Guest Post Re: "The Story of Stuff"

This came my way via email and I asked if I could post it on my blog. So, with permission, I offer you...

Response to Response to “The Story Of Stuff”

I was reading an article in the New York Times about Annie Leonard’s film “The Story of Stuff”. In the article it mentioned how her film was rejected by some places of education because the portrayal of corporations as fat suited men with dollar sign bearing top hats was anti-capitalist.

I have another view of corporations: corporations are entities. They have names, they have faces, through their employees and offices they have a body, they have a financial life, and death. They even have legal rights. The fat suited men, whether sporting dollar signs or pumps, are only puppets that can be replaced easily to ensure the optimum health of the corporation.

The ancient Greeks, the Egyptians, and other peoples throughout history created gods and goddesses who controlled their lives and many people spent their lives in service to these gods. We have created—not gods and goddesses—but nonetheless, beings without physical form whose lives are greater than those of our own.

Is this a problem? Many a Christian, Muslim, or Jewish would rightly object to the possibility that corporations could not possibly be anti-monotheistic. Well, don’t worry, that’s why we call them corporations not gods.

This analogy could be amusing aside from the fact that there is a real truth to it. Do we want to see this truth? Can we dare to envision a future without corporations, without being overwhelmed by fear, even for a few seconds? They do not help us to lead happy and healthy lives. They do not help us to be brave or free.

The problem is what they feed on. Corporations can only survive if they keep people consuming things at an increasing rate. When people stop buying, when people learn to meet their own needs, then corporations suffer. And their voices, through our media, tell us that for our own good, we need to need them. They tell us that we cannot stop spending, we cannot learn to take care of ourselves. That would be anti-capitalist. They treat capitalism as a religion, not as an economic structure.

What they feed on is human need, a need that can only flourish in a human attitude of inadequacy. Only when people are unhappy do we spend money as a way to find happiness. As a society we idolize those who can spend the most money. Our heroes: sports stars, actors and actresses & musicians are those who can spend the most money. Some people even become our heroes just by spending money. Our faith is in the corporate world, as religions worldwide fade in significance, they have become who we truly believe we need to accept into our lives.

Our entire cultural mythology is about corporations and the heroes and heroines who support them. This is not anti-capitalist, this is not even truly anti-corporation, there are many other conscious corporations and co-ops out there trying to fight back. This is about watching humanity as a whole and seeing patterns emerge. I too need money to live -- and money is made by corporations.

All systems live to perpetuate themselves, and every morning we choose to be part of the corporate system. Being conscious of the fact that we are making a choice is the first step to freedom.

Sincerely,
Acorn D.
Cortes Island, Canada.

Myth America

History Worship

We know very little about our Nation's early founders and leaders. We only know what we are taught in history class, which is very little. Today, we have a standard of morals that we hold or wish to hold, our political leaders accountable for, that in truth has nothing to do with their vision, insight or ability to lead our nation.

If we were to hold Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, or any of them to the light of what we think someone needs to be seen in today, they would not stand a chance. Our politics have devolved from the qualities of leadership that created this great nation, to the petty personal assassinations which allow us to be ruled by morons and oppressors.

I personally don't care about who is having or has had affairs. That is between them and their spouse. It has nothing to do with how our nation is led.

Clearly, we have gone awry when you look at the time consumed, the more than $1B spent on investigating and impeaching Clinton for a blow job. Compare that with the real crimes committed by his follow-up act, W. A man whose administration was among the most corrupt. A man who lied to the nation, who ignored intel warning of Al Qaeda, and who squandered our reputation and all the goodwill thereof, by creating wars of choice and choosing to torture.

Are we so distracted by sexual intrigue that we spend our time prying into private matters, yet so disinterested, as a nation, in corruption and fraud, that we choose only to 'look forward'? How do we appear to other nations?

Cheney and Rush are championed by the Right Wing as true patriots, even as they lie, even as they bash a decorated War Hero such as Colin Powell, and continue to try and spread baseless, mindless fear across the land, solely for the sake of "Party" over "Nation".

