self– for it. The authors conclude that esteem have difficulty admitting “the societal pursuit of high self– esteem for everyone may literally their behavior has been unhealthy end up doing considerable harm.”4 and/or unwise,” writes researcher According to American Frederick Gibbons.2 A study popularized by Charles Unconditional self– Krauthammer, writing in Time acceptance doesn’t mean magazine, investigated the that we don’t want to change selfconcepts of 13 year olds in anything.

Britain, Canada, Ireland, Korea, Spain, and the United States. Each Educator, psychologist and researcher was administered a standardized Roy Baumeister has “probably math test. In addition, they were published more studies on self–esteem asked to rate the statement: “I in the past 20 years that anybody else in am good at mathematics.” The the U.S. (or elsewhere).” As Baumeister Americans judged their abilities has observed, many violent crimes the most highly (68 percent agreed result when an individual defends a with the statement!). On the actual swollen self–image against a perceived math test, the Americans came attack.

“They’ll lash out to try to head last. Krauthammer concludes: off anything that might lower their self– “American students may not know esteem.” their math, but they have evidently absorbed the lessons of the newly Baumeister concludes that “the fashionable self–esteem curriculum enthusiastic claims of the self–esteem wherein kids are taught to feel good movement mostly range from fantasy about themselves.”3 to hogwash… Yes, a few people here and there end up worse off because their Researchers at Case Western self–esteem was too low. Then, again, Reserve University and the other people end up worse off because University of Virginia conducted their self–esteem was too high. And a comparison of evidence from most of the time self–esteem makes a variety of studies concerning surprisingly little difference.”5 individuals involved with aggressive behavior of all kinds: assault, A comprehensive review of the homicide, rape, domestic violence, self–esteem literature found that: “the juvenile delinquency, political terror, associations between self–esteem, and prejudice, oppression, and genocide. its expected consequences are mixed, In some studies, self–esteem was insignificant, or absent. This non– specifically measured; in others it relationship holds between self–esteem was inferred. The authors concluded and teen age pregnancy, self–esteem that “aggressive, violent, and and child abuse, self–esteem and most hostile people consistently express cases of alcohol and drug abuse.”6 favorable views of themselves.” Millions of taxpayers’ dollars have It’s therefore pointless to treat been expended by the government on rapists, murderers, and muggers professional training to boost the self– by convincing them that they are esteem of teachers and students, and superior beings, for this is precisely even more millions have been spent by what such criminals typically private individuals paying therapists to believe already. help them enhance their self–esteem.

Yet the available evidence does not support the theory that attempts to raise people’s self– esteem necessarily produce substantial benefits, and some evidence suggests high self– esteem may have pathological consequences.

We should be cautious about accepting enthusiastic claims for the unalloyed benefits of high self– esteem.

Invisible Low Self–Esteem How do advocates of building high self–esteem respond when confronted with this kind of evidence? They have two answers.

The first is to say that when a person seems to have high self– esteem and also has a screwed up life, that person really has low self–esteem.

This reply has a certain plausibility, because we’re all familiar with the stereotype of the loud, brash, assertive person who is inwardly frightened, cringing, and selfdoubting.

Novelists and moviemakers love such characters, and they do occasionally exist. But mostly, in real life, if persons are outwardly loud, brash, and assertive, they are likely to be inwardly loud, brash, and assertive, or at least, more so than those who are outwardly timid or self–effacing. If someone exhibits obvious signs of thinking that he is one of the superior beings of the universe, chances are that he really believes — yes, way deep down — that he is one of the superior beings ofthe universe. In other words, he ’s l i v i n g in a fantasy world out of touch with reality.

Furthermore, if observable self–

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self–esteem brings true happiness, they claim.

As self–esteem in practice means feeling good about yourself because of how well you have done, increasing your self–esteem requires watching your behavior to see whether you have in fact done well. Self–esteem promoters often disagree about what aspects of your behavior you should be watching.

We can look at it this way. Advocates of high self–esteem think: I must do x. If I manage to at least do x, I can congratulate myself on being a good person. If I do less than x, then it follows that I will judge myself to be a bad person.

The advocates of high self–esteem frequently disagree on what “x” is. They each have their own favored criterion for assessing performance, their own choice of x, or perhaps their own varying standards for measuring x. But they all agree that the name of the game is pursuit of a feeling of self–worth, to be attained by doing (at least) x.

According to Nathaniel Branden, for example, x equals “the choices we make concerning awareness, the honesty of The second answer of the our relationship to reality, the level self–esteem promoters to the of our personal integrity.” Branden discouraging evidence on the warns against deriving self–esteem practical results of self–esteem from success in particular pursuits is to make a distinction between — in Branden’s view that would be “authentic” and “inauthentic” self–esteem. Only authentic what we are calling “inauthentic” self– esteem. Branden maintains that we’re worthwhile as humans if we make good choices, act honestly and act with pg. 10 integrity. We can then esteem ourselves esteem is to be brushed aside as immaterial, then this has two difficulties.

Empirically, the claim that high self–esteem is good for you becomes unfalsifiable and therefore untestable. We are unable to determine whether there’s any truth in it.

Pragmatically, if we’re trying to help people to improve their lives, all we can work on is the observable. If we try to help them by building their self– esteem, this becomes futile unless we can be reasonably sure that we can tell whether their self–esteem has gone up or down. The building of a kind of self–esteem which can never be discerned in someone’s behavior (including what that person says) is not really a practical plan.

Authentic and Inauthentic Self–Esteem

highly because we can tell ourselves, in Branden’s words, “I coped well with the basic challenges of life.”7 When the self–esteem concept is criticized, its proponents can defend it by explaining that the reason self–esteem didn’t seem to work in a particular case is not that the very concept is flawed, but rather that the wrong “x” was chosen. Therefore the self–esteem that resulted was not authentic self– esteem but “pseudo–self–esteem.”

But notice that all self–esteem theory has the same pattern, though this is not usually clearly spelled out. First, you set a goal.

Second, you act in pursuit of that goal. Third, you observe your action and its consequences. Fourth, you evaluate your action. Fifth, you globalize that evaluation: you move from evaluating your action to evaluating yourself as a total person. And sixth, you (supposedly) feel and act better thereafter if you decide you’re a great person, or you (supposedly) feel and act worse if you conclude you’re a pathetic loser.

The Alternative to Self–esteem The desirability of raising self– esteem seems persuasive because people with serious emotional problems often have low self– esteem: they hold a low opinion of themselves and dwell on their shortcomings. So it’s an appealing

idea to improve individuals’ rating efficacious person, because I’m always of themselves, and this seems to on time”? require getting them to hold a It can indeed do harm! You are drawing higher opinion of themselves — comfort and sustenance from your building their self–esteem. judgment that you are a fine person, and The way of thinking I have just you are requiring yourself to perform outlined may seem at first to be so well to support that judgment. This obvious as to be unquestionable. leads to anxiety. Moreover, the next But in fact, it commits an error. It time you don’t perform so well, you will assumes that the only alternative then be liable to feel, not just regret and to giving yourself a low rating is sadness that you didn’t do what would to give yourself a high rating. This have been best, but demoralization and way of thinking considers only two discouragement, because you now have alternatives: either you rate yourself evidence that you are not such a good as a bad person (a failure, a louse, a person. nothing) or your rate yourself as a We can acknowledge that low self– good person (a success, a paragon, esteem may be a problem, without a fine human being). That ignores recommending high self–esteem. another option: don’t rate yourself If someone has low self–esteem, we at all. need not try to replace that person’s It’s the essence of the gospel of low self–esteem with high self–esteem. self–esteem that you should rate We can instead encourage them to stop yourself highly. Almost unnoticed globally evaluating themselves. Instead is the assumption that you can’t of low self–esteem or high self–esteem, avoid rating yourself, and equally they can have no self–esteem. Or better, inconspicuous is the practical since “no self–esteem” sounds like corollary of raising your self–esteem: low self–esteem, they can do without if you set out to “build your self– selfrating. If we do not rate our total esteem,” you become preoccupied selves as good or bad, what attitude with your rating of is it best for us yourself.

