LECTURE ON THEFT, ZINN AND THE
CORPORATION
Theft is a difficult issue, one
that has particular implications today. First we will examine the context
and history of theft, and then use the Ethical concepts we have studied as
lenses.
The notion of ‘property’ is bound
up with European and Western identity, often seen as a principle of politics
particular to Europe or fully realized in full within European historical
development. We can easily see, however, that the origins of property,
like most human cultures, has its origins in ape social behavior. While
Europe has developed cultures of property that are highly sophisticated, these
stem from cultural borrowings as much as they do from within Europe itself.
Consider Islamic cultures of borrowing with interest, writing and cashing
checks, etc.
Turning to ape behavior to see
precedents, we can clearly identify with apes both in focusing on and becoming
possessive of objects and forgetting this possession and its objects.
Consider that an ape will become attached to a banana, fight against
other apes that try to take the banana, and then, upon seeing a better banana,
the ape will abandon the first and ignore whether or not the first falls into
other hands. We can see that the ape can come to possess as ‘mine not
yours’, and come to forget this possessing (‘neither mine nor yours’).
This is parallel with self-other distinctions already discussed, as with
the child psychology that says in the beginning there is neither and both must
arise together in tension (codependent arising of Jainism and Buddhism).
There is also evidence that apes
can not only fall into a ‘mine vs. everyone’ relation of possession (of
objects), but apes can also recognize other apes as possessing objects
themselves (selfish as other). Consider the case (from an old
Anthropology class of mine) of the female chimpanzee ignoring another male
chimpanzee trying to give her a banana for sex, and how the female only
snatches the banana for herself when the male ape gets bored and goes out of
sight so that there is no expected reciprocity. We should be cautious of
the sexism here (females ‘push bananas’ at males too), but also marvel in how
familiar this behavior is to humanity (next week, we will see that apes know
lying too).
Humans, of course, have taken
these impulses and instincts and complexified them with many inter-competing
cultures, cultures that are actually capable of stealing from each other as
much as they can describe and criminalize stealing themselves! While there
are many intellectuals who have defended the view that while trade is universal
only the West developed ‘capital’, I am critical of this view (interestingly
enough, the one to coin this specialized term was the great opponent of
Capitalism, Karl Marx). We have yet to do justice to intercultural
borrowings, and ‘The West’ is very proud of its economics today. Is
‘capital’ a new device, particular to Western thought? I think that a
study of Islam passing to Europe shows this can only be a partial truth, but we
get a better view if we turn back the clock to the origin of the device known
as MONEY, capital being one of its distant yet certain relatives.
Where does money come from?
Why does it exist? What relationship does money have to theft, and
is this different from the relationship between theft and any other object?
Money is a very interesting and
unique device. Before wood pulp paper bank notes, the Sumerians and
Babylonians get the credit for coining money first, the government controlling
the pressing process of coinage. Today, we use Chinese style paper bank
notes, backed by the government, just like in China after 500 CE or so.
Wood block printing and the block printing press are other devices of
Chinese origin that are crucial to this process. These two stages suggest
that ‘capital’, though it may have been developed to its extent today in Europe
and increasingly in American privatizing economics, cannot possibly have been a
‘inwardly European’ device of the ‘Western mind’. Other cultures of mind
have had no problem inventing and using devices that are the ancestors of
modern day capital.
But, WHY MONEY?
Before money, people of course
possessed many things and traded them between individuals and groups.
This trade was always barter, swapping one sort of thing for another sort
of thing without the device of money as swapping medium. As people
settled into city states, practices of borrowing and lending became stabilized.
The first money was likely tokens indicating amounts of stuff borrowed from
the ruler or other wealthy individuals.
The culture which includes the
device of money has advantages over the culture of mere barter. Money as
a device is very simple, simple the ways that numbers are simple for much the
same purpose. Money is good (and bad) because it is very easy to
gather/amass and divide/distribute, much more than any other object or
substance.
Consider the salmon fisher in a
village. She goes down to the water, and scores 20 large salmon.
This is far more than she can eat, but she can trade salmon for other
things that she needs in the barter culture. However, salmon does not
keep for long, even if one knows how to salt and preserve it. What
happens if she goes to the market and not many people want or need salmon that
day? What if she has enough salmon to get what she wants, but there are
not enough people who need salmon to trade with her for what she wants?
In a culture where the salmon can be sold for money, you can keep the
money for thirty years (even with inflation and other problems, deterioration
of coins, etc) but no one can keep salmon for thirty years, even with freezers!
In this way, money is much easier to amass and to keep than salmon.
