Clueless in America: Feeding the tapeworms of desire

[Demeter]

AN ESSAY, A TRUE BELLES LETTRES, ON THE AMERICAN PSYCHE AND SOUL (EXERPTS ONLY, RECOMMEND TO READ ALL)

OpEdNews.com

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_charles__061128_clueless_in_america_3a.htm


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November 28, 2006

Clueless in America: Feeding the tapeworms of desire

By Charles Sullivan


What global good could possibly come from an economic system predicated upon selfishness and waste and foisted upon the world with carpet bombs? What common good can stem from a belief system that places greater value on profits than on life itself? How can spiritual health be expected from a system that embraces spiritual emptiness and depravity as virtuous?

It can be seen that Americans are a spiritually starved people, despite bold proclamations of religiosity and faith. But at some level we must intuit that we have few freedoms and are slaves in an economic system that dehumanizes us into mere commodities and turns us into voracious consumers. We are not the free and fulfilled people we claim to be; we are the property of our employers, objects to be used for purposes not of our own choosing.

Material goods and services are a poor substitute for inner tranquility and global community. We are a people bombarded by commercial media every waking hour of our lives. Our troubled existence is a matrix of distracting white noise from which the only escape is the calm slumber of death. The result is that few of us have ever had a true waking moment in our lives. We have replaced wild nature with Disney World and have forgotten which is real and which is bogus. We have recreated god in the image of capital and put him on our currency.

Even so, despite the dominant paradigm of capitalism, there are Americans who have escaped the fate of excess to which so many others have fallen prey. There are millions who were not caught in the web of commercialism, who have maintained a spiritual connection to the earth and to the greater biological community, and to the unfathomable cosmos beyond. There are millions of people who still consider a long walk in unbroken wilderness their greatest blessing-as something beyond valuation by capital.



Authors Bio: Charles Sullivan is a photographer, social activist and free lance writer residing in the hinterland of West Virgina. He welcomes your comments at [email protected]

[The2ndWheel]

1. What, we're supposed to give it all up? All that progress?

Couldn't agree more.