Living, breathing and greatly suffering people on this atrocity-prone planet are [consciously or subconsciously] perceived as not being of equal value or worth to everyone else, when morally they all definitely should be. And it’s not hard for a conscience to do when one considers another an innately lower lifeform.
Human beings can actually be seen and treated as though they are disposable and, by extension, their suffering and death are somehow less worthy of external concern, sometimes even by otherwise democratic and relatively civilized nations.
In other words, the worth of such life will be measured by its overabundance and/or the protracted conditions under which it suffers; and those people can eventually receive meagre column inches on the back page of the First World’s daily news. It’s an immoral consideration of ‘quality of life’.
Meanwhile, with each news report of the daily death toll from unrelenting bombardment, I feel a slightly greater desensitization and resignation. I’ve noticed this disturbing effect with basically all major protracted conflicts internationally since I began regularly consuming news products in 1987.
Furthermore, it's sadly and even shamefully true that while some peoples have been brutally victimized throughout history a disproportionately large number of times, the victims of one place and time can and sometimes do become the victimizers of another place and time.
People should avoid believing, let alone claiming, that they are not capable of committing an atrocity, even if relentlessly pushed. Contrary to what is claimed or felt by many of us, deep down there’s a potential monster in each of us that, under the just-right circumstances, can be unleashed — and maybe even more so when convinced that ‘God is on our side’.
Human beings regard all other Earthlings, apart from our pets, as innately lower, disposable life forms. Though we know that they feel emotional and physical pain in the same way as we do; we subject millions of them to torture in the name of progress or something tasty to eat.
If this is indeed being a monster it is inside all us civilised people all day every day.
We live in a fascist state, governed by oligarchs who own the corporations, the politicians, and the media. Arguably not that different from so many of our fellows around the world, e.g. in China, Russia, or Saudi Arabia. Now what? Luigi Mangione gave one possible answer and the elites are terrified that others will come to similar conclusions; remember the French Revolution.
But burn it all down doesn't solve anything, it just substitutes a new set of problems for the old. So, now what? A new governing paradigm? Think global, act local? A philosopher King a la Plato? A new/old/better religion?
A few social/labor uprisings or revolutions notwithstanding, it seems the superfluously rich and powerful have always had the police and military ready to foremost protect their big-money/-power interests, even over the basic needs of the masses, to the very end.
Even today, the police and military can, and probably would, claim [using euphemistic or political terminology, of course] they had to bust heads to maintain law and order as a priority during major demonstrations, especially those against economic injustices.
Indirectly supported by a complacent, if not compliant, corporate news-media, which is virtually all mainstream news-media, the absurdly unjust inequities/inequalities can persist.
“If voting changed anything [in favor of the weak/poor/disenfranchised] they’d have made it illegal.” (‘Calamity’ Jane Bodine in ‘Our Brand Is Crisis’)
Giant grocer corporations have been raking-in record profits, year after year, while a record number of people have to choose between which necessities of life they can afford. To say that it feels unfair is a major understatement, but what can I or most other shoppers realistically do about it?
Up here, there still are many Canadians who hold the erroneous notion that they live and buy in a nation with truly competitive and therefore consumer-fair markets. But in reality, big corporations are able to get unaccountably even bigger, defying the very spirit of government oversight rules established to ensure healthy competition by limiting concentrated ownership — especially in regard to corporations selling and profiteering from the necessities of life, notably food. Those rules, however, are largely un-enforced by the government.
The heavily corporatized mainstream news-media, which is virtually all of it, has been editorially emasculated thus negligent when it comes to regularly investigating and exposing such societally consequential oversight-rule breaking. All of this is a problematically large part of a corpocratic existence fueled by elected officials getting indebted thus beholden to huge corporate entities, particularly due to their generous political monetary donations.
Meantime, way too many people, perhaps an all-time-high percentage, have to choose between which necessities of life they can afford. A very large and growing populace are increasingly too overworked, tired, worried and even rightfully angry about food and housing unaffordability thus insecurity for themselves or their family — largely due to insufficient income — to criticize or boycott Big Business/Industry for the societal damage it needlessly causes/allows, particularly when not immediately observable. And I doubt that this effect is totally accidental, as it greatly benefits the interests of insatiable corporate greed.
