It all started with a camel. Myself and a couple buddies sitting around bored at work start shooting the shit, one thing leads to another and before anyone knew it we were all balls deep in a probing socio-political discourse. It was one of those rare conversations where you go all the way down the rabbit hole and come out the other end affected by simply the act of discussion with other non-zombies. These types of conversations are the bitter fruits of democratic prosperity. The pinnacle of our societal progress expressed through the respectful, intelligent, and open-minded sharing and challenging of ideas. While enriching and fulfilling, discussions like these are also painful and disheartening. They are kind of like the simultaneous awareness of consciousness coupled with the realization of death. Regardless, it was a pretty badass convo – the meat of which I will regurgitate all over this article.

So my bro, with his five star pirate voice, tells this story about a camel farmer in Michigan. Describes in excruciating detail the disgusting way a male dromedary will extrude its soft palate, which hangs out of the side of their mouth like a nasty, smelly, red balloon. Somehow this triggers something in my brain and I recall a documentary series I watched called Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. In these documentaries, based on his book, Diamond argues that: the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate in environmental differences amplified by various positive feedback loops; and that, if cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians, it is primarily due to the influence of geography.

Diamond points out that nearly all of humanity’s achievements (scientific, artistic, architectural, political, etc.) have all occurred on the Eurasian continent, while the peoples of other continents (Sub-Saharan Africans, Native Americans, and Aboriginal Australians/New Guineans) have been largely conquered, displaced, and in some extreme cases were exterminated by Eurasian military and political advantages stemming from the early rise of agriculture after the last Ice Age. He proposes explanations to account for such disproportionate and lopsided distributions of power and ‘achievements’ in so-called ‘civilization’ in history.

The book’s title is a reference to the means by which European nations conquered populations of other areas and maintained their dominance, often despite being vastly out-numbered – superior weapons provided immediate military superiority (guns), European diseases weakened the local populations and thus made it easier to maintain control over them (germs), and centralized governmental systems promoted nationalism and powerful military organizations (steel). Hence the book attempts to explain, mainly by geographical factors, why Europeans had such superior military technology and why diseases, to which Europeans were immune, devastated conquered populations.

Diamond highlights two major environmental advantages of Eurasia over other areas in which farming apparently developed independently. The various Eurasian inventors of farming, and especially those in “South West Asia” (roughly Mesopotamia and Turkey) had by far the best natural endowment of crops and of domesticable animals in the size range from goats or dogs upwards – the superiority in domesticable animals was the more extreme, as other areas had at most two and often none. Eurasia’s other big advantage is that its mainly East-West axis provides a huge area with similar latitudes and therefore climates. As a result it was far easier for migrating Eurasian populations to use in their new homes the plants and animals to which they had become accustomed; by contrast the Americas’ North-South axis forced migrating Native Americans as well as Africans to adopt new crops and, where available, animals because they found a wide variation in climates as they migrated from North to South.

Native Americans, for instance, had access to corn. But corn provides little nutrients and must be planted one by one – a cumbersome pain in the ass. On the other hand, Eurasians had wheat and barley, high in fiber and nutrients, and which can be spread mega easily with just a toss of the hand, capable therefore of generating massive food surplus, and thus exponential population growth – which led to larger workforces, inventors, artisans, etc. (the maximum amount of food being produced by the least amount of people – comparatively). Grains are not only easily planted, but can also be stored for longer periods of time, unlike bananas (a tropical fruit) for instance. Furthermore, Sub-Saharan Africans had access to mostly wild mammals, whereas Eurasians had access to the most compliant animals on the planet – horses that are easily tamed for human transportation, goats for fur clothing and cheese, cows for milk and leather, and benign animals such as pigs and chickens. Africans, on the other hand, through geographic mischance, not only had the zebra (which has never been successfully tamed due to its skittish and jumpy nature) but had to deal with lions, leopards, and other alpha predators as well. So Eurasia was the beneficiary of geographic, climatic, and environmental happenstance that favored them after the last Ice Age about 13,000-15,000 years ago.

