Another Lost Generation

I wake up and cause a climate catastrophe. I do it again while taking a shower, at the same time I’m dumping chemicals into our water system. The clothes I’m putting on were likely made in a sweatshop, or were otherwise produced by someone underpaid and overworked. The milk in my cereal was made by a cow who has been forcibly impregnated (raped) continuously over several years. Even though I don’t eat meat, that cow will be ground up into a paste as soon as she can no longer produce milk. As I check my email and scan my news feed, I’m using a device made of strip-mined toxic materials and of components manufactured by a corporation that installed nets around its factories to discourage workers from jumping.

I am complicit in environmental devastation that will cause millions to starve and in the poisoning of a dwindling water supply. I personally reap the benefits of slave labor, animal abuse, human exploitation, and torture.

It’s only 9 in the morning.

As I ride the bus to campus I see an entire family begging for change in front of a supermarket overflowing with food, but there’s too much on my mind already. My tuition is filling the pockets of administrators who are slashing salaries of overworked professors and my textbooks perpetuate a racket which exploits the hopes and dreams of my peers. I’m surrounded by nervous and naive teenagers who are already thousands of dollars in debt and who probably have no idea that payments on that debt can be pulled directly from their bank accounts with no warning at all. Some of my required classes explain to me how capitalism is making my life better, while others narrate the tragic disappearance of the American Indians without using the word genocide.

There are people across the world who feed their whole family for less than a dollar a day, I’m living in a world where a dollar is little more than a mouthful. If I took the time to grow my own food then I’d have no time for class, but it’s not as if I have access to enough land for that anyway. So I’m stuck buying plastic wrapped organic produce, which was grown naturally on a corporate farm by illegal immigrants who work 70 hours a week just so they don’t get sent back to a country being eaten alive by drug cartels armed with assault rifles generously donated by the ATF. It’s impossible to escape the exploitation, cruelty, and violence that underlies every facet of American society.

It’s noon, lunch time, that means more money for Monsanto and more animals screaming in their cages. Usually I pack a lunch so I don’t have to buy as much food loaded with high fructose corn syrup or coated in pesticides. Still, the crunch of organic carrots doesn’t quite drown my thoughts about the students and felons being paid barely above minimum wage to run the dining facilities, many of which have been contracted out to multinational corporations in light of dwindling funding for higher education. The student workers are trying desperately to keep up with the 10% tuition hike every year while the felons are trapped working for the same government which stole their future over a trumped up drug charge. Did I mention that my school is legally required to buy all of its furniture from Colorado Correctional Industries? The amendment that made slavery illegal has a glaring exception for those convicted of a crime.

Maybe I’m too cynical, I think I’m just seeing through to the truth of things. I’ve spent a lot of time reading about the history we ignore and I’ve learned many of the disturbing stories behind the polished products which fill our lives. A friend of mine wrote his thesis on labor history in Colorado, at one point he asked his professor why everything they were learning was so depressing. “If you want something uplifting then go study theology, this is history.”

I slink off to the edge of campus for a cigarette. Smoking outside recently became illegal on campus and, even though I’m white, I don’t want to run into any of those peace officers who have a nasty habit of getting away with beating innocent people. I know smoking is bad for me, but I’m already inhaling the fossil fuel fumes that fill the air and at least the smoke from my hand rolled cigarette is carbon neutral.

As the day goes on I’m churned through an educational assembly line, walking beneath inspirational quotes about the “timeless human spirit” which have been carved in stone just above a glass ceiling. I have to be here; even though it’s a corrupt and exploitative institution, college is my best chance of keeping factory work in my past where it belongs. So I fill my blood with caffeine, nicotine, and amphetamines as I get back to work.

I stop at the supermarket on my way home, thankfully there’s no one panhandling this time. I’m not here for much; a block of cheese, a couple bell peppers, and a bottle of ibuprofen. Looking in my basket I can see cows being stuffed with GMO corn and cocktails of antibiotics as machines literally suck life out of them. I see the inspector who was bribed into granting organic certification, but she’s not getting paid much either and has a family to feed. The plastic packaging will probably end up in the ocean somewhere. Then there’s the pharmaceutical industry, I don’t want to even start on that one.

At every step along the way, at every moment in my day, I am complicit in or benefiting from some horrible crime or injustice. But what choice do I have? I have to survive, there are certain items I need to keep going and my budget places very real limits on what I can buy. So I’m trapped supporting a system which perpetuates human exploitation on an unimaginable scale.

