In Daniel Quinn's excellent book Ishmael the gorilla asks the narrator to think about what Mother Culture has been whispering to him all his life. The myths of our culture. And the narrator says that we don't have any myths. Then the gorilla explains about the golden cage in which we live, and how the stories we tell ourselves shape our behavior. This blew my mind. That's how I became aware of the existence of the Noise Machine. It's everywhere, it's the cultural water we swim in. It can't be ignored if you want to participate in modern life. But a big part of it has been hijacked by the Republican party, or as I affectionately call them, our Evil Corporate Overlords Who Are Literally Trying to Kill Us.
After I read Ishmael I started reading all the books Mr. Quinn listed in the bibliography. Some of them were about/by Native Americans, and there were some about wilderness survival. I was really into that at the time. And I think Ecotopia was on there, which is a FANTASTIC book I recommend to all the young idealistic ecowarriors. I was thinking a lot about sustainable communities with nurturing social structures. I was online at the time and did a Daniel Quinn discussion group thing, which was awesome, kinda like Kos. Some of those folks might be here; hey, y'all. It seemed possible that the world was really going to change.
Then Gore lost and the Bush years began and I had a kid and a career and I did go away for a while. I have not been paying attention like I should, especially since Obama was elected, because I thought we had the White House. But that hasn't worked out in terms of progress, because of the wingnuts. The fucking wingnuts! At this point I think some of the older Republicans are embarrassed, as well they should be.
It's been twenty years since I was reading Daniel Quinn for the first time, and things have gotten SO MUCH worse. I am appalled. I think Bryan Lambert is right and we should go ahead and erect a big stone monument that says "We Listened To Idiots" so future intelligent beings will know why we self-destructed and devastated the planet. And to those of you who live in liberal places, never underestimate the stupidity of the hordes who believe the wingnut lies. There are lots of them, and they are armed.
I think a lot about why people vote against their own best self-interest, and it's the noise machine. The Machine is corporately owned and mostly spews out advertising. It's important that we understand how deficient we are in order to keep us consuming as much as possible. We stink in several discrete areas, and we are either too fat or too skinny. We are unhealthy and probably have diseases we don't even know about; at any rate, medication is necessary, and lots of it. Our wardrobes must be updated constantly and must contain special items for every conceivable circumstance. If we cared about our loved ones, we'd buy them plusher toilet paper, and if we really loved our children, they'd be eating astonishingly waste-producing meals consisting of tiny amounts of processed food surrounded by truly offensive amounts of plastic.
You know, I am only dimly aware of what the noise machine is saying, because I Turned. It. Off. I read Jerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television and I stopped watching tv. For twenty years people treated me like I was insane. People kept giving me televisions, which I would pass on to someone else, or use to watch DVDs. People asked me if I was American. The idea that anyone would voluntarily not watch television was incomprehensible. Other people were totally down with it. "Oh, me too," they'd say smugly. "I only watch the History Channel, and the Learning Channel, and Discovery, and the news networks..."
The point of it was to not see commercials, to dull the Machine's noise. And while the growth of the Internet has given me lots of company in No TV Land, it has exposed me to commercials. I don't mind movie trailers, because I like movies, and I often see Ron Reagan saying he isn't afraid of burning in hell, which is fine. But if I see that Bud Light commercial one more time I will track down the mayor of Whatever, USA and strangle him.
On the Internet the Machine is a lot easier to avoid, but I think it's still very prevalent for a lot of people. The information that they are getting is so processed. Either we shut it off or we get people to stop listening to it. So...how do we work towards shutting it down, and how do we get people to stop listening to it?