2011.06.14 — How Strangely Appropriate: a C.G. Jung and N. Chomsky Fushigi*

Here is a totally weird Chomsky/Jung fushigi.

Today, from a Google Chomsky alert, I went for my first time to a web paged called Tikkun.
From it I read 'Overcoming Despair as the Republicans Take Over: A Conversation with Noam Chomsky'
by Michael Lerner
March 1, 2011

It is the transcription of a dialogue between Noam Chomsky and the author. At some point in it I'm amused to read Lerner introduce the issue of religion — in a kind of back-handed way.

...
'What Do We Do about Religiophobia?'

ML: As a side question, we in the NSP [I think he means Network of Spiritual Progressives] and Tikkun have found that our positions and analyses — which are in some ways more radical (going to the root) than many of

Jim Wallis

the programs that you hear coming out of the Left, because we do have a class analysis and we do have an analysis of global capitalism — are nevertheless not paid much attention by the rest of the Left because of what we’ve experienced as a pervasive religiophobia. And that has also been experienced by people like Jim Wallis and those involved with Sojourners, and people around the Christian Century [magazine], and other progressive religious organizations.

And I’m wondering if you have any advice to us on how to overcome that religiophobia, since it seems ludicrous to us that a secular left would not understand that, in a country where you have 80 percent of the population believing in God and 60 percent going to church at least once a month, it would

be in their interest to have a unification with people who have a spiritual or religious consciousness.

NC: I think you should approach them, not just on the pragmatic grounds that it’s in their interest, but also on the grounds that it’s the right thing to do. I mean, personally, I’m completely secular, but I certainly recognize the right of people to have personal religious beliefs and the significance that it may have in their lives, though not for me. Though we can certainly understand each other at least that well, quite apart from pragmatic considerations. I mean, say if a mother is praying that she might see her dying child in heaven, it’s not my right to give her lectures on epistemology.

ML: But it’s not just issues of epistemology, because there we could have a good debate; it’s that there is a climate or a culture in the Left and the liberal arenas that simply assumes that anybody who would have a religious position must be intellectually underdeveloped or psychologically stuck, needing a father figure or scared of the unknown, or some other psychologically reductive analysis. That approach — a kind of ridicule of anybody who could possibly think that there was a spiritual dimension of reality, when it’s pervasive, pushes people away even if they agree with much of the rest of what the Left is saying. How does one raise that issue? How does one deal with that issue among lefties who are simply unaware of the elitism and offensiveness of these suppositions? There was a time when it was extremely difficult to raise the issue of patriarchy, sexism, or homophobia, because people thought, “well that’s ridiculous, it’s just not true, it’s not happening” — there was a huge level of denial. Do you have any advice for us on how to deal with that level of denial that exists in the culture of the Left? In my own study of this — I’ve done a rather extensive study of the psychodynamics of American society, which involved over 10,000 people — we found that this was a central issue for a lot of middle-income working people, who agreed with much of the Left’s positions, but felt dissed by the Left.

NC: Well, the way you approach people is to explain to them that not only is it not in their interest to diss other people, but it’s also morally and intellectually wrong. [Here's the fushigi bit — part 2:] For example, one of the greatest dangers is secular religion — state worship. That’s a far more destructive factor in world affairs than religious belief, and it’s common on the Left. So you take a look at the very people who are passionately advocating struggling for atheism and repeating arguments that most of us understood when we were teenagers — those very same people are involved in highly destructive and murderous state worship, not all of them but some. Does that mean we should diss them? No, it means we should try to explain it to them (my emphasis).

Okay, that was how the fushigi completed itself. Below is how it began:

Yesterday I stumbled into a query in the Goodreads on-line social webpage about the meaning of a passage from Jung's book, The Undiscovered Self. Qing asked:

Chapter 4, The Individual's Understanding of Himself: "It has even become a political and social duty to apostrophize the capitalism of one and the communism of the other as the very devil, so as to fascinate the outward eye and prevent it from looking at the individual life within."

I didn't get this sentence. Does "apostrophize" here mean emphasize, make believe, or treat like non-existing?

I answered with

This is indeed a difficult sentence. I deduce that Jung is using 'apostrophize' to mean that ownership of these political structures has been removed from the individual and put onto the other as a collective manifestation of the devil. To blame the other for our military aggression, for example, is the politically correct way of removing from ourselves responsibility for our own evils.

I went back to the paragraph from which

you've extracted this sentence, and re-reading confirms my assessment. [Here's the fushigi bit — part 1:] The paragraph discusses the manner in which the 'state' can take over the religious functions of man when man's spiritual/religious unconscious nature is abandoned for science and reason. ('Man' here meaning the human animal of both sexes.)

I suggest you read Chomsky's critical examination of the role of propaganda in deluding America

as to their world benevolence. And then supplement that by reading the irrational even rabid evangelism that comprises the gist of the right's dismissal of his arguments and observations. In a real world sense, the anti-Chomsky-ites are as much the evidence of the accuracy of Jung's evaluation in Undiscovered Self as are the fanatical religious political states in the middle east.

But perhaps the strongest evidence attesting Jung's accuracy is the near rabid, even quasi-religious nature of the political debate even in, or perhaps especially in, countries like the USA that have 'officially' removed religion from the state. The religion has gone underground, and their political campaigns have the air of revivalist meetings.

