globalization the awful truth globalization: spider's web of interconnectivity or culture as psychopath? z.rouda To think deeply in our culture is to grow angry and to anger others; and if you cannot tolerate this anger, you are wasting the time you spend thinking deeply. One of the rewards of deep thought is the hot glow of anger at discovering a wrong, but if anger is taboo, thought will starve to death. ~ Jules Henry THE more one learns about anthropology; the more one practices anthropology on oneself and others, the more one must come to embrace or at least accept the fact that, on a base level, culture rules all. Culture gives us our morality, our laws, our conscience, our facts, opinions and identity. Some argue choice is playing an increasing role in assuming identity in our culture; however, true this may be it is nothing more than a slight, sluggish movement towards freedom away from the virtual mental slavery we've been a part of since the birth of our civilization, ten thousand to twelve thousand years ago. Our language itself is a cultural artifact. Our language dictates directly the way we understand ourselves and our connection to the external world. Look up "good" in the dictionary and it lists symptoms: "righteous, proper, honorable, worthy, high in quality, quantity or degree, in excellent condition, healthy." It's all relative: something can only be good or bad when we have something else to compare it to. Good, then, is really a question of better: what is better is good and what is worse is bad. But what of good? What of better? What is this scale, this graph along which "things" are determined to be better or worse than other things? This is of course all cultural. Is it better if it nurtures me? Is it better if it brings me immediate pleasure? Or is better if it makes me stronger in the long run? Or is it better if it puts me right to sleep so I don't have to feel any pain? Is it better if it works well? Is better if it works the fastest, or the longest? Is it better if it brings me monetary wealth? Or is it better if it brings me peace of mind? Is it better if it has the flashiest colors? Or is it better if it works the most musically, the most beautifully? Most everything we know, most everything we've seen or heard or learned or been taught has been and is a product of our culture. Any source to cite or book to read or study to be shown has been written, published, conducted by members of our culture who use the same language and have the same memes, the same intrinsic, almost genetic mental values. So when we try to qualify things in terms of better or worse we must examine what our culture deems better or worse; what the scale looks like, what kinds of things are on it and what they mean. Long ago, perhaps simultaneous with its conception, our culture placed value on this ambiguous term "production" in varying degrees of "efficiency." Wealth was placed in objects and the ideas of good and bad were determined by how quickly, smoothly and simply objects were produced. The simplest, fastest, smoothest, easiest way - the way that requires the least amount of energy or effort - is best. If a human makes an object, this is called creation. When numbers of humans make numbers of objects, this is called production. When these objects are made simplest, quickest, smoothest; with the least amount of energy, this is called efficiency. Humans who practice this way of life build and live in civilizations, and the spread of this way of life is called globalization. Or maybe, civilizations are higher, advanced states of human society. And globalization is simply the process of becoming more inter-connected with the rest of the so-called "developed world." And efficient is simply a synonym for better. And natural resources are just that, resources for humans and other consumers to use which occur naturally. And maybe uncivilized humans don't build civilizations because they're not smart enough. And maybe it doesn't matter if the world ends in two hundred years or five billion years, because it's all an illusion to be transcended through meditation and hallucination anyway. Maybe what matters more than truth and justice is getting rich. Maybe the ends justify the means. Or maybe production is really a nice word for sustained violence. The concentration camp is a great model for production, minus every nicety. Maybe natural resources aren't resources at all, but life-forms as well. Maybe "every man created equal" extends far beyond the reaches of men. Maybe it's, "all life is created equal." Maybe, "One love. Maybe it's true what Derrick Jensen writes, that our civilization's most accurate personification is that of a psychopath, a serial abuser, a wife-beater, a child-raper. Maybe it's true what the Tao Te Ching says, that "the way which can be named is not the eternal way, and the name which can be named is not the eternal name." Maybe globalization is really a synonym for exploitation. Maybe we've got it all wrong. Just maybe. What, then, is civilization? What is globalization? What, for that matter, is production, efficiency, or wealth? What is security? These definitions, beyond being culture-specific, are individual-specific. It's acceptable today that one might have a different definition of all of these things. The definitions of the author define themselves as the only definitions. Civilization cannot simply be "a higher or advanced state of society." It's not necessarily more advanced than other societies, and I'd say it's a lot lower than anything else, being that it's founded on rape and exploitation which characterize the lowest of the low. Civilizations generally have more "stuff" than non-civilized societies. Civilizations generally have small, centralized urban areas with dense populations which rely on food from outlying rural farms and, more recently, factories. Civilizations are based on exploitation of the land they're based on. You cannot have civilization without having globalization, and you cannot have globalization without civilization. Jensen writes, "Industrialism (whether socialist or capitalist) requires cheap and obedient labor, a constant input of raw materials, and ever expanding markets of indiscriminate consumers. Being parasitic, the system requires continued subsidy by nature and the capture of ever more consumers. 