01121 Memes and Structures of Control and Liberation
Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things. — Russell Baker
The Excess Consumption System benefits its controllers at our expense because we give our consent to it and make it possible. That’s easy to do. It is not at all difficult. The system makes it so. There are numerous memes circulating through our society that ensure social control and conformity to the desires of those who benefit from the Excess Consumption System. These memes support structures and systems that make it easy to make bad choices. They endeavor to make it hard to make good, better, or best choices:
The system benefits me.
The government does the right things for the nation.
I am a powerless pawn in the hands of great forces beyond my control.
Nothing I can do will change things, for me personally, or for society.
Enemies threaten us. We must unite and do what the government tells us to do!
More stuff is more better.
Bigger, faster is better.
Borrowing money benefits me.
The lesser of two evils is a fine choice.
Violence solves problems.
Humans don’t need a relationship with nature.
A rising tide lifts all boats.
This system is not an accident. We sometimes forget that the Greatest Generation came out of World War II as expert practitioners of thrift and frugality. They were coming off of a dozen years of depression followed by four long years of war. They knew how to plant gardens and preserve the harvest for winter eating. They knew the truth of "make it over, make do, do without." But it wasn't long before they were turning their backs on those days and enjoying the "fruits" of their wartime victory.
Victor Legough, a PR and advertising expert from the 50s, wrote:
Our Enormously productive economy…demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption…we need things burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.
Thus began the development of shopping as a virtual cult religion, the perfect antidote to traditional American thrift and frugality.
Distraction, Fear, Compensation: Bread and Circuses
The system uses the media to distract the population with trivialities and on edge with fear. Watch your evening news and count and time the number of crime reports. Measure the column inches of violence in your newspaper.
There are plenty of compensatory activities to keep people mindlessly entertained. Five hundred channels of cable television will fill your mind with drivel and stoke your bloodlust for violence and sex. Drugs and alcohol are readily available to numb your senses, dull your brain, and make it seem as though none of this really matters.
Memes of Liberation
If all was lost, you would not be reading this.
There are memes of liberation that help us to break free of the Excess Consumption System and liberate our lives from the controls of slavery. These memes are the seeds of structures of beauty, wisdom, frugality, and sustainability that help us make good, better, or best choices:
The system benefits the powerful at the expense of the common good.
Cooperation is more beneficial than competition.
Less stuff brings more quality of life. This is often said simply as “less is more.”
You are not a powerless pawn.
The lesser of two evils is still evil.
The borrower is the slave of the lender.
What you do matters — to you, to all you love, to your community, and to the planet. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.
Your life is under your control.
If you don’t like what’s happening to you, you can design a better system by which to operate your life.
Kindness, beauty, solidarity, authenticity, and participation work better than greed, gluttony, violence, selfishness, and waste.
The government defends the special interests and takes from the majority to give to the powerful.
We can take back control of the government from the rent-seeking aristocrats.
We can overcome evil with good.
Some structures of liberation are a matter of opening your eyes and your mind and understanding how things actually work. Others empower people to take action that withdraws their consent and support from the Excess Consumption System.
These actions constitute growing communities of support that help us along our journeys of beauty, wisdom, and sustainability.
No one can eliminate their bondage to the Excess Consumption System overnight. It’s a process, a journey.
Our liberation begins first in our own minds.
At the beginning, your work on your own attitudes and thoughts is more important than any other single thing you can do. Freeing your mind — emptying out the trash — is the basis of a better, more sustainable life.
Don’t think that is easy, because it isn’t. There’s a reason people say, “We can be our own worst enemy.” The imprinting and socializing begin early.
But it isn’t impossible. You are the owner of your own brain. You can unlearn bad habits of thought and awake your life to new patterns of freedom and liberation.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
I love self-fulfilling prophecies. They are the best kind of prophecies because they always come true. This is because we self-fulfill them.
The trick is to be careful about the prophecies that you self-fulfill. Stick with prophecies of joy, abundance, cooperation, wisdom, and beauty.
Leave the prophecies of violence, scarcity, destruction, and terror alone.
The world has seen enough violence. We need no more of it. Instead, we need more joy, abundance, cooperation, wisdom, and beauty.
Permaculture design can make this so.