Our Dying Spirit

Should we continue to hold onto the capitalist-materialist conception of the world?

Our Dying Spirit

Hylas and the Nymphs (1896) by John William Waterhouse

Our collective mental environment is in a pitiful shape. Bombarded with advertisements, jolted by commercial breaks and distracted by multitasking, our spirit is under constant assault by capitalism. And at a time when we face the confluence of unparalleled global crises -- climate change, financial collapse, war and widespread foreclosures -- we do not have the mental clarity to act. We do, of course, respond and react but that is precisely the problem. In our reactions we betray our inability to propose a fundamentally different course of history. We still believe that there will be a technological solution to the problems we face and by accepting this basic premise we insure that the corporations will continue to dominate the horizon. What we need is a movement of spiritual rebirth that rejects the capitalist-materialist disenchantment of the world and instead proposes a vision in which mystery has a place.

All that is wild about the world has been systematically penetrated, catalogued and destroyed. The explicit intention of the scientific mindset, to pierce the mysteries of Being, has led to a world empty of excitement in which not even endless consumption can fill the void. We are both cut off from the natural environment, enclosed in sprawling concrete cities, and cut off from any previous philosophical or religious conception of the world that celebrated possibility, contingency and mystery. How would it change things if we rallied in support of nature not because of climate change (an abstraction identified by science and therefore conceivably able to be "fixed" by science) but instead because the nymphs Socrates felt at the river are no longer with us.

Just look at the left's demands for a new world: we want "clean" energy, full employment, a middle-class standard of living for everyone and "green" corporations. To acquire these desires, we insist that more scientific research must be funded. All our dreams for the future rely on scientists, technocrats, capitalists and the highly educated. That is a fundamental error. Unless the revolution can be accomplished by us, each of us as we are right now, whether we be poor or rich, educated or not, literate or not, then we will continue to perpetrate the myth that only Western style progress is the way forward.

What we need now is a spiritual rebirth that grants the magic back to the world. Only then, through the development of a parallel culture, will we be able to see that the way forward may be to go back.

Micah White is a Contributing Editor at Adbusters magazine and an independent activist. He is writing a book on the future of activism. www.micahmwhite.com

Attention: do you have a blackspot idea? I would like to print an occasional guest post on this blog and I am now looking for submissions, if you have something to share that will further the blackspot philosophy, write it up in under 500 words and send it to micah (at) adbusters.org.