In the same way, money is easier
to divide than salmon. Let us say our fisher comes to market with 20
large salmon, and wants to trade for a basket. I, the basket maker, tell
her that one third of a salmon is worth one basket, but I want the front half
of the salmon. What happens if she wants to leave the salmon uncut, or if
she needs four fifths of a salmon later for someone else? What if she
wants to keep all the fish heads for herself? Money has no features to it
other than quantity, even though the pictures are often very pretty.
Fifty dollars is just fifty things, nothing less, so there is no problem
with changing it to two twenties and a ten. You cannot make a whole
salmon again from twenty salmon heads! In this way, money is much easier
to divide and distribute than salmon. If we consider the bustle of a
crowded market, it becomes clear why money would be such a useful (and thus
abusive) device, and how its invention allowed for the modern merchants and
bankers of today. Consider the trillion dollar bailout today, how this is
very abstract yet very real for many people. Luck for us we do not need
to bail out banks with truckloads of salmon!
There are, however, two great
disadvantages to the culture of money use:
First, theft, like trade, becomes
easier! In fact, money not only creates and supports many types of legal
economics, it simultaneously creates and supports many types of illegal
economics like paying money for sex or drugs (Derrida and the signature).
Second, the desire for money
becomes quite intense. Considering that money, sex and cocaine have been
shown to light up similar areas of the human brain, money to barter is like
cocaine to chewing coca leaves. Since money can be traded for anything,
even ironically illegal things, the draw towards money becomes the draw towards
any and everything desired. In this sense, the desire for money is far
more intense than the desire for salmon because money can buy salmon, or remain
money, or buy anything else if one ceases wanting salmon. Just as having
salmon means that the possibility of eating salmon is now practically
guaranteed, having money means the possibility of satisfying any desire
whatsoever is guaranteed. This ultimately means that there is far more
reason to steal money than there is to steal salmon, strange considering that
you can eat salmon and live off of it alone!
In terms of world politics, which
includes the Zinn reading I gave you, stealing and money are central issues of
identity. Communism and Capitalism are divided on the issue of money,
even as Communists print government money and Capitalists organize socialist
programs (public education like BCC, social welfare, public roads and
institutions). The question is: do you trust the government or the
corporations more with your money and economics (an instance of the one/many
problem again)? America has shown that there are great advantages to
privatization, letting corporations control economics rather than the
centralized government. Unfortunately, this does not do away with
problems of authority and corruption (consider that PG&E is still in charge
of California’s power, a pretty plum, in spite of being convicted of stealing
from Californians en masse). Truth be told, both America and the Soviet
Union told third world countries that they would not steal from them or enslave
them like their other surely would, only to both be guilty of similar forms of
corrupt authoritarianism.
A great book to read on all of
this is John Perkins’ book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. He
actually came to BCC last semester for a reading, but I had my other job.
As Perkins says so perfectly, in American foreign relations we try to get
people in debt to us because that binds everyone to our economy and our
desires. I know firsthand from UCB Hass Business School students that
indebting the poor here in America and poor third world countries is an open
practice, spoken of openly in instruction. The financial crisis today was
clearly caused by irresponsible and predatory lending. Our newspapers
never speak of these things, but a piece on NPR my friend gave to me will tell
you just as clearly and honestly an economics professor at Hass. CREDIT
is itself like money, a device that has its advantages but also its
disadvantages, especially for the disadvantaged. If our economy falls far
from where it is today, it could very well be due to the disadvantages of
credit and capital that we have stalled and distanced from ourselves for the
time being as a privileged and advantaged culture. The point is: money
helps the advantaged steal from the disadvantaged, even as it helps the
disadvantaged gain advantage! This is why Americans are relatively
wealthy yet there is an increasing gap between rich and poor here as well as in
the third world. While the ‘American way’ sometimes allows the poor to
get rich, it also very much allows the rich to get much richer and there is
only so much in the pot.
Of course, the rich are also more
encouraged than ever to steal from the rich as well as from the poor.
Consider in 1996 CIA convicted of manipulating business to favor Americans
over Australians. Neither Australians nor Americans can recall this, due
to lack of media coverage in both locations. Since America and Australia
are both wealthy Capitalist countries, you are only doing the system disservice
by making such a scandal public.
Now that we have briefly examined
the history of money and advantage, we have set the stage to ask the question
of theft. The Ethical question we must ask is: Is theft ever justified?
We can use our Ethical concepts
we have studied to give various answers to this question. While I will
not say that there is a certain answer here, we can see that there are many
ways of answering the question but each has its problems. This is how we
know we are investigating the question in matters of real life and not in an
ideal construct.
