FInal Paper!!!!!!!!

The topic for AWOL students is - "How I make sense of the American Way of Life". You should address some specific examples of US practices (government, capitalism, birth, health care, economic inequality, food, energy) and connect them to each other and to deeper underlying patterns.

Some starter suggestions and questions:
You should share your orientation towards the American Way of Life - do you resist it? Enjoy it? Enjoy and resist different aspects? What aspects of the mainstream American Way of Life account for its global dominance and dominance here in the U.S.? What aspects of the American Way of Life are particularly tragic or dumb? How did the essential aspects of the American Way of Life develop and where are we headed? Please include some quotes from your own or others' earlier work that expresses strongly what you believe or what you don't (any longer) believe.



As many Americans have probably realized, our country is in trouble. Some blame it on the mortage crisis, others on the past administration, etc... There are many different theories on what is wrong, although I would have to argue that many of them are shortsighted. There is one fundamental issue with America and all other industrialized societies; since we have all grown so comfortable with having machines and the poor do everything for us we consider it unsanitary or demeaning to perform such lowly tasks. Thus, we are unwilling to alter our status of life to anything other than what it currently is. This staunch inflexibility is what will lead to our downfall...

This issue permeates every aspect of our culture, be it food, housing, birth, medical insurance, our outlook on social wellbeing, or transportation. Having looked at many of these aspects in this class I feel that I can rightfully proclaim that they bear certain similarities to one another. In short, we are bent on preserving our individual comfort regardless of the cost, and most of us will continue living alienated, superficial, and overindulgent lifestyles similar to the ones we now lead regardless of how much we know to be wrong with our way of life.

I recently read "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, and in the end I walked away with one solitary insight. Not how to combat an enemy in mountanous territory nor how to use an enemy's strengths to their own disadvantage, but rather how to lead. The fundamental message of the book, aside from all the war mumbo jumbo, is that if the
"base and superstructure" of a system are sound and with good intention then all that proceeds it will follow suit. Think about it; if you are good to your troops and lead them with morality and honor, they will follow you and do as you please. If the nature of your leadership is characterized by selfishness then your troops will be selfish. The same can be said of any system, ours included. Now lets take a nice, close look at the U.S. and the groundwork that provides the foundation for our entire system. All wealth is based on the primitive accumulation of capital; A hoarding of valuable natural resources or other useful sources of production. Our "civilized" ancestors exploited the natural land for crops and enslaved black people, all of which provided our country with its first source of income. So one can rightfully assume that all that came to pass prior to this bears many similarities to our past. It is here that we first soughed the seeds of our own destruction.

Since the industrial revolution every aspect of our culture has become massively mechanical; we produce food on a massive scale, we have mass media to entertain us, we have chemically synthesized medicine to fix every tiny ailment, and we operate on a universally massive scale that stifles the humanity within us all. We all have to work like well oiled machines in order to get by; god forbid we should show any sign of emotion. We aren't dealt with on an individual basis and thus, generalities are made and we are all treated exactly the same when in reality we aren't.

I'll start first with the American way of birth: Supposedly, upon turning three infants lose all memory of past events in their lives, but the impact of our birth stays eternally with us. Something as simple as being born in a bath-tub could have a profound effect on ones experience. So one could probably see why people feel the need to manipulate every little factor. What other miniscule factors could alter the life of a child? In our society, natural birth is looked down upon by mothers and Obs alike and all the while people are becoming more and more reliant on medical technology. But why when our own bodies provide us with all the tools necessary to give birth to a child. Just as we rely on our corrupt politicians to straighten things out we rely on doctors to heal us. Yet in doing so we lead ourselves astray and lose sight of the ultimate importance of birth. The Techno-medical way of birth alienates us from our bodies and perpetuates the same mindless capitalist system that is the driving force behind the rest of our culture.

Looking at birth statistics, mothers, more often than not, use epidurals during labour to relieve themselves of pain. However, evidence proves that epidurals drug the baby as well which can make it reluctant to breast feed, an important factor in the mother child bonding process. Breast feeding soon after birth helps the mother to release oxytocin, a “bonding” chemical, that the child then absorbs into his body through the breast milk. If mothers are willing to sacrifice their bodies and their entire lives for their unborn children, one would assume they would be willing to endure a few hours of pain to ensure the healthy and un-stoned birth of their baby. This being said, why then do most mothers use epidurals and other birth intervention drugs? It’s not that I believe that most mothers don’t love their babies, but there has to be something, aside from the pain, that would encourage a mother to take such a risk.
Being fairly familiar with the way our culture works I feel that I can adequately assess what may possess people to use these drugs. Who other than the multi-billion dollar business that holds the lives of millions of Americans at stake for money; big pharmaceutical companies, the puppet masters that tug us whichever way best suits them.

