17 Aug 11, 01:31AM
(16 Aug 11, 10:02AM)Foo Wrote: "An inescapable, pervasive culture of fear leads to a "fight or flight response" in the populace which in effect has moved American society into an "everything is either black or white" mindset. Discuss."
I won't write the answer for you, but here are some ideas....
Italians claim country run by Goldman Sachs
Reading IS fundamental: Financial Terrorism: How The Economic Elite Made Off With $46 Trillion
Dylan Ratigan's Epic Rant on the International Banking Cartel and Political Corruption
1. "The problem that I set here is not what shall replace mankind in the order of living creatures (—man is an end—): but what type of man must be bred, must be willed, as being the most valuable, the most worthy of life, the most secure guarantee of the future.
This more valuable type has appeared often enough in the past: but always as a happy accident, as an exception, never as deliberately willed. Very often it has been precisely the most feared; hitherto it has been almost the terror of terrors;—and out of that terror the contrary type has been willed, cultivated and attained: THE DOMESTIC ANIMAL, THE HERD, the sick brute-man—the moralistic priest in man...
!What is good?—Everything that heightens the
feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself.
What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness.
What is happiness?—The feeling that power increases—that resistance is overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but fitness(virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).
The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.
What is more harmful than any vice?—Active sympathy for the botched and the weak—THE HERD MENTALITY.
2. stupidity and gullibility:
"The pathetic thing that grows out of this condition is called faith: in other words, closing one’s eyes upon one’s self once for all, to avoid suffering the sight of incurable falsehood. People erect a concept of morality, of virtue, of holiness upon this false view of all things; they ground good conscience upon faulty vision; they argue that no other sort of vision has value any more, once they have made theirs sacrosanct with the names of “God,” “salvation” and “eternity.” I unearth this theological instinct in all directions: it is the most widespread and the most subterranean form of falsehood to be found on earth. Whatever a theologian regards as true must be false: there you have almost a criterion of truth. His profound instinct of self-preservation stands against truth ever coming into honour in any way, or even getting stated. Wherever the in fluence of theologians is felt there is a transvaluation of values, and the concepts “true” and “false” are forced to change places: whatever is most damaging to life is there called “true,” and whatever exalts it, intensifies it, approves it, justifies it and makes it triumphant is there called “false.”... When theologians, working through the “consciences” of princes (or of peoples—), stretch out their hands for power, there is never any doubt as to the fundamental issue: the will to make an end, the nihilistic will exerts that power...."
--Stupid people can be happier, but it is a shallow, superficial happiness. They don't have to deal with complex thought or larger-historical world events.
3. Why are we slaves to materiality? It's not just us, granted we are the epicenter of corporate corruption, it has spread around the world... See Zeitgeist Pt II-Addendum and III-Moving Forward, and the book/movie titled 'The Corporation'.
4. compare philosophies... too deep of a topic for right now (I will: see Rorty, Searle, and Davidson)
5. it seems #2-5 are all very related, see the book/movie titled "Manufacturing Consent" (1989). You are apt to mention Reagan. Also, Hoover, Bush Sr., it is really economic power over policy that has been changed the most in America compared to other western countries.
The Police State: Chief Says No Cover Up In Fatal Police Beating Of A Hog Tied Homeless Man
How Corporations Became 'Persons'... The amazing true story of a legal fiction that undermines American democracy.
All Roads Lead to Rothschild