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"We're fools, protagonists in
a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage
of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that
we're still in denial - we still think
this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was designed by
the group of psychopaths on Wall
Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the
American Dream." - Matt Taibbi 03/19/09
 
The American Dream: downtrodden peoples
discover freedom from tyranny.
Now Americans find themselves trapped
in the tyranny of the ponerological
embrace of the materilaistic
pragmatism of manufactured
desire.
That manufactured desire includes
an embrace of American
Exceptionalism - belief that worldwide culture should mimic Greenfield
Village of Henry
Ford.
The Church of
Ford proselytized an
exceptionalist fantasy of manufacturing desire to acculturate
MICE culture.
"The
populations of dying empires are passive because they are
lotus-eaters.
There is a
narcotic-like reverie among those barreling toward oblivion.
They
retreat into the sexual, the
tawdry and the inane, retreats that are
momentarily pleasurable but ensure
self-destruction.
They naively trust it will all work out.
As a species, Margaret Atwood observes in her dystopian novel "Oryx and
Crake," "we're doomed by hype."
Absurd promises of hope and glory are
endlessly served up by the
circus industry,
the political and economic elite,
the class of courtiers who pose as
journalists, self-help gurus like
Oprah and
religious belief systems that assure
followers that God will always protect them.
Collective self-delusion,
a retreat into magical
thinking." - Chris Hedges
"The American Dream has become what
the ruling class dreams for
us.
The American dream has become one where you step on everyone and
everything you have to in order to rise to the top of the heap.
It's
time to remind everyone that this is not the real American dream.
The
 Real American Dream
is:
a dream of a good life
for everyone, a decent job and the ability to live our lives free of other
people telling us what we can and can't do.
Most of us have no need
or desire to "have it all."
We just desire
enough to live a comfortable, simple life." - Bruce
McDonald
"From Bernie Ebbers and
WorldCom to
Jeff Skilling and the Enron
boys, to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi
scheme, to the bait-and-switch that Bush and
Cheney used to take the country into war, this was the Decade of Deception.
No deceit was more
malevolently corrosive than the fiction that this was a period of expansive
prosperity in which
significant numbers of our people were able to share in the American Dream of Financial
Security.
A tiny minority of insiders, on the other
hand, did very well for themselves.
Economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas
Piketty report that the highest earning 0.1% of Americans accounted for 8.2% of
the country's total pretax income.
That's the highest concentration of
wealth since 1917." - Tim Rutten
01/02/10
"Many individuals and groups now find themselves
living in a society that measures the worth of human life in terms of
cost-benefit analysis.
The central issue of life and politics is no longer about working to
get ahead, but struggling simply to survive.
And many groups, who are
considered marginal because they are poor, unemployed, people of color, elderly
or young, have not just been excluded from "the American dream," but have
become utterly redundant and disposable, waste products of a society that not
longer considers them of any value." - Henry A. Giroux
The Industrial Revolution in America was the
motivating factor for the initial corruption of the American
Dream.
1868 Horatio Alger pens Ragged
Dick.
Rags to riches juvenile
novels teenage boys, through studious labor, work hard to
escape poverty to become upper middle class if not
wealthy tycoons.
Horatio Alger forged the myth of
upward social mobility in
America.
The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship
American
popular culture places too much
emphasis on the acquistion.
Moments of true value,
friendly conversation, time spent with family, enjoying the summer breeze - all
relegated to a subordinate position.
The
prevalent American philosophy, Social
Darwinism, preaches that survival
of the fittest - in the economic terms of
acquisition,
control and
manipulation of resources - is
the mark of the successful pursuit of
the American Dream.
"The Industrial Revolution
concentrated labor
into mills,
factories, and
mines, but industrial workers could
never experience the sense of satisfaction and pride that
craftsmen derived from their
creations.
Working a craft is a mentally stimulating and creative
activity; operating a machine is not.
The best craftsmen were renowned as
artists.
Some are still renowned today: Thomas Chippendale and
George Hepplewhite.
The integral strength of Windsor chairs has never
been duplicated in a factory.
Handmade textiles, Persian rugs,
even handcrafted toys are renowned
for their artistry.
Today that pride and satisfaction accrues only
to hobbyists, such as quilters, but never to industrial workers.
The Industrial Revolution degraded human
life to the status of coal.
People became fuel for
machines.
Bought
cheap, people are used until unneeded and then discarded like
slag.
Individuality,
talent,
imagination,
originality; the best attributes
of human beings are suppressed to the point of
extinction.