The more that such corporations make, all the more they want — nay, need — to make next quarterly. It’s never enough, yet the news-media will implicitly celebrate their successful greed, a.k.a. ‘stock market gains’.
Mangione gave a possible answer? Are you mad? Shoot those who profit most from the system that all of us in the West benefit from? The French Revolution- yeah remember how that ended with the Reign of Terrorr? The 'elites' aren't worried about us, they're worried about multipolarity and the climate crisis. Which is why they spread Sinophobia and climate denial.
You're right, more burning isn't going to solve anything! There is no time for a new religion, solution nor global paradigm of multilateral degrowth. This is the time for courage.
The definition of insanity: "Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result."
"Shoot those who profit most from the system that all of us in the West benefit from?"
Seriously? Isn't the whole point is that a lot of people have come to the conclusion that the current political/economic system in the West is very much not to their benefit, but to the benefit of their oligarch overlords? The exploited, downtrodden, and simply neglected masses are reaching the end of their rope.
"The 'elites' aren't worried about us, they're worried about multipolarity and the climate crisis. Which is why they spread Sinophobia and climate denial."
Wait, are you saying the elites are concerned about the climate crisis and so they spread climate denial? Sorry, you're reasoning ability is way out of my league.
Hyperbole much. Yes, the 1% are exploiting everyone but the 10% (that's us) are exploiting the 90%. I don't know about you but I have a great pension (from the NHS), a warm house, food to eat and I know disabled people who have care packages that enable them to get out and live their lives too. I could get a doctor's appointment very easily if i so wished, though my ambition is never to need one for a chronic illness. Shooting everyone who does well out of pharma, animal testing, neoliberalism, fossil fuels and expoitation of the Global majority would mean shooting the entire western middle class. We'd be left with those with the biggest guns. And pulling the whole lot down means pulling down the welfare state with it and looking after the disabled and elderly ourselves.
The 'elites' are very concerned about our concern for the planet- they don't want the whole lot of us rising up and hitting them where it really hurts- in their wallets- by cycling everywhere and going vegan- oh no that would never do. Hence the $billions being spent on hiding the blindingly obvious.
"I don't know about you but I have a great pension (from the NHS), a warm house, food to eat..."
In other words, your attitude can be summed up by "I'm all right Jack."
fwiw, I hove exactly $0 pension (except some day, if it hasn't gone bankrupt yet, I might get Old Age Security or some such miniscule assistance), but thankfully I do have a roof over my head and enough to eat.
I'll admit to being curious though about whether you have children or grand children. Do you think the "business as usual" world you seem to be advocating for will be as kind to them as the world you grew up in was to you?
Also, fwiw, I explicitly do not recommend "burn it all down" as a path forward. But neither do I recommend more of the same insanity that has led us to this precarious situation. Hence my original question:
"So, now what? A new governing paradigm? Think global, act local? A philosopher King a la Plato? A new/old/better religion?"
How does accepting that I'm in no way downtrodden, accepting my role in global inequality and the climate crisis and being horrified that murdering loved human beings is seen by some as any kind of solution mean that I think I'm alright, sod everyone else?
I don't advocate business as usual even though I don't recommend shooting people.
I'm vegan, I don't drive or fly, I love my friends and family. These are worthwhile things to do in and of themselves even though there isn't a future for humanity beyond a few decades.
"How does accepting that I'm in no way downtrodden, accepting my role in global inequality and the climate crisis and being horrified that murdering loved human beings is seen by some as any kind of solution mean that I think I'm alright, sod everyone else?"
What else could it possibly mean? You are all right. You have "a great pension (from the NHS), a warm house, food to eat and I know disabled people who have care packages..." (wow!). You can "get a doctor's appointment very easily if i so wished" and presumably easily pay for it, but apparently it is totally superfluous because you are (fortunately) entirely healthy.
