---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: venukm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 2008/10/12
Subject: The Trojan Horses Of Our Demise: Reconnecting To The Moral Sense-(
Article by Gary Corseri)
To: zeroneutral 2bigotry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"Ignorance, arrogance, violence, greed—we opened the gates, let them
into our minds, our hearts, our children's dreams. Is it too late to
heed Laocoon? The snakes are coiling around our legs."
Printer Friendly Version
The Trojan Horses Of Our Demise: Reconnecting To The Moral Sense
By Gary Corseri
10 October, 2008
Countercurrents.org
Equo ne credite, Teucri. / Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona
ferentes.
("Do not trust the Horse, Trojans. / Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks
even bearing gifts.")
--Virgil, The Aeneid
The Trojan horses of our demise: ignorance, arrogance, violence and
greed. If we seek analogies for our financial collapse, Trojan horses
are more instructive than horsemen of the apocalypse. The latter may
be useful to the Fundies with their tiresome end-time fantasies. The
horsemen externalize evil; they are children's boogeymen, writ large
in adult type, to frighten adult minds that should know better but
cling to victimhood. Trojan horses, instead, internalize dangers—from
the assassins crouching within their wooden hulls; to the gullible
celebrants taking them into their fortress-city. In our blame-game
culture, where and how we affix blame now is crucial to any possible
restitution, let alone redemption. The glass is neither half-full nor
half-empty; it is a looking-glass through which we may know ourselves.
"A deadly fraud is this," Laocoon warned his fellow Trojans, "devised
by the Achaean chiefs." For "Achaean [Greek] chiefs" read: banksters,
Wall Street, K-Street, mealy-mouthed politicoes, media and academic
pundits. And the "fraud" is our credit-based economy. Laocoon was a
prophet cursed to be heard but ignored; his reward for prescience was
strangulation by two of Minerva's serpents. (And have we not had our
Laocoons? Martin Luther King and Malcolm X; John Lennon and Richard
Wright; Paine and Thoreau? Artists like Jeffers, Patchen, Millay and
London—ignored, dismissed or reviled.)
Ignorance. In 1987 Allan Bloom kicked up dust with The Closing of the
American Mind. It wasn't just our schools that were failing, but our
culture. Not simply that Johnny couldn't read, but that whatever
Johnny and Jean saw on TV or heard from their elders—and the music and
songs they listened to—lacked context, depth and framing. Not that
they didn't know who had fought the Civil War or what the First
Amendment guaranteed, but that they saw no reason to care. In fast-
food America it was about getting the next burger-fix, shot of Coke (-
a-Cola!); passing quizzes, padding resumes, screwing cheerleaders or
jocks-- and the hell with the world. When Clinton signed the repeal of
Glass Steagall, annulling the reforms that had kept our banks solvent
since the 30's—what did it mean? Who knew? Who cared? When the progeny
of Reagan railed against government, we howled with the wolves till
our house crashed down. Instead of conceiving government as the
intermediary between ourselves and the financial institutions that
have dominated human affairs since the Industrial Revolution, instead
of sharpening our tools to build a sturdier government attuned to the
bottom 90%, we sang the siren song of de-regulation; we transfixed
ourselves in our shattered shelters.
Arrogance. Married to arrogance, ignorance can kill. After World War
II, we out-produced the world. American "know-how" we said. We forgot
we had conquered a continent, committed our own holocaust/genocide,
robbed the natives and generations of Blacks. The Brits collapsed in
the Middle East and the French pulled out of Indochina and we said, We
are "can-do" people; we'll do it! Nixon went off the gold standard and
abrogated the Bretton Woods agreements that had knitted the economic
fabric of the post-war world. God's chosen people, we destroyed
Vietnam to save it. Calvin's God had made us wealthy and Wilson had
bequeathed his mission to make the world safe for democracy. We
slaughtered a coupla million "gooks," fertilized the "killing fields"
of Kampuchea. We crushed rebellions in Central America and Chile. We
killed a million in Iraq and stomped on Palestine. And when the
blowback came and the twin towers crumbled like Samson's pillars, the
boy-emperor stood on the rubble and said we would make them pay. And
the men who had lost friends and brothers chanted like a deranged
Greek chorus: "USA! USA! USA!"
Violence. We drink it with morning coffee. Wedding party bombed in
Afghanistan. IED kills two Americans. 1500 killed by Katrina (Cuba
lost 4 to Ike!). 100,000 die in our hospitals every year from hospital
infections or neglect. 20,000 die every year because they don't have
health insurance. Our kids inhabit a stroboscopic world of high school
bullies, gory video games, TV cop shows of rapes, torture, murder.
Kids kill kids. TV, that came humbly into our living rooms, now
fragments the family, holds each member hostage in his/her room. Pop-
tarts for dessert.
Greed. It's good, Gecko said in "Wall Street." Greed for knowledge,
wealth, power. How easily we were seduced, judgment suspended. Isn't
it hunger for knowledge? And how much wealth do we need, how much
power?
In Tolstoy's story, How Much Land Does a Man Need?, a peasant is
allowed to claim as much land as he can circumambulate in a day. He
must return to his starting point by sunset. He starts out measuring
his paces, but soon realizes he has tried to cover too much ground. He
runs at the end to reach his starting point again; then drops dead
from exhaustion. He's buried in a six-foot long grave.
How much do we need? Isn't that the moral question? Do we really want
a world of billionaires and paupers? Is there no ceiling to our lusts?
Must we celebrate these killer-thieves, earth-rapists? We devised a
system of checks and balances to rein in political power and the foxes
raided the henhouse and stole the golden eggs. We must realize now: we
cannot separate political and economic power. We have a moral
imperative to make judgments; we evince our humanity according to the
judgments we make.
What is a fair differential between the "average" worker and his/her
"boss"? Can we replace "bosses" with "facilitators"? If $40,000 a year
is average, isn't $400,000 enough? (That's what we pay the president
we vote for!)
Ignorance, arrogance, violence, greed—we opened the gates, let them
into our minds, our hearts, our children's dreams. Is it too late to
heed Laocoon? The snakes are coiling around our legs.
Gary Corseri has taught in universities and prisons and has posted/
published his work at Countercurrents, The New York Times, Village
Voice and hundreds of other venues. He has performed at the Carter
Presidential Library, and his dramatic work has been broadcast over
PBS-Atlanta. His books include novels and collections of poetry.
Contact at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
Bobby Kunhu http://community.eldis.org/myshkin/Blog/
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Green Youth Movement" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