Its astounding to see how much Capitalism and the profit motive permeate our culture to the point where people designated to provide us remedies and treatments deceitfully trick us into paying for drugs and procedures that could potentially harm or affect the life of an unborn child. Orgasmic birth is a natural birthing method that, as the name entails, turns the process of birth into an ecstatic and beautiful orgasm. I mean, compared to the alternative of having your feet put up in sturrups in a cold hospital environment you'd think that any woman would jump at the chance to have an orgasmic birth. But we have been conditioned into believing that the world of sex and birth must be kept seperate. Also, instead of allowing the mother the intimacy of their own home, doctors have been taught to encourage the mechanical, clockwork hospital environment.

If the majority of us are brought into this world via machine, then we ourselves will grow to be little carbon copy, atomaton droids bent on upholding the same system that beckoned us into existence. And we quite obviously do. After being born into a mechanical world we accept it and live it as if it were natural. One thing we Americans do "naturally" is shop. In fact we shop so much that even our religious holidays are plagued by capitalism. On December 25th of every year, people around the world celebrate the birth of the lord Jesus Christ with decorated evergreen trees, candy filled over-sized stockings, and of course, gifts. It is a time of giving, a time of love and goodwill towards fellow man, and don’t forget jolly old Santa Clause with his big white beard, red fluffy suit, dangerously large paunch, and enormous sack of gifts. To emulate this pudgy, jovial man people stuff their faces with calorie-dense foods and fritter away their yearly salaries on plastic shit mostly made in China. Yes, I’m talking about Christmas, the one time of the year where it’s considered ok to buy, eat, and drink (ironically) to excess.
Ideally, Christmas is a winter wonderland filled with joy and happiness and morbidly obese men squeezing their way down chimneys with bags filled with colorfully wrapped gifts for Jack and Sally. But, as one could expect, this is hardly the reality most face come December 25th. For me, the Christmas season brought nothing of the sort. Several days before Christmas I accompanied my father on a trip to Macy’s in hopes of finding evidence to use in this analysis. It was a very white Christmas at Macy’s. I got what I expected, people crowded together cursing under their breath at how crowded it was, lines of exhausted white people stretched throughout the store, each one tapping their feet, waiting to purchase Christmas gifts. Workers uselessly stationed at random places throughout the building giving samples of cologne and only increasing the general intensity of the store. When the people on line finally reached their destination, the look on their faces was priceless, or worth as much as they were spending. In short, the place was an absolute mob-scene, Macy’s as the scene and the consumers as the mob. We can't even have a merry, merry Christmas without all our hard earned cash on crap that the media machine tells us to buy.

Worst of all is that in the end we really don't have much of a say in what we buy, at least in regards to food. Our crops are sprayed with pesticide so that that very same poison is hardwired into their genetic structure. Worst of all is that we willingly put this crap into our body's, not just in regards to plants. In fact, I'd say that pesticides are the least of your average Americans worries, seeing as most people here don't eat nearly enough fruits or veggies. Instead, we eat chemically synthesized foods with nondescript ingredients. That there is one of our largest problems in regards to eating; we don't know what goes into most of what we eat. All we know is calories, fat, sugar, and carbs. I was reading the ingredients off of a can of soda my brother had just purchased and not one of the ingredients made sense to me; whats sorbitol? whats high fructose corn syrup? Whats potassium benzoate? and the list goes on and on... But sadly, this is our idea of the food world; we entrust massive companies like Coka Cola and Mc Donalds with our diets and leave it to them to not poison us. So as you can clearly see, it is out of our hands while we sit back and let others decide what is put into our slobbery gullets. At least Hunter Gatherers knew what they were eating.

The rest of the food industry is no different. Our meat is more or less factory raised, and treated inhumanely as a result. Most meals are packed full of this tortured meat and processed produce that has been sold to us by the big food corporations. The act of eating has become factory like. Hell, kids are told now that our bodies are like factories. What are they supposed to believe?

...And just like a Hummer, what does our entire country run on? OIL! Who'd think that this black, tarry, noxious fluid would literally pave the way to our peak and our ultimate demise? Certainly not the creators of the first oil well, nor the many individuals who first used their product. In this day and age, however, we all know full well that oil is bad for the environment and how incredibly limited of a resource it is, so one would assume we would do something to stop tearing apart the world around us like a spoiled infant with tinker toys.

First off, I'd like to establish this one fact: EVERYTHING IS RUN AND CREATED BY OR BY USING OIL IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER. The Hummer drivers aren't the only ones at fault; even many of those so called health nuts that work out at the local YMCA contribute; they buy nylon exercise outfits to allow for flexibility (nylon being a derivative of oil), they buy shoes with rubber soles which are also made out of rubber, and they buy bottled drinks on the fly because canteens require commitment that they aren't quite prepared to give simply because they are cumbersome and once you are done working out you have to carry it around, at which point it is no longer of use or wanted. The point being that we all contribute. Hell, even using water requires oil to filter and heat. Its truly inescapable.