Unconditional self– to take towards Not rating yourself, acceptance doesn’t mean ourselves? Instead refraining from that we don’t want to change of esteeming self–rating, means anything. ourselves, we can that you can uncondi tionally evaluate what you accept ourselves as do without drawing conclusions we are. about yourself as a total person. For No matter how well we perform, instance, if you are frequently late no matter how brilliant our for appointments, you may think, accomplishments, we are always “Being late for appointments has imperfect, fallible human beings. consequences I don’t like. Is there Conversely, no matter how badly we some way I can stop being late?” You screw up, we always do some things right don’t have to think, “Because I am (as demonstrated by the fact that we often late for appointments I am a have survived this far). Unconditional loser.” You don’t need to draw any self–acceptance doesn’t mean that conclusions about your total self. we don’t want to change anything. It That may sound unobjectionable. means that we unconditionally accept But suppose that you conquer your the reality of who we are and what habit of being late. Now, you’re we are like. This does not involve any always punctual. What harm can overall evaluation of our worth or it do to pat yourself on the back? quality as human beings. It means that Why not think, “I’m an admirably nothing that we do will make us believe

that we are, in toto, terrific or terrible, heroic or horrible, godlike or goblin–like.

Having unconditionally accepted our–selves, we can then concentrate on what we do and how we can improve it — not because this will make us feel wonderful about ourselves, give us high self–esteem — but because we will then more effectively accomplish the goals we have set ourselves, and feel wonderful about that.

The Gap in Self Esteem Theory There’s a strange aspect of the reasoning of many self–esteem theorists. They often seem to assume that if you perform well according to their chosen x, this will automatically cause you to esteem yourself highly.

Robert Ringer, for instance, states: “It takes a good deal of practice to play the game effectively but a good player reaps the rewards of self– esteem, the self–esteem which comes from knowing who you are, what you stand for, and where you’re going in life.”8 What is odd about this view is that Ringer appears to believe that self–esteem wells up spontaneously within you if you do something. He doesn’t seem to understand that, whatever you do, this can only affect your self–esteem if you evaluate what you have done, and evaluate your total self based on what you have done, that this requires judging your behavior and your self according to some standard, and that you are free to perform these mental acts of evaluation or not to perform them.

pg. 11

Nathaniel Branden also writes as though he believed that if you have coped well with the basic challenges of life (his nominated “x”), this must automatically cause you to possess high self–esteem.9 And, presumably, if the truth is that you have not coped well with the basic challenges of life, that must automatically cause you to possess low self–esteem.

You are apparently unable to react in any other way, for example by concluding: “I haven’t coped well with the basic challenges of life but I’m not going to let this get me down.” Or: “I haven’t coped well with the basic challenges of life. Tough shit! I’ll just try harder.” Or: “I haven’t coped well with the basic challenges of life. What a fascinating specimen I am! I’ll write a novel about myself.”

Self–esteem advocates often seem to assume that judging your total self is involuntary, and automatic. However, esteeming oneself involves choices among alternatives: you choose to act, you choose to evaluate your actions, you choose to extend the evaluation of your actions to an evaluation of your total self, you choose the standard by which your total self will be evaluated.

To esteem our selves or to rate our selves flows from choices we make in how we will think: cognitive choices. If we fail at some endeavor, or a whole series of endeavors, we are not fated to think the worse of ourselves. If we do draw the conclusion that we are worse as persons because we have failed in some specific endeavors, that conclusion arises from

pg. 12

our philosophy of life, our beliefs, our habits of thought.

When I say that these are matters of choice, I mean this in the same way that learning a foreign language is a matter of choice.

Changing our habits of rating or not rating ourselves requires repetition and reinforcement over a period of time.

We may in the past have unreflectively accepted that when we screw up (or fail to “cope well with the basic challenges of life”), this diminishes our worth as persons. At the moment when we draw this conclusion, it may therefore indeed be “automatic.”

In exactly the same way, the horror of a superstitious person when a black cat crosses his path may be automatic and may seem involuntary. But that person can question the validity of his superstitious belief and can, over time, learn to accept that a black cat is not something to be dreaded.

The conviction that our self–worth rises or falls according to our performance is indeed a kind of superstition. If we were to discuss the experience of dread which seizes a superstitious person who has seen a black cat, as though this feeling did not depend upon that person’s superstitious beliefs but flowed simply from his seeing a black cat, we would be obscuring the vital part played in this seemingly automatic process by the person’s beliefs — beliefs which can be changed, though changing them may take persistent effort.

Problems with Self–Esteem Fifty years ago, marathon runner and writer Trevor Smith, then 15, spent a hiking vacation with a group of classmates, climbing Switzerland’s Stanserhorn. One thousand feet from the summit, exhausted and struggling, Smith chose to turn back.

Later that evening at dinner, reunited with all his classmates, Smith “saw the glow of satisfaction on the faces of the boys who made the summit safely… I regretted bitterly that I had quit when

others succeeded.” Smith continues to view the decision to abort his ascent as so horrible that even today he relives it “as if it happened yesterday.”

As an adult, Smith climbed peaks, paddled white water, and ran hundreds of races. He concludes: “Sometimes I’ve paid a high price in discomfort and many injuries. But achieving goals gave a feeling of self–esteem that healed everything.”

Smith’s lesson for his readers?

Develop high self–esteem. “Tell yourself that you can do just about anything that any other human being can do . . . If you believe you can do just about anything, usually you can.”10 Trevor Smith’s thinking illustrates the essence of the self–esteem notion: self–rating. When you do well you rate yourself as a “good” person, you have high self–esteem; you can do anything. When you do poorly, you’re a worthless failure.

(Or if not worthless, you’re certainly worth less.) So your motivation to do well is that you will derive satisfaction from proving that you’re a good person.

Smith’s widely accepted but dangerous view of self–esteem illustrates its inherent traps. If you subscribe to his self–esteem notion, when you do well you’ll tend to take an overblown, grandiose view of your self. And when you do poorly you’re likely to feel depressed and hopeless. Many people who pursue this approach live their lives either anxiously and compulsively striving to prove themselves (instead of enjoying themselves by striving to attain their goals) or phobically avoiding challenging and competitive situations.

In the 1960s, Joe Pine, an acerbic conservative TV talk show host, had as his guest the long–haired rock musician Frank Zappa. Pine was prone to surliness, which a leg amputation — he wore a wooden prosthetic — may have exacerbated.

As soon as Zappa had been that we are good because we introduced and seated, the have performed well or bad following exchange occurred: because we have performed PINE: I guess your long hair makes poorly, we generally find that you a girl. ZAPPA: I guess your this is not symmetrical. There is something innate in human wooden leg makes you a table.11 beings — perhaps it has survival This brings out another of the value — to pay attention to attendant difficulties with the what is creating discomfort and pursuit of self–esteem. If I am to to pay no attention to what is decide whether I am doing well going OK. Selfraters therefore or badly as a total person, I have tend to drift downward in to somehow reduce to a common their self–rating, drawing measure all the varied aspects of gloomy conclusions when my performance in different fields, they fall short, and not fully to come up with a single score or balancing these with optimistic rating of my self. conclusions when they do well.