Think to Reagan or W. Bush, or Sarah Palin and how their advocacy of American style democracy/capitalism has a near hysterical truly irrational and religious fervour.

Q. thanked me, and wrote that he'd try reading more about this subject. And so I recommended that a few good books to begin with might include:

Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies
and Perspectives on Power: Reflections on Human Nature and the Social Order by Chomsky.

I also recommended Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, The Unconscious Civilization by John Ralston Saul
and

The Reenchantment of the World by Morris Berman.

Post Script 2011.06.15
I did a bit of research after the original posting of this blog (and adding the graphics). And I found tucked away in my e.mail 'signature quips' list, the following citation from The Undiscovered Self:

We ought not to underestimate the psychological effect of the statistical world-picture: it thrusts aside the individual in favour of anonymous units that pile up into mass formations. Instead of the concrete individual, you have the names of organizations and, at the highest point, the abstract idea of the State as the principle of political reality. The moral responsibility of the individual is then inevitably replaced by the policy of the State (raison d'état). Instead of moral and mental differentiation of the individual, you have public welfare and the raising of the living standard.

Jung, C.G. "The Undiscovered Self," CW 10, cited in C.G. Jung: His Myth in our Time by Marie-Louise von Franz. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1975. Tr. by William H. Kennedy, p 254-5.

2011.06.12 — A Tiny, Silly, Fushigi*

Work, Friday June 10th, was a day filled with uncommon vivacity and laughter. The pod of three co-workers next to mine was having a whale of a time. These people are normally very energetic and vociferous. But Friday, OMG! There was more than the usual banter and good-natured but typically very sharp barbs and repartees. They were, to put it simply, very noisy in an office that is, perhaps typically of modern offices, without even a smidgeon of sound proofing. We all can hear with crystal clarity, everything everyone says within 25 or 30'. Laughter and raised voices carry much further.

I sit less than 10' from the most distant, and share my one third false wall with the closest. But my work day was a busy one, and so I concentrated on that and paid them no heed.

For some reason, perhaps three sibling-ed small house childhood, perhaps simply quirk of nature, the noise of others does not distract me when I want to concentrate. But when my pod-mate noticed

me putting my Apple ear phones into my ears in order to listen to my iPod music, he commented 'Good idea.' 'What?' I asked. 'Tuning out all that silliness in order to get work done.' 'Oh,' I replied, 'their silliness doesn't bother me at all. Besides,' I added, 'everything about life is silliness.' 'Yes,' he agreed, 'you're right.'

Well, last night I was continuing my read through The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood.

I was very bemused when, on page 234, I read:

On April Fish Day, which originated in France, we make fun of one another by attaching a Fish of paper, or, in our case, a Fish of recycled cloth, to the back of another person and then crying out, "April Fish!" Or, in the original French, "Poisson d'Avril!" In anglophone countries, this day is known as April Fool's Day. But April Fish was surely first a Christian festival, as a Fish image was used by the early Christians as secret signals of their faith in times of oppression.

The Fish was an apt symbol, for Jesus first called as his Apostles two fishermen, surely chosen by him to help conserve the Fish population. They were told to be fishers of men instead of being fishers of Fish, thus neutralizing two destroyers of Fish! That Jesus was mindful of the Birds, the Animals, and the Plants is clear from his remarks on Sparrows, Hens, Lambs, and Lilies; but he understood that most of God's Garden was under water and that it, too, needed tending. Saint Francis of Assisi preached a sermon to the Fish, not realizing that the Fish commune directly with God. Still, the Saint was affirming the respect due to them. How prophetic does this appear, now that the world's Oceans are being laid waste!

Others may take the Specist view that we Humans are smarter than Fish, and thus an April Fish is being marked as mute and foolish. But the life of the Spirit always seems foolish to those who do not share it: therefore we must accept and wear the label of God's Fools gladly, for in relation to God we are all fools, no matter how wise we may think we are. To be an April Fish is to humbly accept our own silliness, and to cheerfully admit the absurdity — from a materialist view — of every Spiritual truth we profess (p234-5 my emphasis).

Now I am perfectly aware that in the big scheme of life, such an observation is silly. But, so what? It is still a fushigi, even if 'only' a silly little one.

2011.06.05 — John Pilger 'Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire'

Something we'd like to think cannot be true...

"... in the west, ... American state crimes were merely superficially recorded, let alone documented."

And yet across the world the extinction and suffering of countless human beings could be attributed to rampant American power. "But," said [Harold] Pinter, "you wouldn't know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest."

Pinter's words were more than the surreal. The BBC ignored the speech of Britain's greatest dramatist

Harold Pinter

John Pilger, dissident journalist.
Plenary Session on Confronting Empire
Freedom Next Time: Defending the Empire.
"Propaganda, the Press, Censorship.'
Speech at the 'Socialism 2007' Conference in Chicago.
Democracy Now.
Click on link Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire to play the video with Real Player.

John Pilger

I was poking around the web, following a Google Alert I'd received for Noam Chomsky that took me to YouTube. I started with "Chomsky on Ethical Dilemmas: Should I Protest Against My Government and Risk Jail Time?"