After briefly explaining the theory I expressed that I had no sympathy for the oppressed or dominated peoples of the earth, just as I have no sympathy for animals long extinct due to climatic changes or an inability to adapt to evolutionary developments in predation. My friends agreed, moreover arguing that if you are living in a foodless desert all you need to do is pick a direction and walk to remediate your situation. We lingered for some time on the different animals and plants that were not indigenous to certain areas and how over this time they have come to define that area. Potatoes are not native to Ireland, for example.

We related the ideas proposed by Diamond to the current issues affecting America. We talked about race relations and how they are total bullshit. We talked about American preponderance of power and how it is experiencing a perceptive wane. We talked about a morbidly obese and fatally flawed federal bureaucracy that can no longer wage war or govern its people independently or effectively. We talked about the effect of the media on the perceptions and beliefs of the American population.

At this point the conversation took a turn towards current social issues and I found myself sharing stories of woe from my days on the Hurricane Katrina relief. The dichotomy between what was actually happening in contrast with what the media was reporting. The dichotomy between the ideals of aid and assistance in contrast with the goals and actions of those actually taking part in the recovery effort. In a nutshell it was an observation of people acting as base and depraved as possible – in fact choosing to do so – all the while I/we questioned why.

Hurricane Katrina Human Depravity List:

- Civilians killing, raping, robbing everything in sight.
- Cops killing, raping, robbing everything in sight.
- Wanton and unpunished crime in the streets.
- Hatred and blame of white people by blacks not only for the perceived lack of assistance but for the hurricane itself.
- Hurricane ‘victim’ offered water and turning it down – demanding a coke.
- ‘Victims’ wasting recovery assistance money given to them on gambling, drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, and big screen tv’s (the aid money was more cash than they had ever had in their possession in their whole life – they squandered it).
- No effort or desire to help the fellow man.
- FEMA simply acting as tourists, taking helicopter rides just to view the devastation.
- Red Cross workers there because they want something to brag about in their bible studies and rotary clubs back in trailerpark middle America.
- Sense of entitlement by everyone involved.
- Government spending untold millions on hotel rooms (prices jacked up by the owners) when they could have built and rebuilt the devastated areas three times over.

In all, I left New Orleans in spiritual shambles. I did not identify with any individual or group I encountered. I felt completely marginalized and alienated. The outright squandering of so much money by federal agencies made me never want to pay taxes again. The savagery and barbarism of the populace made me never want to help people, let alone black people, again. The corruption of both government agencies and local police forces made me (as if this needed any additional evidence) never want to trust authority again. The outright lies and cover-ups by the media (again, as if I needed another reason) made me never want to trust the news again.

But these are the forces that are shaping everybody’s life. These are the events that define a people.

I read an article in the Atlantic back in August of ’08 about Google. Part of that article describes the effect of the use of a typewriter on the prose and thought patterns of Friedrich Nietzsche;

“Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.

But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”

“You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler, Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”

- Is Google Making Us Stoopid?, The Atlantic, August 2008

So if a typewriter can affect Nietzsche’s brain so profoundly imagine the effects of all the little gizmos and gadgets that fill our modern lives. The human brain is infinitely malleable and the flow of media into it is a torrent. It could be said that modern consciousness is overdetermined by mass media. And there is no moral or ethical responsibility to the shit being pumped into our brains. The news agencies only care about making money not balance nor responsible objective reporting. Media is an institution existing only for the purpose of continuing its existence. Selling an ideology, selling a lifestyle. The more flash, the bigger the headlines, the bloodier the drama, the more people that will pay attention, the more money that the media agencies will make. And there is this strange modern need to demand attention.

I remember when I was in Israel, Jerusalem to be more precise, and there were always these tour groups of high school kids coming through. Sometimes they stayed at the same hotel I lived in and I would observe them fairly regularly. Most the time the guys were just trying to fuck the chicks on the tour as well as every young saggy-titted jew whore that crossed their path. The girls would mostly just act like being there was the most important thing that ever happened to them in their whole life. Like coming to fucking jew-land was the pinnacle of their existence. Really it was just the American woman’s need to feel important and demand more attention. No doubt they would all return from jew-land, when they never gave two shits about it before – probably mostly functional atheists, telling tales of religious sites and a deep and profound experience that could never be duplicated or substituted for in any way. Thereby putting the means of production well outside the realm of any who may be listening to them. Really they were just selling the lie. Selling the bullshit that they had this amazing experience to make everyone else back home jealous. To make them queen for a day. To feel better than everyone else. To be able to tell everyone they ever meet for the rest of their pathetic and inconsequential lives about the amazing spiritual pilgrimage they made to jew-land and its many religious sites.

