Farhan WahabIn a corporate-dominated world, every belief has been substituted and replaced by cynical notions. Human morality is no longer in existence: human imperfections are considered to be weaknesses.
We go to school just to become part of the workforce of a corporation. We no longer study about humanism or moral values; our primary concern is to focus on ranks and achieving the first place in everything.
We all want to be winners, and being the number one is our newly developed obsessive disorder. What we have materially achieved is what creates our social existence and gives meaning to our lives. We have been taught to be good employees, not good humans.
Our education was hijacked by a group of plunderers.
The pre-designed system, therefore, tells us what we should learn and what we shouldn’t. Elite institutions are the centre for the distribution of this ‘sickness’; other institutions are the hangover versions of it.
The word ‘success’ was defined and interpreted in a very cynical way by the lobbyists. Material wealth and unlimited luxury are what defines the word ‘success’ – inspired by dreams of a better world which is filled with riches.It is kind of an extended version of Disneyland.
They talk about a success which measures poverty, inequality, famine, deprivation by material logic and interpretations. It also identifies poverty as the outcome of laziness or one’s inability.
Hard working is the most cunning categorisation of this hypocrisy that justifies the poverty of Africa and Asia.
People live in their own cupola with their well designed materialistic dreams and fantasised notions. They aren’t ready to accept the criticism of the very system they uphold.
Stealing and systemic plundering is being seen as smartness and business strategy. When the corporate elite’s narcissism is questioned, such criticism is immediately labelled as ‘negative thoughts’.
This ignorance brutally ignores intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek, Ralph Nader, Tariq Ali, and other critics of predatory capitalism, and labels them as negative minds of this world, who do not know how to appreciate the progressive moves inherent in the processes of corporate plundering.
In India, these same allegations are being thrown at people like Arundhati Roy, Pankaj Mishra and others. Those who plunder successfully present these intellectuals and their writings as incomprehensible.
This manipulation goes a long way to alienate people from critical thinking. Our limited intellectual capacity, and the inertia which retards the grasping of the new ideological dialectical changes, are what mostly lead us to get trapped by these manipulations.
Thus, these leaders have substituted the work of critical thinkers with new ideological forms which were thoroughly designed by corporate intellectuals who write propaganda books to justify and glorify positive ideology and the idea of social harmony.
The stories of successful entrepreneurs and billionaires are augmented with palatable cliches.
Mostly it seems they all spice up the same dish with different masalas. Troubled childhood, public humiliations, poverty and – one day – the dog has its day! to become a millionaire! These are the standard elements of the stories which promote the fantasised success formula of materialistic success, and generate insensitivity.
This adulteration of knowledge supports a vulgarised lure to gain material wealth and proclaims it as the success of life. This has turned into a mantra that even goes further to say that life’s meaning could be seen only through material prosperity.
Laura Nader, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that:
“Most oppressive systems of power, including classical Western colonialism and proponents of globalization, all use the idea of social harmony as a control mechanism. There is a vast difference between social harmony and harmony ideology, between positivity and being genuinely positive.”
Positive ideology is what the new strategy of generalisation of culture promotes. And thus these apologists are dismantling the value of individualism.
In a way, we are living in a new era of new age fascism, which criminalises individual opinions and practices. Now questioning is considered an offence, and critical thinking as a symptom of a mental disorder. On top of everything, this system sees civil obedience as a virtue.
Whatever has been contributing to push human civilisation further has been criminalised. Thus everything is brought under one ideology to safeguard the very system which defrauds and impoverishes people.
Now, this way of ideology only creates pen pushers and a meekly believing middle class. They do not invent nor research, because everything needed has already been given to them.
Even as homework they have been assigned dreams to dream.
This submissiveness is a virus that perpetuates continual assault on human civilisation and knowledge.
Generalisations do not open up new doors for the human race, but only create a bunch of dumb individuals who glorify the system that oppresses them.
We don’t push our boundaries anymore: self-censorship has been identified as a virtue, as being positive. This does only one thing: promoting dreams of the fantasised shared dream perpetuated in the name of positive thinking, without acknowledging the reality of the world.
When somebody pinches these dreamers to wake them up from their deep sleep, they find it so annoying that they insult those who try to awaken them.
Positive psychology has another history. The people who invented the idea of positive psychology are the ones who offered exceptional services to corporations such as General Motors and Toyota, introducing policies and processes of effective human management.
Through their experiments, they figured out human behaviours and vulnerabilities and points of weakness to manipulate human notions that helped those establishments to keep their employees under virtual siege.
Later on, they lent their services to intelligence organisations such as the CIA. They figured out new techniques to torture the detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. SERE (survive evade resist and escape) was invented by the CIA in the first place to replicate torture methods and help U.S. troops to survive Chinese and Soviet interrogations.
Later, these techniques were adapted and re-engineered by the positive psychologists, to apply them in U.S. torture houses and American interrogation centres.
The sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, lengthy periods of enforced stress positions and forced nudity were systematically employed to reduce prisoners to a state of passivity akin to that of vegetables, and the psychologists directly monitored these interrogations and advised them on how to apply techniques to complete their psychological disintegration.
The sources of the psychological study of our so-called psychologists have a brutal history.
Without knowledge of any of these background facts, manipulated knowledge has been practised and glorified in our intellectual circles through the endorsement of these processes.
The very education system we are formed by became the medium of this propaganda, dismantling the idea of human study and nature.
We aren’t taught to think or question. In schools and universities, rather than thinking about the subjects or questioning, we study the contents to get high results in exams. We spit it back on the exam sheet, so we get ranks which would enable us to get recruited at corporate houses.
Corporations encourage positive thinking as a kind of manipulation which refuses to see the reality and nature of the world as it is.