In keeping with the policy of writing history to suit the writer, the campaign from the Right Wing since the election has been, to create a myth. To create the myth that W kept the country safe, we must ignore that we were attacked on his watch, and that the subsequent anthrax attacks, leveled mostly at Federal Representatives and Journalists that opposed the Bush Administration, never happened.

We must, if we are to believe that myth, believe ourselves to be children who are best taken care of if we do not know and are never told the Truth.

The myth on Torture is running on two fronts: One, that it gained valuable intel, which is what 'kept us safe' and that 'Leading Democrats knew and approved' of the torture. The second part is just in case the American people don't buy the first part.

History War Ship

The Myth America campaign is blaring from the Corporations who are greatly invested and who have profited from the war machinery and the administration that allowed them to merge and take over Public Airwaves as if they were privately owned.

The profits from the media mouthpieces are not manifested in the bottom line of those media corporations. In fact, they are losing money. Rather, it is manifested in the many other investments, mostly in Resource Extraction and War Machinery Economics, that the profits are skyrocketing.

They can afford to take a loss on Limbaugh's contract, on Fox News, because the pay offs past and down the road, if they succeed, are unlimited.

Health Insurance is unregulated in this nation. The high cost of medical care is directly related to the obscene profits reaped by insurance industry power houses. Doctors are not making more money, and fewer people can afford care. Those who have insurance are now at the mercy of a clerk, not a doctor, who will, decline coverage, regardless.

They spend billions on lobbying and advertising to keep us from reforming health care.

Tax exemptions for the wealthiest 2%, which amounts to billions of dollars, at the expense of our nation's infrastructure, schools, health care, and defense. Bring on the mindless Tea Baggers.

Preventing laws that would limit, regulate or prevent Major Financial Corporations from predatory lending practices which have left so many homeless and their credit in ruins, pays big time to those who sponsor the Limbaughs and the FOX brand of misinformation and disinformation.

Keeping us divided as a nation, is how they keep their fortunes multiplying. They can afford billions to save themselves hundreds of billions in revenue.

What they can't afford is for people to start coming together. They can't afford for education to improve so that people learn how to think instead of being told how to think.

They need for us to believe that the use of Torture yielded information we needed. Anyone who has learned anything about torture and how it was designed and what it was used for, knows that torture was designed solely for the purposes of propaganda. To gain false confessions to use to bolster the idea that the government is 'protecting us'.

We, in this nation, are distracted so easily. Our media, which is losing it's toehold as the source of information, continues to feed us diatribes from both sides, with few programs ever talkign to us as adults.

We watch 'discussion panels' which devolve quickly into the WWE trash talk, or Jerry Springer Lite format.

I find this exhausting. I find this fruitless. I find the research on the issues and the source of my information to be more and more, the Internet.

Not everything on the net is true. But everything on the internet can be researched and validated or disproved. More and more of us are gathering, not at the watering holes of Fox, NBC, ABC or any of those, but rather at the running streams of Twitter, blogs and other Social Media sources.

While the extremes on either end will happily pound one another like cartoons with big hammers, those of us who want more indepth and substantial information bypass the stagnate and the turbid waters of the mudholes and move to the streams, and find what we need.

America is changing. There are some who don't see it. There are some who don't want to see it. For them, it is becoming more confusing and more traumatic as they try to retain intact, their image of Myth America.

For those of us who see it, know it and embrace it, we are in the streams and we are doing our part. Without myth, without MSM platforms, and without anything more than our name, we represent, and we do our part to keep the streams flowing.

The desperation on the part of the mythmakers is evident in their increasingly shrill, abusive and threatening rhetoric. They complain about the President putting mustard on a hamburger, and laugh at the joke of a soldier assassinating Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

As long as none of them is caught getting a blow job, their hard-core following will continue to think of them as "Patriots" and as 'saving' this country, which they in fact are tearing to pieces.

I look at the Limbaughs, the FOX panels as I would a magician's assistant. Only there to distract. What they cannot do with pretty costumes and graceful moves, they do with vile, obscene disinformation, as they try to rationalize their wrongs, absolve themselves of responsiblity for their wrongdoing, and to blame the Democrats.

America is changing. We want leaders who are accountable. We are tired of the spin cycle. We want this wheel to take us forward.