The same thing goes with SEALs, and probably most people in the military in general. They come back from deployment overseas telling fanciful tales of combat and valor. Rarely do any of these stories hold even the glimmer of truth, but tell these stories they will. I can remember coming back from Afghanistan, going out to get totally drunk, and seeing a platoon buddy sitting at the end of the bar. Tears filled his eyes, he was actually crying in the bar telling this story to a couple other guys who were eating it up like soft-serve ice cream. He held his hand up, tears streaming down his face, “I took life with this hand” now raising the other hand while lowering the first “and created it with this one.” His wife gave birth to his son while he was deployed. I was on that deployment, in that platoon, on that mission. His weapon was totally jammed throughout the firefight. He had accidentally assembled the thing improperly and it was totally useless. He ended up disassembling and then reassembling the entire weapon in the middle of the fight. By the time he was done the fight was over, he had contributed nothing, but to my growing nausea he “saw heads come apart in my scope”. The only thing he shot on that deployment was a sight-in target at the range. It sickens me.

I’ve been to AA meetings. Horrible affairs from beginning to end, but the same thing is present. Every burned out alky trying to endlessly one-up everyone else in the mutually consensual creation of some ‘biggest loser’ pecking order.

Drunk #1 “I used to drink ten beers a day.”
Drunk #2 “I used to drink twenty, and beat my wife.”
Drunk #3 “I used to drink thirty, my wife divorced me and I lost my job.”
Drunk #4 (in tears) “I used to drink FOURTY, raped my wife, molested my kids, got thrown in jail, got raped in jail, and became a prostitute just to get more booze.”

(Drunk #4 is the winner)

Is that what is going on in America right now? Are Americans so devoid of true tests of merit or true meaning in their lives that they must create meaning from inherently meaningless events? Is it guilt, or boredom, or ignorance, or ego that drives people to embrace intellectually indefensible causes simply to receive the social acclaim of martyrdom? Why do people need attention so badly that they will take a controversial point of view simply to be controversial. I would almost go so far as to say that Americans seem to be culturally self-destructive simply for the excuse to make these current times seem important and historic. They embrace the sensationalizing of media events, like a bored high-school chick, just to have something to talk about. They declare and wage strange wars of ideology simply to create a means to define themselves, as well as to in fact find communion with other identity deficient people.

I think that there is a fundamental lack of determination. Values require discipline and dedication – essentially hard work and tough choices. We are living in a culture that defines itself through possessions, through luxury, through extravagance. Luxury is the antithesis of determination. Parents have ceased raising their children, they each have their own ‘career’ that they pursue independently. They live out their bizarre lives as the expression of unconscious artificial needs in a never ending quest to find fulfillment. The TV raises the children, the media, the cell phone, the text message. When they come home at the end of a long and meaningless day they want to still win the favor of their children. The kid starts crying, buy it a toy. The parent starts crying, give it a pill. Instant gratification, no lag time between desire and satisfaction, no distance between need and fulfillment. Pleasure is effortless and at the same time meaningless. Physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually. Everyone gets a trophy, everyone is #1 in their own way. Primal urges are expressed through technological contrivance. A mate is selected not based upon size, strength, or protective abilities but upon the most intricate and appropriately crafted myspace page. Identity is expressed not through actions driven by deeply held beliefs, but by the intangible combination of song, graphic, emoticon all displayed under a clever headline and pseudonym.