At the same time "There is no time for a new religion, solution nor global paradigm of multilateral degrowth. This is the time for courage."
Courage for what exactly? To complacently tolerate our immiseration? In addition to courage, how about advocating for change? Chnage to the intolerable circumstances too many of us around the world (including in the good ol' USA) find ourselves caught in? But no, according to you this is not the time for a new solution, and I say that's because you're all right.
Due to the risks involved, I’ve always respected foreign correspondents and especially admired those covering active war zones. Nevertheless, I feel that too much of contemporary ‘journalism’ is motivated more by a paycheck and publication (‘a buck and a byline’) than a genuine strive to expose thus challenge the corrupt powerful who abuse/exploit those with the least in this increasingly unjust global existence.
Also, while journalism’s traditional fundamental function is/was to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” to a noticeable degree there seems to have been a redefining, or even a reversal, as to what/who constitutes an “afflicted” and “the comfortable”.
As a good example, the new “afflicted” requiring news-media comforting may include an increasingly internationally criticized/unpopular Israeli government and Israel Defense Forces as they continue the slaughter of large numbers of Gazan non-combatants young and old, when in the past it would more likely and rightly have been Palestinian civilians, as the latter resist having their ancestral lands gradually annexed while being cleansed from it. It indeed is a modern-day David versus Goliath scenario.
Journalists with genuine integrity should and would tender their resignations and even publicly proclaim they can no longer help propagate their employer’s media product, whether it involves self-censored/missing coverage of a brutally-lopsided foreign war or that of domestic corporate corruption that will harm the populace.
Particularly with Israel’s onslaught against Gazan non-combatants young and old, heavily corporatized Western mainstream news-media have been, to put it mildly, editorially emasculated thus negligent. Though it may be due to orders from ownership headquarters and therefore beyond their control, our (Canada's) news-media are serious offenders.
The most notable example is The National Post. One would really have to read it to believe it, especially since the Oct.7 Hamas attack on Israel. It epitomizes an extreme example of an echo chamber promoting unconditional support for the Israeli state, including its very-long-practiced cruelty towards the Palestinian people.
For example, a single-column story about a five-year-old American-Palestinian boy who was stabbed to death by the landlord of the residence in which he and his mother lived simply for being Palestinian was placed on page 5, while placed up high on the front page was a large photo (which accompanied a much larger story) with three Israeli teenage girls crying after their friends or family were kidnapped by Hamas gunmen.
More progressive outlets like Canada's other national newspaper, The Globe and Mail — progressive in regard to essentially following “woke” ideology — can be more deceptive with its essentially pro-Israel coverage and op/ed writing since 10/7. There seems to have been an attempt at appearing objective on this topic when it actually is not. (Maybe that actually makes the newspaper more insidious and therefore worse than The National Post, which is completely upfront with its intense bias, however disturbingly so.) ...
I believe that it’s the ethical/moral duty of Western journalists and editors to publicly expose the compromised news-media product and therefor its facilitator(s). By doing so, such brave journalists can at least then also proclaim they will no longer participate in its creation and/or dissemination.
Over decades, I’ve heard of too many cases of employees not standing up and doing what is necessary for the public and/or human(e) good, instead excusing themselves with something like: ‘I wanted/needed to keep this job; I have a family to support’. I’m afraid that — unless, of course, they were actually forced into coupling, copulating and procreating however many years before — such familial obligation status does not actually ethically or morally justify their willing involvement.
Quite frankly, journalists/editors with genuine integrity should and would tender their resignations and even publicly proclaim they can no longer help propagate their employer’s media product, whether it involves self-censored/missing coverage of a brutally lopsided foreign war or that of domestic corporate corruption that will harm the populace.
For anyone who may be interested, I made this comparison between what was happening in Israel to the Nazi regime in Germany. The parallels I thought were quite remarkable https://shadowlightblog.substack.com/p/gaza-genocide-a-lesson-wilfully-ignored
Many thanks, Barry.
