Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Weltanschauungskrieg in the Heartscape
Weltanschauungskrieg is a German word that means "Worldview Warfare." It was used to describe the Nazi strategy of understanding warfare (and life) as a struggle to conquer hearts and minds. Heartscape is a word that has been used symbolically and poetically by many people. For me, it's a literal term for the landscape of our hearts -- our hopes, our dreams, our poems and songs, our deepest feelings, our closest relationships, our greatest humanity, and so on.
Sometimes, I feel like the known history of humanity has been a history of escalating Weltanschauungskrieg in the Heartscape.
From the Roman Empire onward, this dawning Weltanschauungskrieg (WSK) grows bit by bit more intentional and organized. But in my mind, the real turning point comes in the 19th and 20th Centuries, when the ancient art of WSK is refined into a psychological and social science. Instead of using material weapons to expand a worldview of dominance, the worldview itself becomes the weapon of choice to maintain that dominance.
This brings us to the 21st century.
Sometimes, I turn on my TV to watch the Simpsons, That 70's Show, and yes, even that hit action series, 24. Every moment that this little black box buzzes in my living room, I can feel the WSK pushing on my consciousness. This is especially true for 24, and even more especially true for the corporate commercials. Every word is a bullet; every song is a grenade; every image is a bunker buster. On those rare occassions when I seek out Fox News or other direct fascist propaganda, the psychonoetic assault intensifies exponentially, to the point where I can physically feel each word, each note, each image smashing into my flesh. Soon, every cell in my body is resonating with the whispered words of this multimedia blitzkrieg:
...Action. Fun action. Terrifying action. Sexy action. Take action. Buy into the action. Buy these clothes to dance in the streets. Buy this car to play in the woods. Buy these soldiers to fight for these cars. Buy the flag when the soliders die. Buy, buy, buy more soldiers, buy more flags to cover invisible caskets, invisible bullets, invisible bombs. Buy elections to buy the soldiers. Buy Direct TV to forget about elections. I buy, therefore buy-am...
Is this really what we should be bombarding our consciousness with? I wish that it were only confined to the TV, but the entire physical, social, and economic infrastructure of our society is set up as an extension of the dominant worldviews that keep The Few in power, The Many powerless, and The All in a life of maximized profit and minimized meaning. Only small pockets and thin networks of counter-culture and counter-strategy remain, barely able to hold back the burning tides of the blitzkrieg, much less offer any sort of proactive positive strategy of their own.
In some ways, we in the United States are the most protected people in history. The chief task that our rulers lay out for us is to consume endlessly in an escalating orgy of fun and excitement. American WSK -- both in its psycho-social sophistication, and in its military backup -- is the most powerful WSK that has ever existed on the planet, and its continued expansion promises us greater wealth, greater popularity, greater security, greater FUN.
So, it seems to protect us above all others. And yet...
And yet... even aside from its faltering inability to truly protect us... we are not as protected as we seem. Why? Because it is we who are its first targets. It is we who are endlessly assaulted into submission by the blitzkrieg on our Heartscapes just to maintain the Empire. The American WSK that is sweeping over the globe as we speak was perfected first at home, and the greatest innovation in psychosocial control still arises here, in a Heartscape so dominated by this worldview that it knows no past, no future, no broader world outside of its carefully crafted cultural bubble.
Welcome to Weltanschauungskrieg in the Heartscape of America. Do you feel free yet?
And yet... there is still hope.
Somehow, I always come back to a place of hope. If I felt that the human heart had been fully conquered, and the human spirit fully chased from its physical vessel, then I would just give up on trying to make a difference. And sometimes, I'm about ready to give up. But then... I pause... I take a deep breath... and I look around myself...
...I search with my heart through the fluorescent haze of an entire reality designed to induce dreamless submission...
...I find the kinship of many kindred spirits, their hearts torn and tattered like my own, at times unsure which threads of their own fabric are real, quietly huddling together in stolen moments of deep resonance while the Weltanschauungskrieg marches on around us...
...I find sparks of humanity, ecology, ingenuity, authenticity, growing up through the cracks of pop culture like dandelions in a parking lot, sending runners across the barren land, springing up whole networks of independent communication, radical uprising, free thinking, free feeling, ecological living, intentional community...
...and even though the Weltanschauungskrieg is bigger, and louder, and faster, and shinier, and maybe even tougher, I just know that these little green plants peeking through the cracks are here for a reason. We are the sprouting seeds of resistance -- and even though it seems impossible at times, our roots and vines will soon weave across the face of this nation and this planet, overgrowing societies that used the sophisticated tools of the 21st century as just another big club to swing around in service of the paranoid and self-serving whims of their reptillian brains.
Well, on that note, I think that I've had just about enough blogging for one day. Away with the oil-chugging dinosaurs and hooray for the greeny rainbowy revolutionaries! Time to rest up for another day at work and another effort to exorcise the remains of a bronchial uberbug that our society of sickness has graciously passed onto me... you know, I tried to tell my bronchial tubes that someone who was warning society about the dangers of antibiotic abuse years ago should be immune to all antibiotic uberbugs. But so far, I've had mixed results... I'll let you know how it goes.