My last stop on the way home is the liquor store. I head to the back and snag a local brew from an employee owned company which uses 100% recyclable materials. Beer is one of very few products that I can buy guilt free, which should tell you a lot about my drinking habits. Soma has never tasted so good.

I know it seems like I’m overly pessimistic, seeing what’s wrong with everything around me, but this isn’t a piece about what’s good in the world. There are plenty of people who write and sing about the beauty and wonder of life, I’m not blind to that either. I’ve loved and danced, laughed and played, climbed mountains and swam in the oceans, and it was all wonderful. All things considered I have a great life, but most of that was pure luck. I am a straight white cisgender male, who is also tall, conventionally attractive, and was born into an upper middle class family with intelligent and well educated parents. The world was handed to me on a silver platter, but this isn’t about me. The coziness of my own little corner of the world does not mean that things are ok. This global perspective is characteristic of my generation, the information age has given us a window to the wider world and what we see could mildly be called depressing as fuck.

We know our oceans are being poisoned and global temperatures are rising, we know our government is owned by the rich and fucks the rest of us on a daily basis, we know de facto slave labor produces most what we buy, we know that the few good jobs left are paying less and less, and we know that neither our social nor political institutions provide any avenues for affecting real change. Hell, many of us cast our first votes for hope and change six years ago and we’re seeing all too clearly how well that’s turned out.

So some of us tune out, reveling in petty distractions or drowning this knowledge with some obsession or addiction because the thought of it all is unbearable. Others collapse into despair or develop some debilitating mental illness because we cannot bring ourselves to look away. Either way, we’re working so goddamn hard nowadays (or not working at all no matter how hard we try) that all thoughts of making the world a better place fade in the face of making it through one more week.

We are a lost generation. Raised on fading hopes and broken dreams, we came of age and naively stepped forward to claim the promised rewards of our struggles, only to find them snatched away every time we try to take hold. Stumbling forward we look around asking ourselves “What the fuck is going on here?” failing to find any satisfying answers. Scarcity in an age of abundance, plutocracy in the paragon of democracy, slavery in the land of the free; contradictions, myths, and lies everywhere we turn. We’re lost because the world doesn’t make any goddamn sense.

I find myself writing this instead of rolling my boulder of homework a little higher up the hill. A small but growing stack of bowls and plates sits on my desk in front of a hookah held together with duct tape. Although I’ve ensured that it’ll be another late night, the cynical satisfaction I’ve found in composing my thoughts will probably preserve my sanity for at least one more day.

After reaching the point of exhaustion I scan my news feed one more time. A sardonic smile crosses my face as I find another video of police beating people at a protest against police brutality. I probably shouldn’t have watched it, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before and I attend those kinds of protests too so it’s only a matter of time till my face is smashed into the pavement.

This can’t go on and we all know it. Even if we weren’t losing our hopes and losing our minds, no society built around the use of a finite resource can survive for long. Ideally a revolution occurs before it is the only option, needless suffering can be avoided and the absence of desperation allows for clearer heads to prevail. Yet at the same time as more and more of us are realizing how little we have left to lose, defenders of the status quo are resorting to more and more desperate measures. I guess they’re just in denial, but they’ll learn the hard way that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.

The largest class war between the haves and the have nots will be fought in our lifetime and we will be on the front lines. Previous generations failed to wrest power out of the hands of the psychopaths who run our government and the corporations which own it, so now it’s our turn to try. It’s our turn to fight for a better world but now the stakes have changed. Global climate change and resource depletion threaten our entire species, if we fail then the next generations may not have enough clean air to breathe. The water is rising, we fight or we die.

Right now though, I’m exhausted. A long and grueling day of attentive listening and hunched scribbling has left me drained in both body and mind. The most I can muster is to share a few links on facebook expounding and detailing various specifics of our increasingly desperate situation. I woke up ready to start fucking shit up but I looked around me and saw that there aren’t enough of us ready yet. Many still have hope that things will work out, that life will make an exception for them and they’ll have their little fairy tale. Someday that illusion will break and that naive denial will fail in the face of cold hard reality. We’ll stop lying down and start looking up, start fighting to make the world a better place. A mass of angry young people who feel they have nothing left to lose can turn the whole world upside down. Once we realize how powerful we are there will be no stopping us. It could happen any day and at any time, there’s no way to know what will trigger this pent up desperation and rage. I don’t know when it will happen, but I do know that the longer we sleep the worse the nightmare will become.