Living, breathing and greatly suffering people on this atrocity-prone planet are [consciously or subconsciously] perceived as not being of equal value or worth to everyone else, when morally they all definitely should be. And it’s not hard for a conscience to do when one considers another an innately lower lifeform.
Human beings can actually be seen and treated as though they are disposable and, by extension, their suffering and death are somehow less worthy of external concern, sometimes even by otherwise democratic and relatively civilized nations.
In other words, the worth of such life will be measured by its overabundance and/or the protracted conditions under which it suffers; and those people can eventually receive meagre column inches on the back page of the First World’s daily news. It’s an immoral consideration of ‘quality of life’.
Meanwhile, with each news report of the daily death toll from unrelenting bombardment, I feel a slightly greater desensitization and resignation. I’ve noticed this disturbing effect with basically all major protracted conflicts internationally since I began regularly consuming news products in 1987.
Furthermore, it's sadly and even shamefully true that while some peoples have been brutally victimized throughout history a disproportionately large number of times, the victims of one place and time can and sometimes do become the victimizers of another place and time.
People should avoid believing, let alone claiming, that they are not capable of committing an atrocity, even if relentlessly pushed. Contrary to what is claimed or felt by many of us, deep down there’s a potential monster in each of us that, under the just-right circumstances, can be unleashed — and maybe even more so when convinced that ‘God is on our side’.
Human beings regard all other Earthlings, apart from our pets, as innately lower, disposable life forms. Though we know that they feel emotional and physical pain in the same way as we do; we subject millions of them to torture in the name of progress or something tasty to eat.
If this is indeed being a monster it is inside all us civilised people all day every day.
We live in a fascist state, governed by oligarchs who own the corporations, the politicians, and the media. Arguably not that different from so many of our fellows around the world, e.g. in China, Russia, or Saudi Arabia. Now what? Luigi Mangione gave one possible answer and the elites are terrified that others will come to similar conclusions; remember the French Revolution.
But burn it all down doesn't solve anything, it just substitutes a new set of problems for the old. So, now what? A new governing paradigm? Think global, act local? A philosopher King a la Plato? A new/old/better religion?
A few social/labor uprisings or revolutions notwithstanding, it seems the superfluously rich and powerful have always had the police and military ready to foremost protect their big-money/-power interests, even over the basic needs of the masses, to the very end.
Even today, the police and military can, and probably would, claim [using euphemistic or political terminology, of course] they had to bust heads to maintain law and order as a priority during major demonstrations, especially those against economic injustices.
Indirectly supported by a complacent, if not compliant, corporate news-media, which is virtually all mainstream news-media, the absurdly unjust inequities/inequalities can persist.
“If voting changed anything [in favor of the weak/poor/disenfranchised] they’d have made it illegal.” (‘Calamity’ Jane Bodine in ‘Our Brand Is Crisis’)
Giant grocer corporations have been raking-in record profits, year after year, while a record number of people have to choose between which necessities of life they can afford. To say that it feels unfair is a major understatement, but what can I or most other shoppers realistically do about it?
Up here, there still are many Canadians who hold the erroneous notion that they live and buy in a nation with truly competitive and therefore consumer-fair markets. But in reality, big corporations are able to get unaccountably even bigger, defying the very spirit of government oversight rules established to ensure healthy competition by limiting concentrated ownership — especially in regard to corporations selling and profiteering from the necessities of life, notably food. Those rules, however, are largely un-enforced by the government.
The heavily corporatized mainstream news-media, which is virtually all of it, has been editorially emasculated thus negligent when it comes to regularly investigating and exposing such societally consequential oversight-rule breaking. All of this is a problematically large part of a corpocratic existence fueled by elected officials getting indebted thus beholden to huge corporate entities, particularly due to their generous political monetary donations.
Meantime, way too many people, perhaps an all-time-high percentage, have to choose between which necessities of life they can afford. A very large and growing populace are increasingly too overworked, tired, worried and even rightfully angry about food and housing unaffordability thus insecurity for themselves or their family — largely due to insufficient income — to criticize or boycott Big Business/Industry for the societal damage it needlessly causes/allows, particularly when not immediately observable. And I doubt that this effect is totally accidental, as it greatly benefits the interests of insatiable corporate greed.
