E. Miller on Fri, 21 Nov 2003 23:20:38 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> Fwd: [CTHEORY] Article 136 - The Digital Death Rattle of the American Middle Class |
The problem is that it's not just the elite supporting the policies that shift even more power and wealth to the elite. There's a large degree of complacency within the middle and working classes in the US, possibly because the benefits of globalized labor and production are clear to all (hey, cheap TVs at Wal-Mart!) while the disadvantages are much less apparent. I've heard the condition described as 'cognitive dissonance'. Cut taxes AND increase services! Ship jobs overseas AND have a rising national standard of living! Pay nothing for software AND have a highly-paid corps of US-based software developers! As a nation we're compartmentalizing our experiences into comprehensible chunks using an ideological framework (either free-market or religious) and often simply discarding the bits that don't fit. So it's not only the elites that like the idea of an "easily digested structure of nobles and serfs." It's also ideological comfort food for the other classes, because the myth of unfettered Horatio Alger-ish individual mobility says that YOU TOO can be a noble, if you just work hard enough. Not that I'm saying anything new here, but the sad thing is that it's been said for decades but the American national psyche is highly resistant to inconvenient observations undercutting the individualistic mythology and belief systems. I'm starting to think that the complexity of globalized social/economic/material systems has eclipsed our ability as humans to sufficiently understand and manage the systems. That ain't good. Eric On 11/20/03 3:19 PM, "David Patterson" <cptanalog@fastermac.net> wrote: > At last the "elite" have found a way to eradicate us pesky middle-class > citizens and get back to their own easily digested structure of nobles > and serfs. The US will soon have a societal organization which even > George W. can understand. Sieg Heil!!! > <...> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net