Then I poked on a few other short snippets from what must have been an extended interview. Eventually I clicked onto John Pilger, more or less by accident. I clicked on him in part because the angle of the tiny photo kind of looked like Chomsky if you weren't looking too closely, but more so because of the title, "Propaganda, the Press, Censorship..." PART 1/5". I honestly do not remember having heard the name 'John Pilger' before, and I was very pleasantly surprised at the quality of this lecture. It was given at the 'Plenary Session on Confronting Empire' at the Socialism 2007 Conference in Chicago. (When I went looking for an image to Blog, one or two of the images resonated, so perhaps I have seen/heard him somewhere.)

It was in part 3 that I began to — unnecessarily as it turns out — transcribe what I was listening to because Pilger was relating his own experiences with PBS censorship and 'freedom' of the press. It reminded me of Chomsky's experiences of being censored by the PBS that I recently blogged: 2011.04.14 — Rebel Without A Pause & Freedom of Expression American Style....

Being rather dumb, it was after I'd finished transcribing most of parts 3, and 5, and all of 4 that I even thought to look for the transcription. I found it at Democracy Now. And I also found there the video unbroken: Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire.

Here's what caught my ear. I couldn't resist throwing in Pilger's reaction to the John Wayne movie, 'The Green Berets' as a gentle introduction to what follows:

...
[@22:36] I wasn’t going to mention The Green Berets when I sat down to write

this, until I read the other day that John Wayne was the most influential movie [actor] who ever lived. I saw the Green Berets starring John Wayne on a Saturday night in 1968 in Montgomery, Alabama. (I was down there to interview the then infamous governor George Wallace). I had just come back from Vietnam, and I couldn’t believe how absurd this movie was. So I laughed out loud, and I laughed and laughed. And it wasn’t long before the atmosphere around me grew very cold. My companion, who had been a Freedom Rider in the South, said, "Let’s get the hell out of here and run like hell."

We were chased all the way back to our hotel, but I doubt if any of our pursuers were aware that John Wayne, their hero, had lied so he wouldn’t have to fight in World War II. And yet the phony role model of Wayne sent thousands of Americans to their deaths in Vietnam, with the notable exceptions of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Last year in his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the playwright Harold Pinter made an epic speech. He asked "Why," and I quote him, "the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought in Stalinist Russia were well known in the west, while American state crimes were merely superficially recorded, let alone documented." Unquote.

And yet across the world the extinction and suffering of countless human beings could be attributed to rampant American power. "But," said Pinter, "you wouldn't know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest." Unquote.

Pinter's words were more than the surreal. The BBC ignored the speech of Britain's greatest dramatist.

Here's the bit that first caught my ear. PBS executives refuse to air Pilger's documentary Year Zero, at least in part because it makes America look bad, although they don't say that. Amusingly, instead of having the balls to say that, they scam the refusal by using a 'fixed' 'adjudicator.'

I've made a number of documentaries about Cambodia. The first was 'Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia.' It describes the American bombing that provided a catalyst for the rise of Pol Pot. What Nixon and Kissinger had started Pol Pot completed; CIA files alone leave no doubt of that.

I offered 'Year Zero' to PBS and took it to Washington. The PBS executives who saw it were shocked. They whispered among themselves. They asked me to wait outside. One of them finally emerged and said "John, we admire your film. But we are disturbed that it says that the United States prepared the way for Pol Pot." And I said "Do you dispute the evidence?" I'd quoted a number of CIA documents and others. "Oh no! No, no, no," he replied. "But we've decided to call in a journalistic adjudicator." [Laughter.]

Now the term 'journalist adjudicator' might have been invented by George Orwell. In fact they managed to find the only journalist – no, only one of three journalists who had been invited to Cambodia by Pol Pot. And, of course, he turned his thumbs down on the film and I never heard from PBS again.

'Year Zero' was broadcast in some sixty countries, and became one of the most watched documentaries in the world. It was never shown in the United States.

That was what I'd intended to blog. However, the speech was so good I wound up transcribing all the rest of it. It is, I think, an important speech that has been heard by very few — in YouTube, anyway: less than 2000 people since it was uploaded 3+ years ago.

Of the five films I made on Cambodia, one of them was shown by WNET the PBS station in New York. I believe that it was shown at about one in the morning. [Some laughter.] On the basis of this single showing, when most people were asleep, it was awarded an Emmy. [Some laughter.] What marvelous irony. [Laughter.] It was worthy of a prize but not an audience. [More laughter.]

Harold Pinter's subversive truth, I believe, was that he made the connection between imperialism and fascism. And described a battle for history that is almost never reported. This is the great silence of the media age. And this is the secret heart of propaganda today. A propaganda so vast in scope that I am always astonished that so many Americans know and understand as much as they do.

We're talking about a system, of course, not personalities. And yet a great many decent people believe that the problem is George W. Bush and his gang. And yes, the Bush gang are extreme. But my experience is that they are no more than an extreme version of what has gone on before. [Applause]

In my lifetime more wars have been started by liberal democrats than by republicans. Ignoring this truth is a guarantee that the propaganda system and the war making system will continue. We've had a branch of the democratic party running Britain for the last ten years. [Laughter.]

Tony Blair

[Prime Minister Tony] Blair, apparently a liberal, has taken Britain to war more times than any prime minister in the modern era. Yes, his current pal is George Bush, but his first love was Bill Clinton. [Laugter] The most violent president of the twentieth century – the late twentieth century.

Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, is also a devotee of Clinton and Bush. The other day Brown said, "The days of Britain having to apologize for the British Empire are over. We should celebrate." Like Blair, like Clinton, like Bush, Brown believes in the liberal truth that the battle for history has been won. That the millions who died in deliberately imposed famines in British imperial India will be forgotten. Like the millions who've died in the American empire will be forgotten.