Kant, of course, would give the
first and most positive answer to this question: NO, theft of property is
NEVER justified. Notice that Kant, living in the German Enlightenment of
the 1700s, is very proud of the culture of property and considers the
possession of property to be an entirely reasonable and principled act.
This is questionable when we trace its roots all the way back to
chimpanzee behavior, of course.
This answer has the obvious
advantage of never getting one involved in most questions of stealing, but
there remain issues. What if one’s society is stealing from another, and
legally one has become wealthy within the stealing society? While we
could imagine that one is ignorant of the ongoing theft and therefore not
DIRECTLY guilty of theft, one is INDIRECTLY guilty. Societies, especially
America, store their wealth in the pockets of the wealthy. America stores
its wealth in its millionaires and billionaires primarily, and encourages these
individuals economically to siphon money from other economies and put it in
their pockets because this is the central way that America gets wealthier.
Thus, while one may hold fast to the principle of ‘I shall not steal’,
one could be complicit in groups and cultures that are engaged in theft that
benefits the individual and the individual actively supports (even in the
absence of conscious consent).
According to the concept of
ethical virtue, theft is fully justified as long as the individual is virtuous
or becomes virtuous through the act of theft. In a very similar way,
Utilitarians and Consequentialists would argue that theft is justified if in
the long term it results in good and justice, much happiness and prevention of
harm. Seems impossible? Robin Hood is the perfect example for
consideration. If I rob the evil rich people and give to poor people who
are starving (i.e. if we construct an example in which many would agree), many
would say that I am virtuous and that I have acted for the best ends in the
long view. I may be hanged for the crimes, but my actions benefit others
and can be argued to benefit my own character (though this is debatable).
Balance
The concept of balance draws our
attention not only to the duality of stealing and not stealing but also to the
duality of possessing and forgetting about possession, grasping and letting go.
There is a great passage of the Dao that says, ‘if you want to be free
from robbers, do not store up treasure in your house’. If one stores up
wealth, one brings theft to one’s doorstep. If one stores up wealth and
becomes attached to it, one brings fear of theft to one’s mind (a Zen koan
theme is calling intention in the mind a thief, that the grasping of desire in
the mind is the real thief). If you do not worry about money, not only do
you not have to worry about stealing from others, you do not worry about others
stealing from you, no matter how much one has!
Also, consider that if one steals
and gets away with it, this makes the compulsion for stealing stronger.
One continues to steal, and then gets caught. Getting away with
stealing can be a major cause of getting caught stealing, a paradox similar to
the bad example attack on Utilitarianism (in this case, ‘good’ examples can lead
to bad just as bad examples can lead to good).
One problem with using balance
here: should we think that we can do bad as long as we balance it out with
good? If we give to charity every time we steal, does this balance things
for our own merit or for the shared situation?
At first, it seems that drive and
self interest would tell us, ‘steal to your heart’s content’. This may
prove harder than it sounds. Is it in one’s self interest to steal from
everyone? Not if everyone has large sticks and helmets haven’t been
invented yet. Unfortunately, this concept is best for understanding the
international situation and the reading I gave you from Zinn. America
today feels that it must indebt the third world to itself to strengthen its
capitalist way of life, as it did during the Cold War. Supporters of the
Vietnam war as well as the ‘War on Terrorism’ today say openly on the News that
we need to ‘defend America’s interests’. Thought the word ‘economic’ is
left off the front of ‘interests’ here, this is essentially what is being
argued. America is a very fine omelet (a money credit omelet, if you
will), and this means eggs need to be stolen from the hen house. Perkins’
book gives us excellent insight into its mechanisms.
To repeat what was said at the
beginning, we have all had the experience of stealing and having things stolen.
Hopefully there is something that moves us towards wisdom in not stealing
even though theft seems an inevitable and in fact integral part of our world.
Aside from the ‘Golden Rule’, there is likely no other constant source of
deterrence from theft considering that the government that prints the money and
prosecutes the theft also in some circumstances supports theft between its
citizens and steals from other governments in the name of life.
To further show the mechanisms
and complexity of theft in the modern world, there is no better nor more
relevant documentary than ‘The Corporation’.
LECTURE ON LIES AND PROPAGANDA
Individuals and groups manipulate the truth to
serve their own ends, in a conscious/unconscious way that often resembles
denial. Speech means that we can tell the truth or tell lies. This
has been an issue for humans before they were even human, like theft and
violence.