Individuals are unique and This tendency is all the more manyfaceted. “Weighting” all the powerful because of a fact I different aspects of one’s behavior have omitted to mention so far, is unavoidably subjective. Suppose for the sake of simplicity. that your daughter is an excellent People who rate themselves swimmer but a poor runner, or always find in practice that is well above average in math but “feeling good” or “feeling bad” well below average in languages, or about themselves is not stable. is often unusually considerate of So, when we say that someone her little brother but sometimes has high or low self–esteem, mercilessly teases him to the point we’re referring to an average: of tears. There is no objective how good they feel about method for making these different themselves always fluctuates. behaviors commensurable.

Our moods fluctuate naturally, In practice, people who pursue and hanging our sense of well– self–esteem usually don’t get being on the peg of our self– very far in trying to formulate a rating tends to magnify the weighted evaluation of all their mood swings. performances. Instead, they tend to fall back on some formula which grossly oversimplifies the picture. For example, a child may become convinced that he is no good because he has done poorly It is rational to be concerned at spelling. He may then give up about your effectiveness in trying, using as an excuse the “fact” pursuing your goals, and therefore in dealing with that he is a no–good failure.

Furthermore, people often change problems that arise. It is not — not all at once, overnight, but rational to be concerned about in particular ways continually. your overall rating as a person.

As Albert Ellis puts it, “People’s The pursuit of high self–esteem, intrinsic value or worth cannot even where it seems to be really be measured accurately working for a while, can be because their being includes their hazardous. And at best, self–esteem accomplishes nothing important becoming.”12 that can’t be accomplished by Another problem is that once self–acceptance. we get into the habit of thinking

Just Say No to High Self–esteem

Notes: 1. The Power of Self–Esteem (Deerfield Beach: Health Communications, 1992), p. 46.

2. F.X. Gibbons, T.J. Hedges, and A. Benthin.

“Cognitive Reactions to Smoking Relapse: The Reciprocal Relationship between Dissonance and Self–Esteem.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72: 1 (1997), pp. 184–195.

3. “Education: Doing Bad and Feeling Good.”

Time (5 February 1990).

4. R.F. Baumeister, J.M. Boden, and L. Smart. “Relation of Threatened Egotism to Violence and Aggression: The Dark Side of High Self–Esteem.” Psychological Review 103: 1 (February 1996), pp. 5–33.

5. Roy F. Baumeister. “Should Schools Try to Boost Self–Esteem?” American Educator (Summer 1996), p. 14.

6. A. Mecca and N. Smelser, The Social Importance of Self–Esteem (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), p. 23.

7. The Power of Self–Esteem, pp. 59, vii.

8. Robert J. Ringer, Looking Out For #1 (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1977), p. 87; and see pp. 11–12. 9. Branden advises that we judge ourselves by what is within our volitional control, not by what is under the control of other people (The Power of Self–Esteem, p. 52). He does not address the issue of our being free to abstain from any self–judgment at all. We can speculate that he might think this is impossible, or he might think it would have harmful consequences for our personal efficacy. In either case, he would be mistaken.

10. “Perspectives: Believe in Yourself.”

Running and Fit News (June 1997), p. 3.

11. Cited in Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (New York: Morrow, 1993), p. 274.

12. Early Theories and Practices of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy and How They Have Been Augmented and Revised during the Last Three Decades. Journal of Rational– Emotive and Cognitive–Behavioral Therapy, 17:2 (1999), pp. 69–93.

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like you

fashion

Bohemian

Modern Success crashes a fashion party in Middle Europe Photography by Jessica Poignard

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fashion

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Dump Civilization Author Derrik Jensen talks to students at the University about why we should trash this place

By Michael Wilson

“When I tell people that maybe the tree doesn't want to be cut down, they think I'm really crazy.”

The audience of about one hundred students and others filling the UW's Varsity Hall in the South Union, chuckled and settled in for the talk by author Derrik Jensen, probably most (im)famous for his books, Endgame, in two volumes. His quip immediately informed the audience that tonight, some tree–hugging will be discussed.

Jensen, a man with tousled brown hair, dressed in an over–sized old sweater with a seventies–style tiger print on the front, worn–in sneakers, white socks that slouch down to his ankles from apparent lack of elastic, and pants which just add to the whole Comfortable Clothes I Wear Around The House mystique, cleared his throat and coughed.

And coughed again. And again.

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“I'm sorry,” he apologized, “I have some terribly weird nasty flu.”

Which perhaps explained why, just before the talk began, Jensen was lying on the floor, reclining on his side and watching the audience from the perspective of their shins.

The flu and his coughing would become a strange and ironic sonic backdrop to the evening's talk on the ills of modern civilization. “I've been given a list of five questions by the University students, which I will try to now answer.” This reporter heard him only answer two.

It is important to keep these disjointing facts in mind since Jensen's flufevered talk was anything but what one might call organized. However, I have tried to organize the article according to what I felt were Mr. Jensen's main points, and by asking later for some clarification by email; therefore the article may tend to misrepresent what appeared to be probably through no fault of Jensen's own a long, rambling series of semicontingent ideas and statistics that were perhaps connected, though in much the same way that a heaping pile of spaghetti is 'connected.'

Untangling the Spaghetti Jensen began with an anecdote which he referred to as an example of 'techno–creep.'

“There's this new iPass thing now that… allows you to quickly move through toll booths… so that, essentially, the authorities can know where you are at any time.” He stated that this was an example of the panopticon, a term made so that lights poured down on the prisoners in such a way that they could not see if they were being watched by the guards. Never knowing if they were being watched our not, the prisoners acted as if they always were being watched.

Our enforcers are much the same: aloof, hidden, unseeable… [making] us behave, forcing us to police ourselves.”

“Technology,” he went on, “is the creeping panopticon of authority and power—” at which point he stopped because an official–looking gentleman from the U approached the table where Jensen was seated in order to adjust a small, slim iPhonelooking camera, a camera I hadn't seen until now.

The audience laughed at the serendipity of the moment.

Herein, Jensen began to address the questions.

The first question was, Why does he assert in his books that civilization is unsalvageable?

“Really,” he began, “the question for me becomes, How does one first make themselves sane enough to recognize the insanity of our culture?”

This was where, I realized later, Jensen made his first assertion to the question: that civilization is unsalvageable because it is mentally ill. “The language of our society is bound within the cultural environment of Post– Traumatic Stress Disorder; the repeated exposure to trauma and excessive stresses, such as being sexually harassed at work,

“In our society, we reward sociopaths by making them president.”

pollution, advertising telling you that you are ugly, this repetitive social bludgeoning has become so normalized in our society, that we don't even recognize it. What was insanity is now normal, sane.”

As examples of this, he listed some “supposed myths,” such as the impossibility of ever having a truly fulfilling relationship, a myth oft–romanticized in modern cinema as the

ubiquitous anxiety of never finding true love, the nagging question, Does true love really exist?

Jensen said these were not true at all, that fulfilling and vtrusting relationships are in fact possible.

Relationship, apparently, unlike his own relationship with his father, which Jensen stated was severely physically abusive, and of which he added rather gruesome accounts to the evening's talk.

