The U.S. Disconnecting & Numbing Epidemic: The Culprit and Our Options

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From CounterPunch: “In the 1960s and 1970s, there were many prominent thinkers dissecting our increasing dehumanization. A small sample from this group of well-known authors who immediately come to mind include: Erich Fromm, Lewis Mumford, Paul Goodman, Ivan Illich, Jane Jacobs, E.F. Schumacher, Leopold Kohr, Kirkpatrick Sale, Jerry Mander, John McKnight, and Wendell Berry.

Back in that era, the misery caused by capitalismā€”the prioritizing of profit over life resulting in human beings feeling alienatedā€”was a given; and so original thinkers were delving into just how dehumanization was playing out throughout society: from technology, to schooling, to healthcare, to transportation, to the mass media, to neighborhoods and communities, to architecture and urban planning, and to every aspect of our lives. Back then, it was not all that radical to conclude that we are increasingly being forced to become machine components alienated from our humanity so as to fit into a large machine.

Lewis Mumford, in this two-volumedĀ The Myth of the Machine (1967, 1970), details the origins and the scope of the ‘megamachine’: a social and bureaucratic system that functions impersonally like a gigantic machine. To make the megamachine work efficiently, people are dehumanized to be machine cogs, and Mumford describes the structure that makes it possible for authoritarian control over large populations be it in a labor machine, a military machine, a school machine, or a healthcare machine.

. . .Ā There are of course different experiences of the megamachine.

There are those of us who simply cannot fit into any labor machine, becoming homeless or institutionalized in a prison, mental hospital, or in some other way.

Then there are those of us who are able to adjust and adapt enough to fit into a money-making machine so as to not end up on the streets, but pay the price of alienation from our humanity. Some of us experience that alienation in anxiety, depression, dissociations, and various ineffectual rebellions, which today are commonly called ‘mental illnesses.’ While others, in denial of their alienation, become capable only of relationships with machine-like people, incapable of a truly loving human relationship, including with their spouse and children.

Then there are the most fucked up of all. These are the control-freaks atop of hierarchies who are running large machines within the megamachine. Weā€™re talking about Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates. Weā€™re talking about the most frighteningly fucked up machine-like individuals in society.

To be sure, a handful of Americans have lucked into a way of obtaining money that is somewhat outside the direct control of the megamachine, but most of them are aware that their lucky deal can be eliminated at any time by the megamachine. Moreover, they likely experience the pain of other components of the megamachine (for example, the healthcare machine); and they would be incredibly lucky not to experience the pain of the megamachineā€™s crushing of an unlucky family member or close friend.”

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3 COMMENTS

  1. But this mega machine, which I think is best described as the total social historical process of humanity, is not just the outward structure of a mechanical and bureaucratic society. It’s the intellect also which IS social historical accumulation and the social conditioning by this accumulation. Intellect creates all forms within civilization and runs it’s operations, and this civilization conditions the brain, fills the thinking mind with all it has, thereby reproducing the intellect in each subsequent generation. It is quite obvious, when you recognize his, that civilization itself has become a disease of the hearts and minds. We accumulate forms through time and then become subject to them, having to adjust to them, be constrained and shaped and destroyed by them, and this disease process, which nobody steers or can steer, has destroyed humanity and the Earth. And there is nothing thought or the intellect or civilization can do because it IS the problem, and this is very hard for the intellect to see. But the proof is in the pudding. All our problems have pilled up and accumulated also. I’m so bored of saying this though and likely bore you too. So can you start telling your friends in your own words please? And can you tell them that the living dead and vampire films were all about these times.

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    • Thank you, Bruce, as always, for an insightful piece. I consider you to be one of the “others who can energize us to keep looking.”

      But I hope you are wrong that “dismantling the megamachine any time soon is unrealistic.”

      Since I see us all now living in a critical time … the ponzi scheme of the monetary systems of Western civilization are imploding, the entire “mental health” industry is based upon scientific fraud, the medical system as a whole has lost credibility, the legal and judicial systems are convoluted and unjust, we’re on the edge of WWIII, ….

      “When everything’s made to be broken
      I just want you to know who I am”

      Gee, let’s just admit, Western civilization has bad systems … and actively work to change those bad systems (of course that will take those working within those bad systems, cleaning up the mess that their industry’s collective greed, created) … instead of letting the oligarchy that shouldn’t be (at least lawfully, I think, in the US) continue to dehumanize all of us.

      I know I can’t do it alone, but I do believe all of us decent folks, can improve society together. Let’s hope and pray, God helps us do so, in a timely manner. Since I don’t want to hand over to my children, the societal mess that I was handed over, by the elder generations of Western civilization. Nor do I want WWIII.

      But, of course, I was declared “mentally ill” / insane, for questioning those who were behind 9.11.2001. Resulting in all distress caused by 9.11.2001 being blamed upon a “chemical imbalance” in my brain alone, by an insane non-medically trained psychologist … rather than the chaos and distress caused by the distressing events of 9.11.2001 being blamed on the real masterminds behind 9.11.2001.

      Gosh, my dad used to be Donald Rumsfeld’s campaign finance manager. What did Rumsfeld admit to the day before 9.11.2001? … Oh, we’re back to the monetary system is a fraud based Ponzi scheme societal problem.

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  2. Fantastic article.

    Finding safe refuge for one’s soul in a materialistic world has always been and will always be one of life’s greatest challenges yet also its greatest reward.

    “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? ~ Mark 8:36

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