In one of the most fascinating stories of ape
behavior I have heard, researchers documented that a young male baboon made the
mistake of trying to force himself sexually on a high ranking female baboon of
his tribe. When the female screeched, the rest of the tribe began chasing
the young male along the ground floor. Suddenly, the young male turned
and gave the call for leopard. The chasers dashed up into the trees and
out of sight, while the young male stood, watching them leave, on the ground in
no danger from any leopard. The researchers concluded that they had
witnessed and documented an ape lying to save his own skin. Thus, we can
assume, humans have been lying since before they were human.
Interestingly, we believe in lying to children
as a matter of raising them. Children before the age of seven are quite
incapable of telling the difference between fiction and reality or
understanding sarcasm. This is why young children believe in Santa and
wonder where Thomas the Train Engine lives.
There are two amusing stories I have on this.
One of my students in a response paper wrote that as a young girl she had
a pet goldfish and accidentally killed the fish by cleaning its bowl with hand
soap. When she saw her fish was dead her mother, who did not want to
torture the young girl with the truth, told her that the cat had walked by and
the fish had a heart attack. Notice the utilitarianism here, and that
Kant would be mortified. Secondly, there was a news story last year about
a boy in Thailand who was stuck on the roof of a tall building, and he would
not climb into the arms of the police who ascended a ladder to rescue him.
One of the police dressed up in a Spiderman costume, and the boy threw
open his arms and leapt into the waiting embrace of Spider Man, who carried him
down to a cheering crowd.
Children believe in superheroes and villains.
One would like to think that the use of heroes and myths ends with
childhood, but the literature on propaganda tells us that all civilizations
make myths that glorify themselves and demonize their enemies, both internal
and external. Because children are raised with these myths, they often do
not think to question them even when they are quite past the age of seven.
Consider the use of superheroes in comics,
fighting criminals at home and enemies of America.
Watchmen is a good look at some of these
dynamics. Consider that Iron Man was originally from Korea, then the
recent movie puts him in the middle east. We still use superheroes to
stand for “truth, justice and the American way”, but we have subtler ways.
I think you can look at Iron Man and the new Batman movie and see
distortions that we not only pass on to kids and teenagers but the adults in
the audience as well.
The Assyrians were masters of propaganda, and
they were one of the oldest civilizations on the planet. Most of their
conquest was through trade, though they invented all of the siege weapons used
through the European middle ages. Rock edicts, tall carvings in cliffs
and on monuments, declared glorious meanings for the common people to consume.
Interestingly, the common people could not read, and someone who could
read and pass the messages to others was called “one who makes the stones
speak”. Just like a modern textbook, the human authors are lost and the
media simply speaks for itself.
Here we come to the old and the new style of
propaganda. The old propaganda model is simple, and it is still in use
particularly by traditional and communist countries: We are the King/State, we
tell you what you need to know, namely that we look after you and our enemies
are evil. WE are the great multicultural empire that looks after everyone
(Assyrian did not denote a race, but a citizen of the empire), but our enemies
will oppress you and kill you for no good reason. Very little has changed
over several thousand years.
The new propaganda is even more effective, and
strangely it does not call itself propaganda at all. In China today, the
communist government says openly that they use propaganda to educate the
people, and the same was admitted in the United States and Britain until just
this last century. The government tells you “brush your teeth, it is good
for you” and this is acknowledged as a message coming from authorities telling
you what you should know and do. Chomsky, who we will study today, is
quite clear on this point, as is Bernays. Propaganda only recently became
something evil, something that the enemy does.
I am going to focus on American propaganda from
WWI through the Cold War, and then talk about Chomsky’s theories on propaganda
models and the American media’s role in American empire and economics.
Hegel tells us when we haven’t looked into an
issue, perspectives are polarized. Here in America, similarly in Britain,
it is thought that we are free and love democracy, but other cultures
(especially the Germans in WWI and II, the Russians in the Cold War, and
Islamic extremists) are not civilized but rather lie as much as they can
because ‘they hate our freedom’.
We have failed to have a real discussion about
censorship and bias in America. This means ‘THEY’ are simply biased and
put forth propaganda, and WE would never do something like that. This is
not only the basic human frame as before, but Americans and British got set in
this in a particular way through WWI and II. In WWI, propaganda became
something the Germans do, not the Belgians, British or Americans. In
WWII, the Germans and Japanese do propaganda, and in the cold war the Russians.
The British and Americans, however, would never do ‘propaganda’ by name,
as they are the champions of liberty, democracy and freedom from tyranny (even
as Britain and then America plundered and sought empire in the same way that the
Germans, Russians did). Today, this is ‘Islam and the West’ where we have
unbiased journalism while they simply put forward obvious propaganda (watch
‘Control Room’ for the best of this).