The second myth Jensen then listed as an example of symptomatic PTS is the myth that the human is the superior creature, man as top of the food chain, dominator of nature.

“In this view,” he claimed, “nature is seen as a source of resources disconnected from humanity which man has the right to exploit.”

He gave an example of civilization's egoism by offering a quote from Richard Dawkins, who, in his book, A Devil's Chaplain, writes, “Science boosts its claim to truth by its spectacular ability to make matter and energy jump through hoops on command, and to predict what will happen and when.” “This shows,” Jensen argued, “how human egoism is revealed in its eagerness to dominate nature, to make it 'jump through hoops' in order to understand it.”

This presents a knowledge equals domination dialectic, which quickly extends to other areas of the culture, such as the way in which we bang on tvs to get them to work, all the way down to interpersonal violence in relationships.

Rolling seamlessly into his second answer to the original

question, Jensen began to argue that civilization is unsalvageable because it is socially irredeemable. He referenced a study byRuth Benedict (published later

by Abraham Maslow in his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature) in which good cultures were defined as those which “lasted for millennia, and in which people were treated well… especially the poor, the sick, women and children.”

Bad cultures were those which largely dehumanized people, and passed away quickly into history. “The Hobbsean/ conservative worldview says all humans are selfish, whereas the liberal/ communist view says all humans are social.”

Benedict recognized that good cultures were those that accepted humans as both selfish and social, whereas bad cultures tended to see humanity as dog–eat–dog, looking out for number one. “[Good] societies socially rewarded behavior which benefits the group and inhibited behavior which benefits the individual at the expense of the group. Whereas bad societies reward only the selfish, singular acquisition of resources and wealth.”

Of which he offered a riveting example. “Among Inuit peoples, when socio– paths [those without any

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“The only sustainable level of technology in history so far has been that of the stone age.” empathy toward others] were occasionally born in the tribe, they would take them on a hunt, and push them off the end of an ice–floe.

In our society, we reward sociopaths by making them president.”

Jensen, despite the applause and several gasps from the audience quickly launched into his third answer to the question, that civilization is unsalvageable at the level of resource movement.

“Basing a civilization on an unsustainable system

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of extracting non–renewable resources…is untenable. Also, any society based on hyper– consumption and exploitation of renewable resources is also unsustainable and untenable.”

Here, Jensen paused for quite some time; one of several throughout the evening which lasted much beyond the usual comfortable ‘pause to reflect’ time period, so that I began to wonder if the cold medicine he had taken was sending him on some hazed delirium of reverie. Then as if we hadn’t all just sat in silence for the last fifteen heartbeats he said, “A friend once told me that the only truly sustainable level of technology

in history so far has been that of the stone age.”

Here he abruptly defined some of his terms. “Civilization I define as a large number of people living in cities. And cities I define as an urban area which requires the importation of resources in order to maintain it’s own energy and consumption needs… Under these terms, native peoples would not be considered as ‘having a civilization.’ But then we might wish to remember that many of their cultures survived for over 10,000 years.”

From this, he said, it followed that cities and their civilizations must be characterized by two things: they must be violent, as in the use of mili–tary power to gain access to resources, and they must be exploitive of resources. To clarify, he explained that, in order to build cities, one must denude forest land, which allows for empty space and the growing outward into those spaces of the city, requiring more resources, more energy, more lumber, and the

cycle continues. “Eighty percent of old growth forests are gone.”

Heremindedthe audience of the old stories in Persian writing indicating the lush forests of the middle east “the flag of Lebanonhasacedaronit to this day”before cities began being built, before civilization. “All this …and none of it is in the press, it’s not on our lips, not in our dialogue. Upton Sinclair famously said, ‘It’s hard to make a man understand something when his job depends on him not understanding it.’ I would take that one step further and say that it’s hard to make people understand something when their entitlement depends on them not understanding it.”

I do not see this as a civilization we could call sustainable.”

At this point, Jensen grew morose, saying that there’s no global transformation happening when 25% of all women are raped at some point in their lives, and another 19% are lucky enough to fend off their attackers, that nearly all the perpetrators were men close to them a relative, close friend, a father. “If men are treating the women close to them this way in our society, and we talk more about Dancing With the Stars and our nifty iPass…

His fourth answer to (still the first) question was that civilization is irredeemable because it is disconnected from the real world.

“The world must be primary.

Without a world to live in, there is no We.” Instead, he asserted, technology has become the main ‘relationship’ in our life. “Think about how often you interact with gadgets on a daily basis. Your coffee makers. Your toaster.” An older gentleman piped up, “Smart phones!” A girl behind me mumbled quietly, “Televisions, televisions, televisions.” Weirdly, no one I could hear mentioned computers. At any rate, this, Jensen said, creates

an almost “hallucinatory state” in which ideology is completely divorced from the real world, our microenvironment. “One day I realized that I touch more plastic than human flesh.”

Jensen then launched into a diatribe against what he called “the cult of masculinity,” wherein he likened the distanced and dislocated exploitation of nature to rape. “Sometimes, it’s too obvious. We drill using large metal phalluses, in order to penetrate the earth” and relieve it of it’s virgin resources. “There was a terrible movie in the 1970s called A Boy And His Dog [1975] where there were only a few women left on some futuristic earth.

So the ones that were left were continually raped. Don Johnson’s [of ‘80s television series ‘Miami Vice’ fame] character, seeing one of these poor women dead on the ground, casually comments, ‘What a shame.

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We could have gotten a few more out of her.’ In the same way, capitalists will continue to exploit the world to death, and then, when there’s nothing left to take away, they will reminisce that maybe they could have gotten just a few more gallons of oil out of her.”

The SecondQuestion The mood had become decidedly dismal. Night had fallen, leaving us in a sudden unnatural (‘technical’) light. second question: Do you think technology will solve our pollution and energy problems? Immediately, he began to turn on more data, numbers, EROI, or Energy Return On Investment, such as in the case of crude oil, where it use to be around 100:1 (energy you get:energy you put in), whereas now it something around 1.5:1, and tar sands are just 4:1. He paused, and summed up his point by saying that technology can not save us because we will run out of energy first. This reminded me of something I read where Russian farmers realized the true nature of their tractors and plows when they ran out of gas: a large pile of metal rubbish. “There is a disconnect in a society which extracts limited minerals in order to make super hi–tech wind mills. Or so called clean energy dams that are built? They actually destroy and dislocate indigenous communities,

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exterminate local species, wipe out fish populations, disrupt nesting grounds…The true costs are constantly being re–routed and displaced somewhere else, always elsewhere.”He continued that technological ‘advancement’ should instead be called technological ‘intensification.’

At this point, Jensen took a moment to retrieve a something from his backpack, which turned out to be a package from which struggled to free a pill. He tilted his head back, and, in a strange ‘House M.D.’ moment, popped the pill into his mouth.

“Here’s the second point,” he said, swallowing. “We have to decolonize the mind. For example. People say things like, ‘Our troops are in Iraq.’

Our troops? I have troops?” The audience laughed. “I can control them, manipulate them, bring them home? Or people will say, ‘Our government is committing war atrocities.’ My government? I can control what it does? No. It’s not my government. Not my military.

Not my president.” Those things, he said, had been colonized long ago by vested power.

He paused again and the silence was palpable, as if everyone were holding their breath …

“If aliens from outer–space were poisoning our world, putting Dioxin in our mother’s breast milk, filling our water with petro–chemical plastics and vinyl, taking away food stocks, decimating our crops and forests at an ever–increasing rate… if they were doing those things to us right now…would we still be having these stupid conversations?

