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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
“Many wealthy people are little more than
janitors of their possessions.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
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 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.
Craftwork is a
mentally stimulating creative activity; pushing a button 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 vision 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 to permanent
war.
"What America really needs is
a policy vision which sparks
community building and coöperation 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
coöperation." - 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 rise with income.
Nobel Prize-winning economist and
psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls this a "hedonic treadmill."
Like
proverbial rats, we run faster and faster - so do aspirations - 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
every 'experience' under the sun is the ultimate
goal of "living a full life".
"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
ghost - three persons in one; these are
the true and only god, mighty and supreme." -
Mark Twain
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This web site is not a commercial web site and
is presented for educational
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
coöperation. Coöperation 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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