What we need? We need to see how people
censor and authority is abusive in comparison, and this is what is never done.
Rather than hear one line of Chinese media through ours and say
“Propaganda!” we need to compare censorship operation by the government in both
places and see the complex similarities and differences. I am going to
show human overall consistencies while describing the particular way that
Americans are involved in the inscription of messages and ideology in our
society. That way, we get beyond the strange complex of saying that in
America there is no propaganda while living in an America that knows how to
sell and spin professionally better than anyone ever has.
WWI (the British/Americans vs. the Germans)
The Germans invade Belgium, and the British make
up all sorts of things. The Germans become the evil Hun, and the Belgians
the poor victim, even though they had just gotten bad world press by
systematically killing 10 million Africans in the Congo.
The British run propaganda in America to get us
into the war, and teach us the techniques of British style empire and
propaganda. You set up ‘free’ reporters to say your messages, rather than
do the old way like Germany and Russia with a Ministry of Propaganda.
Thus, after the horrors of WWI, ‘propaganda’
became a bad word in Britain and America.
Since then, we do not do propaganda at all.
We do ‘education’, ‘information’, ‘public relations’, ‘human relations’,
and in time of war we may engage in psychological warfare, but we never do
‘propaganda’.
Propaganda is not an evil conspiracy.
Consider great example of guy who did ‘Birth of a Nation’, KKK film,
being jailed for 10 years for his next movie showing British and Natives
committing war crimes against Americans.
Basically, the British and Americans lied as
much as possible about German atrocities, the French and British took most of
what Germany had after WWI, the Germans fell even lower in the 20s with the
market crash, and they came back as the Nazis, NOW as bad as the British and
Americans had led others to believe.
Consider that Irish newspapers in NY were shut
down for telling people that the British have been evil in Ireland, Scotland,
India, Africa, all while calling themselves the defenders of democracy and
freedom. At this time, government censorship during time of war was
unquestioned (story about Pentagon lifting ban on coffins today).
Bernays book Propaganda:
Chomsky says that Bernays was one of the first
propaganda specialists in America and he is quite open about praising the use
of propaganda. Bernays says, during WWI, that it is remarkable that the
moment America propaganda explodes (advertising, PR), becomes a necessary tool
of corporations, it becomes ‘evil’ in name. PR went from being Barnum and
Bailey to every corporation running spin and ad campaigns. Bernays
invented the committee of Doctors who tell you to eat eggs and bacon for a
‘hearty’ breakfast, saying old way is ‘Eat Bacon!’, new way: ‘Drs say, ‘Eat
bacon’’. This is ‘free expert’ style of propaganda.
In 1938, writing his book, Bernays says that
half the front page of NYT is identifiably propaganda, stories planted by
interested parties. He says the NAACP is a great PR group, and show a
strong hand holding their annual conference in Atlanta. He got out of
cigarette ads in the 40s, tabloids having picked up on the health risks.
It wasn’t till the 1970s that major media carried the story at all.
1953 Bernays helped United Fruit convince everyone that Guatemala was a
communist threat, so the US overthrew the elected leader with a CIA coup and we
supported dictatorship there for cheap labor to supply Americans with cheaper
fruit.
Nazis and WWII:
Hitler says: We did not have as good propaganda
as the British and Americans, but next time will be different. Nazi TV,
engineering goes to American, America rises above Britain in wake of WWII.
During WWII, the Americans and British praised Stalin and his Red Army as
they all fought the Nazis. Then, as soon as the war was over, the British
led the Americans in the Cold War anti-communism campaign. This is where
stuff gets REALLY INTERESTING: US vs. Soviet Union. Both say, ‘THEY do
all of this, so WE HAVE TO’, in the official channels, but the story for the
masses is: only THEY would do that.
COLD WAR
The following material is drawn largely from the
book The Cultural Cold War by Saunders.
Post WWII, the French and Russians had largely
convinced everyone that America has no culture, only cheap commercialism, and
America talks a lot about Freedom, but look at how they treat black people.
US and Soviets started ‘Congresses’, (Soviets for World Peace, US for
Cultural Freedom). It is now know that these were the two big umbrella
groups for a lot of fronts for propaganda campaigns. These groups used
historians, scientists, poets, artists, philosophers, professors, you name it,
to give the impression that individuals were lining up against ‘the evil’ of
the other. The US wanted to fight the ‘French Flu’ and push European
intellectuals away from Marxism as liberation towards free market capitalism as
liberation. Ex: US intellectual goes to Paris, gives a talk about the
‘Negro’s progress in America’. Then when he is heckled (“possibly by
communists”), brings out black band to do jazz all night.
