Cultural Phenomenon

So I've had some ideas loosely floating around in my head for, oh, a decade, maybe 15 years or so. This seems to be a good place for me to loose my frustrations, so I thought I'd try to consolidate these floaters. A lot of this may seem horrendously obvious, but I feel that writing it down helps me to make sense of things a bit better, if sense is possible. Here goes nothin'.

I think Christianity, consumerism and corporate media together play a heavy hand in the creation of our culture as a whole. Likely the heaviest by far. I have been vexed and often appalled by blatant displays of a complete and utter lack of personal responsibility by those around me. The daily conflicts of driving in traffic, trying to find parking spots, grading student papers, etc. act as a constant reminder. This is a theme I have touched upon in various other blog entries, but I am trying to consolidate them here.

My students can't think critically. They don't know how to analyze anything. A text, a photo, a T-shirt or bumper sticker. Nothing. Of course some of them can - likely products of both good nature and nurture. With most, however, I feel that I'm beating my head against a wall. Their theses are broad and unargumentative. They summarize and generalize. They dance across the surface seemingly unaware that there exists a vital and amazing depth waiting to be pursued. For some it's sheer laziness. For others it's sheer ignorance. My question is how one achieves the age of 18, 19 or 20 never having analyzed anything, critically thought about a thing in their entire lives such that they don't even know how to begin. I can show them examples, good and bad. I can give them the definition of "analysis". I can walk through an example analysis with them. I can answer the same question 17 times in 17 different ways and yet some of their final papers look little different than their first. I believe that this is because, for 18, 19, 20 years they have been indoctrinated to tape their own eyes shut, plug their own ears and open their gaping mouths ready for whatever the spoon may bring. Christianity teaches them to do this. Television teaches them to do this. Nearly everything they see and hear teaches them to do this. And since Mommy and Daddy are letting Elmo raise their children, no one is teaching them anything different. By the time I get them, their brains are mush and it's my job to reconnect the neurons?! Right.

Aside from poor performances, these same students expect to receive good grades. I tell them to analyze and they summarize. I tell them to be specific and they generalize. I tell them to create an argument and they skirt any real subject altogether. Yet when they get a D in the class, it's my fault. When they fail to complete half of the coursework thereby failing the class, it's my fault. I lack "compassion". How dare I? Their work is apparently anyone's responsibility but their own. It's Mommy and Daddy's responsibility. It's mine. It's the university's. God forbid they be held accountable for their lives.

When I get on the highway, there's a guy driving 45 mph in the left lane. To get around him, another guy goes 20 mph over the speed limit weaving in and out of traffic having apparently forgotten that he has a turn signal while throwing Styrofoam Sonic cups out his truck window. He owns this bitch. We're all his minions. The slowy in the left lane also owns this bitch. But he doesn't know about any minions. When Mr. Weavy ends up parking somewhere, he parks in 2 spots simultaneously at the very front of the parking lot. He doesn't want to walk too far. That would take effort. But he also doesn't want anyone scratching his ride. He also owns this parking lot.

When the U.S. Military Industrial Complex decides they need something another nation has (its lunch money, you know, whatever), they act just like Mr. Weavy on the highway. Throwing their dicks around the planet like they own this bitch - destroying the natural environment, destroying entire cities and nations, displacing peoples, destroying lives. The citizens at home, my students who never acquired critical thinking skills, support this activity entirely. After all, it's all done in the name of Freedom - a word people love to use yet never analyze.

So what is the foundation of this cultural trend - this live and let die, walking around in a me-bubble oblivion, it's anyone's fault but mine cultural phenomenon? I believe it is a combination of an economic system that intentionally sustains such attitudes utilizing a 2000-year-old religion that conveniently lends itself to the same attitudes. When the humans who comprise this culture accomplish something, "God" did it. A student of mine recently wrote that her 11-year-old self somehow managing to operate a tractor was the work of "God". I say way to go 11-year-old you! This little human figures out how to operate a complicated piece of machinery (designed and manufactured by humans)...and God did it. How's that for a pat on the back? On the flipside, when these same humans fuck up their lives, they are told to remedy the mess my "giving their pain and suffering to God". How about looking in the mirror, owning your mistakes and remedying them yourself? God didn't fuck up your life, and God's not going to clean up your mess. But I'm sure if these people somehow scramble their way out of their respective shit holes, they'll be thanking God.

Consumerist agendas function in much the same way. The goblins in "Goblin Market" say "Come buy, come buy, come buy." Indulge now, pay later. That two-week-old PC's a dinosaur! That blouse is sooo 2009. Gorge yourself on the smorgasbord of wealth we have acquired by the broken backs of the rest of the world and don't even begin to imagine the consequences. There are no consequences with guns like these.