The
Industrial Revolution sucked the humanity out of the human race; people became
things." - John Kozy
"We become what we behold. We shape our
tools
and then our tools shape us." - Marshall McLuhan |
Americans are
constantly bombarded by advertisements that manipulate the individuals sense of
self-worth as
most people just desire a
little attention.
Much of what Americans purchase are called
"positional goods" - objects whose value is measured in relation to the
purchases of other individuals.
When an
individual becomes trapped in the hamster wheel of manufactured desire
a fine line between reality
and fantasy is bridged.
This "bridging" allows an individual,
through the use of mirror
neurons, to self-identify with
fictitious
characters.
"Consumerism needs
an infantilist ethos as it favors laxity
over discipline, values childish
impetuosity and juvenile narcissism over
enlightened self-interest
preferring consumption
directed play to
spontaneous recreation.
This ethos feeds a
private market logic
combating the public consciousness
fashioned by a republican democracy." -
Benjamin R. Barber
The
American Dream for the founders of America was a
dream in which men were
free to worship,
think and live as they saw fit - the
government was not to demand submission; was not to decree
morals; was not to grant franchises and
privileges to entrenched
aristocracy; was not to encourage
consumption and was not to
conduct a never ending
war.
The American Dream has lost all
resemblance to the original dream of liberty.
Now the American Dream
is a dream of bondage in
permanent war.
"What America really needs is
a policy vision which sparks
community building and cooperation among its citizens rather than
instructing them to simply spend their way into the American Dream. What
Americans don't realize is in so many ways it is
in their self interest to work in
cooperation." - Mark Winston Grifith
"Studies
show that happiness rises with incomes - up to the point at which basic needs
are met, after which it stagnates as aspirations also rise with income.
Nobel Prize-winning economist
and psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls this a "hedonic treadmill." Like the
proverbial rats, we run faster and faster - and so do our aspirations - but the
bottom line is the old cliche: Money can't
buy happiness." - Andrew L. Yarrow
The American Dream is now one of
a utopian social order in which
'experience' is the ultimate goal.
"It may be too late for this year, but next year
the malls and stores can put up their real symbol of the season and
Jews and
Christians alike will be able to get
behind it: a 12-foot gilded dollar sign, decorated with
credit cards and
shopping bags." - Marta
Goldstein
"What is the chief end of man? - to get rich.
In what way? - dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must.
Who
is god, the one only and true?
Money is god.
God and Greenbacks and Stock - father, son, and the
ghost - three persons in one; these are
the true and only god, mighty and supreme." -
Mark Twain |
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purposes only.
This website defines a
new perspective with which to engage reality to which its author adheres. The
author feels that the falsification of reality outside personal experience has
forged a populace unable to discern
propaganda from reality and that this has been done purposefully by an
international corporate cartel through their agents who wish to foist a corrupt
version of reality on the human race. Religious intolerance occurs when any
group refuses to tolerate religious practices, religious beliefs or persons due
to their religious ideology. This web site marks the founding of a system of
philosophy named The Truth of the Way of the Lumière Infinie - a
rational gnostic mystery religion based on reason which requires no leap of
faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme leader, no church buildings and in
which each and every individual is encouraged to develop a personal relation
with the Creator and Sustainer through the pursuit of the knowledge of reality
in the hope of curing the spiritual corruption that has enveloped the human
spirit. The tenets of The Truth of the Way of the Lumière Infinie are
spelled out in detail on this web site by the author. Violent acts against
individuals due to their religious beliefs in America is considered a "hate
crime."
This web site in no way condones violence. To the contrary the
intent here is to reduce the violence that is already occurring due to the
international corporate cartels desire to control the human race. The
international corporate cartel already controls the world economic system,
corporate media worldwide, the global industrial military entertainment complex
and is responsible for the collapse of morals, the elevation of self-centered
behavior and the destruction of global ecosystems. Civilization is based on
cooperation. Cooperation does not occur at the point of a gun.
American
social mores and values have declined precipitously over the last century as
the corrupt international cartel has garnered more and more power. This power
rests in the ability to deceive the populace in general through corporate media
by pressing emotional buttons which have been preprogrammed into the population
through prior corporate media psychological operations. The results have been
the destruction of the family and the destruction of social structures that do
not adhere to the corrupt international elites vision of
a perfect world. Through
distraction and coercion the direction of thought of the bulk of the population
has been directed toward solutions proposed by the corrupt international elite
that further consolidates their power and which further their purposes.
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