Colonizing the mind and self-propaganda

Even though WW2 was a fight for control of the world, which the Americans primarily won and thus became the most powerful empire in human history, it can be reimagined as a fight against the evil Nazis – just like the war in Iraq, which is primarily about regional domination and control of key resources (especially oil) can be reimagined as a fight against irrational terrorists or for the pseudo-intellectuals a fight against an emergent global caliphate.

Nazis made WW2 colonizable to the fantasies and imaginations of Americans who long to believe themselves noble. This colonizing has been such a success that “evil Hitler” became “evil Saddam Hussein” when Americans needed to feel noble over their actions in Iraq and “evil Osama bin Laden” when Americans needed to feel noble over their actions in Afghanistan.

The successful result of marketing shapes the definition of future marketing. The purpose is to construct a version of history useful to the beneficiaries of war – this version is neither true nor false – truth and lies become judged for how useful they are within the propaganda model and accepted, rejected, or more often twisted, accordingly.

One of the most terrifying aspects of reality to me is that individual Americans do precisely the same thing. They establish a propaganda model *for themselves* and then each piece of reality or fiction that they experience is manipulated to benefit the model, which fuels their sense of well-being. When confronted they explain that there’s something called “subjectivity” which accounts for this – it’s therefore totally fine. Reality serves US, not the other way around. Anyone who believes otherwise is simply not a “good citizen”.

A brief examination of the 20th and 21st century within capitalism

Frequently on television as I was growing up there was a ticking time bomb, and a hero gained the glory of saving the day and the temporary relief of not dying by defusing it. What does this situation require? Not only a confident hero, but a masochistic one, to use the threat of annihilation to achieve success. His confidence is only generated by his terrible fear.

This is the psychological reality in the minds of people during the Cold War, where the ticking time bomb was averted day after day by the “heroes” who save us all by avoiding pushing the death button.

This theory, or philosophy, of “progress through threat of annihilation” is the basis for industrialization. The technology of the 20th century is often heralded as a success, as a justification for civilization and capitalism. It’s nearly never stated that the reason for the frantic technological development is to save the world, and that industrialization is the root cause of the need to save it.

That’s the core lure of industrialization, the seduction – at the very time it’s causing such utter fear, depression, and despair it’s offering solutions to those very problems. It’s both the disease and the cure in one. It’s annihilating the Native Americans and then “preserving” them. Who knows? Perhaps without their very annihilation they would have gone extinct without being brought under the domineering umbrella of capitalist civilization. So human beings are killed in order to maintain their life – capitalism is the necromancer who gives “undying life” to the very people he kills.

True believers say it will never stop. The Endless Summer so popular in the United States at the height of Cold War terror is the idea that industrial capitalism will always produce the cure to every life-threatening disease, through the magical powers of “innovation” and “entrepreneurial activity”. They point to technological progress as more sign of The Cure, which one day will provide the Final Cure which will render all future diseases moot.

The final stage of reality to true believers is when human beings can do literally anything they want, total license, with zero negative repercussions, because all cures are technologically built-in. Hugh Hefner’s dream vision of sexuality is a metaphor for how the true believers, such as Gene Roddenberry, view capitalism.

The purpose of capitalism is to transform the world into one which produces and maintains the final cure to itself.

Capitalism no longer believes in this “positive” vision of capitalism. Capitalism is no longer seeking to generate the Final Cure for all of humanity. Capitalism is now generating an “escape the earth” model where a few people may escape the earth, “repopulate the human race”, “make the desert of outer space bloom”, and the rest of the people will be “left behind” on earth to die.

This is the core reason for the death of the global middle class. The vision of the Final Cure involves bringing all of humanity into the heart of the system, at least as intimate to the system as patients are in a doctor’s office. But this new vision, that of Escaping the Earth – that involves the rejection of humanity by the escapists. In other words, the Zombification of humanity in order to justify it’s extermination by the “noble humans”.