Wouldn’t the question simply become: How do we get rid of these fucking aliens?”

A murmur through the crowd.

“Here’s the third reason I don’t believe technology can save us. Photo Voltaic Cells. Solar, right? Things still have to be connected to a central authority, be it the electric company or the company that makes the panels the upkeep, the maintenance, the extraction and smelting of all the minerals necessary to make them…There is a control of these very limited resource supplies in the hands of monopolies. These types of resources, the PV cells, are what I call ‘authoritarian resources.’

There are also ‘democratic resources.’ Bows and arrows are democratic resources because there is no monopoly on their technology or the resources required to make them or use them. A nuclear bomb is an authoritarian resource. As is oil. The toaster too, because of it’s connection to the power company. Right now, all I see is the abundance and proliferation of authoritarian resources.”

Jensen shifted. To close, he read from an essay called “The Rules of the Manbox.” The Manbox was his concept for patriarchal entrapment, the ways in which society reinforces hyper–machismo mechanisms of violation, from bullying and mean bosses, to rapists and CEO fund managers. The eight–minute reading concluded with: “The manbox is tricky and difficult to escape. But we can leave the manbox. We must leave the manbox.”

Q& A

The floor was opened up to questions from the audience. It was sometimes difficult to hear, but one question that was both intriguing and revealing of Jensen’s views, was a young woman’s question. She asked, “You have said that this civilization should be scrapped. But what do you see as a sustainable civilization?”

Jensen began by reiterating that the only really sustainable civilizations so far have been those of indigenous peoples partaking in agrarian and huntergatherer practices. The young woman clarified and asked if Jensen might have any modern examples we might follow. Jensen continued to state that he only knew of traditional societies surviving any amount of time.

Later, via email, I asked Jensen again if he might clarify this point further. I first asked him to define at what point one might define ‘modern civilization’ in history, as many traditional civilizations did in fact engage in tribal warfare, slavery, rape, and so on.

Jensen stated that one might say that modern civilization practices began to emerge about 10,000 years ago.

I asked him, then, if he might expand on the question by the young lady about examples of sustainable cultures, and why he hadn’t mentioned the cooperative–syndicalist agrarian communities that began to emerge across Europe (and a few scattered throughout the Americas) around the late 1800s, before they were demolished by the interests of the ruling powers which threw everyone into the chaos of World War I and modern industrialization

began ruling the day. To this, Jensen only said that, “if they were based on modern civilization practices, then they were not sustainable.”

It seems that Mr. Jensen may benefit from a closer reading of modern European and American history, as it is evident to most historians that, if the ruling elite hadn’t made their power move, those agrarian, selfsustaining communities may have survived, and provided a new template for the future of humankind.

You can see more on Jensen’s philosophy of civilization in the crowd– funded underground movie “End:Civ” (2010) via Submedia.tv or EndCiv.com, as well as a variety of other formats on the web.

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By Chris Hedges

END GAME STRATEGY reprinted with kind permission from Adbusters, February/March 2012 U.S. edition

The unrest in the Middle East, the convulsions in Ivory Coast, the hunger sweeping across failed states such as Somalia, the freak weather patterns and the systematic unraveling of the American empire do not signal a lurch toward freedom and democracy but the catastrophic breakdown of globalization. The world as we know it is coming to an end. And what will follow will not be pleasant or easy.

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©Minka Stoyanova / minka-art.net // used with permission

The bankrupt corporate power elite, who continue to serve the dead ideas of unfettered corporate capitalism, globalization, profligate consumption and an economy dependent on fossil fuels, as well as endless war, have proven incapable of radically shifting course or responding to our altered reality.

They react to the great unraveling by pretending it is not happening. They are desperately trying to maintain a doomed system of corporate capitalism. And the worse it gets the more they embrace, and seek to make us embrace, magical thinking.

Dozens of members of Congress in the United States have announced that climate change does not exist and evolution is a hoax. They chant the mantra that the marketplace should determine human behavior, even as the unfettered and unregulated marketplace threw the global economy into a seizure

and evaporated some $40 trillion in and elected officials have worldwide wealth. The corporate media become largely irrelevant. retreats as swiftly from reality into Corporate lobbyists write the endless mini–dramas revolving around bills. Lobbyists get them passed. celebrities or long discussions about the Lobbyists make sure you get inane comments of a Donald Trump or the money to be elected. And a Sarah Palin. The real world — the one lobbyists employ you when you imploding in our faces — is ignored. get out of office. Those who hold actual power are the tiny elite The deadly convergence of who manage the corporations. environmental and economic catastrophe is not coincidental. The share of national income of the top 0.1 percent of Americans Corporations turn everything, from since 1974 has grown from human beings to the natural world, into 2.7 to 12.3 percent. One in commodities they ruthlessly exploit six American workers may be until exhaustion or death. The race of without a job. Some 40 million doom is now between environmental Americans may live in poverty, collapse and global economic collapse. with tens of millions more Which will get us first? Or will they get living in a category called “near us at the same time? poverty.” Six million people Carbon emissions continue to soar may be forced from their homes upward, polar ice sheets continue to in the United States because of melt at an alarming rate, hundreds of foreclosures and bank repos– species are vanishing, fish stocks are sessions. But while the masses being dramatically depleted, droughts suffer, and floods are destroying cropland and human habitat across the globe, water sources are being poisoned, and the Those who actually hold great human migration from coastlines power are the tiny elite who and deserts has begun. As temperatures managae corporations. Their continue to rise huge parts of the lobbyists write the bills. They globe will become uninhabitable. The make sure the bills get passes. continued release of large quantities They make sure the money of methane, some scientists have gets the right person elected. warned, could actually asphyxiate the human species. And accompanying the assault on the ecosystem that sustains Goldman Sachs, one of the human life is the cruelty and stupidity financial firms most responsible of unchecked corporate capitalism that for the evaporation of $17 is creating a global economy of masters trillion in wages, savings and and serfs and a world where millions wealth of small investors and will be unable to survive. shareholders in the United States, is giddily handing out We continue to talk about personalities $17.5 billion in compensation —Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama or Stephen Harper—although the heads of state pg. 29

to its managers, including $12.6 million to its CEO, Lloyd Blankfein.

The massive redistribution of wealth happened because lawmakers and public officials were, in essence, hired to permit it to happen. It was not a conspiracy. The process was transparent. It did not require the formation of a new political party or movement. It was the result of inertia by our political and intellectual class, which in the face of expanding corporate power found it personally profitable to facilitate it or look the other way. The armies of lobbyists, who write the legislation, bankroll political campaigns and disseminate propaganda, have been able to short–circuit the electorate.

It has become impossible for most citizens to find out what is happening.Television news celebrities dutifully present two opposing sides though nothing is actually elucidated or explained. Once the television lights are turned off, the policiticans go back to serving business.

Our political vocabulary continues to sustain the illusion of participatory democracy.

The Democrats and the Liberal Party in Canada offer minor palliatives and a feel–your–pain language to mask the cruelty and goals of the corporate state.

Neofeudalism will be cemented into place whether it is delivered

by Democrats and the Liberals, who are pushing us there at 60 miles an hour, or by Republicans and the Conservatives, who are barreling toward it at 100 miles an hour.

