Posted on by

Escaping the Matrix: This author actually appears to think he’s the first one to realize that the media-shaped consensus version of political reality is an illusion that doesn’t make sense. “I also perceived important

patterns that others seemed to have missed. When I started tracing

historical forces, and began to interpret present-day events from a

historical perspective, I could see the same old dynamics at work

and found a meaning in unfolding events far different from what

official pronouncements proclaimed.” The patterns he proclaims he’s noticed amount to:

  • Capitalist interests and national interests are intertwined.
  • The democratization of the world is an illusion; in reality wealth and power are becoming more and more centralized.
  • The rhetoric of growing prosperity did not prevent the disenchantment of a segment of the population; this threatens to undermine the public passivity necessary for the stability of the status quo.
  • The mechanisms of the police state to deal with disquiet, ranging from subtle mind control techniques to brute force, are in place.
  • Marx was right — capitalism does not exist for the public benefit but is inherently exploitative, for the purpose of capital growth. Over time, it develops more refined ways to exploit and grow further. “Like a cancer, capitalism consumes its host and is never satisfied.”
  • The movement to overthrow capitalism will not succeed unless it develops “consensus reform that harmonizes the interests of its constituencies.”
  • If it fails, a new tyranny will replace the old.

    • Now, let’s not, for the moment, quibble over whether you agree or not with this author’s political analysis. What’s impressed me is why Whole Earth (a journal which, after all, has been around since then, and to which I’ve been a subscriber from its first issue) would publish a piece that does nothing but summarize every truism of the last thirty years’ progressive thinking as if it were newly discovered revelation. What am I missing here? I suppose it should be sufficient warning whenever someone trumpets that he “perceived important patterns that others seemed to have missed” in the first paragraph…