An Opinion Article ByKeetah Bryant
- WE LIVE IN A FREE SOCIETY
Our neighborhoods are demographically designed to cater to their populations. In one neighborhood you might find a plethora of organic food (Kitsilano) and in another area you might find ubiquitous fast food outlets (Surrey) - this selective availability of products does not promote equality. (There are those of you out there who will argue with me that the demand for certain things controls the market, and thus the prevalence or lack of prevalence of select business types is entirely due to the demand of the population in that area. I would argue with you that demand is heavily affected by knowledge and access, and if knowledge and access are restricted in certain neighborhoods, then one cannot say that the demand of that area is truly a reflection of the desires of the people.)
The majority of the British Columbian media is controlled by one media giant, CanWest Global. There are numerous accounts of this corporation’s monopoly on our local media, as well as mounting piles of evidence that point to their editorial control and unbridled censorship. We here in Canada have no right to point the finger at China for censoring information from it’s citizens, when we here are subject to the same restrictions. (For more information on Global, see the article in this blog, “SOS From the Republic of CanWest”)
- HARD WORK, PERSEVERANCE, AND HONESTY WILL GET YOU ANYWHERE YOU CAN DREAM OF GOING, YOU ONLY HAVE TO TRY
For a perfect example of how you ought to behave (even though no one ever explicitly tells you), see the book: “Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You to Know and What to do About Them” by Cynthia Shapiro. (This book is available at your local public library).
In case you don’t have the time to read the book for yourself, here are some tantalizing pieces of advice that Shapiro offers the savvy worker:
“To find the hidden agendas in your company, look at what it’s key decision makers currently reward and value (even if it’s never talked about, even if it’s openly denied or politically incorrect)”.
“Putting yourself and your personal interests before the company will label you as a traitor, not to be trusted, not to be invested in”.
“It’s all about managing the image your company has of you. We all know raising a family and working full times makes for a life full of chaos and extreme juggling. The question becomes how much you let your employer see”.
“At work, your dress should always be conservative. If you can, it should match as closely as possible the style of those at the top”.
- WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY THAT IS FREE OF RACISM, SEXISM, AND GENERAL STEREOTYPING
Our society ultimately functions because of our alienation from each other. Racism, sexism, stereotyping and the exclusivity that those attitudes produce, all work together to ensure a working capitalistic system, in which the majority of the population is disconnected from one another. In this way, workers, visible minorities, the impoverished, men, and women, are all perceived as separate entities within society, with distinct and separate interests, making large scale change virtually impossible.
The status quo is maintained, and those who are oppressed continue on in their condition, blinded by the perceived solitary nature of their condition. These superficial divisions, that are encouraged in our society, only distract from the true nature of our economic system, which places control and power in the hands of a small elite, while the large majority of the population struggles amongst themselves for the scraps of token “control” that remain.
How are these divisions nurtured? Through news media, educational institutions, and entertainment devices. All of these mediums foster specific stereotypes that are accepted by the masses, and are then subsequently internalized as “us/them” ideas. When was the last time you heard the word “Indo-Canadian” in a local paper, without the word “gangster” being used in the same breath?
Can you think of any common stereotypes that exist about the Asian community? The Black community? Are your beliefs based on personal experience or what you have heard and learned from outside sources? How do these beliefs affect your interactions with people that are “outside of” your group?
- WE ARE MORE LIBERAL THAN THE UNITED STATES
Our two-party dominant system is a farce used to give legitimacy to our pseudo-democracy - Liberals and Conservatives are one in the same entity. Regardless of which party ends up holding the balance of power, ultimately corporate interests are the main concern of all government parties. The parties exist to give the voting public the illusion of choice, the feeling that change will occur because of their independent actions. It is a pacifying tactic that works to lull the public into percieving a democracy where one truly does not exist.
One of the most vocal scholars on this precise point is linguist and activist Noam Chomsky, who has written several books and appeared in numerous movies regarding the current world order. He sees our government as a puppet of large corporations, and the party system of the government as a mere distraction from the fact of our pseudo-democracy. For more information on this topic and more, read: “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest For Global Dominance” (2003) and “Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post 9/11 World”, both by Noam Chomsky.
Here are a few select quotes from those works:
“What remains of democracy is largely the right to choose among commodities. Business leaders have long explained the need to impose upon the population a ‘philosophy of futility’ and ‘lack of purpose in life’ to ‘concentrate human attention on the more superficial things that comprise much of fashionable consumption’. (64) Deluged by such propaganda from infancy, people may accept their meaningless and subordinate lives and forget ridiculous ideas about managing their own affairs. They may abandon their fate to corporate managers and the PR industry and, in the political realm, to the self-described ‘intelligent minorities’ who serve and administer power.”