“By fostering an illusion among

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the powerless classes that it can make their interests a priority,” Sheldon Wolin writes, “the Democratic Party pacifies and thereby defines the style of an opposition party in an inverted totalitarian system.” The Democrats and the Liberals are always able to offer up a least–worst alternative while, in fact, doing little or nothing to thwart the march toward corporate collectivism.

It is not that the public in the United States does not want a good healthcare system, programs that provide employment, quality public education or an end to Wall Street’s looting of the U.S. Treasury. Most polls suggest Americans do. But it has become impossible for most citizens in these corporate states to find out what is happening in the centers of power.

Television news celebrities dutifully present two opposing sides to every issue, although each side is usually lying. The viewer can believe whatever he or she wants to believe. Nothing is actually elucidated or explained.

The sound bites by Republicans or Democrats, the Liberals or the Conservatives, are accepted at face value. And once the television lights are turned off, the politicians go back to the business of serving business.

Human history, rather than being a chronicle of freedom and democracy, is characterized by ruthless domination.

Our elites have done what all elites do. They have found sophisticated mechanisms to thwart popular aspirations, disenfranchise the working and increasingly the middle class, keep us passive and make us serve their interests. The brief democratic opening in our society in the early 20th century, made possible by radical movements, unions and a vigorous press, has again been shut tight. We were mesmerized by political charades, cheap consumerism, spectacle and magical thinking as we were ruthlessly stripped of power.

Adequate food, clean water and basic security are now beyond the reach of half the world’s population. Food prices have risen 61 percent globally

since December 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The price of wheat has exploded, more than doubling in the last eight months to $8.56 a bushel.

When half of your income is spent on food, as it is in countries such as Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Somalia and Ivory Coast, price increases of this magnitude bring with them widespread malnu–trition and starvation. Food prices in the United States have risen over the past three months at an annualized rate of five percent. There are some 40 million poor in the United States who devote 35 percent of their after–tax incomes to pay for food.

As the cost of fossil fuel climbs, as climate change continues to disrupt agricultural production and as populations and unemployment swell, we will find ourselves convulsed in more global and domestic unrest. Food riots and political protests will be frequent, as will malnutrition and starvation.

Desperate people employ desperate measures to survive. And the elites will use the surveillance and security state to attempt to crush all forms of popular dissent.

The last people who should be in charge of our food supply or our social and political life, not to mention the welfare of sick children, are corporate capitalists and Wall Street speculators. But none of this is going to change until we turn our backs on the wider society, denounce the orthodoxies peddled in our universities and in the press by corporate apologists and construct our opposition to the corporate state from the ground up. It will not be easy. It will take time. And it will require us to accept the status of social and political pariahs, especially as the lunatic fringe of our political establishment steadily gains power as the crisis mounts. The corporate state has nothing to offer the left or the right but fear. It uses fear to turn the

population into passive accomplices.

And as long as we remain afraid, or believe that the formal mechanisms of power can actually bring us real reform, nothing will change.

It does not matter, as writers such as John Ralston Saul have pointed out, that every one of globalism’s promises has turned out to be a lie.

It does not matter that economic inequality has gotten worse and that most of the world’s wealth has become concentrated in a few hands. It does not matter that the middle class — the beating heart of any democracy — is disappearing and that the rights and wages of the working class have fallen into precipitous decline as labor regulations, protection of our manufacturing base and labor unions have been demolished. It does not matter that corporations have used the destruction of trade barriers as a mechanism for massive tax evasion, a technique that allows conglomerates such as General Electric or Bank of America to avoid paying any taxes. It does not matter that corporations are exploiting and killing the ecosystem for profit.

The steady barrage of illusions disseminated by corporate systems of propaganda, in which words are often replaced with music and images, are impervious to truth.

Faith in the marketplace replaces for many faith in an omnipresent God. And those who dissent are banished as heretics.

The aim of the corporate state is not to feed, clothe or house the masses but to shift all economic, social and political power and wealth into the hands of the tiny corporate elite. It is to create a world where the heads of corporations make $900,000 an hour and four–job families struggle to survive. The corporate elite achieves its aims of greater and greater profit by weakening and dismantling government agencies and taking over or destroying public institutions.

Charter schools, mercenary armies, a for–

profit health insurance industry and outsourcing every facet of government work, from clerical tasks to intelligence, feed the corporate beast at our expense.

The decimation of labor unions, the twisting of education into mindless vocational training and the slashing of social services leave us ever more enslaved to the whims of corporations.

The intrusion of corporations into the public sphere destroys the concept of the common good. It erases the lines between public and private interests.

It creates a world that is defined exclusively by naked self–interest.

Many of us are seduced by childish happy talk. Who wants to hear that we are advancing not toward a paradise of happy consumption and personal prosperity but toward disaster? Who wants to confront a future in which the rapacious and greedy appetites of our global elite, who have failed to protect the planet, threaten to produce widespread anarchy, famine, environmental catastrophe, nuclear terrorism and wars for diminishing resources? Who wants to shatter the myth that the human race is evolving morally, that it can continue its giddy plundering of nonrenewable resources and its hedonistic levels of consumption, that capitalist expansion is eternal and will never cease?

Dying civilizations often prefer hope, even absurd hope, to truth. It makes life easier to bear. It lets them turn away from the hard choices ahead to bask in a comforting certitude that God or science or the market will be their salvation. This is why these apologists for globalism continue to find a following. And their systems of propaganda have built a vast, global Potemkin village to entertain us. The tens of millions of impoverished Americans, whose lives and struggles

We are mesmerized by political charades, cheap consumerism, the spectacle and magical thinking, as we are ruthlessly stripped of power.

rarely make it onto television, are invisible. So are most of the world’s billions of poor, crowded into fetid slums. We do not see those who die from drinking contaminated water or being unable to afford medical care. We do not see those being foreclosed from their homes.

We do not see the children who go to bed hungry. We busy ourselves withthe absurd.

The game is over. We lost. The corporate state will continue its inexorable advance until two– thirds of the nation and the planet is locked into a desperate, permanent underclass. Most of us will struggle to make a living while the Blankfeins and our political elites wallow in the decadence and greed of the Forbidden City and Versailles.

These elites do not have a vision.

They know only one word: more.

They will continue to exploit the nation, the global economy and the ecosystem. And they will use their money to hide in gated compounds when it all implodes. Do not expect them to take care of us when it starts to unravel. We will have to take care of ourselves. We will have to rapidly create small, monastic communities where we can sustain and feed ourselves. It will be up to us to keep alive the intellectual, moral and cultural values the corporate state has attempted to snuff out. It is either that or become drones and serfs in a global corporate dystopia. It is not much of a choice. But at least we still have one.

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Boom & Doom: Revisiting Prophecies Of Collapse

By Debora MacKenzie, originally printed in New Scientist 10 January 2012 At the beginning of the 1970s, a group of young scientists set out to explore our future. Their findings shook a generation and may be even more relevant than ever today.

The question the group set out to answer was: what would happen if the world’s population and industry continued to grow rapidly? Could growth continue indefinitely or would we start to hit limits at some point? In those days, few believed that there were any limits to growth some economists still don’t. Even those who accepted that on a finite planet there must be some limits usually assumed that growth would merely level off as we approached them.

These notions, however, were based on little more than speculation and ideology.

The young scientists tried to take a more rigorous approach: using a computer model to explore possible futures. What was

DEAR READER The staff at New Scientist were kind enough to offer us a significantly reduced rate to reproduce the article and it’s graphic. Unfortunately, we couldn’t raise enough money, and consequently, are not legally allowed to show you anymore of the article.