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Sometimes, I feel like the known history of humanity has been a history of escalating Weltanschauungskrieg in the Heartscape.
From the Roman Empire onward, this dawning Weltanschauungskrieg (WSK) grows bit by bit more intentional and organized. But in my mind, the real turning point comes in the 19th and 20th Centuries, when the ancient art of WSK is refined into a psychological and social science. Instead of using material weapons to expand a worldview of dominance, the worldview itself becomes the weapon of choice to maintain that dominance.
This brings us to the 21st century.
Sometimes, I turn on my TV to watch the Simpsons, That 70's Show, and yes, even that hit action series, 24. Every moment that this little black box buzzes in my living room, I can feel the WSK pushing on my consciousness. This is especially true for 24, and even more especially true for the corporate commercials. Every word is a bullet; every song is a grenade; every image is a bunker buster. On those rare occassions when I seek out Fox News or other direct fascist propaganda, the psychonoetic assault intensifies exponentially, to the point where I can physically feel each word, each note, each image smashing into my flesh. Soon, every cell in my body is resonating with the whispered words of this multimedia blitzkrieg:
...Action. Fun action. Terrifying action. Sexy action. Take action. Buy into the action. Buy these clothes to dance in the streets. Buy this car to play in the woods. Buy these soldiers to fight for these cars. Buy the flag when the soliders die. Buy, buy, buy more soldiers, buy more flags to cover invisible caskets, invisible bullets, invisible bombs. Buy elections to buy the soldiers. Buy Direct TV to forget about elections. I buy, therefore buy-am...
Is this really what we should be bombarding our consciousness with? I wish that it were only confined to the TV, but the entire physical, social, and economic infrastructure of our society is set up as an extension of the dominant worldviews that keep The Few in power, The Many powerless, and The All in a life of maximized profit and minimized meaning. Only small pockets and thin networks of counter-culture and counter-strategy remain, barely able to hold back the burning tides of the blitzkrieg, much less offer any sort of proactive positive strategy of their own.
In some ways, we in the United States are the most protected people in history. The chief task that our rulers lay out for us is to consume endlessly in an escalating orgy of fun and excitement. American WSK -- both in its psycho-social sophistication, and in its military backup -- is the most powerful WSK that has ever existed on the planet, and its continued expansion promises us greater wealth, greater popularity, greater security, greater FUN.
So, it seems to protect us above all others. And yet...
And yet... even aside from its faltering inability to truly protect us... we are not as protected as we seem. Why? Because it is we who are its first targets. It is we who are endlessly assaulted into submission by the blitzkrieg on our Heartscapes just to maintain the Empire. The American WSK that is sweeping over the globe as we speak was perfected first at home, and the greatest innovation in psychosocial control still arises here, in a Heartscape so dominated by this worldview that it knows no past, no future, no broader world outside of its carefully crafted cultural bubble.
Welcome to Weltanschauungskrieg in the Heartscape of America. Do you feel free yet?
And yet... there is still hope.
Somehow, I always come back to a place of hope. If I felt that the human heart had been fully conquered, and the human spirit fully chased from its physical vessel, then I would just give up on trying to make a difference. And sometimes, I'm about ready to give up. But then... I pause... I take a deep breath... and I look around myself...
...I search with my heart through the fluorescent haze of an entire reality designed to induce dreamless submission...
...I find the kinship of many kindred spirits, their hearts torn and tattered like my own, at times unsure which threads of their own fabric are real, quietly huddling together in stolen moments of deep resonance while the Weltanschauungskrieg marches on around us...
...I find sparks of humanity, ecology, ingenuity, authenticity, growing up through the cracks of pop culture like dandelions in a parking lot, sending runners across the barren land, springing up whole networks of independent communication, radical uprising, free thinking, free feeling, ecological living, intentional community...
...and even though the Weltanschauungskrieg is bigger, and louder, and faster, and shinier, and maybe even tougher, I just know that these little green plants peeking through the cracks are here for a reason. We are the sprouting seeds of resistance -- and even though it seems impossible at times, our roots and vines will soon weave across the face of this nation and this planet, overgrowing societies that used the sophisticated tools of the 21st century as just another big club to swing around in service of the paranoid and self-serving whims of their reptillian brains.
Well, on that note, I think that I've had just about enough blogging for one day. Away with the oil-chugging dinosaurs and hooray for the greeny rainbowy revolutionaries! Time to rest up for another day at work and another effort to exorcise the remains of a bronchial uberbug that our society of sickness has graciously passed onto me... you know, I tried to tell my bronchial tubes that someone who was warning society about the dangers of antibiotic abuse years ago should be immune to all antibiotic uberbugs. But so far, I've had mixed results... I'll let you know how it goes.
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