I can’t imagine the psychological pressures of prolonged cubicle life. Being imprisoned in an ergonomic prison cell (office) day after day with no discernable or agreed upon measure of accomplishment or value. Is this Marxist alienation of the worker from the means of production? I read about Marx in college. Learned about the communist manifesto, analyzed its theories, debated its validity. It has its bourgeoisie who own the means of production and its proletariat who are the workers. The division is clear. Funny thing is that I always associated the bourgeoisie with people, men and women, like rich top-hat wearing, cigar smoking, kings of capitalism. Well, what if the new modern interpretation of Marx’s theories defines the bourgeoisie not as people but as modern ideologies and institutions. The media, commercial marketing, political correctness. This brings a new and more culturally appropriate translation of this text frighteningly close to home.

“The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an
end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has
pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to
his “natural superiors,” and has left remaining no other nexus
between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash
payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of
religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine
sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It
has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of
the numberless and feasible chartered freedoms, has set up that
single, unconscionable freedom–Free Trade. In one word, for
exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked,
shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”

Maybe the product is no longer money or property, as outlined by Marx, but a more esoteric and elusive societal wealth – a kind of hedonic brownie point based upon popularity and possessions. But not possessions whose value is defined through their use or functionality, but possessions whose value is determined purely through their social perception.

“The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation
hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has
converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the
man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental
veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money
relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the
brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists
so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful
indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can
bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian
pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has
conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses
of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising
the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of
production, and with them the whole relations of society.
Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form,
was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all
earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of
production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions,
everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois
epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations,
with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and
opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated
before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all
that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face
with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his
relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products
chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It
must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions
everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market
given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in
every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has
drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on
which it stood. All old-established national industries have
been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged
by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death
question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer
work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the
remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only
at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old
wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new
wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant
lands and climes. In place of the old local and national
seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every
direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in
material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual
creations of individual nations become common property. National
one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more
impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures,
there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication,
draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation.
The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with
which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the
barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to
capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to
adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to
introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to
become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world
after its own image.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the
towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the
urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued
a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural
life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so
it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on
the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois,
the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the
scattered state of the population, of the means of production,
and of property. It has agglomerated production, and has
concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence
of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but
loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws,
governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into
one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national
class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff. The
bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has
created more massive and more colossal productive forces than
have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s
forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry
and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs,
clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of
rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground–what
earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive
forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?”

- The Communist Manifesto, Section I. BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS

Throughout history societies have defined their worth by many methods. America itself has expressed its societal values in varying ways. During the cold war capitalist democracy was compared to communism by means of conveniences. America and its capitalist democracy was seen to be better than Soviet communism because there was a refridgerator, a washing maching, a T.V. and a toaster oven in every home – items which the Soviet state was lacking. Since the end of the cold war there has been no great conflict, and without conflict there can be no self definition, no active comparison. Perhaps the current state of affairs is directly related to this sequence of events. With the end of the cold war have we maintained those values simply as an antiquated institution? Maybe in the post cold war world we compete against each other in the absence of an ideological ‘enemy’ merely through our possessions, our technology, our modern conveniences. A value system that is concerned not with processes but merely with results, items owned, religious sites visited, television programs watched, boxes checked, creates a culture that lacks discipline and true morality. Who cares how you got what you got, simply possessing it is the measure of a human. In this world the ends always justify the means. This society is no longer many voices resounding as one. This is the death of democracy. A society of a thousand mindless cunts all whining together. Their individual voices unheard in the bizarre cacophony of bragging and complaints. The infinite subdivision of purpose and drive, the infinite failure of values and determination. Identity defined through possessions, intention directed through advertising, personality overdetermined through media, and soul vanquished through technology.

What is the answer? It sure as hell isn’t this current trend towards socialism, but I can understand how many would see that as the modern American psychological equivalent to the communist revolution of old.  A sense of entitlement coupled with a dissociation from the means of production. Is it all hopeless? Are the Buddhists right? Has it always and will it always be this way? I’ve read On Killing by Dave Grossman.  I know that historically in combat only a very small percentage of the soldiers did the vast majority of the fighting.  In this way I also believe that a small and determined group of people who hold fast to their values can make a difference, but what are the values and what is the difference? Is this whole article simply an argument against itself? I guess I don’t really have a clue, but it’s been fun going down the path anyway, so fuck off.

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