However, we can report on it. Two of the team’s larger conclusions, based on the World 3 computer model, were that, 1. “If present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next 100 years.”

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shocking was that their simulations, far from showing growth continuing forever, or even leveling out, suggested that it was most likely that boom would be followed by bust: a sharp decline in industrial output, food production and population. In other words, the collapse of global civilization.

These explosive conclusions were published in 1972 in a slim paperback called The Limits to Growth. It became a bestseller and provoked a furious backlash that has obscured what it actually said. For instance, it is widely believed that Limits predicted collapse by 2000, yet in fact it made no such claim. So what did it say? And 40 years on, how do its projections compare with reality so far?

The first thing you might ask is, why look back at a model devised in the days when computers were bigger than your fridge but less powerful than your phone? Surely we now have far more advanced models? In fact, in many ways

2. “Only when the growth of population and industry were constrained, and all the technological fixes applied, did [the model not crash but rather] stabilize in relative prosperity.”

Further, all current data since the 1970s has been added to the model and the data has followed the model’s projections nearly perfectly.

We will attempt to bring you the full article in the next issue. However, you can, of course, read the full article at: www.informationclearinghouse. info/article30216.htm The graph can be seen at www.newscientist.com We highly recommend you check it out.

©Rolling Thunder Press / crimeethinc.com // used with permission

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Documentaries

SCHOOL OF THE REAL Get Yourself an Education In any society where great power is centralized, only certain ideas are allowed within the mainstream dialogue.

Ideas which are beneficial to society and the citizen are marginalized and pushed aside — they are not mentioned in the mainstream press, not mentioned on the big news channels, books get banned or relegated to obscure press, people are censored or asked not to come on the big-

budget talk show — because these ideas are not helpful or supportive to great centralized power. The greater the power of the central players, the more difficult it becomes for fresh, new ideas to enter the mainstream dialogue.

It becomes ‘impolite’ or ‘un-American’ to discuss them. But since when did taking care of each other, our friends, our moms, our kids, become impolite or un-American? Is this not a basic tenet of humanity, something which we can surely all agree on as a universal moral right?

A People’s History of the United States “In 1492,Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” So starts the usual history of America that we are told in grade school and is carried on through high school. Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States tells a very different version of American history. Instead of the standard victors who write history, Zinn looks at history from the side of the so-called losers, those who are poor and powerless. He writes about those who struggled against power, about the genocide of the Indian Nations, the struggle of women to gain basic rights, the cruel realities of the African slave trade so easily glossed over in conventional textbooks. This is the book your history teacher hoped you would never read.

Discipline & Punish An author we mentioned in the Jensen article, Foucault’s Discipline & Punish is a landmark work on the history of the western prison system, and it’s roots in insane asylums and the consequential moral coding ofhumans as ‘mentally ill.’ Of course,the definition of mentally ill at that time was obscure and ill- defined; what’s more, it was one of the first instances of ostracizing humans from other humans, problem humans who would be shut away and not be seen by polite society. Your professor will have much to say about this book.

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The most powerful guard against any regime is to get educated. And we don’t mean a college education.

We mean a real education; one with the blinders off. Modern Success will present some media in each issue to help you further your own education, so you can make informed and intelligent decisions about your current reality and to help you secure your future.

Books The Revolution of Everyday Life Sometimes one stumbles across a book that challenges their thinking on levels they never even knew existed. A student and proponent of GuyDubord’s work and that of the Situationist International(see Stoyanova’s “Barstool Philosophy” in this issue), Vaneigem wrote The Revolution of Everyday Life as a critique of some of the Situationists’ assertions. The book is at times exhilarating in it’s poetry and is filled with insight that makes your brain do an almost palpable shift.

After being published in France, the book was quickly circulated among the students of the Sorbonne University in Paris. Shortly thereafter in May of 1968, they took over the campus …

Some documentaries can be more riveting than any Anytime a movie approaches the topic of modern day thriller. the food industry, one starts to imagine Manufacturing Consent a splatter-fest put out by animal rights is such a film. Made in 1992 groups to deter one from eating meat.

by Mark Achbar and Peter However, Food, Inc. (2008, Kenner) stays Wintonick, the film follows away from the gratuitous gross-out and the work of professor Noam focuses on the who behind the corporate Chomsky, whom you may food industry.

It shows how the idyl of have heard about in your the small family farm is no longer a reality English Linguistics class. But in America and has largely been replaced Professor At MIT is just his day job. At night — or with huge food industry conglomerates. any free second he has, it seems — he turns into (Tyson raises and processes 85% of the chicken consumed in Super American Policy Critic Man. (Admittedly not this country.)

Kenner interviews several independent farmers a good superhero name.) With the help of Achbar and Wintonick, Chomsky slowly and methodically who, for example, have chosen not to use Monsanto’s genetically peals away the layers of U. S. Propaganda to reveal modified corn seeds and spray toxic round up on their land, and a very different America than the one we are told reveals how Monsanto manipulates, bullies, or outright sues about in the main stream media. At times the movie those farmers. Food Inc., however, fails to live up to it’s full feels a bit like how Neo must have felt when he took promise as a champion of consumer rights when Kenner chooses the little red pill in The Matrix. Considered a must- to highlight — as a shining model for American grocers — Walsee on nearly every major top-ten documentary list. Mart’s new ‘organic’ line (which contain all big-ag food lines; see Though the out-of-date fashions and 90s hairstyles “What Do I Do Now?” article after this article). Except for that give some comic relief, make sure to have comfort one egregious error, it’s a great look into the workings of the industry that makes everything you eat. food and anti-anxiety meds close at hand.

If the Chomsky film didn’t stand your hairs up on end, Why We Fight (2006, Jarecki) should just about do the trick. Jarecki’s work is cautious and well plotted, allowing the characters— from Senator John McCain (RAZ), to workers in a munitions factory, to former heads of the CIA — to tell their story in the context of the rise of the “military-industrial complex,” a term coined by President Eisenhower in his closing speech to the nation. The film reveals what we really actually do when we go to war, the real reasons we go to war, who benefits from permanent war, and what the consequences to our security have been from the dozens of military invasions we have carried out around the world. A thoughtful, quality examination of American war policy in lieu of 9/11.

The recent documentary, Inside Job (2010, Ferguson), is an excellent account of the market crash of 2008 that resulted in millions of people across the country losing their homes, their savings, their livelihood. With Matt Damon as the movie’s smooth narrator, the movie shows that no one involved in the greatest Ponzi scheme of all time has gone to jail or been fined. Conversely, nearly all of the bank CEOs have received huge milliondollar bonuses. What’s more, it is you and I who bailed them out with our tax dollars. The graphics are very helpful to understand the intricacies of the scheme, though nothing is more telling than the moment when the Chair of Harvard University’s Department of Economics, John Campbell, Bush’s main economic advisor, looses his composure and lays into Ferguson; and it is in this moment that one can finally see the amount of energy these men are using to protect themselves from the things that they have knowingly done to the public.

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Mags & Online Mother Jones Picking up a copy of Mother Jones sometimes feels a little… naughty.

After all, in these pages lie the keys to the kingdom that the king doesn’t really want you to have; for example, he doesn’t want you to know that he taxes you to death while giving the rich merchants bonuses; nor does he want you to know how he keeps getting reelected (same king, different face). In this sense, reading Mother Jones is a bit like reading the tabloids. Except here, the paparazzi are the tenacious (and courageous) investigative team at MJ who go after the large corporate rollers; the banks that took away your uncle’s or friend’s or your house; the senators that keep those banks solvent; and everyone else that keeps the king in place. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself reading it giddily behind some locked bathroom door.