“Those at the center of power relentlessly pursue their own agendas, understanding that they can exploit the fears and anguish of the moment. They may even institute measures that deepen the abyss and may march resolutely toward it, if that advances the goals of power and privilege. They declare that it is unpatriotic and disruptive to question the workings of authority - but patriotic to institute harsh and regressive policies that benefit the wealthy, undermine social programs that serve the needs of the great majority, and subordinate a frightened population to increased state control.”
- OUR COUNTRY HAS A FREE PRESS, AND A MEDIA SYSTEM THAT DELIVERS THE FACTS
Most of the media outlets here in Canada are governed and controlled by people with vast corporate interests, international connections, and stakes in defense contracts and the like. (Once again, check out the article on CanWest Global on this site, as well as the “Derek Burney” watch). Whether we like to believe it or not, the “news” that we get is designed and selected in order to complement and enhance the corporate agendas in our country. Noam Chomsky writes passionately about this concept in his books, and his opinion is featured in a film entitled “Manufacturing Consent” , which can be downloaded or watched at www.archive.org - just search the title in the “Moving Images” section of the search engine.
Here’s a little of what Noam has to say on the state of the North American media:
“ It’s not easy, under stagnating economic conditions, to maintain political power. Only one good method is known: inspire fear. That tactic was employed throughout the Reagan-Bush years, as the leadership conjured up one devil after another to frighten the populace into obedience.”
“One high government official [US] described it’s ‘Operation Truth’ as a ‘huge psychological operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in denied or enemy territory’ - a frank characterization of pervasive attitudes toward the domestic population.”
“My own personal interest, incidentally, is not the media per se but the intellectual culture. The media happen to be the easiest part of the intellectual culture to study. The elite media - The BBC, The New York Times, the Washington Post, and so on, are the day to day expression of the elite intellectual culture and are therefore much easier to study that intellectual scholarship. You can do that too, but it requires more complex research. In the media you can fairly easily find systematic biases about what’ permitted, what’s not permitted, what’s stressed, what isn’t stressed”.
“The major media do report information, they must for a number of reasons. One is that their primary constituency requires it. Their primary constituency consists of economic managers, political managers, and doctrinal managers - the educated class, the political class, those who run the economic system. These people need a realistic picture of the world. They own it, they control it, they dominate it, they have to make decisions in it, so they’d better understand something about it. That is, why, in my opinion, the business press tends to have better reporting than other national press”.
When Noam Chomsky was asked how one might go about recognizing propaganda, he responded:
“There are no techniques, just ordinary common sense. If you hear that Iraq is a threat to our existence, but Kuwait doesn’t seem to regard it as a threat to its existence and nobody else in the world does, any sane person will begin to ask, where is the evidence? As soon as you ask this, the argument collapses. But you have to be willing to develop an attitude of critical examination toward whatever is presented to you. Of course, the whole educational system and the whole media system have the opposite goal. You’re taught to be a passive, obedient follower. Unless you can break out of those habits, you’re likely to be a victim of propaganda..."
"Just use your ordinary intelligence. There are no special techniques. Just be willing to examine what’s presented to you with ordinary common sense, skeptical intelligence.”
- WE ARE AN INDEPENDENT NATION
It’s well known in Canada that our archaic laws on marijuana use and possession have been on the reform table for years, screaming for much needed change. But, because of external pressure from our neighbours, we continue to uphold these restrictive, overly-punitive, and widely disregarded laws just to save face in front of our American friends. That doesn’t say much for our so-called independence.
- PEOPLE HERE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR OWN SHORTCOMINGS
The last thing the corporate elite want to assume is any responsibility towards the people whom they exploit. If the common person can be assured that their life position is due solely to their own shortcomings, and not due to the shaping mechanisms of a very powerful, external force, then this unrecognized force can continue to operate freely in it’s subordination of the masses, unchallenged and unrestricted. It has long been understood by those who hold positions of power and wealth, that in order to maintain their elite position, subordination of the masses must be of a primary concern.
