Cooptation of the Individual

[Struggling]

I don’t know if I am going to be able to get my point across, but it’s been really bugging me lately.

It seems that “the System”, the enemy in theology traditionally called “the World,” is inescapable. The Devil and the Flesh are resistable, but it seems in the modern day I cannot escape the World.

I did some research and read this book review. It is about how any attempt at counterculture gets absorbed into the mainstream and “sells out” in the end, being neutralized, neutered, coopted, and tamed.

The book says:

This is why the hippies didn’t need to sell out in order to become yuppies. It’s not that the system “co-opted” their dissent, it’s that they were never really dissenting. As Michelle Rose [a woman whose “rejection” of mass society caused her to buy a farm in Hawaii so that she could commute from Vermont and “feel” the soil] and others have proved, rejecting materialist values, and rejecting mass society, does not force you to reject consumer capitalism. If you really want to opt out of the system, you need to “do a Kaczynski” and go off and live in the woods somewhere (and not commute back and forth in a Range Rover). Because the everyday acts of symbolic resistance that characterize countercultural rebellion are not actually disruptive to “the system,” anyone who follows the logic of countercultural thinking through to its natural conclusion will find herself drawn into increasingly extreme forms of rebellion. The point at which this rebellion becomes disruptive generally coincides with the point at which it becomes genuinely antisocial. And then you’re not so much being a rebel as you are simply being a nuisance.

Now, I do not support the kind of counter-culture (a liberal leftist counterculture) that is mocked in this book. A funny quote it has about the liberal counterculture (when discussing the movie Pleasantville) is:

Through the magic of cinema, a bunch of white teenagers having sex becomes equivalent to both the civil rights movement and the struggle against fascism. What’s more, the kids don’t even have to do anything unpleasant or make any sacrifices in order to achieve this effect. Having fun is the ultimate subversive act. This is an incredibly consistent theme in the popular culture - from the final dance sequence in Footloose to the infamous rave scene in The Matrix Reloaded - and yet it is so obviously wishful thinking. The Beastie Boys called everyone’s bluff a long time ago, when they recorded a “protest” song with the anthemic title “You Gotta Fight For Your Right (to Party).” In the end, this is what most countercultural rebellion comes down to.

So I clearly don’t support the leftist counterculture. As a Catholic, I believe we should support a Christian counter-culture. I have my own radical right leanings and midievalist idealizing…but that is not essential to my point. My point is that the System seems to always coopt anyone trying to make a difference.

The World is too powerful. As the book said…you can’t really be countercultural.

The system will first try to marginalize you…either by calling you a freak/crazy…or else by patronizing you and feigning token acknowledgment, but really laughing behind your back and thinking of you as just like a naive idealistic little kid…

If you do manage to start getting popularity…then “they” (and who are they?) will absorb you, co-opt you, but in the process corrupt you. They will make you mainstream, but in the process neuter and neutralize you. In short, you will have to sell-out.

I fear this co-option almost happened to Christianity with Constantine who made Christianity official, but then as emperor introduced caesaropapism still somewhat prevalent in the east…however, Rome fell but the Church lived on.

As the Catholic Encyclopedia says:

The officious interference of a theologian emperor was more dangerous to the Church than the hostility of Julian, his successor. But the wish to dominate in every sphere was not the only relic of pagan Rome. Though the emperor was no longer pontifex maximus and the statue of Victory was removed from the senate house, though Theodosius decreed the final closing of the temples and put an end to pagan public worship, the ancient world was not really converted; it was hardly a catechumen. In philosophy, literature, and art it clung to the old models and reproduced them in a debased form. Pagan civilization had not been Christians of a simpler character and a more spontaneous vigour than the inhabitants of the degenerate empire. The formation of Christendom was to be the work of a new generation of nations, baptized in their infancy and receiving even the message of the ancient world from the lips of Christian teachers.

In it’s way, the Church destroyed Rome I like to think. Simply “converting” it would not work. If anything permanent was going to happen, it was going to be Rome converting and “taming” the Church, not the other way around. So it’s good that Rome fell, a new Christendom had to be built from scratch.

 

[Struggling]

However, modern Society seems too strong and resilient to ever fall or be truly converted.

If you act extremely (like the Unabomber or Eric Rudolf) then you will be marginalized and deemed “crazy” or “a freak” or “a sociopath” or “a murderer” (which they were) and lose all credibility and be made impotent in terms of being able to really effect people.

