Chris Hedges: How to Think

[marmar]

from truthdig:



How to Think

Posted on Jul 9, 2012
By Chris Hedges


Cultures that endure carve out a protected space for those who question and challenge national myths. Artists, writers, poets, activists, journalists, philosophers, dancers, musicians, actors, directors and renegades must be tolerated if a culture is to be pulled back from disaster. Members of this intellectual and artistic class, who are usually not welcome in the stultifying halls of academia where mediocrity is triumphant, serve as prophets. They are dismissed, or labeled by the power elites as subversive, because they do not embrace collective self-worship. They force us to confront unexamined assumptions, ones that, if not challenged, lead to destruction. They expose the ruling elites as hollow and corrupt. They articulate the senselessness of a system built on the ideology of endless growth, ceaseless exploitation and constant expansion. They warn us about the poison of careerism and the futility of the search for happiness in the accumulation of wealth. They make us face ourselves, from the bitter reality of slavery and Jim Crow to the genocidal slaughter of Native Americans to the repression of working-class movements to the atrocities carried out in imperial wars to the assault on the ecosystem. They make us unsure of our virtue. They challenge the easy clichés we use to describe the nation—the land of the free, the greatest country on earth, the beacon of liberty—to expose our darkness, crimes and ignorance. They offer the possibility of a life of meaning and the capacity for transformation.

Human societies see what they want to see. They create national myths of identity out of a composite of historical events and fantasy. They ignore unpleasant facts that intrude on self-glorification. They trust naively in the notion of linear progress and in assured national dominance. This is what nationalism is about—lies. And if a culture loses its ability for thought and expression, if it effectively silences dissident voices, if it retreats into what Sigmund Freud called “screen memories,” those reassuring mixtures of fact and fiction, it dies. It surrenders its internal mechanism for puncturing self-delusion. It makes war on beauty and truth. It abolishes the sacred. It turns education into vocational training. It leaves us blind. And this is what has occurred. We are lost at sea in a great tempest. We do not know where we are. We do not know where we are going. And we do not know what is about to happen to us.

The psychoanalyst John Steiner calls this phenomenon “turning a blind eye.” He notes that often we have access to adequate knowledge but because it is unpleasant and disconcerting we choose unconsciously, and sometimes consciously, to ignore it. He uses the Oedipus story to make his point. He argued that Oedipus, Jocasta, Creon and the “blind” Tiresias grasped the truth, that Oedipus had killed his father and married his mother as prophesized, but they colluded to ignore it. We too, Steiner wrote, turn a blind eye to the dangers that confront us, despite the plethora of evidence that if we do not radically reconfigure our relationships to each other and the natural world, catastrophe is assured. Steiner describes a psychological truth that is deeply frightening.

I saw this collective capacity for self-delusion among the urban elites in Sarajevo and later Pristina during the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. These educated elites steadfastly refused to believe that war was possible although acts of violence by competing armed bands had already begun to tear at the social fabric. At night you could hear gunfire. But they were the last to “know.” And we are equally self-deluded. The physical evidence of national decay—the crumbling infrastructures, the abandoned factories and other workplaces, the rows of gutted warehouses, the closure of libraries, schools, fire stations and post offices—that we physically see, is, in fact, unseen. The rapid and terrifying deterioration of the ecosystem, evidenced in soaring temperatures, droughts, floods, crop destruction, freak storms, melting ice caps and rising sea levels, are met blankly with Steiner’s “blind eye.” ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_to_think_20120709/

[xchrom]

1. Du rec. Nt

[RainDog]

2. k&r n/t

[Odin2005]

3. I quit reading when he started bashing empiricism and science.

He's sounding like a typical Humanities person whining about all the scientists and engineers who refuse to praise him because he can quote Shakespeare.

[Puzzledtraveller]

6. Well, envy would be a natural human emotion

as you point out, and is one that is not easily veiled.

[lunatica]

7. A good question would be why don't they praise him

if what you say is truly the case. You don't have to agree with everyone but not to listen is to shut out something that may be of value. I think that was his point rather than bashing empiricism and science. He was talking about things that you can't quantify or measure such as imagination and vision outside of science. Science is good, but so is art.

At least that's what I got out of it.

[AlbertCat]

8. Science is good, but so is art.

Since when were they separate?

[Odin2005]

13. He is wrong.

There is plenty of abstract thought going on in our society, it is simply abstract thought that has lost touch with reality, and the people that have trouble with abstract thought now would have had trouble with it 50 years ago, too.

[Larry Ogg]

12. When institutions of learning become hell bent on being...

politically correct institutions of indoctrination, they praise and advance those who conform to the proper paradigms established to favor the ruling elite, even if it is at the expense of the truth.

When this happens, society begins a downward spiral towards self-destruction, because the natural genius of humanity, the true problem solvers who dare think outside of the box, are ridiculed, censored, forced out of the system, and into hiding.

And those who end up at the top of societal authority are of mediocre intelligence at best, false leaders, gatekeepers, ass kissers, brown nosers, sycophants, intellectually frauds, narcissist, sociopaths, and psychopaths, at the very worst.

There is no doubt in my mind that any criticism coming from Chris Hedges lays solely on the latter group.

[Overseas]

4. K&R. Well said.

[cali]

5. except for his thoughtless bashing of science I found this an engaging and

thoughtful piece- something I haven't seen a lot of out of Hedges in the last few years. Worth the read. rec.

[abelenkpe]

10. Who are ruling elites?

And urban elites?

[fasttense]

11. He is urging us to see beyond the myths. To see the truth...

"It is better to see what is about to befall us and to resist than to retreat into the fantasies embraced by a nation of the blind."

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. Great articls. Thanks for posting.