Gordon Brown

And like Blair, he's confident that professional journalism is on his side. For most journalists, whether they realize it or not, are groomed to be tribunes of an ideology that regards itself as non-ideological. That presents itself as the natural centre, the very fulcrum of civilized modern life.

This may well be the most powerful and most dangerous ideology we've ever known because it's open ended. This is liberalism.

I'm not denying the virtues of liberalism. Far from it. We're all beneficiaries of them. But if we deny its dangers, its open ended project, and the all consuming power of its propaganda, then we deny our right to the true democracy because liberalism and true democracy are not the same. Liberalism began as a cult of the elite in the nineteenth century, and true democracy is never handed down by elites. It is always fought for and struggle for. [Applause]

[Judith LeBlanc, a] senior member of the anti-war coalition, United for Peace and Justice, said recently, and I quote her, "The democrats are using the politics of reality," unquote. Her liberal historical reference point was Vietnam. She said that President Johnson began withdrawing troops from Vietnam after a Democratic Congress began to vote against the war.

That's not what happened. [Laughter.] The troops were withdrawn from Vietnam over four long years. And during that time the United States killed more people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with bombs than were killed in all the preceding years. And that's what's happening in Iraq. The bombing has doubled since last year, and this is not being reported.

And who began this bombing? Bill Clinton began it. During the 1990s Clinton rained bombs on Iraq in what was euphemistically called the no-fly zone. At the same time he imposed a medieval siege called 'economic sanctions,' killing, as I've mentioned, perhaps a million people. Including the documented figure of 500,000 children.

Almost none of this carnage was reported in the so-called mainstream media.

Last year a study by the John Hopkins School of Public Health found that since the invasion of Iraq 655,000 Iraqis have died as a direct result of the invasion. Official documents show that the Blair government knew this figure to be credible. In February, Les Roberts, the author of the report, said the figure was equal to the figure of deaths in the Fordham University study of the Rwandan genocide.

The media response to Roberts' shocking revelation was silence. What may well be the greatest episode of organized killing for a generation, in Harold Pinter's words, did not happen. It didn't matter.

Many people who regard themselves on the left supported Bush's attack on Afghanistan. That the CIA had supported Osama Bin Laden was ignored. That the Clinton administration had secretly backed the Taliban, even giving them high level briefing of the CIA is virtually unknown in the United States. The Taliban were secret partners with the oil giant Unocal in building an oil pipeline across Afghanistan. And when a Clinton official was reminded that the Taliban persecuted women he said 'We can live with that.'

There is compelling evidence that Bush decided to attack Afghanistan not as a result of 9/11 but two months earlier in July 2001. This is virtually unknown in the United States. Publicly. Like the scale of civilian casualties in Afghanistan. To my knowledge only one mainstream reporter, Johnathan Steele of The Guardian in London, has investigated civilian casualties in Afghanistan. His estimate is 20,000 dead civilians, and that was three years ago.

The enduring tragedy of Palestine is due in great part, great part, to the silence and compliance of the so-called liberal left. Hamas is described repeatedly as sworn to the destruction of Israel. The New York Times, the Associated Press, Boston Globe. Take your pick. They all use this line as a standard disclaimer. And it's false.

That Hamas has called for a ten year cease fire is almost never reported. Even more important, that Hamas has undergone an historic ideological shift in the last few years, which amounts to a recognition of what it calls the reality of Israel, is virtually unknown. And that Israel is sworn to the destruction of Palestine is unspeakable.

There is a pioneering study done by Glasgow University on the reporting of Palestine. They interviewed young people who watched TV news in Britain. More than 90% thought the illegal settlers were Palestinian. The more they watched the less then knew, in Danny Schecter's famous phrase.

The most dangerous silence is over nuclear weapons and the return of the cold war. The Russians understand clearly that the so-called American defense shield in eastern Europe is designed to subjugate and humiliate them. Yet the front pages here talk about Putin starting a new cold war. And there is silence about the development of and entirely new American nuclear system called 'Reliable Weapons Replacement' – RRW, which is designed to blur the distinction between conventional war and nuclear war. A long held ambition.

In the mean time Iran is being softened up, with the liberal media playing almost the same role it played before the Iraq invasion.

And as for the democrats, look at how Barrack Obama has become the voice on the council on foreign relations. One of the propaganda organs of the old liberal Washington establishment. Obama writes that he wants the troops home, and I quote, "We must not rule out military force against long standing adversaries such as Iran and Syria." Unquote. Listen to this from the liberal Obama, and I quote. "At moment[s] of great peril in the past century our leaders insured that America by deed and by example lead and lifted the world. That we stood for and fought for the freedom sought by billions of people beyond our borders." Unquote.

You know, that's the nub of the propaganda, the brainwashing, if you like, that seeps into the lives of every American. And many of us who are not Americans. From right to left, secular to God-fearing, what so few people know is that in the last half century United States administrations have overthrown fifty governments. Many of them democracies. In the process thirty countries have been attacked and bombed, with the loss of countless lives.

Bush-bashing is all very well. And is justified. But the moment we begin to accept the siren call of the Democrats drivel about standing up and fighting for freedom sought by billions, the battle for history is lost, and we ourselves are silenced.