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April
20, 2009
09:08 pm
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I have been indoctrinated into a culture which values money over life. This the underlying device and indirect version of the "American Dream". By itself this is a heartbreaking realization. Yet one that must be made solely to understand the why. ... Only theories can surface. — Nicholas
April
11, 2009
02:20 pm
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" What we need is a movement of spiritual rebirth that rejects the capitalist-materialist disenchantment of the world and instead proposes a vision in which mystery has a place." (Micah M. White) Adbusters, April 3rd, 2009. By learning skills that empower us again as individuals, skills that ALL peoples on this Earth have had in their lineage (fire making, cordage and basket making, weapon making, plant medicine making, hunting, fishing, storytelling, etc.) can we begin to rediscover our heritage that most of us have no current connection to. When we do not know where or who we have come from, how can we know where to go. By stopping, and learning again these "basic skills" can we begin to find our strength as a people again. It may sound backward, but it is no doubt powerful. Having worked with children and young adults for seven years as a professional in the field of outdoor education, I have seen this type of learning work to instill within their bodies a sense of belonging, comfort, and power that these people may have never found otherwise. I believe that the change Mr. White is speaking of, is by connecting with each other and ourselves though our shared heritage from our Ancient Ancestors life skills. It is time to re-wild and become active again. We have large heads, but weak bodes. let's use our hands again, let's balance this thing out. I have been a part of a primitive skills movement, teaching and learning skills past on and reclaimed from traditional cultures all over the world. There exist a number a great teachers/non-profits/organizations doing incredible work for people of all ages. It works. It is working. — Fox
April
11, 2009
01:57 pm
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Do we really need to 're-define the sacred? What about just 'finding' sacred... for ourselves, by taking a walk in to the local woods/desert/tundra/park. stop, sit, breathe. The spirit we are speaking of is present, we just have to show up. We are not going to fix this monster by riding it out. We need to step out, and get off of this beast. THis means doing more with less...Encourage 'do it your selfing' and empower each other...over canning your gardens vegetables, getting together on the weekends to sew together your own clothes, meeting your neighbors for the first time, whatever you are doing to take yourself out of the cooperate machine, make it fun. Teach, empower our peoples with the concept that they can create the things from nature that we need..Example... grab a stick, teach your/a kid how to carve their own spoon (it'll take knife safety skills and patience! but it'll pay off), and let them take it to school and show their friends. Outdoor Education For all! Music and Dance and Arts! People will begin to trust those beautiful feelings again, if introduced. At least I have, and I am no different from anyone else... Is this the only answer? there are many more correct answers out there. Lets talk tangibles people, lets talk HOW we can start where we live, instead of all of this heady theory. Masturbators of our brains (all of us educated peoples of the west), we have outsmarted ourselves again and again and again. We could learn a lot from our ancestors and 'primitive cultures'.... Let's dig in and get our hands dirty, and put that racing mind to rest, please. Doing is the new cool. — Fox
April
27, 2009
03:31 pm
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absolutely true! there is no need to 're-define' whatever we used to believed in... what everyone need is an open mind which will make us understand that some of the old ways do not particularly mean obsolete and useless. extenze — mannmade
April
11, 2009
01:19 pm
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I think what the author was trying to say, is that there is no sense of wonder left in America. There is no indomitable spirit within us. We've broken down all natural phenomenon into scientific cause and effect. We are out of touch with our own wants and needs beyond the materialistic. We are so used to having the workings of the world explained to us that we no longer take responsibility for ourselves and our worlds. We expect someone else to make it right. We no longer experience the act of living. We have become lonely, powerless individuals because our worlds are micromanaged. There is no mystery. There is no wonderment. We are numb to everything around us and happily chase the ever elusive tail of material fulfillment that never quite comes within grasp. — Anonymous
April
06, 2009
06:57 pm
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"Our collective mental environment is in a pitiful shape. Bombarded with advertisements…" A few hundred pixels away on the same page, an advertisement "proclaim your independence - The Corporate Flag Shirt". Ad-busters? Something is very wrong here. — ƒ
April
07, 2009
12:08 pm
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a) Not all ads are the same. b) There is a difference between going to adbusters.org and seeing an ad for adbusters stuff, and going to nytimes.com and seeing an ad for bikini wax. If I only saw ads for corporations when I visited their corporate websites, I wouldn't complain. It is that I see ads when I am going about my daily life that makes me annoyed. — Thoughtful reply
April
06, 2009
02:19 am
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facts and not emotions we need. Science and pure art are not dissimilar and should not be derided or confused with mercеnary technology for political end "weaponry". Buckminster-Fuller coined "livingry" and Jacque Fresco devised society without money - www.thevenusproject.com http://www.bfi.org Technology and not ideology has given us everything from fire to flight. Science is Art and there are plenty of talent working on the convergence of the two. Please do not confuse with technologies that are forced to serve the power control structures. It is politics and money that we have to do away with and not the Science/Art symbiosis. And education doesn't mean buying into a degree and yuppie consumerism at all. — An Earthling
April
05, 2009
08:58 pm
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completely right. enough with superstition, spirits, gods, elves, fairies! more science, more social planning, more understanding. — Anonymous
April
06, 2009
05:47 pm
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"more science, more social planning, more understanding." Of course! Everything that made the USSR and China the greatest countries in the world. — Anonymous
April
04, 2009
08:02 am
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leaving aside the question of whether we'll rally to nature because of nymphs or other absurd considerations, i as a leftist certainly do not wish for 'green' corporations, however much i wish for clean energy and a decent, environmentally sustainable living standard for all--by which i mean everyone, not just denizens of the west. the corporation, as an institution of monopoly capitalism in the first instance and of the capitalist mode of production more generally, must be abolished together with these systems. to call for anything less is certainly not to be a leftist. — Anonymous
April
04, 2009
04:58 pm
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I think that what the author is saying is that the desire for green 'corporations' is indeed a counter-revolutionary idea. Doing so would rely on the liberal conception of science, still so mired in capitalist ideology. quote: All our dreams for the future rely on scientists, technocrats, capitalists and the highly educated. That is a fundamental error. When the author is saying "our," I don't believe that s/he means to suggest that s/he wishes for these dreams, rather the "we" is the mass of American petty bourgeoisie, still hooked on the idea of revisionism and liberalism. Thoughts? — theyounghegelians
April
03, 2009
11:21 pm
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The first step is to achieve a consensus of conscience, a collective committment to a way forward. In the context of plausibility that stands more as a lament than a prescription. We're just not going to make it. Corporatism has us in a position of such powerful dependence that, barring something cataclysmic, we're just going to keep riding this tiger. — Mound of Sound
April
03, 2009
04:00 pm
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re-defining the sacred is paramount for 'the revolution'. out reality demands changing our life-situations to see less in what is and more in what one does. — mikezephyr
April
03, 2009
03:35 pm
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I think Fredy Perlman in 'Against His-story, Against Leviathan' said something quite profound when he wrote "When they're through ransacking the Temple, they've forged activities that no longer have any connection to their own or anyone else's past. What to all others is the sole reality loses all its reality to the Greeks. The great enactments are reduced to Drama, the shrines to Architecture, the visions to Painting and Sculpture. The externalizations of visions becomes Art; the internal probings become Philosophy; the sharing becomes Rhetoric." — Anonymous
April
03, 2009
03:31 pm
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It is wrong to equate capitalism with science--with a materialist outlook--because capitalism is its opposite. Capitalism worships the mystery of the free-market and the mysteries of gods as saviors. We need scientifically researched--planned economy designed--not for profit--but for the satisfaction of the real material needs of the people. Consumerism and the luxury goods market would go away along with the mystery of who we have to thank for our material blessings--those who produce them from their own labour. — Anonymous

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