Now lets take a country as massive as ours; just think how much oil it takes to run things...evaluating everything in our daily lives that is somehow related to oil is no small task. According to the documentary "A Crude Awakening" the U.S. uses 25% of the worlds oil despite the fact that we make up a whopping 3% of the world population. Shocking, right? And worst of all is that its not just us doing it; the majority of people in any industrialized country go through life with blinders on, ignoring all the shit that goes on out of pure convenience, entirely disregarding the obvious effects on the natural world.

Peak oil is the theory that the peak of our oil production "coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted" (Life After The Oil Crash, Matthew David Savinar) Once we reach this peak oil production continuously decreases while cost simultaneously increases. Because we are a constantly growing nation, both in regards to population and the economy, demand for oil will certainly increase and we will need an even greater amount to satisfy our thirst. The U.S. reached peak oil in 1971 and since then the theory has held true. Of course we, the people, haven't actually seen this, after all we are still producing more and more crap each year. We leach oil from other countries to sustain ourselves, and what do we have to show for it? We produce very little of anything and most of the goods we buy are from foreign countries.

But what would we ever do with out oil in this day and age? Nothing. We simply cannot do without oil since it is now firmly ingrained in every aspect of our existence. The real worry, however, is not so much that we will run out, but that our world supplies will diminish to the point where we will no longer be able to sustain our status of life. "In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him." I like how he characterized America as this tremendous, obviously overindulgent man. The main point here being, that this lifestyle is unsustainable.

Yet what do we do? Millions upon millions of Americans continue driving and buying plastic despite knowing how it will affect the earth. Even when the world spells it out for them in the weather and in the news people still don't take a hint. But as the theory of entropy states, all societies will inevitably decline and degenerate.

We can see that this theory has held strong throughout the entire history of human kind; the mayans fell, The Roman empire fell, china has fallen several times...Every past civilization has been reduced to ruins, whey then do we feel that we can preserve what we now have, especially with all the many new complexities our system has placed on us. We no longer have just sticks and rocks, nor do we have only our own seperate islands at our disposal; we have the entire world at our finger tips. Its not just us exploiting our own local natural resources anymore, no, we can now take from the rest of the world because everything, the earth included is treated like a commodity. This is made especially clear in the case of the Polynesian inhabitants of Easter Island. In order to build the monumental statues off of which they have been made famous, the Polynesians cut down trees to construct lifting mechanisms, for the strength of no man nor group of men was enough to lift the tremendous statues. To build more they had to cut down more trees, and for a while they could sustain this ideal, but as time bore on and the trees steadily decreased in number their land already reflected the impact that they themselves had caused. And thus their society fell apart; the people overthrew the chiefs, toppled the statues that they had sacrificed so much to build, and people fled or died.

There are obvious parallels between these two different circumstances, the main one being the rapid depletion of natural resources to uphold a certain standard to which they held themselves and the society around them, the standard in this case being the statues. History has told us that any society that exploits mother nature to such a degree will collapse, yet we still follow our ancestors with the misguided optimism of a pack of freerange cattle being led into a truck to the slaughterhouse.

After reading most of these articles and hearing of our disgusting, gold-digging affair with petroleum I feel that I can proclaim with the utmost certainty that our civilization is going to fall and we're taking the rest of the world with us. God can send all the plague and pestilence that he wants; one way or another, no matter what religious deity we pray to, our addiction to oil will be our downfall.

While investing and utilization of alternative sources of energy such as sunlight and wind could definitely improve our current situation and provide us with something to fallback on I believe that it is only prolonging the collapse...that and you can't build bottles out of wind or sunlight. Also, our country has so firmly embedded oil in its structure that switching to another more expensive source on which to fuel our country would not likely fly. Do you really think people would give up their hummers for some dinky looking electric car? Do you think that people would be willing to stop buying their morning bottle of water? I think people wont be willing to alter their way of living until the reprecussions of their actions are pointing a a big fat GAT at their porky fucking heads, at which point it will be too late for us. And as for reverting to a more primitive lifestyle, I think we will keep on searching for ways to mimic what we currently have, and each time we find away entropy will follow through once again. Its the nature of the world, especially in our highly mechanical culture that depends on this limited natural resource to survive.

I see the American way of life as an unchanging and unsustainable drill, careening its way to the very real magma-filled core of our existence. Once it hits and we all finally realize the reality of our situation it will be too late to save us. History has made it crystal clear to us that all civilizations will diminish and collapse as entropy sets in and we steadily eat away at our precious natural resources. Blame it on the human consciousness, blame it on selfishness, blame it on our ability to adapt to any given environment, whatever it is, industrial humans have lost sight of the human aspect of existence and we have been reduced to mechanical drones, operating within the confines of an unstable system. In order to change our system we would need to alter our entire world outlook, but until we do that we will continue on, searching for ways to prolong our reign while simultaneously trying to uphold our specific standard of life. Its like fueling a fire with the logs from your own cabin.