Today wasn’t a good day. Sometimes I can forget what’s going on around me and find a little peace of mind in the daily grind, but not today. Instead today was just another straw on the camel’s back. There’s only so much more I can take before I snap, but I know that when I snap I won’t snap alone.

Breaking news: Congress to vote on the DoublePlusGood Act

A bipartisan group of legislators recently sponsored a piece of legislation with ambiguous and confusing language. The DoublePlusGood Act may or may not be used to deny legal rights to the bad people, and might-possibly-but-no-one-can-really-tell give major corporations more money and power.

Speaking under condition of anonymity, a senior senator stated "I really have no fucking idea what this bill is about but it's clear that The DoublePlusGood Act will be a good thing for this country, possibly even plusgood." When asked for clarification over what the fuck this act is about, one of the cosponsers provided key insight and understanding. "The Doubleplus Good Act will do one or more of several things; it will create jobs, ensure national security, protect our freedoms, and/or make America more American." This may sound like more trite political bullshit but Senator Rich Whitey offered a heartfelt a pinkie promise that The DPGA will be doubleplusgood for America.

When asked why they chose the name DoublePlusGood Act, Sen. Whitey stated that "The Patriot Act, The Freedom Act, and the America Act were already taken and we were running low on thinly veiled propaganda. We figured fuck it, the American people are docile enough to accept a stronger plutocracy. Anyway I've got to go, my wife wants me to fire our servants and hire new ones who will work for less." Sen. Whitey then noticed the interviewer's watch and realized his own watch was more expensive. He ended the interview saying "Fuck off, pleb".

Our Brave New 1984

Note:  This is a slightly modified version of an essay I submitted for a class assignment.  I am working on expanding the ideas within but this may take some time seeing as the material could easily fill an entire book.

Few dystopian novels have a greater hold on our collective conscious than Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” or George Orwell’s “1984.” These two are almost polar opposites, Huxley’s world is controlled by pleasure while Orwell’s is controlled by pain, yet the basic goals of either ruling class are the same: maintaining their own power. By comparing and contrasting different forms of control from these two dystopias, I hope to shed some light on how they converge in our world today.

I will analyze three broad categories; forceful control, resource control, and information control. Forceful control refers to the use of brute force; police, prisons, military, etc. Resource control refers to the availability of basic necessities and commercial goods. Information control refers to propaganda, access to information, and surveillance systems. The power systems in both dystopias and our world today can be thought of in these terms.


Information control

Arguably information control is the first line of defense of any power structure. If propaganda is universally believed, if people are unaware of the functioning of their society, or if they lack the information or language to understand or describe the nature of their oppression, then they are unable or entirely unwilling to organize effectively. In Orwell’s 1984, three major themes of information control are relentless propaganda, revisionist history, and surveillance. The telescreens of 1984 are present in every Party member’s home and constantly broadcasting propaganda. There is no subtlety here; every message is about the Party’s accomplishments, the enemy’s ever present evil, and how much better off everyone is thanks to the government. Generally the US government does not engage in such blatant propaganda but government institutions certainly reinforce various useful illusions, such as The American Dream. Certain historical facts are simply omitted from the history taught in schools and thus are largely unknown. These support the illusion of a just yet imperfect government.

A very strong parallel to 1984 revolves around surveillance. In this dystopia, all Party members are being watched at all times and anyone who shows any sign of heretical thought is arrested by the Thought Police. In our world, the United States government has created surveillance programs that attempt, and largely succeed, to capture and record every single piece of electronic communication in the world. There are far more terrifying programs that have come to light but hedonistic apathy and simple ignorance limit the scope of awareness. We have yet to see what the US government will do with such terrifying power.

The most pervasive propaganda campaigns in our world are run by big business. In Brave New World, humans are conditioned from birth to hold certain values and have a specific set of desires. Selfish hedonistic consumerism is imprinted on children via behavioral conditioning and hypnotic suggestion, crafting a population that loves mindless entertainment and always desires the newest gadgets. The overabundance of material goods means there is always a hot new thing to satisfy animalistic desires, so there is never a lull in the entertainment paradigm wherein people might question the status quo or engage in self reflection. This selfish hedonistic consumerism is markedly similar to the United States culture of today.