In other terms, we are taught illusions which lead to self-deception to keep us happy in our own fantasy. And the motive of life was redesigned into a process of achieving goals most of the time: the quest for unlimited material wealth and unquestionable hedonism.
This educational system that doesn’t let us question the way things work creates a bunch of intellectually malnourished, submissive, meek mooks who are prone to be seduced.
They were fed with positive, energetic talk; they see the world through the eyes of corporate successful entrepreneurs and philanthropists, the very people who steal the world!
They tend to read the success stories of corporate giants, such as David Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. These wealthy icons become their role models, and they dream through them. Their dreams are designed by those who create organised thievery.
Glorifying those personalities happens in the name of self-help or self-guidance. So they buy the books which deliberately impose the ideal mechanism of corporate thievery. Biographies of David Rockefeller, Steve Jobs, Andrew Carnegie and so on, which teach these desperate people about ‘life’.
The romanticised version of their life stories shapes these people’ s broken dreams in a way that satisfies their subconscious mind ‘s desire of becoming successful. Through them, they get satisfaction. It is a kind of fetishism, which cripples our rationality and misguides us.
As the philosopher, David Jopling, asserts: “Life-lies that are so-called positive illusions may work for a while, but collapse when reality becomes too harsh and intrudes on the dream world.”
In the name of self-help, most people are misguided by manufactured truisms rather than experiencing the raw experience of human life. So-called success stories do not allow us to inquire about the human soul through a personal, organic experience.
Yet, there are hundreds of books which carry real human experiences and talk about the endless journey of searching for the meaning of life.
Man’s Search For Meaning – A raw, unromanticised account of an Auschwitz survivor, by Viktor E Frankl – is such a book. The pages of this book aren’t filled with fantasised illusions to dismantle a person’s rationality. It is a real survivor’s guide.
When someone tends to criticise corporate power and its endless exploitation he or she often encounters this allegation:
“The person who criticises Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Andrew Carnegie doesn’t know how to look at the positive side of those golden-hearted people,”
The problem with our senses is that we have all become affected by historical amnesia. The global media is so happy to present the news of those philanthropists’ generous acts, such as Bill Gates’ recent humanitarian project to wipe out malaria in African countries or Rockefeller’s new project to fund Indian schools.
So our positive thinkers and think tanks assume that these greedy people have got good hearts, and if they are kind enough to spend some money on those poor people, at least they are much better than those heartless political activists who criticise everything and everyone. Fair enough!
But what those so-called positive thinkers don’t understand is the vicious circle of these humanitarian pretenders and their well-planned agenda of playing the part of people who have a ‘beautiful soul’.
Andrew Carnegie deployed a private army to suppress the organised workforce in his steel factory. Many were killed, and union leaders who stood against those acts of brutality were tortured and detained. But finally, he distributed a large part of his wealth to humanitarian causes all over the world. David Rockefeller, the man behind the U.S Senate who had even run wars in Latin America through the US government to squeeze out the minerals of those countries, killed thousands of people, and overthrew democratically elected governments.
Especially in El Salvador, where people associated with him carried out acts of genocide in villages to eliminate people to build their industries. And, even by deploying mercenaries, stole the wealth of those nations. But his other side, portrayed in public, was completely a story of a saint who grew up in poverty, had a troubled childhood, and was humiliated at a coffee shop for the shortage of money.
He became a billionaire, and he is a kind-hearted man who gives millions to the Red Cross Society, and through them, helps thousands of people – with what he has stolen from Latin America and Asia.
The Indonesian dictator Suharto was backed by American corporations at the end of last century to oust his predecessor, who had tried to lead the country to socialism.
It was a war in which thousands of people were killed, and political activists who rallied to the socialist regime were captured and kept on an island for years, tortured until they died. (Refer to John Pilger‘s documentary Stealing A Nation.)
Now the country is the sweatshop of first world countries. Nike, Reebok, Puma, Gap and other popular brands run their factories through local industrialists. They impose even 24-hour shifts on their workers, and it’s a large scale slavery malarkey.
Slavoj Zizek’s warns: “In Neoliberalist ethics, the ruthless pursuit of profit is counteracted by charity. Charity is the humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation.”
Doesn’t it sound like thuggery? No, it’s not! They have got a heart of gold! They fund organisations to wipe out malaria in Africa, support Indian kids to learn the computer, whatever they get from their business they give it away because they are compassionate.
Sounds familiar! Don’t you think that the story sounds like Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest?
He did the same thing – but he stole from rich people to give to the poor. But here, the story is a bit tricky. These people steal from Latin American poor people and give it to Asia.
These are sweet deals which wipe out their guilt. At the same time, developed countries help undeveloped countries, so critical issues of the third world are forgotten. And the corporations can happily continue their exploitation.
None of them really wants to change the world.
All they want is the continued intake of unlimited wealth through their so-called charities, in which they find meaning for their depraved existence.
And it’s for the sake of capitalism’s survival: a balancing strategy, distributing a tremendous amount of money – not to uplift the life standard of people, just to make themselves feel better about their own thievery,
But our pseudo-intellectuals with their narrow consciousness find it very impressive and logical. Thus we are not able to grasp the actual reality that is underlying the surface of these predatory economic forces.
As a society, we are being forced to grasp their ideas and malnourished ideologies. Questioning and thinking have become the attitude of antagonism, civil obedience is the virtue they admire. Whatever they could do to keep us as system slaves they had done it in the name of knowledge, this adulteration of knowledge is an onslaught on our humanism and moral values.
To come out from this systematic trap, we have to expand our views and educate ourselves to grasp and evaluate the ideas expressed in anti-establishment literature, because literature is the tool to enlighten all the societies on Earth.
And it is an instrument which can help us to get ourselves out from that pseudo-intellectualism which deceives us in this corporatised, fascistic world.