'Globalization,' then, is the spread of this parasitic, monetized, commodity-driven, inequitable, mono-cultural socioeconomic system from the center of empire to its periphery. " Globalization is when civilizations move and grow and swallow the indigenous cultures of whatever land they claim. Globalization is when the White Man came to North and South America and slaughtered and swallowed the indigenous cultures of the land. Civilization is the noun and globalization is the verb. Globalization is an economic and political system, as detailed in Hardt and Negri's Empire, but it is much bigger and more blinding than that. Globalization is a phenomenon unique and inherent to civilization-building cultures. Other cultures besides our gigantic, 98%-of-the-human-population-on-Earth civilization do not swallow their neighbors (except for previous civilizations which functioned essentially the same as ours.) The process of globalization involves the use of computers, oil-based transportation systems and telecommunications in order to "connect" with people all around the world, even cross-culturally. It also involves the use of computers, oil-based transportation systems and telecommunications, coupled with the institution of industrial schooling, in order to attempt to fragment, isolate and disconnect the proverbial People from themselves and each other. Arjun Appadurai's concept of the imagination as social practice comes to mind; especially when coupled with Jensen's concept of "toxic mimics." Psychology/psychiatry are completely invented medicines, and they are toxic mimics of true support and true mental health. Candy is completely contrived - a complete joke. And it is a toxic mimic of fruit or berries, bushes at eye-height, ready to grab. Many pillars of our civilization have no direct, solid basis in anything - except the minds of those enslaved by it. Globalization is a process of cultural sharing, and it's a process of cultural blending. It's the process of increasing the so-called "quality of life," and it's the process of diminishing it, to the point of exploitation and abuse; rape. If you value the contrived over the organic, the synthetic over the natural, if you value the spectacle over the story, if you value possessions over people, if you value speed over skill and skill over soul, and especially if you don't remember having a choice in your values, then it's easy to argue for the good in globalization. If you value money over safety, comfort over sanity, numbness of mind over peace of mind, if you value things over thoughts and cash over heart, if you value what is simple and easy rather than what nourishes and enriches the heart, mind, body, soul, and environment, then it's easy to argue for the good in globalization. If you think the profits yielded by Monsanto's cancer-causing pesticide-resistant Roundup-Ready products outweigh the millions of suicides committed by Indian farmers, it's easy to argue for the good in globalization. There is evidence of a great sensationalization and idealization of globalization within our civilization-of-fragmentation. Anna Tsing compares the new era of globalization to the apparently-deceased Marxist concept of capitalism thusly, "'Circulation' is in global rhetoric what the 'penetration' of capitalism was in certain kinds of Marxist... theory... The difference is significant; where penetration always evokes a kind of rape,... circulation calls forth images of the healthy flow of blood in the body and the stimulating, evenhanded exchange of the marketplace" (Tsing, Anna. The Anthropology of Globalization. Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2002). This kind of talk comes only from a mind so brainwashed by commerce, so mentally destroyed by "communications," feeling hard the void of a supporting community, feeling hard the void of real life, that it takes on the characteristics of a psychopath: it begins to invent reality. The epiphany waits: globalization is only good to those who are bad. "It's not that black-and-white," they say. "There's more to it than that," they say. "Industry, technology, knowledge will save us," they say. "Nature is here for us. All animals consume; this is no different," they say. "I've been busy," they say, "working hard, taking care of business." "A life that'd make me truly happy is unattainable," they say. "It's always been this way," they say, "and it always will be," they say. "I feel like I'm watching my life like a movie," they say. "I've forgotten how to dream," they say. It's all a matter of proportions. All relationships, even those outside of the economic mindset we all share, are about giving and taking. Even if it is simply support, friends give each other support and receive support from others. Civilizations (which globalize naturally) are simply and truly awful friends. Included below are the list of characteristics of a psychopath, taken from the ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders, World Health Organization, Geneva, 1992, section F60.2 on Dissocial (Antisocial) Personality Disorder: • Callous unconcern for the feelings of others • Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations • Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no difficulty in establishing them • Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence • Incapacity to experience guilt and to profit from experience, particularly punishment • Marked proneness to blame others, or to offer plausible rationalizations, for the behaviour that has brought the patient into conflict with society. People who exhibit these symptoms may be commonly known as psychopaths. There's a test: A woman's mother dies. At her mother's funeral, she sees an attractive man. A week later, she kills her sister. Why? Nine out of ten say the man was involved with her sister. One out of ten say the sister's funeral would be a chance to see the man again. What is civilization? What is globalization? Is it good or bad? What is it called when the entire culture you belong to exhibits the symptoms of a psychopath? Is it good or bad? 070927 ... FUCK you make-a me cry 081020 ... hsg because we do not agree, and/or are not willing to, we simply must win whether we compete or not. some indigenous peoples knew of better things. but they dropped the ball. the responsibility lies in the hands of those who knew not what they thought was true but those who were accurate. if we can't make simple sustainable sustainable systems here on earth even for the very basics (energy, food/waste etc) then any attempt at space_exploration is silly. and spa exp is glo~'s aim. 081029 what's it to you? who go blather from