So what should we do? That question often asked in meetings I've addressed, even meetings as informed as those in this conference, is itself interesting. It's my experience that people in the so-called third world rarely ask the question, because they know what to do. And some have paid with their freedom and their lives, but they knew what to do. It's a question that many on the democratic left, small 'd,' have yet to answer.

Real information, subversive information remains the most potent power of all. And I believe we must not fall into the trap of believing that the media speaks for the public. That wasn't true in Stalinist Czechoslovakia, and it isn't true in Bush's United States. [Applause]

In all the years I've been a journalist I've never known public consciousness to have risen as fast as it's rising today. Yes, its direction and shape is unclear, partly because people are now deeply suspicious of political alternatives, and because the Democratic Party has succeeded in seducing and dividing the electoral left. And yet this growing critical public awareness is all the more remarkable when you consider the shear scale of indoctrination, the mythology of a superior way of life, and the current manufactured state of fear.

Why did The New York Times come clean in that editorial last year? Not because it opposes Bush's wars. Look at the coverage of Iran. That editorial was a rare acknowledgement that the public were beginning to see the concealed role of the media, that people were beginning to read between the lines. If Iran is attacked the reaction and the upheaval cannot be predicted. The National Security and Homeland Security presidential directive gives Bush power over all facets of government in an emergency. It's not unlikely that the constitution will be suspended, the laws to round up hundreds of thousands of so-called terrorists and enemy combatants are already on the books. That's not paranoia, to be understanding of that. I believe that these dangers are understood by the public, who have come a long way since 9/11. And a long way since the propaganda that linked Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda. That's why they voted for the Democrats last November, only to be betrayed.

But they need truth. And journalists ought to be agents of truth, not the courtiers of power. I believe a 5th estate is possible. The product of a people's movement that monitors, deconstructs and counters the media, the corporate media. In every university, in every media college, in every news room, teachers of journalism and journalists themselves, need to ask themselves about the part they themselves now play in the bloodshed in the name of a bogus objectivity. Such a movement within the media could herald a perestroika of a kind we've never known. This is all possible. Silences can be broken. In Britain the National Union of Journalists has undergone a radical change, and has called for a boycott of Israel. [Applause] [end of part 4/5 10:55]

The website Medialens.org has single handedly called the BBC to account. In the United States wonderfully free rebellious spirits populate the web. I can't mention them all here, but from Tom Feeley’s International Clearing House, to Mike Albert’s ZNet, to Counterpunch online, and the splendid work of FAIR. The best reporting of Iraq appears on the web—Dahr Jamail’s courageous journalism; and citizen reporters like Joe Wilding, who reported the siege of Fallujah from inside the city.

In Venezuela, Greg Wilpert’s investigations turned back much of the virulent propaganda now aimed at Hugo Chávez. Make no mistake, it’s the threat of freedom of speech for the majority in Venezuela that lies behind the campaign in the west on behalf of the corrupt RCTV. The challenge for the rest of us is to lift this subjugated knowledge from out of the underground and take it to ordinary people.

We need to make haste. Liberal Democracy is moving toward a form of corporate dictatorship. This is an historic shift, and the media must not be allowed to be its façade, but itself made into a popular, burning issue, and subjected to direct action. That great whistleblower Tom Paine warned that if the majority of the people were denied the truth and the ideas of truth, it was time to storm what he called the Bastille of words. That time is now.

Well, that is quite a mouthful! I'll be tweaking this over the next few days with links and more images.

2011.05.30 — We Are Alive in the Age of False Sincerity

“The secret of success is sincerity.

Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.”

Jean Giraudoux^*

The age we are living in is not most accurately described as the 'information age', despite the explosion of abbreviated information being flung between smart phones. Nor is the age ware are we living in most accurately described as the 'space age', despite man have created fecal matter shooting stars.

The age we are living in is truly that of false sincerity. And while fakery has always been popular our age is particularly blessed: we the help of media propaganda we have

1) given over our authority to the politician's speech writers;
2) come to deify the Harvard-school MBAs and their agents and;
3) we defer socio-economic complexity to empty economic jingoism and feel good words or phrases like 'team,' or 'embrace change,' or 'initiate opportunity.'

And while these societal maladies are everywhere made manifest, they are most easily discerned in the lowly and unwanted task of providing worthy customer service once the post sale coital blush and cigarette have passed and become cold. This customer service cold shoulder occurs despite the MBAs having read the importance of customer service. And that they have read such scripture is easily deduced because its importance is yelled from corporate image ads ad nauseam and in puerile internal propaganda campaigns.

So why is customer service often the worst by those who shout its importance?

Simply because the executive MBAs quarterly bonuses are not immediately dependent on customer service. Worse still, the opposite can be perceived to be true because GAAP relegates customer service to an expense best minimized. The short term financial intangibility of slightly reducing good customer service combined with leadership pelf are perhaps the two biggest reasons that service industries everywhere have leapt to outsourcing their call centres, for example. The MBAs are being paid huge sums for making these choices while they proffer to care that the third world or imprisoned contractors are trustworthy, loyal, caring or whatever the corporate image ads effuse because everyone signs promises of ethical behaviour.

It does not take much intelligence to question the service side of this practice. Customer service contractors do not have a long term vested interest in their 'employer,' their wages are often locked to very short response times, and they are aware that they could as easily lose their jobs to outsourcing as did the original call centre employees.

