End the cult of the self and stop corporations from inducing narcissistic behavior
“End the cult of the self and stop corporations from inducing narcissistic behavior”
Chapter 8
How to take down the Billionaires
If you are serious about opposing global corporate fascism, you already have had the experience of meeting citizens, friends and family, who have been reduced to passive consumers by the hypnotic television, who are incapable of conceiving of their relationship with society other than in terms of how much money they can make and how much they can buy, and who lack the imagination required to comprehend the global takeover underway now—which is not described by the network news.
The multinational corporations have paid their lackeys to create a corporate-controlled system that establishes norms and values for citizens that are not natural but rather induced. The process, which has gone on for a century, is so blatantly unconstitutional and so clearly an effort to reestablish slavery in violation of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.
The traditional values of frugality, modesty, sincerity and loyalty have been obliterated, through a systematic brain washing program introduced into the mind through toxic injections of entertainment and sensationalist journalism. In place of healthy values and love between family members, cooperation between villagers, we face the false god with a hidden face that ruthlessly demands of us competition, personal achievement, self-improvement, and straight out narcissism and greed, as the basic values, the new religion, for citizens.
The potential for organizing communities and effective movements has been undermined, no! destroyed, by this narcissistic view of the individual in a struggle for self-aggrandizement, best known as the “cult of the self.”
The cult of the self is an advertising and public relations campaign, which can be traced back to the 1920s, that is intended to induce dependency on consumer products (which means dependency on corporations) and to encourage passivity and self-obsession. It is promoted in music videos that stress wealth and self-importance, narratives about love that focus on personal experience and ignore family and society, movies that feature superheroes that are independent from their communities, fashion magazines that suggest the only road to happiness is consumption and looking good in the eyes of others, and a broad range of self-help experts who suggest that we must learn from billionaires, or blame ourselves for our lack of personal enlightenment if we are disturbed to see a predatory and cannibalistic culture around us.
The cult of the self does everything possible to erase and obscure class warfare, the need for solidarity in communities, the importance of taking care of family and friends, and the critical virtues of humility, modesty, frugality and compassion.
Linked to the cult of the self is the glorification of technology and the promotion by corporations of the idea that an IPhone or a Facebook post will improve one’s emotional and spiritual experience. Technology is always dangerous, always potentially destructive, for society and culture, and all choices regarding technology must be made with extreme care, and in an open and participatory manner.
If we have corporations introducing dangerous 5G technology in our neighborhoods without review by citizens, we are living in a totalitarian state.
What is lost in the promotion of technology and narcissism is the capacity to engage in rational and detached thinking, to slow down enough to read a book or to consider a complex issue in three-dimensions. In other words, narcissism destroys the capacity of people to serve as citizens and guts the constitutional system which is supposed to undergird all governance. Corporations that induce narcissism through advertising are engaged in a criminal and treasonable action.
The promotion of narcissism and the resulting drop in the ability to concentrate and focus on the part of citizens, means that those citizens fall for bogus high-profile protests and are convinced that government is doing something when some toothless law is promoted by the self-appointed experts.
That is to say that the vast majority of citizens are no longer capable of assessing what is actually taking place with detachment, and following the scientific method.
If we wish to take down the billionaires, we need to first create a culture in daily life that offers an alternative to this deadly web of indulgence and sloppy thinking woven by the rich and powerful so as to entrap us all. Democracy is the process by which the needs and the wisdom of the people are converted into policy. But if the people are misled, sated with distorted and embellished journalism, if they are taught to be self-indulgent and thus lose interest in governance, then we a democracy without people. If the debate on policy is not grounded in truth, then we have a fantasy democracy. However, and this is the hard part, truth is never democratic. If we are voting to determine what is true, then we have already slipped into an orderly, and all too reasonable, psychosis.