If you act moderately (like a hippy, or even the Tridentine Liturgy movement within the Church), then they will simply ignore you. They may pay lipservice to you, let you have what you want, but ultimately co-opt you. An “isn’t your idealism adorable!?” type of demeaning “respect”. They may tolerate you, but they will still think of you as “weird” and not really consider you a real threat. They will let you have what you want, but only to “keep you busy” and “shut you up” (“okay, go ahead and play your little “counterculture” game, as long as you don’t really accomplish anything”). At the very worst, they adopt you against your will and twist your message for their purpose (like the pop-culture cooption of the leftist counterculture)

But Society doesn’t respect people trying to change the status quo. The system is too perfect. In the old days, people at least respected their enemies as a threat. Rome was evil, but it at least respected the Christians enough to treat them as a genuine threat and martyr them. At least there was dignity in a martyrs death. Now, they do not persecute, they simply patronize…and in many ways it is much more painful, because there is no triumph in it, nor glory, no victory, no change to the world, but no Escape either.

Radical Muslims are trying to change the world. And what does the west say of them? They are either called “crazy fanatics” who have no credibility because they murder, or else it is insisted that “Islam can be brought into the modern democratic world and be a religion of peace” (ie, it can be “tamed” and then neutered and co-opted into western decadence)

This may seem an odd example, but there is a Simpson’s episode called “Hungry Hungry Homer”. It is available here at youtube.

In it, Homer discovers evidence that the Isotopes are moving to Albuquerque. Duff insists that they are not moving and he has Duffman drug Homer to cover up the truth. Homer is shocked and attempts to alert the media to the plan, but Duff removes all traces of the evidence Homer found. The journalists dismiss Homer’s story and call him a liar.

In response, Homer stages a hunger strike in which he chains himself to a pole near Duff Stadium in order to force the owners of the team to admit they are moving to Albuquerque. He attracts a great deal of attention so the team decides to move him into the ballpark and exploit his popularity using the name “Hungry, Hungry Homer,” but telling the fans that he is hunger striking “until the Isotopes win the penant,” totally coopting his original intent. Eventually Homer becomes so thin and sickly that the team decides to get rid of him.

Do you see what I’m saying? The world doesn’t even see dissenters against the system as a threat anymore! They no longer even give the dignity of a martyrs death. They just keep us busy talking while nothing gets accomplished, and then laugh behind our backs like someone treats a little kid who makes a plan or threatens to do something. There is no escape, you are either marginalized as crazy or co-opted.

At least people used to respect their enemies and fight them man-to-man…but now the system is so big, it doesn’t even acknowledge it’s enemies. It let’s them continue in its midst even, because it knows it can turn them into a joke.

GRR! Is there any escape. Senseless violence makes one loose all credibility. Simply concentrating on one’s own soul and individual compassion is simply patronized and ignored and is in fact used as a way to “keep people busy” while the evil continues? Is there any way to dignity or triumph? The Cross used to be the way. But there is no more martyrdom in America…they don’t respect us enough or consider us enough of a threat to kill us.

Can we ever be heard, or will the world always go, “O they’re harmless. Ha ha ha! How ripe, how adorably naive.”??

 

[Struggling]

I worry even Language is being engineered to not let us think in certain ways (ie, “newspeak”). And how would I know if information and language are being controlled or not?

LOL! Even George Orwell’s point has been neutered exactly BECAUSE the book has become mainstream. It lost any chance it had to undermine the system and truly be subversive the moment it started to be discussed on college campuses and such, and so while everyone discusses, no one is DOING, while everyone asks how we can fight it, now one is fighting (or those who are, are crazy murderers and insane cultists)

But even if Language hasn’t been truly co-opted yet (which would require a more centralized effort which just doesnt exist yet, it is society as a whole which spontaneously generates “the system”)…art and literature certainly has been. Anything in the past that may have been subversive or truly counterculture…has been absorbed and made “harmless”. Anything Revolution has been merely turned into some sort of neutered catharsis to STOP revolution. It has been made “mainstream” and “classic” and a topic of endless discussion among the intellegentsia, and while they are busy discussing it, it accomplishes no action.