The extreme behavioral conditioning of Brave New World is largely absent in our society but we are regularly subjected to subliminal messages which warp our values and desires. The science of marketing is aimed at making people desire certain things and the marketing sectors of separate industries have a shared interest in reinforcing consumerism. Television ads target children, the most impressionable demographic, and brand mascots become idols. At such a young age, this sort of conditioning is very effective and carries over into our adult lives, even for those of us who are aware of it. These imposed superficial values and desires serve to counteract the effects of the greatest information revolution in all of human history: the internet.

The wealth of knowledge available at our fingertips, indeed in our pockets, has the potential to tear down all ideological barriers. The powers that be are right to see it as a threat, this is why there are so many attempts to censor the web. However, in Huxley’s dystopia censorship is simply not needed because people have no desire to learn beyond the needs of their hedonistic desires. We are undoubtedly seeing that trend today, enormous breaches of the social contract by major corporations and government institutions are largely ignored by the general public. Thus there will be no revolution while the circus continues.


Resource control

Despite being the second line of defense, resource control can mitigate the shortcomings of information control schemas. This can take the form of abundance or scarcity, in our world we see both acting at once on different social classes. In 1984, everyone except Inner Party members are poor and even they have minimalistic lives by our standards. Scarcity for the proles and Outer Party keeps them physically drained and struggling, both of which limit capacity for critical thought and sap energy that could otherwise go towards higher pursuits. However, if resources are too scarce then there will be ‘bread riots’ as the prevailing social order is incapable of meeting basic human needs. The ideal balance between these two is maintaining resource availability barely above subsistence levels, which is exactly what the Party has achieved in 1984.

We see this at play for the lower classes of US society. Those who live near the poverty level work long hours and earn only enough to keep a semblance of a home and provide for their most basic needs. With no time or energy to learn or examine the nature of their oppression, and lacking resources above a subsistence level, they are generally unable to organize to demand better treatment. We do see protests demanding higher wages when living conditions fall below a certain level, but the concessions made by the ruling classes are almost always the bare minimum necessary to pacify the public.

The opposite resource control schema is necessary to pacify a middle class. With a higher quality of education and far more free time, they are more prone to demand political or social change. However, since they have the time, energy, and resources, they can be distracted. This is where we see the material abundance scheme from Brave New World; the middle classes of our society can easily spend time and money on the newest gadgets, games, and TV shows. However there must always be novelty or else they will become bored. This demands consumerism perpetuated through behavioral conditioning. In Brave New World there are slogans such as “more stitches; fewer riches” while in our world we have business models based on planned obsolescence. A distracted and thoroughly entertained middle class is far less likely to agitate for change.


Forceful control

The last resort of oppressors, when information and resource control are not enough to maintain the status quo we see tear gas and batons. In our world we see different applications of violence to various social classes while the worlds of 1984 and Brave New World have opposing methods of state violence. In 1984, violence is planned as soon as any individual breaks from the Party line. The only reason they are not imprisoned immediately is to allow for more monitoring of the individual to determine psychological weaknesses. The threat is absolute, anyone who shows any hint of dissent will be disappeared and likely never seen again. Large scale crowd control is not needed as the Thought Police are always looking for political dissidents and neutralize them as soon as possible. The opposite is true in Brave New World, individuals are not monitored because they can be trusted to mindlessly pursue hedonism, while the few that do dissent are simply ignored by the rest of the population. As of now, our society does not appear to emulate either of these models.

Despite strong correlations with race and poverty, state violence directed against civilians is largely arbitrary in the US, with one major exception. We thankfully lack a government agency akin to the Thought Police so political organizations are relatively free to form. Without that safeguard, it is necessary for the power elite to violently resist any protest or movement which threatens the status quo; this usually takes the form of pseudo-soldiers posing as peace officers. We rarely hear about protests that are violently suppressed and they are relatively rare, due in large part to the brutality of the state’s response. This works to serve information control as it restricts knowledge that a counter-movement exists in the first place.



Within these three spheres of control, our world is like a hybrid of the information and resource control schemas of 1984 and Brave New World. Forceful control most certainly exists as well but it does not have the extreme attributes of either of these dystopias. If we are looking to these novels as warnings against the evils of totalitarian society, we ought to focus primarily on the information control systems from each. Some aspects of our society, particularly between hedonistic apathy and universal surveillance, are eerily close to the worlds of 1984 and Brave New World. Many of these dystopian aspects seem to be growing at a terrifying rate while others are being increasingly undermined, primarily due to the developing information age and industrial automation. We should remain vigilant against increasing similarities between our world and these dystopias lest they become predictions of our future.