Author of three books on the decline of the American Empire, cultural historian Morris Berman talks about the USA & its core values. It offers good insight into people’s psychology. He does not hold out much hope that the situation can be reversed which I suspect is one of the reasons he is an ex-pat & now lives in Mexico. He rejects the idea that the problem is only coming from the top-down & that the citizens are rational & well-intentioned: The idea that if you pull the wool away from the eyes of these individuals, the citizenry will spontaneously awaken. ...What if it turns out that the wool is the eyes? The so called average citizen does want, to quote Janis Joplin, a Merceded Benz & is probably grateful to corporations for supplying us with oceans of consumer goods. The unconscious programming that directs Americans... & what Americans say to each other & the way they behave, they are a collection of marionettes on a string. Those strings are being pulled from the late16th Century. ...The chances of turning this situation around is just about negative infinity, being generous. “The true root of the problem rests on the nature of the American culture, which has been based in war and religious objectives since colonists first arrived to the New World. The US reflects a negative identity in that we create oppositions to guide and justify our actions. To begin to rectify economic, political, and social problems in the US we need to address mass public education and redefine the American identity.” Americans are not taught to think in an holistic fashion. Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline https://youtube/watch?v=GzgY20d2MtU
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 12:37:48 +0000
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