Even me quoting that book review for “nation of rebels” or referencing the Simpsons feels like a cooptation. That is to say, I am organizing my feelings according to THEIR Categories of Thought and archetypes. I am being given symbolic templates and images to express myself by THEM. As language does too, I am being limited in communication by the examples I am given in the world. The events in literature provide a way for me to organize my thoughts in a time-testedly-harmless way and to ultimately appease me and make me content (and thus complacent?)

Is there a way out?

LOL. Ironic. Even while discussing this with you, I am discussing the problem and so not DOING anything. And very quickly, I’m sure, getting myself labled as Paranoid…and soon enough perhaps sociopathic…but ultimately no threat. GRR…no escape…

 

[I_A]

From what I’ve seen protest is relatively useless. Turning inward is useless, but turning to Jesus, now He will get you results.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Nobody is peaceful. Everybody is always busy, always hurrying. Maybe slowing down and giving things to Jesus is the best way to protest.

 

[Struggling]

But I get a sense that’s what they want me to do!!

They have taken the God Idea, one that to me should be ultimately subversive to its enemy the World, and made it into a sort of soma to keep us content.

“yes, you go off and pray to jesus”…while whispering to their friends and laughing, “that’ll keep 'em busy, silly Christian”…

 

[cheddarsox]

Live your faith as genuinely and deeply as possible, whether anyone pays attention to it or not. Live what you believe. Some people will see and notice, because they can’t help but notice, but not because you are purposely being “counter culture” and pushing it in their face. You don’t have to announce it, carry a sign or wear a badge, no sackcloth or ashes (unless that is truly where God leads you), just be what you believe.

That is a very individual thing to do, but not the kind of thing that arouses so much notice that it becomes a mockery of itself. It just is.

I heard on the radio that Joel Osteen is “coming to town” next month. The ad sounded like a joke, but it wasn’t. He sounds like a fool in the soundbites. I was actually surprised that the radio station played the add, because it was more “me, me, me, gimmee, gimmee, gimmee, indulge, indulge, indulge” than any glamour rock concert ad I’ve ever heard.

It is not just “the world” that coopts the individual, all too often the “individual” sells themselves and their message out by using “worldly” means to advertise themselves.

Fasting is one thing…a public hunger strike another. If you believe your faith…is it more important that God knows you are fasting? or that ABC, MSN, CNN knows?

At the end, we have to explore “what’s it all about?”, serving God, or serving the world? Some of us will be called to serve the world, perhaps by public efforts to “save” it. Pray about what God is calling you to do, and be willing to accept that you or I, might indeed be called to be a “Divine fool”. But being part of a greater plan, no matter how expendable a part, is a priveledge.

Living with integrity seems to get me nowhere (at least as the world defines it) but then again…where is it that I think I need to go? If this is where the Divine want me, indeed, I am exactly where I need to be, and there is no better place for me.

cheddar

 

[Struggling]

I know that’s true, but at the same time, I get the feeling (and it is only really a feeling) that such messages are a way to give people a catharsis and stop them from truly being potent or affective in the world.

Like, take the Amish. They don’t care what people think, they just live their lives how they believe.

And yet by believing that, they have effectively marginalized themselves. We may go, “Wow, I respect their commitment,” but it will almost always be followed (at least internally) by something like, “How quaint! They’re nuts, of course, but good for them.” And so their whole Idea is neutered by being associated with ideas like “fringe nutjobs” and “crazy reactionaries” and so outside their own souls, they have little effect on anything. They are like the Indians on the Reserve in Brave New World, they can continue their own little thing as long as they don’t accomplish anything or upset the System.

 

[cheddarsox]

If your beliefs are so “out there” that living them totally marginalizes you, then you’d better accept that you’re out there.

Do you choose a faith so you’ll be accepted and “change the world” or because it is true?

I believe (I have faith) that living the truth will change the world, maybe slowly, maybe one person at a time, maybe only the parts of the world that I directly touch, but change none the less.

If I am living my faith, that is all I am called to do. If that action influences one or many, is not totally up to me. I’m not in control of the world, I’m only in control of myself.

Jesus did what he did for a relatively short amount of time on a limited field…yet, what he did, eventually changed the world. You do your thing, and then accept that it’s out of your hands.

A little corner hamburger stand became McDonald’s and altered how a lot of people eat. There are myriad factors that determine whether or not something is accepted or catches on.

And, on the subject of the Amish…they’ve changed the world for a lot of people who were victims of disasters and had an Amish team quietly come in, do their very Amish thing, and leave an impression that is anything but “look at those nutjobs”.

cheddar