All of these underlying, unanalyzed, spoon-fed and deeply ingrained attitudes stem from the very building blocks of our culture: our economy and our religion. These basic infrastructures are so enmeshed in our mentality that it is nearly impossible for most people to even recognize them let alone alter or abandon them. Until we disentangle ourselves from this web and are able to witness it for what it is, nothing will change. Needless to say, I doubt much of anything ever will. I'm not even sure how I intend to disentangle myself despite my ability see and analyze the problem. I could become an executor. No. I could tune in, turn on and drop out. No. That obviously didn't work. I suppose all I can do now is look to those I admire as particles of harmony in a mess of individualistic bumper-cars for the clarity and wisdom to rise above the tumult.

Most Significant Dreams

Disclaimer: Please excuse the rampant self-involvement of the following post. It is more a record for myself than for others. Nonetheless, if it inspires others to pay attention to and analyze their dreams, it has done its job. I cannot emphasize enough how beneficial dream awareness can be...or at least it has been for me.

1. Age 6, 1988:

I am in the gameroom my family recently converted from what used to be the garage of my childhood home. I am tied to a chair being held captive by a road-runner. This is not the cartoon road-runner, but a real road-runner. However, it is very vibrantly colored – all of the colors of the rainbow. Though it is understood in the dream that the road-runner is the one holding me captive, the road-runner itself sits inside a cage that is attached to the wall. Eventually, I free myself from my restraints and walk toward the sliding-glass door to look out into the backyard. My parents are outside doing yard work. I see my father put his index finger to the tip of his nose, and when he pulls his finger away, the tip of his nose detaches from the rest of his nose and remains attached to his index finger. I freak out, run outside and tell my mother what I saw: “Dad took his nose off!” My mother turns to my father and says, “Hon, could you not take your nose off in front of the kids; they can’t do it yet.” I’m horrified to learn that I am of a breed of monsters. I awake and run into my parents’ room, wake my mother and tell her my dream, possibly crying, definitely freaking out.

2. Age 19 or 20 (same age in the dream), 2001-02:

I am on the deck outside and in the back of the house in which I grew up (the same one as above). There is a dirty, white curtain hanging from the sky. It is tattered and torn up. To the left is a palm plant (like the ones that grew downstairs under the deck) potted, but dried up, brown and dying. A strong wind picks up and blows through the torn curtain and the dried leaves of the palm plant. It is God speaking to me. Surprisingly, considering I do not believe in “God”, or at least the standard American conception of “God”, I become overwhelmed with emotion. I gasp and cannot breathe as if someone has punched me in the stomach, and I begin to tear up. I awaken and am frustrated that I cannot remember what God said to me, then later realize that what was said was not said in English or any human language that can be understood verbally.

3. Age 19 or 20 (same age in the dream), 2001-02:

This dream, I believe, occurred after the one just above, but I am not sure. They occurred, I believe, within about 6 months of each other; a year at the most. I am lying on the ground just in front of the garage behind the house in which I grew up (same house). This is the garage built to replace the one which was converted into a gameroom. I am wrapped in a white curtain hanging from the sky. It is long and wrapped around my body several times, with my arms down at my sides. I am wrapped as a corpse is wrapped for illegal disposal. There is a serial rapist and murderer prowling the neighborhood. I do not see him, but I know that he is inside my house. He is going to rape and kill my mother and sister and when he is done, he is going to come after me. I feel completely helpless and terrified. I want desperately to help my mother and sister and to save myself, but I can do nothing but lie immobile wrapped in the curtain.

Looking up “curtains” in a dream dictionary, I found that curtains represent hiding or protection. This seems obvious. It was only after discovering this and interpreting the second of the adult dreams that I understood what God had said to me in the first of the adult dreams. Thus, a running theme through all of these dreams is captivity or immobilization. My natural inclination is to protect myself, my vulnerability and sensitivity (via curtains), but that protection is what immobilizes me and keeps me from progressing and functioning successfully in life. The first dream (childhood) indicates the reason I feel the need to protect myself. I fear that I am a monstrosity and want to “hide” that from others; protect myself from being judged or treated harshly because of it. I’ve carried this initial fear throughout my life which results in dreams set in my childhood home. The first of the adult dreams, however, presents the curtain as tattered and torn. What God says to me, therefore, is that only after I destroy such curtains will I be able to function to the best of my ability and live freely.

*In the childhood dream, the road-runner is held captive while holding me captive. The road-runner is a representation of myself. This is not wholly negative. The road-runner is vibrantly colorful, which is why it must be caged. But it cages itself as it binds me. It is entirely within the road-runner’s ability to free itself; to perceive its vibrancy not as flaw but as a strength.