This dead-horse-flogging was triggered Friday, May 20th when I experienced yet another example of false sincerity from a Customer Service Rep. This one, for whatever reason, stuck a burr up my butt. And while I don't blame the rep as such, because s/he is quite likely unsupported in that role. However, s/he was still my link into getting my Casio watch band fixed.

The details of the exchange are below. Except for the minor editing required to convert an e.mail chain into a readable blog, it is unedited. You can decide whether or not I'm blowing smoke out of my ass, or that we are living in the age of false sincerity.

-----Original Message----- [my on-line enquiry]
From: DO-NOT-REPLY [mailto:inquiry_cms@casio.com]
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 10:34 PM
To: watches_cms
Subject: Watch Band Replace

TOPIC-Repair
NAME-Guy A. Duperreault
ADDRESS-gduperreault@gmail.com
TITLE-Mr.
TEL-
ZIP-Canad
CATEGORY-Watches- All Others
MODEL-2531 DI (Pro Trek)
MARKETING-du
MESSAGE-I would like to replace the broken watch strap for the 2531 DI (Pro Trek) sports watch. When I looked for the watch on your web page, it did not exist. When I did a global search, it was not found. Please help.

[-----Original Response-----]

Mr. Duperreault,

Thank you for selecting Casio America, Inc. We would recommend a local parts distributor for your purchase. If you are located outside of the U.S. please go to http://world.casio.com/ where you will be able to locate your nearest Casio branch contact and service information.

If you reside in the U.S. please use the parts/accessory distributors below.

When ordering parts or accessories please have the model number or accessory number handy!

Casio Parts division for the U.S. residents may be contacted via phone:
800-223-2001
This list is subject to change without notice.

Official Parts Distributors Listing

Pacific Coast Parts Dist. Inc.
153 E. Compton Blvd., Gardena, CA 90248
Tel: 310-515-0207, 800-421-5080
Fax: 800-782-5747
www.pacparts.com
orders@pacparts.com


American Perfit Crystal
520 8th Ave., New York, NY 10018
Tel: 212-246-8292 (NY), 800-345-0537 (Outside NYC)
Fax: 212-265-4085
www.americanperfit.com
info@americanperfit.com

We hope that we were able to assist you with your question and again, thank you for contacting CASIO AMERICA.

Sincerely,
Cori
Customer Services
Casio America Inc.

[-----My First Response-----]

Dear Cori @ CMS.
Your response has not been of any use, given that the watch's model number that I supplied did not exist on the Casio watch page.

Also, when I searched for a repair location in Canada, there were none that were convenient that fixed watches.

So, I went to the US links that you supplied me with. From the first:

You will notice that the model number has supplied me with anything but watches.

The other link you supplied gave this:

Thus both the sites you supply gave me, more or less, the same information I got from the Casio web page: my watch does not exist, which goes round back to my query and puzzlement as to why you wouldn't have confirmed the viability of these sites before sending them to me. Please re-read my query because it would seem that you, Cori — meaning Casio's representative — do not have have this watch nor its parts, and your directions are what I call 'false friendly' in the MBA-style of doing business. You want to appear like you are being helpful without actually providing help. If you want to be helpful, you can

a) tell me that the watch I have is irreparable, with an apology and an equivalent to replace it along with some kind of really friendly gift certificate or

b) the equivalent part number of my watch, if it exists, and my easiest/closest method of getting it repaired, which, given that I located myself in CANADA (in the ZIP code slot since your inadequate page does not allow for Canadian Postal Codes) is unlikely to be either CA or NY or

c) thank me for having wasted my time(piece) because it is unlikely I would ever consider purchasing a Casio product in the future and, furthermore, I will relate my experience with you as a typical example of the false friendliness of MBA-style customer service.

[-----Cori's Second Response-----]

Mr. Duperreault,

It seems you did not enter the model number correctly. you [sic] have a Protrek watch so it should start with a P and it will be on the back of the watch. However, it may be difficult to find part in the United States since Protrek models are not and never have been for sale in the United States.

Sincerely,
Cori
Customer Services
Casio America Inc.

[----My Second Response---]

Cori:
Sadly, you have confirmed absolutely that Casio is infected with MBA-disease and that you have been improperly trained in your function as a customer service representative. I speak from experience because I also deal with customers. We both know that customers are often not correct. However, it is your job to correct customers of their errors without making them feel stupid and to get them to where they want to go. Your e.mail also confirms my experience with the false-front MBA customer service practices that have become endemic to the business world, and is not just limited to you and/or your department.

Before reading what I have written below you may want to consider what you and your organization's web page may have done to represent Casio in a manner that would convince me that I would want to both recommend them for their customer service, and would convince me that buying another Casio's product would be worth while. Consider: you have no idea whether or not I am just some lowly grunt not worth talking to, or the child of the senior purchase agent for a big retail chain looking to purchase new POS devices.

With your response you have fully acknowledged that you in fact did not read my original request, and wasted both our times by putting me onto a wild goose chase and creating from me two pukes of verbiage. However, your response also reveals that Casio's customer service web page is poorly designed, given that you have now stated that you only want to help Americans. My IP address when I searched Casio's web page would have flagged me as being from Canada. Since being a foreigner precludes me from getting Casio's help, it would have been prudent and cost efficient on the part of Casio to flag foreigner's coming into the web page and advising them that we are not going to be helped. Better, of course, would be to take us to an aliens' only page, where country options would be available, and appropriate redirection given.