Walter Lippman,was an influential journalist and Liberal of the earlier part of the 20th century. Noam Chomsky summarizes his take on the general populous:
“... the goal of putting the public in it’s place in this current ‘democracy’ could be achieved in part through the ‘manufacture of consent’ a ‘self-conscious art and regular organ of popular government’. This ‘revolution’ in the ‘practice of democracy’ should enable a ‘specialized class’ to manage the ‘common interests’ that ‘very largely elude public opinion entirely’”.
Essentially, the ruling class sees the common people as a potential threat to their control and as a nuisance to progress. The masses require pacification and domination. Rather than have the common people aware and resistant to their oppression, this “manufacturing of consent” has produced the common assumption that people are responsible for their own failures here in North America. Coupled with this internalized responsibility, we are made to believe that we need out government to regulate our world, keep us “safe” from the “terrorists” and assure us of our good health (with the help of giant pharmaceutical companies), and “superior” education. We relenquish all of our control and many of our rights, in exchange for the illusion of “national security”, because we are helpless failures without the system and it’s intellectual elite to support us.
- WE HAVE UNBIASED DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS
A false consensus can be conveyed using polls, and thus the masses respond to this consensus by conforming themselves to it. Our entire human psyche is based on integration with the group, social learning, interdependence - and the makers of our modern day media know this, they know it inside and out. This is how the mechanism of propaganda works. By manipulating the psyche of the masses into a false consensus, the manufacture of consent has occurred. This “consent” can be garnered for acceptance of foreign and preemptive war, acceptance of ideologies and beliefs, and for the proliferation of false ideas, misrepresentation of facts, and general psychological control of the masses.
Because of this highly functional, scientifically developed method of “administering truth”, it seems impossible to conceive of an election in this sort of society that could occur unaffected by the devices and controls of information administration that currently dominate.
- VISIBLE MINORITIES DO NOT ENCOUNTER ANY BARRIERS TO SUCCESS IN OUR COUNTRY
In fact, if you are a visible minority, you are nearly twice as likely as your neighbor to live in poverty, because 36% of the visible minority population in Canada lives below the poverty level. It’s also interesting to note, that in the United States, whose minority population shares many like economic circumstances with it’s cohort in Canada, the prison population is a highly disproportionate visible minority group. Here in Canada, Aboriginal people and other visible minorities are highly disproportionate members of our own prison system.
(This picture was taken from a personal website, of an
individual who feels that minorities are infringing on
his right to "things").
According to a 2005 report released by Statistics Canada “ a substantial body of research has shown that the economic welfare of immigrants deteriorated over the 1980’s and 1990’s”. It also alludes to the fact that during the 1990’s incomes fell for most lower income families, and rose for most higher-income families in a majority of Canadian cities. Visible minorities, Aboriginal people, and single parent families are disproportionately represented among the working poor. On average, people in these groups have incomes less than half that of the average Canadian.
- OUR MILITARY IS FILLED WITH VOLUNTEERS WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY
Some of the perks offered by the military for enlistment are rather seductive: guaranteed income, paid education, and full health coverage. For individuals who look to student loans to finance their education, or for individuals who, for numerous reasons, feel incapable or unable to complete a post-secondary education, the military becomes a very viable option. But who are these people?
Noam Chomsky:
“If there is going to be an army, I think it should be a citizen’s army, not a mercenary army. There are several kinds of mercenary armies. One model is the French Foreign Legion or the Gurkhas, where the imperial power just organizes a mercenary army. Another model is a volunteer army, which is in effect a mercenary army of the disadvantaged. People like us, except for the occasional maniacs, don’t volunteer for it. But people like Lynndie England do volunteer, because they come from a background where that’s their only opportunity. So you end up getting a mercenary army of the disadvantaged, and that’s much more dangerous than a citizen’s army.”
The ideas of freedom and democracy are very hard to define, depending upon who’s speaking about them. Speaking to one of our Canadian troops, the impression would be given that freedom is equivalent to equal opportunity to all, and an existence that is free from oppression. Democracy would be portrayed as a system of government in which the people “participate” in the decisions of the nation. Our soldiers fight for these things, and they volunteer based on these principles - that and the guarantee of security in a very competitive economic world.
If one were speaking to a capitalist elite, freedom would be equivalent to the ability to do anything one choses, regardless of the repercussions. Freedom becomes the ability to dominate and control without being challenged. Democracy would be conceptualized as a system of control that serves to pacify the people into believing they have “free choice” and convinces them that they are “participating” in the decision-making process of their nation. Freedom and democracy are the goals of all people, but how we perceive and achieve those ends can be highly varies, depending upon which side of the fence you sit.