US used CIA and many fronts to tour black
performers through Europe, increase publication of certain books (Camus, not
Sartre example, Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, introductions written to spin
Animal Farm and 1984 by Orwell, who hated both). The idea was to promote
the NONCOMMUNIST LEFT. (Sartre and Merleau-Ponty not studied in America,
as they boycotted Congress of Cultural Freedom invitations due to US treatment
of Black people).
The US had spent $34 million on this by 1950
(also, wealthiest country at this point, passing Britain in financing the
rebuilding of Britain, Germany and France). The money quadrupled in rate
of expense after 1950, as China became the world’s largest communist country.
The CIA set up French literature reviews, toured the Boston symphony
orchestra, approached wealthy individuals about setting up art collections that
praise US art and European art that honors the US.
Pollock and others (though communists) praised
and toured through Europe to show that American has genius painters after all.
Agent as director stockpiled abstract minimalist art at the NY Moma
(Contemporary Chinese art exhibit in Berkeley today). The Ford and
Rockefeller foundations remain serious fronts for money dispensed in America to
artists, writers and performers who do work that promotes America even as it is
avant-garde art.
At home, Billy Graham got money knowingly from
intelligence, toured America telling Christians that ‘Communism is masterminded
by Satan’, never mind that the first communes were French Christian communes.
John Wayne and Ronald Reagan were promoted as Soldier/Cowboys, both spied
for the FBI against communism at home for the house of un-American activities
committee of McCarthy. Disney and Warner brothers made cartoons for the
US in WWII, then denounced their writers and animators as communists when they
went on strike. Disney spied for the FBI, testified for HUAC, while he
was doing illegal things to his workers like sending strike breakers to beat
people up and the FBI looked the other way.
In films, token black people began appearing
well before the civil rights movement. Documents of agents who worked
with studios on scripts say, ‘took out a drunk, added a black person’. One of
the best examples is a black golfer and caddy added into the background of a
scene on a golf course, at a time when white Catholics and Jews had a rough
time getting into golf clubs.
Consider that the civil rights movement
was partly started by seeing token black people in the cinema, like the golfer
and caddy, and wondering aloud why this could not become a real lived reality.
Both US and Soviets fought over who liberates and who oppresses.
In 1956, the ‘Melting Pot’ became a slogan for the US. We can see
that many Russian films and Korean propaganda posters deplore the evils that
America has done to black people as a simple tactic.
Today, if your movie has anything to do with
police or military, they will give you heavy support as long as they go over
the script and ok it. Six media owner companies means each needs a cushy
relationship with both cops and military. That means: America is well
aware of the streamlined view of America put out all over the world in TV and
Movies. They are the BEST form of propaganda. There are consulting
firms who specialize in getting your script ready for police and military
approval, so that you do not get charged extra by the official government
representatives who review the scripts for a fee.
Meanwhile, stories pepper the news about how
“Iran censors movies” and “China might be censoring the internet”. No
further detail is drawn. This is the British/American style: THEY simply
censor, without any comparison of us and them. THEY censor (so, we
don’t?). Recently the media corporations agreed with the government not
to show footage of coffins coming home from the war. Is there ever a need
for a conspiracy when power works the way it always has?
Chomsky and Herman’s MANUFACTURING CONSENT:
There is no better book on American propaganda
and the stories both promoted and ignored by the American media. The book
argues that the mass-media protects the interest of the wealthy and powerful
individuals and institutions in America by promoting particular views and
filtering out others. This process involves the ownership of media
groups, the reliance of media on the government for information and support,
the reliance of media on advertising revenue, flak heaped upon dissident views
(particularly socialist views and those critical of business interests).
LECTURE ON VIOLENCE AND GROSSMAN
Apes & Violence
Monkeys and apes are some of the
only creatures that can rotate their shoulders as we can.
This means that they, like us,
are the only creatures that can throw things and club things.
There are three major groups of
apes, Gorillas, Orangutans and Chimpanzees. Gorillas kill kids, but they
don’t rape. Orangutans never kill kids, but they rape all the time.
Our direct ancestor is the Chimpanzee, which comes in two major
sub-species. Bonobo Chimps, the smaller group, are quite non-violent and
solve all social issues with sex. The main group of Chimps, our direct
relatives, do all the kinds of violence known to human kind. Once again,
like every ethical issue we examine, the issue is older than humanity.