Science News From the Society for Science and the Public comes Science News. We have found this magazine to be extremely helpful in gaining access to the world of science, as it is the Society’s vision to “promote the understanding and appreciation of science and the vital role it plays in human advancement.” One of the science magazines on the shelf that doesn’t heavily promote corporate sponsored science: studies or slants on studies which advance the underlying corporate agendas, especially those of the oil, auto and military industries.

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DemoncracyNow.Org An online news source offering coverage of daily headlines, Democracy Now! features original stories from speakers, authors, scientists, and professors talking about what’s happening behind the major headlines. Democracy Now! attempts to correct the prevailing spin put on by the media. Such as when we are told that drones strikes killed 17 ‘militants’, the mainstream media politely forgets to mention that all males over 18 are considered militants by the US government until such post-mortem evidence proves them otherwise.

Adbusters is the quintessential nonmagazine. That is, it is one of the only major circulations the coutry which maintains absolutely advertising.

The magazine has recently become a force to be reckoned with in all areas human: political, social, cultural, psychological.

They have become, at their own behest or otherwise, one of the primary voices of the Occupy Movement, and have rallied together several of the great thinkers of our time to produce something that goes beyond the boundaries of the everyday mundane magazine. Each page is visually arresting, art in it’s own right. So much so that one might miss the mind-altering article stitched into the fabric of the magazine’s canvas.

Many of these titles can not be found at the big chain video or book stores. If you’d like to check out some local places where you can get them (and help out the Madison economy), we recommend you stop by these places: Madison Info Shop madinfoshop.wordpress.com Rainbow Book Store rainbow.bookstore.coop Four Star Video Heaven fourstarvideoheaven.com

What Do I Do Now? There is an enormous amount of work to be done if we wish to succeed as a human race. The fact that the vast majority of scientists affirm that the planet is on a path toward ecological (and human) collapse is beginning to be acknowledge by greater numbers of the planet’s human population.

Faced with such an immense task, one may naturally feel a bit overwhelmed. But there are several things you can do — many of them quite simple — to effect change. This is a problem that all us earthlings are facing, so everyone’s talent is needed.

Here is a brief list of ideas to get you started: PURCHASE POWER Some may argue the efficacy of this approach, but at the very minimum, you can begin to show the corporate oligarchy that you no longer value what they are putting out.

Purchasing products from small, independent businesses that incorporate sustainable ecological models, staying away from major labels and brands (Coke, Nike, McDonald’s, Starbucks, ad nauseam), shopping in co–ops and community–based markets, all these acts move money away from the mega–corps.

Think of it like legally stealing from The Man. But the Man is tricky. For example, before running off to Willy Street Co–op to replace your foodstuffs with organics, we recommend reading up on how big industry is taking over organic product lines, which has had significant deleterious effects, such as the way large corporations alter or skew the definition of organic, and fight for it in court and through

overwhelming lobbying efforts. Here’s a great example: did you know that Odwalla is owned by Coke? See www. msu.edu/~howardp for information on which Big Industry owns which natural and organic food lines. (Then ask Willy St. why they don’t tell us which multi– national corporations are behind the products they sell! The reasons they give may shock you.)

It should be noted that it is important to buy organic products whenever possible, not only to protect oneself against herbicide and pesticide exposure, but more so to support efforts by independent farmers who don’t use those chemicals on their land or introduce them into nature (adding to the global warming epidemic). More on the organic industry in an upcoming issue.

A great place to start on your organic journey is to chat with the folks at Community Pharmacy (communitypharmacy.coop). It’s a great place to get personal health care products that are crueltyfree and cleaning products that are safe for the human environment. They also offer vitamins, herbs, smart drugs, and regular drugs (if you got a ‘scrip).

On top of everything, the staff there are super friendly, knowledgable and approachable about a wide range of health care topics.

TRANSPORTATION To immediately and significantly decrease your environmental impact and reduce the amount of carbon you are directly contributing to the atmosphere …

1. Ditch Your Car I haven’t owned a car or motorcycle or moped for over fifteen years and I’m doing just fine, thank you. Even so–called ecocars have detrimental environmental effects, not only because of the manufacturing process (those precious metals gotta come from somewhere, and we gotta use a lot of coal to not only get them out of the ground, but then make the darn thing into an eco–friendly vehicle, producing hundreds of tons of CO2 in the process), but also such cars as electrical cars — unless they are powered by solar or wind energy — are getting their electricity from a power grid …the vast majority of which use coal and gas to create that electricity, and we are back to square one. More on cars in the next issue.

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RESIST DESPAIR 2. Bike Madison is one of the most bike–friendly towns on the planet. And there are loads of ways you can stay warm when it gets chilly. And you’ll lose weight too!

3. Take Public Transport Yeah, it sucks to ride the bus.

But it’s not unbearable. And the more people that ride, the more busses they’ll put out there.

4. Don’t Fly Ever! Unless you have an emergency, consider that flying is like setting a forest ablaze and releasing all that carbon into the atmosphere, as well as destroying the oxygenproducing forest itself.

The costs to our environment due to flying are obscene.

VOX HUMANA Democracy means a society where everyone has a voice and uses that voice.

Here are a few ways to find and implement your voice.

1. Talk Yep. That’s it. Just talk.

This is one of the easiest and most effective ways of being an agent for change. You don’t have to do it through a megaphone or from a podium (though, by all means, go for it!), but simply by talking to those closest to you: your close friends and family members. Research shows that

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l people are generally most influenced by their social group, those to whom they feel a strong bond or attachment.

This means that your friends do listen to you, as does your family, your co– workers, and so on. They may pretend not to, may scoff or ridicule, but they’ll think about what you say. Especially if you provide evidence for your opinions.

Stay away from hostile attacks. Keep to the truth that you know. The effect of new knowledge brought into any social group can have a ripple–effect throughout that group and onward into other contiguous groups.

2. Activism There are many ways to engage in social change through activism. You can find groups through Facebook or general search engines.

350.org and CitizensClimateLobby.org are a few examples. But we strongly urge you to do your own research on any group before deciding to join.

Make sure the group aligns with your vision. If they don’t, move on!

Also, like the problem we discussed re: organics, watch out for corporate activist groups such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Move On.org, and so on. These groups tend to invest their time and energy into raising money for

promotional advertising in order to raise money for more promotional advertising. Direct action tends to be a secondary agenda item. What’s worse, they continue to make concessions to the whaling, lumber and mining industries, to name a few. This allows those industries to control the range of debate and actions in which the activist groups are ‘allowed’ to participate.

In other words, corporateactivists are in league with the same people who are running the planet, and humanity, into the ground.

We don’t wish to say too much about How You Should Get Involved. That is entirely up to you.

Everyone must find their own way, usually by connecting with others who resonate with their talents and perspectives. Some people are activists through their artwork.

Some write books or letters or blogs. Some chain themselves to bulldozers. Some build a local independent radio station. Some put up street art. There are as many ways to speak out as there are people on the planet. The point is to speak. To act. And to do it now.

“What is presented everywhere as an ecological catastrophe has never stopped being, above all, the manifestation of

a

d i s a s t r o u s

r e l a t i o n s h i p t o

t h e

w o r l d

.”

— The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection

Yo u h a v e n o t b e e n p a y i n g a t t e n t i o n .

— Radiohead, “2+2=5”

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