The more that such corporations make, all the more they want — nay, need — to make next quarterly. It’s never enough, yet the news-media will implicitly celebrate their successful greed, a.k.a. ‘stock market gains’.
fwiw I love this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD_eZg70Ms0 (Rich People by Carsie Blanton)
Mangione gave a possible answer? Are you mad? Shoot those who profit most from the system that all of us in the West benefit from? The French Revolution- yeah remember how that ended with the Reign of Terrorr? The 'elites' aren't worried about us, they're worried about multipolarity and the climate crisis. Which is why they spread Sinophobia and climate denial.
You're right, more burning isn't going to solve anything! There is no time for a new religion, solution nor global paradigm of multilateral degrowth. This is the time for courage.
The definition of insanity: "Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result."
"Shoot those who profit most from the system that all of us in the West benefit from?"
Seriously? Isn't the whole point is that a lot of people have come to the conclusion that the current political/economic system in the West is very much not to their benefit, but to the benefit of their oligarch overlords? The exploited, downtrodden, and simply neglected masses are reaching the end of their rope.
"The 'elites' aren't worried about us, they're worried about multipolarity and the climate crisis. Which is why they spread Sinophobia and climate denial."
Wait, are you saying the elites are concerned about the climate crisis and so they spread climate denial? Sorry, you're reasoning ability is way out of my league.
Hyperbole much. Yes, the 1% are exploiting everyone but the 10% (that's us) are exploiting the 90%. I don't know about you but I have a great pension (from the NHS), a warm house, food to eat and I know disabled people who have care packages that enable them to get out and live their lives too. I could get a doctor's appointment very easily if i so wished, though my ambition is never to need one for a chronic illness. Shooting everyone who does well out of pharma, animal testing, neoliberalism, fossil fuels and expoitation of the Global majority would mean shooting the entire western middle class. We'd be left with those with the biggest guns. And pulling the whole lot down means pulling down the welfare state with it and looking after the disabled and elderly ourselves.
The 'elites' are very concerned about our concern for the planet- they don't want the whole lot of us rising up and hitting them where it really hurts- in their wallets- by cycling everywhere and going vegan- oh no that would never do. Hence the $billions being spent on hiding the blindingly obvious.
"I don't know about you but I have a great pension (from the NHS), a warm house, food to eat..."
In other words, your attitude can be summed up by "I'm all right Jack."
fwiw, I hove exactly $0 pension (except some day, if it hasn't gone bankrupt yet, I might get Old Age Security or some such miniscule assistance), but thankfully I do have a roof over my head and enough to eat.
I'll admit to being curious though about whether you have children or grand children. Do you think the "business as usual" world you seem to be advocating for will be as kind to them as the world you grew up in was to you?
Also, fwiw, I explicitly do not recommend "burn it all down" as a path forward. But neither do I recommend more of the same insanity that has led us to this precarious situation. Hence my original question:
"So, now what? A new governing paradigm? Think global, act local? A philosopher King a la Plato? A new/old/better religion?"
No, I do not have a good answer to the question.
How does accepting that I'm in no way downtrodden, accepting my role in global inequality and the climate crisis and being horrified that murdering loved human beings is seen by some as any kind of solution mean that I think I'm alright, sod everyone else?
I don't advocate business as usual even though I don't recommend shooting people.
I'm vegan, I don't drive or fly, I love my friends and family. These are worthwhile things to do in and of themselves even though there isn't a future for humanity beyond a few decades.
"How does accepting that I'm in no way downtrodden, accepting my role in global inequality and the climate crisis and being horrified that murdering loved human beings is seen by some as any kind of solution mean that I think I'm alright, sod everyone else?"
What else could it possibly mean? You are all right. You have "a great pension (from the NHS), a warm house, food to eat and I know disabled people who have care packages..." (wow!). You can "get a doctor's appointment very easily if i so wished" and presumably easily pay for it, but apparently it is totally superfluous because you are (fortunately) entirely healthy.
