Our fall from grace -- our separation from the mother -- our lifelong yearning for a return to completion -- our fundamental sublimating selves have never managed to rise above the predatory and venal. Societies and politics only reflect this. What have we become? We have not become other than what we always were, and that is the tragedy. The U.S. is now a template for the madness that promises to engulf the planet. A culture of cyborgs, of zombies, who compulsively and with growing intensity stagger toward mental paralysis. Is it an unconscious self loathing that is reflected in backing a Hillary Clinton? A George Bush? A John Kerry? I suspect so. Our society has less and less "time" for its populace to spend on idle activities or reflection. Longer hours and less pay, more stress and the need for more justification. "We" are the best, "We" are the richest, etc., etc., etc. At what point is such talk meaningless? (It long ago became demonstrably incorrect.) Ortega y Gasset once wrote how animals respond more directly to the exterior, that they respond to stimuli around them, and when the stimulation stops, they simply go to sleep. Man once slept better, as life was simpler. Today we live in a terminal state of anxiety and suffer near total insomnia. We seem unable to step back and look inward, even for a minute. In the U.S., as of 2003, one in eight lived beneath the poverty line. That's roughly double the numbers for Western Europe. The U.S. leads the world in per capita prison population and we have the highest murder rate. We also, as a nation, kill the most people in other countries. We do this in the name of progress and out of a nerve-bending white-hot brain-melting fear. We fear everything.
So, what have we become? We have become zombies. That is the best single image I can come up with. We are programmed by marketing and a religion of profit. Distraction from ourselves is such an acute need that without it we go berserk. The numbers of those "going postal" increases each day, and the cracks in the patina of sanity grow wider. The Western turn toward "reason" has become a principle of domination and control. The inequality all around us is simply not seen by most Americans. If someone points out that Cheney is living off blood money, hundreds of millions made off the suffering of others, most Americans respond by wishing THEY were Cheney -- NOT by asking for a stop to the suffering and exploitation.
Zombies.
http://www.swans.com/library/art11/johns09.html