Early Civilization & Violence
Violence, like sex, was a part of
life since childhood in the beginning. As Grossman says, in Victorian
England sex became something shameful and best kept out of sight, and similarly
with the butcher and refrigeration violence became something out of sight.
Consider David Foster Wallace’s FX Porn article about T2 and Jurassic
park. Sex and killing are specialized spectacles, quite unrealistic and
pieced together with bad dialogue. Interestingly, serial killers and
aggressive personality types often start and practice by killing animals, which
used to be something everyone had to do. These are disassociating
fantasies.
In the ancient world cosmology
picture of the world, sacrifice and dismemberment play a major part in the
creation of the world. To eat, one must kill livestock. Similarly,
sacrifice was seen as giving food/thanks back in balance and exchange.
The cosmos was thought of as a great sacrifice in which the All is carved
up for everyone’s use and consumption. Thus, one should carve up animals
and humans and give them back to be fair.
Consider the scepter of the king.
Often in early cultural art we see the king holding a stick that
symbolizes his authority. It has been suggested that this is the king as
judge, jury and executioner. If you do something stupid, you get hit with
the stick. How hard you get hit depends on what you did. The
Egyptian Pharaohs have crossing stick and hook, ‘rod and staff’ from the psalm,
in crossed arms, signifying that the king has power over life and death, which
cross over into one another (like any pair of opposites).
Society became complexified and
highly specialized. We now have specialized individuals who kill animals,
who cook meat, who order acts of aggression, and who carry out the orders.
As Grossman says, this specialization has made violence unnatural and
fantastic, like sex.
Consider now that the US spends
more on War than anyone has ever in all of world history. Objective
‘science’ is a myth in so far as the US Military has been one of the biggest
supporters and funders of science (physics, mathematics, psychology) so far.
Addicted To War says: over 50% of budget and taxes go to US Military.
LT. COL. GROSSMAN’S ON KILLING
The book is written in 1995, and
Grossman says that there has never been a book on killing or dealing with
killing from the individual perspective until this time. As an officer
and psychologist of the US Marine Corps, Grossman tells us many things that are
surprising but trustworthy about the capability of individuals and groups to be
violent.
The overall message of the book I
find to be quite positive. We all have violent thoughts, but very few
humans will be violent, no matter what culture or ethnicity or gender.
Normally, there is a safety catch in the human mind that prevents us from
being violent (notice the gun metaphor, useful for teaching troops).
However, in certain situations with particular factors, most everyone
becomes capable of violence. 2% of the population have an aggressive
personality, potentially psychosis (these individuals are often, Grossman says,
drafted into the hardcore units, the marine spearhead squads dropped behind
enemy lines or the frontal advance groups). Regardless of whether one is
of the 98% or the aggressive 2%, violence is a kick at first but then psychological
problems set in that are difficult for the individual.
The overall message is: though
human beings are constantly getting themselves into violent situations, there
are no human beings who find violence easy or simply justifiable. They
pose this way to seem tough, but as Grossman says violence is about impressing
the enemy and making them submit much more than it is about the killing.
The killing is always in the service of something else, such as staying
alive. Grossman, as a psychologist, is convinced that post traumatic
stress disorder is natural and most will carry it silently their whole lives,
afraid of what others will say or say about them if they question the things
they did for the highest ideals.
In my terms: there is a balance
that is quite brutal in the head. We can pretend like others don’t matter
to us, but only for awhile. Grossman says: the one who takes life
cheapens his own, in his own head, and argues this point well.
Non-firing Rates:
Grossman starts off from a very
military pragmatic point of view. He argues that we have every reason to
believe that most humans who have been involved with war have not tried to kill
anyone the whole time. He notes studies that say that WWI and II troops
would routinely fire over the heads of the enemy. He says that he and
others examined these studies and the military celebrated a 95% firing rate in
Vietnam, although he later tells us the factors that make this seem much better
for the military than it really was. There were 50,000 rounds per US kill
in Vietnam.
Grossman argues that, in all
cultures and times, the majority of soldiers were posturing in war, doing
everything to make the enemy back down, cease fighting and submit. Before
guerilla war became the norm, this is the beating of the drums and the war
chants, the clashing of shields. Grossman says we see nonlethal fighting
with one’s own species in piranhas, rattlers, and the whole animal kingdom.
Alexander the great only lost 700 men the whole 20 years of war.
This is quite similar to Hegel’s
idea of the master/slave, reversed: submittal is primary.
American media is quite gifted
with the myth of the easy kill, for both the hero and villain. Ex:
Schwarzenegger’s Commando (“I let him go”) and O Dog from Menace to Society
watching tape. This myth, like the propaganda last week, is a cultural
conspiracy, a conspiracy of silence according to Grossman. It’s not what
it says that’s the lie, but what remains unsaid.