At the same time "There is no time for a new religion, solution nor global paradigm of multilateral degrowth. This is the time for courage."
Courage for what exactly? To complacently tolerate our immiseration? In addition to courage, how about advocating for change? Chnage to the intolerable circumstances too many of us around the world (including in the good ol' USA) find ourselves caught in? But no, according to you this is not the time for a new solution, and I say that's because you're all right.
The big media is the voice of the Empire!
well done. the hypocrisy here is amazing
Not a whisper in the US media. I only learned of the report here on Substack.
Due to the risks involved, I’ve always respected foreign correspondents and especially admired those covering active war zones. Nevertheless, I feel that too much of contemporary ‘journalism’ is motivated more by a paycheck and publication (‘a buck and a byline’) than a genuine strive to expose thus challenge the corrupt powerful who abuse/exploit those with the least in this increasingly unjust global existence.
Also, while journalism’s traditional fundamental function is/was to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” to a noticeable degree there seems to have been a redefining, or even a reversal, as to what/who constitutes an “afflicted” and “the comfortable”.
As a good example, the new “afflicted” requiring news-media comforting may include an increasingly internationally criticized/unpopular Israeli government and Israel Defense Forces as they continue the slaughter of large numbers of Gazan non-combatants young and old, when in the past it would more likely and rightly have been Palestinian civilians, as the latter resist having their ancestral lands gradually annexed while being cleansed from it. It indeed is a modern-day David versus Goliath scenario.
Journalists with genuine integrity should and would tender their resignations and even publicly proclaim they can no longer help propagate their employer’s media product, whether it involves self-censored/missing coverage of a brutally-lopsided foreign war or that of domestic corporate corruption that will harm the populace.
Particularly with Israel’s onslaught against Gazan non-combatants young and old, heavily corporatized Western mainstream news-media have been, to put it mildly, editorially emasculated thus negligent. Though it may be due to orders from ownership headquarters and therefore beyond their control, our (Canada's) news-media are serious offenders.
The most notable example is The National Post. One would really have to read it to believe it, especially since the Oct.7 Hamas attack on Israel. It epitomizes an extreme example of an echo chamber promoting unconditional support for the Israeli state, including its very-long-practiced cruelty towards the Palestinian people.
For example, a single-column story about a five-year-old American-Palestinian boy who was stabbed to death by the landlord of the residence in which he and his mother lived simply for being Palestinian was placed on page 5, while placed up high on the front page was a large photo (which accompanied a much larger story) with three Israeli teenage girls crying after their friends or family were kidnapped by Hamas gunmen.
More progressive outlets like Canada's other national newspaper, The Globe and Mail — progressive in regard to essentially following “woke” ideology — can be more deceptive with its essentially pro-Israel coverage and op/ed writing since 10/7. There seems to have been an attempt at appearing objective on this topic when it actually is not. (Maybe that actually makes the newspaper more insidious and therefore worse than The National Post, which is completely upfront with its intense bias, however disturbingly so.) ...
I believe that it’s the ethical/moral duty of Western journalists and editors to publicly expose the compromised news-media product and therefor its facilitator(s). By doing so, such brave journalists can at least then also proclaim they will no longer participate in its creation and/or dissemination.
Over decades, I’ve heard of too many cases of employees not standing up and doing what is necessary for the public and/or human(e) good, instead excusing themselves with something like: ‘I wanted/needed to keep this job; I have a family to support’. I’m afraid that — unless, of course, they were actually forced into coupling, copulating and procreating however many years before — such familial obligation status does not actually ethically or morally justify their willing involvement.
Quite frankly, journalists/editors with genuine integrity should and would tender their resignations and even publicly proclaim they can no longer help propagate their employer’s media product, whether it involves self-censored/missing coverage of a brutally lopsided foreign war or that of domestic corporate corruption that will harm the populace.
I think people in the west know nothing about this genocide. As Zionist controlling the media there.
Anyone still paying the BBC licence?
Biting the hand that feeds it comes to mind