As to my having seemingly entered the number incorrectly, that was a sloppy job of blaming the customer. On the surface that might appear to be a good guess, but if you are ignorant of alien products, you are gambling with an already irate customer. As it turns out, your guess was wrong. Find attached the images of both the product manual and a photo of the back of the watch.

You will see that in neither case is the 'P' you allude to included.

And now that I've brought up the THICK manual into evidence, I have now re-confirmed that nowhere in it is there a single reference to customer service or repair, domestic, foreign, or metaphysical. This absence yet again re-confirms that Casio, in their congratulations on my intelligent purchase (yes, the manual does congratulate me), are hypocrites. Casio wants my money, but isn't willing to work for it.

And, again, despite my noting that good customer service would be to provide me with some kind of effective direction or link to someone somewhere on the planet that would be able to help me, you have failed to provide me with any help whatsoever. You have, actually, in polite language, told me to 'F.off, sucker! Only dumb-a$$es would consider buying anything outside of America.'

So, I thank, you for providing me more evidence of MBA-itis. Your response has confirmed that my experience with you and Casio is worthy of being included on my blog. Which, I guess, you hope, no one reads or takes seriously, and that I am just a nobody. But I am a nobody who will not purchase a Casio product, and who will be relating this story to anyone who has their own stories of customer service failure.

And I say this with all the sincerity I can muster.

I did not get a response after that. Can't say that I blame Cori, but I most certainly will not be buying a Casio product.

“The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.”

A no more accurate and succinct description of the typical MBA and Executive MBA and their effects on society has been written.

* As time progressed, I have seen this quotation attributed to three other people. Since JG was the first I came across, I've left the attribution stand with him.

2011.05.28 — quietus at dawn (small stone #5-28)

quietus at dawn
yarrow stands regretless, tall,
changing and unsought.

2011.04.28 — Election Canada: An Alternative Method of Choosing Your Candidate

Governance by Lot — an alternative voting strategy

The next Canadian federal election is fast approaching. And for this May 2nd decision day I've decided to suggest a method that might encourage voting from the undecided. the habitual ballet spoilers and those who have given up voting as a futile effort. In other words, I am addressing those who have come to understand that they are being proffered what is largely a false, or perhaps an empty, choice: regardless which government rises from the rabble, the wealthy and their large corporations will continue to be given tax breaks and incentives to outsource work at the same time that fundamental social services such as education and health will continue be underfunded.

No, I am definitely not going to suggest strategic voting. I disagree with such a practice because it perverts the principle of democratic voting — even if it's apparent pragmatism or seeming utilitarianism has the smell of being a reasonable solution to the anti-Canadian anti-democratic near tyranny of a Harper. The problem is that the 'pragmatic' alternative is largely imprisoned by the same anti-social economic ideology, even if it appears less extreme.

Instead I would like us to revisit one of the methods Aristotle discusses in The Politics, his treatise on governance: the jury or lottery system. I have argued for this method, as it is truly democratic, at the BC Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform and in my blog.

Well it turns out that Aristotle's 'lottery' system — which he describes as having been old in his day — was not — is not restricted to Greece (or the West). Robert Hopcke describes an example of an ancient deliberate synchronistic method still being used by some Buddhist monks:

An example of which "is the case of the very conscious and deliberate method the Chinese monks at Kuei-yuan use to elect an abbot as head of their community. As repeated by Holms Welch and Robert Aziz, these monks choose an abbot by drawing lots from among the names of hundreds of candidates: after prayer and ritual, a seniour member of the community uses chopsticks to pick out a name from a metal tube, and the person whose name is drawn three times in a row – from

among the hundreds possible – is acknowledged as the abbot. As one might imagine, this time consuming process, which the community continues for as long as it takes unit the thrice-chosen name appears, can sometimes eventuate in the selection of a person whom the community initially perceives as a bad or problematic candidate. But even when almost universally acknowledged inferior individuals have been chosen, this method nevertheless seems consistently to have worked: to the community's surprise, such "inferior" individuals have proven themselves capable leaders, which points up the elegance of such a method in which pure chance – free from the influence of human prejudice, envy, malice, and ambition – is better at providing fo rthe community's leadership than any mortal could have been."

Hopcke, Robert H. There are no Accidents: Synchronicity and the Stories of Our Lives . New York: Riverhead Books, 1997, p. 208.

Aziz, Robert. C.G. Jung's Psychology of Religion and Synchronicity . Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990, pp. 153-4.

And with that why not vote synchronistically? The chop stick method seems a bit tedious for us busy backs'ons, so toss a die, use the 5th number on your pocket money's serial number, or whatever.

2011.04.14 — Rebel Without A Pause & Freedom of Expression American Style...

I've been taking great pleasure in the Google alert I set for Noam Chomsky because it has

led me now and then into little gems, like this one — Rebel Without A Pause.

RWAP is the 2003 video of Chomsky visiting Ontario, Canada, produced by VisionTV. After a rather grim commentary on the poor quality of intellectual discourse and level of media disinformation campaigns, you do get to hear Chomsky accentuating societal positives that have come to pass after long struggles. For example, he comments that the public protests against America entering a war with Iraq, before the war had begun, was unprecedented in history as far as he knew.

And this film was also a nice introduction to his wife, Carol,

Carol Chomsky

who died a few years after this was filmed, in 2008.