This is why I often object to the use of “problem” by liberals and progressives when they speak of various capitalist antics. Like, the war in Afghanistan is a “problem”. How is people dying and being terrorized and as a result others being better positioned to escape the earth a problem, exactly? It’s certainly not a problem as far as the current capitalist vision is concerned. How is torturing people in Guantanamo Bay a “problem”? It’s part of the solution.

What I truly object to is not so much deep ignorance on the part of people who believe themselves good but their lack of any alternative vision to the terrible but at least extremely clear and logical capitalist vision. As a hungry man says “I’m eating terrible food, but it’s better than nothing”. It may well be a symptom of humanity that it prefers a terrible vision to no vision at all, and if this is correct then what is desperately needed today is a positive vision of a future. Unlike most “positive visions” offered, a worthwhile one needs to become real if it’s people make it real, so it needs to be founded in reality, just as Escape the Earth is despite it’s seemingly unlikely nature (the low probability of sustaining human life outside of earth).

A followup to “Zombification in the 21st century”

Noone believes what they actually believe, including the rulers. All of human communication and understanding is translated from reality into a socio-political construct which people both believe and communicate to others.

The leaders of the American fossil fuel companies believe that global warming either doesn’t exist or isn’t primarily caused by burning certain fuel sources. That’s what exists consciously inside their minds and is what they communicate to others. They actually believe that global warming does exist and is caused by burning fuel, but this belief is sub-conscious due to their belief that it’s better for them to believe otherwise.

This is the reason why there was a “shift” in white American attitudes from racist to anti-racist following the triumph of global over national capital in the 1960s. It’s not like a person was deeply racist one day and deeply anti-racist the next – his actual beliefs never changed. What changed was the balance of power within capitalism and therefore the dominant hegemonic attitude, with Americans merely shifting to the “winning attitude”. This is why American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are terribly racist toward the people they are dominating and stealing from, but those same soldiers can become anti-racist when they return to the United States and take on a life which doesn’t benefit from their direct racism. This is why there were lots of Nazis in Nazi Germany and not very many Nazis afterward. The same person, wearing the swastika one day and the dove the next (although in both cases the dollar sign is paramount but never worn).

One can detect the actual beliefs of humans from their actions, which underlie their conscious position. The Pentagon for example is preparing for the construction of zombies – but if you read what they say about the zombies they make up a lot of nonsense – like the creation of zombies by occult means and vegetarian zombies. So consciously the Pentagon believes it’s merely being cautious, and if pressed perhaps would say that popular culture influenced the way in which they framed their project. The reality, however, which underlies their actions, is that they themselves actually believe (regardless of their conscious belief) that the 21st century will be dire, and humans can be socio-politically transformed into zombies by the wealthy people of the world in order to justify their mass murder or deep enslavement.

How much more successful would the Nazi Holocaust have been if before sending those people to the gas chambers they had first transformed them into zombies. Then Americans would have cheered – exterminating the monsters to “save the world” for the rest of us, to allow us to “make the desert bloom”, to “repopulate the human race”.

Dehumanization is nothing new – the native Americans were “savages” to the European colonialists. When people with some political goal want to kill someone, dehumanization greases the wheels of the extermination. My point is that these European colonialists never actually believed that the native Americans were savages – their actual belief didn’t really matter. What mattered was getting the land from them – all of their “beliefs” were in service to that goal. This is why now, when the goal has been accomplished, native Americans can be viewed as “noble” and “unfairly treated in the past”. Slaves can be treated well, and pitied, while weak people with oil need to have the revenues from that oil taken from them, and then later they too can be treated well, and pitied.

The NEETs of Japan are a proto-zombie group. Given the right political framework in Japan, these people might become zombies to the “good people” of Japan, and if a persuasive argument was made perhaps these “good people” could convince others of the same.

Whenever someone is fascinated by something that doesn’t exist, that thing actually exists. This can be seen in science fiction, where one day people are fascinated by something that’s “not real”, and the next day it exists.

Zombies are “fictional” – that is to say they don’t exist, but our fascination with them implies that they do exist. So then the question becomes the precise nature of their existence.