What this myth conceals: there
are far greater chance of being a psychological casualty of conflict then there
are of being killed or wounded. 60 days of continuous combat without rest
means 98% rate of psychological casualties (why we keep ‘green zones’ and
distance to target).
But: is this killing or being
subjected to combat? Grossman argues that Britain and Germany bombed each
other’s cities in WWII, the first massive bombardments of history (now our
specialty, setting the bar in Vietnam, then Gulf War, now War in Iraq).
The theory was that the civilian population would go into traumatic shell
shock, that everyone would be quickly converted to psychological casualties,
but this turned out surprisingly to not be the case.
It turns out that, unless one
feels that one has done something to warrant being killed, one bunkers down and
does not suffer post traumatic stress disorder. Depression sets in, but
not PTSD. Prison guards in the cities DO suffer from PTSD during
bombings, but NOT the POWS! This shows us the balance of self and other
in the head. One compulsively sets the world up as THIS perspective vs.
OTHERS, and one sets the others up as one sets up the self in the head.
This means that when one knows that the other will feel JUSTIFIED in
killing, one becomes conflicted with oneself. Consider that recon patrols
behind enemy lines don’t suffer PTSD like hard core (2%) marine spearhead units
that are dropped behind lines to sew death and confusion. If one is in
the enemies home turf, but not killing, one does not feel like the justifiably
killable target that one does if one is killing the enemy. Consider that
killing someone in their home is much more traumatic and justifiable than
killing someone in their home.
So: What factors increase or
decrease the justification and the enabling of violence?
This is what Grossman and the US
Military have been studying intensely. Grossman tells us many surprising
things openly that are done to help US troops kill easier with less
consequence.
Absolution by Distance:
Killing with a knife is much
harder than killing with a 20 foot pike, and killing with an automatic weapon
is far easier because one does not feel the other’s body at all (propaganda
value of showing the enemy with fixed bayonets). Medium to long range is
the easiest kill. The farther away, the less PTSD. The more
equipment mediating the kill, the easier it is. Bomber pilots feel little
to no PTSD. Grossman says ‘Nintendo Warfare’ in first Gulf War is
intentional use of night vision goggles and TV screens in tanks, which lessens
the PTSD (one would think the purpose was to take the enemy in the dark, but
not so).
The less one sees eyes and faces,
the easier it is to kill. This is why the executioner is hooded along
with the executed. Both lessen the feeling of PTSD for the executioner.
Apes and humans have an impulse to attack when the other turns and runs.
This is why if one is caught or kidnapped, one always looks the captor in
the eyes as much as possible, take off the helmet or hat (or hood), why
military are taught to kill with a kidney strike from behind.
Intolerance and Racism are used
actively as distancing mechanisms, making it easier to kill. The less
one’s enemy is like oneself, the easier it is to justify killing. This is
why it is fundamental to say the other ‘does not share one’s values’. This
is THE WEST, earlier the EUROPEAN RACE.
Absolution by Authority:
Officers are separated from
killing. The officer orders the aggression, the troops carry it out.
The officer can feel distanced from the act because they themselves did
not kill or see the kill, and the troops can feel distance because they did not
decide to kill or order the kill.
Interestingly, the farther the
authority is away from the troops, the less the authority is effective, BUT the
farther away the authority the easier it is to do the ordering.
Group Absolution:
The more one is firing into the
brush with many others, the more one is unsure that one is killing a particular
target oneself. In firing squads, often only one person has a bullet, and
the others have blanks and are told this to ease the actions. In
defending the home (being amongst one’s group and the group turf) one feels
justified in killing in a way that is reversed when one is on enemy soil, as
mentioned.
Stages of Killing
1)
Combat High, exhilaration, esp. medium to long range (automatic weapons are
best).
2)
Remorse (move from positive to swing negative)
3)
Rationalization (wrestling with the contradiction of positive/negative,
self/other)
Both soldiers and gang members
find themselves having nightmares where those who have been killed come back to
haunt them and ask why. It is as if killing a being does not kill the
presence, that the negated presence comes back. This is likely why people
believed in evil ghosts for so long across all cultures. One feels one is
still indebted to beings long gone if one was involved in their disappearance.
(ex: ghost of Jacob Marley, the telltale heart of Poe)
Grossman notes that for HR Bush,
Gulf War surge in popularity and then fall in end show social process of these
stages as well as individual (and now this fits W Bush in Iraq war as well).