But what really caught my ear was his matter of fact description of just how censored he is by the American media. In particular its National Public media — TV and Radio, which turn out to be extremely constricted in their public discourse. The Canadian audience laughs at what is, in reality, the farcical state of America's so-called freedom of expression.

Now, this isn't new to me. I remember having read Chomsky describe his active censorship by an editor of the Boston Globe. On the year Chomsky won for the second time the Orwell Award (for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language) his name was not mentioned in an editorial that The Globe ran on the history of this particular reward, despite Chomsky being a resident of Boston and being a rare double recipient. Chomsky wrote that the editor had gone on record to assure her readers that for so long as Chomsky is associated with a particular (left wing) publishing house, that she would see to it that his name never enters the pages of The Globe. (This is a paraphrase from a distant remembered read — my quick search through my library did not reveal it to me, nor did my Googling it. If anyone knows the citation's details and would like to share them, I would really appreciate it. Thanks.)

Studs Terkel

And I remember having watched, many years ago on American Public TV, the Studs Terkel very late at night broadcast of three journalists who experienced censorship. (I was once again unable to locate it on the Web.) In it a NY Times journalist related her inability to get her 'Three Mile Island' story put to press because of big money links to the paper's advertising revenue stream; a serious critique of America's handling of nuclear waste that was flipped into vacuous fear-mongering by ignorant idiots by the editors of the MacNeil/Lehrer Report and oops — I've forgotten the third story. I have kept my eyes open for it ever since, and haven't seen it mentioned, let alone re-broadcasted.

Enough of that. Here is the "Rebel Without a Pause" describing how he is made mute in his home country, the land of the free and home of the brave:

... So I'm on mainstream television all the time. In Ireland, England, Italy, New Zealand [laughter]. In fact the public television studios in Boston, all the staff knows me very well. I'm there all the time for satellite broadcasts to even ... used to be Canada too. That's now declined. But, ah, and occasionally in the United States. Commercial television is much less constrained than public television. Public television is more liberal and it's therefor much more ideological, and imposes much narrower constraints. They don't allow deviants. That's pretty constant. But yeah, they don't want ... I mean it's not in their interest to have people talk about things like this. Sometimes they're pressured and they'll allow a couple of minutes here and there. And it's kind of interesting the way it works. So, television is mostly out, except for commercial cable television.

But radio is a little freer. National Public Radio is considered the liberal, ah, the kind of outer limits of the left in the United States. Very small, but it's considered very dissident. And they're the one's with the sharpest restrictions by far. They won't allow a millimeter of deviation from the party line.

But sometimes they are under pressure to do it. It's interesting the way it works. So, for example, during first Gulf war – I'm pretty well known around Boston, and that happens to be the centre, the ideological centre for National Public Radio. It's their flagship station, and all that sort of thing. And there's a lot of pressure to let me be on, now and then. So during the first Gulf war they did approach me and they told me I'd be allowed to have two and a half minutes. [Laughter.] However, they insisted that I write out what I was going to say, send it to the central office so they could ensure that it's, you know, okay. And once they approved it I had to read and they pre-recorded it, to make sure I wouldn't add a phrase [more laughter] that wasn't ... ah ... that went off the limits. The first time I thought it was kind of ridiculous – so did the staff. The staff is mostly laughing, the engineers and so on. But I did read it and the first reading took two minutes and thirty-six seconds. So they told me no, I gotta re-read it. And so I read a little faster and got it into the two minutes and thirty seconds, and they actually did run it.

And there are other things like that. I'll just mention one other case. Same – National Public Radio again, the kind of left medium. They have a book review thing. And again they're under a lot of pressure often, to have something about books of mine. Around ten years ago there was a book of mine based on [my Massey] lectures over CBC [Canadian Broadcast Corporation, called Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies]. And actually it was a best seller in Canada for years. Nobody ever heard of it in the United States, it was never reviewed or anything. But there was pressure around Boston to get them to review that book, okay.

So they finally agreed. And we again had a pre-recorded five minute interview with

Robert Siegel, who's their big shot intellectual.

And it was actually announced. Their main program, it's called 'All Things Considered.' It starts at five o'clock, and every educated person's supposed to listen to it. And at five o'clock they announced that they were going to have a review of this book. The publishers, South End Press, called me up, and said, 'Great, it's going to be on.' It got to 5:30 – it got to 5:25. At 5:25 the program stopped and there were five minutes of music. At 5:30, when they move into the next segment, they announced the next segment and phone calls started coming in from all over the place, saying, you know, what happened to that five minute review. I wasn't listening, but people started calling me, saying what happened to the review. After about ten minutes I got a call from the manager of the whole thing in Washington, who said something very strange, we're getting a lot of calls saying that your review didn't appear. But we know that it did. I see it right on my program here. So I said I don't know, I don't know anything about it. About ten minutes later she called me back, very chagrined, and said that she was over-ruled for the first time ever by some higher up who heard the announcement in the first five minutes and cancelled it.

Well you know that caused quite a furor. She was very upset for, you know, professional reasons – she didn't want to be over-ruled. And there was a lot of public reaction. And so they finally agreed to re-do another five minutes, you know, pre-recorded. The second one they actually ran.

Well that's off at the left liberal end of the spectrum. When you move to the more conservative, commercial media they're less constrained. (20:08 - 25:29)

This is, I think, very interesting.