Civilizational Pathology
2
without regard for ecological balance or understanding (we trade completely
viable and useful things for no-things, i.e., symbolic money, what has of itself
little to no use-value separate from its exchange value). This mythology is
pushing us off our own planet (and we lack to date the technology to take us to
this “final frontier”). This rhetoric enslaves its inhabitants by inhibiting critical,
cultural thinking (and covers the systematic oppression not only of minority
groups but the so-called majority as well).
Gregory Bateson reminded us, in his essay “Conscious Purpose Versus
Nature,” that St. Paul once boasted, “I was born free.” What he meant, according
to Bateson, was that he was born Roman, and this had certain legal advantages.
Today we hear the same cry uttered from the lips of many “Americans.” (i.e.,
United Statians who speak in the voice of mythical “America:” Land of the free
and home of the brave.) To say, “I was born free,” is not to say that you are free
so much as you are well protected—you have rights and a reasonable amount of
protections, comforts and so on. The phase itself, as in the case of the discourse
of freedom in general, has become so pervasive and taken for granted by the
middle classes that it has begun to lack teeth, and we become more and more
reactionary—asking ourselves, as Nietzsche would suggest, what are we free
from? rather than, what are we free for?
2
systems theoretical approach.
2 See Deleuze, G. (1983). Nietzsche and philosophy. (H. Tommlinson, Trans.) New York:
Columbia University Press (Original work published 1962).
Convention