Many
modern people, on the other hand, are
disturbed by the prospect of
death, as is shown by the amount of effort
they expend trying to
maintain their physical condition,
appearance and health. We argue
that this is due to unfulfillment resulting
from the fact that they
have never put their physical powers to any
use, have never gone
through the power process using their bodies
in a serious way. It is
not the primitive man, who has used his body
daily for practical
purposes, who fears the deterioration of
age, but the modern man, who
has never had a practical use for his body
beyond walking from his car
to his house. It is the man whose need for
the power process has been
satisfied during his life who is best
prepared to accept the end of
that life.
Not everyone in industrial-technological society suffers from
psychological problems. Some people even profess to be quite satisfied
with society as it is. We now discuss some of the reasons why people
differ so greatly in their response to modern society.
78. First, there doubtless are differences in the strength of the
drive for power. Individuals with a weak drive for power may have
relatively little need to go through the power process, or at least
relatively little need for autonomy in the power process. These are
docile types who would have been happy as plantation darkies in the
Old South. (We don't mean to sneer at "plantation darkies" of the Old
South. To their credit, most of the slaves were NOT content with their
servitude. We do sneer at people who ARE content with servitude.)
79. Some people may have some exceptional drive, in pursuing which
they satisfy their need for the power process. For example, those who
have an unusually strong drive for social status may spend their whole
lives climbing the status ladder without ever getting bored with that
game.
Another way in which people satisfy their need for the power
process is through surrogate activities. As we explained in paragraphs
38-40, a surrogate activity that is directed toward an artificial goal
that the individual pursues for the sake of the "fulfillment" that he
gets from pursuing the goal, not because he needs to attain the goal
itself. For instance, there is no practical motive for building
enormous muscles, hitting a little ball into a hole or acquiring a
complete series of postage stamps. Yet many people in our society
devote themselves with passion to bodybuilding, golf or stamp
collecting. Some people are more "other-directed" than others, and
therefore will more readily attack importance to a surrogate activity
simply because the people around them treat it as important or because
society tells them it is important. That is why some people get very
serious about essentially trivial activities such as sports, or
bridge, or chess, or arcane scholarly pursuits, whereas others who are
more clear-sighted never see these things as anything but the
surrogate activities that they are, and consequently never attach
enough importance to them to satisfy their need for the power process
in that way. It only remains to point out that in many cases a
person's way of earning a living is also a surrogate activity. Not a
PURE surrogate activity, since part of the motive for the activity is
to gain the physical necessities and (for some people) social status
and the luxuries that advertising makes them want.
By "freedom" we mean the opportunity to go through the power
process, with real goals not the artificial goals of surrogate
activities, and without interference, manipulation or supervision from
anyone, especially from any large organization. Freedom means being in
control (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) of
the life-and-death issues of one's existence; food, clothing, shelter
and defense against whatever threats there may be in one's
environment. Freedom means having power; not the power to control
other people but the power to control the circumstances of one's own
life. One does not have freedom if anyone else (especially a large
organization) has power over one, no matter how benevolently,
tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised. It is
important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness (see
paragraph 72).
The system HAS TO force people to behave in ways that are
increasingly remote from the natural pattern of human behavior. For
example, the system needs scientists, mathematicians and engineers. It
can't function without them. So heavy pressure is put on children to
excel in these fields. It isn't natural for an adolescent human being
to spend the bulk of his time sitting at a desk absorbed in study. A
normal adolescent wants to spend his time in active contact with the
real world. Among primitive peoples the things that children are
trained to do are in natural harmony with natural human impulses.
Among the American Indians, for example, boys were trained in active
outdoor pursuits -- just the sort of things that boys like. But in our
society children are pushed into studying technical subjects, which
most do grudgingly.
Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that amke
them terribley unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their
unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent
in our own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical
depression had been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe
that this is due to disruption fo the power process, as explained in
paragraphs 59-76. But even if we are wrong, the increasing rate of
depression is certainly the result of SOME conditions that exist in
today's society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people
depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect,
antidepressants area a means of modifying an individual's internal
state in such a way as to enable him to toelrate social conditions
that he would otherwise find intolerable. (Yes, we know that
depression is often of purely genetic origin. We are referring here to
those cases in which environment plays the predominant role.
. To start with, there are the techniques of surveillance. Hidden
video cameras are now used in most stores and in many other places,
computers are used to collect and process vast amounts of information
about individuals. Information so obtained greatly increases the
effectiveness of physical coercion (i.e., law enforcement).[26] Then
there are the methods of propaganda, for which the mass communication
media provide effective vehicles. Efficient techniques have been
developed for winning elections, selling products, influencing public
opinion. The entertainment industry serves as an important
psychological tool of the system, possibly even when it is dishing out
large amounts of sex and violence. Entertainment provides modern man
with an essential means of escape. While absorbed in television,
videos, etc., he can forget stress, anxiety, frustration,
dissatisfaction. Many primitive peoples, when they don't have work to
do, are quite content to sit for hours at a time doing nothing at all,
because they are at peace with themselves and their world. But most
modern people must be contantly occupied or entertained, otherwise the
get "bored," i.e., they get fidgety, uneasy, irritable.
There are many people who find it difficult or impossible to
get work, because for intellectual or psychological reasons they
cannot acquire the level of training necessary to make themselves
useful in the present system.) On those who are employed,
ever-increasing demands will be placed; They will need more and m ore
training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more
reliable, conforming and docile, because they will be more and more
like cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increasingly
specialized so that their work will be, in a sense, out of touch with
the real world, being concentrated on one tiny slice of reality.
Nature makes a perfect counter-ideal to technology for several
reasons. Nature (that which is outside the power of the system) is the
opposite of technology (which seeks to expand indefinitely the power
of the system). Most people will agree that nature is beautiful;
certainly it has tremendous popular appeal. The radical
environmentalists ALREADY hold an ideology that exalts nature and
opposes technology. [30] It is not necessary for the sake of nature to
set up some chimerical utopia or any new kind of social order. Nature
takes care of itself: It was a spontaneous creation that existed long
before any human society, and for countless centuries many different
kinds of human societies coexisted with nature without doing it an
excessive amount of damage. Only with the Industrial Revolution did
the effect of human society on nature become really devastating. To
relieve the pressure on nature it is not necessary to create a special
kind of social system, it is only necessary to get rid of industrial
society. Granted, this will not solve all problems. Industrial society
has already done tremendous damage to nature and it will take a very
long time for the scars to heal. Besides, even pre-industrial
societies can do significant damage to nature. Nevertheless, getting
rid of industrial society will accomplish a great deal. It will
relieve the worst of the pressure on nature so that the scars can
begin to heal. It will remove the capacity of organized society to
keep increasing its control over nature (including human nature).
Whatever kind of society may exist after the demise of the industrial
system, it is certain that most people will live close to nature,
because in the absence of advanced technology there is not other way
that people CAN live. To feed themselves they must be peasants or
herdsmen or fishermen or hunter, etc., And, generally speaking, local
autonomy should tend to increase, because lack of advanced technology
and rapid communications will limit the capacity of governments or
other large organizations to control local communities.
11. (Paragraphs 63, 82) Is the drive for endless material acquisition
really an artificial creation of the advertising and marketing
industry? Certainly there is no innate human drive for material
acquisition. There have been many cultures in which people have
desired little material wealth beyond what was necessary to satisfy
their basic physical needs (Australian aborigines, traditional Mexican
peasant culture, some African cultures). On the other hand there have
also been many pre-industrial cultures in which material acquisition
has played an important role. So we can't claim that today's
acquisition-oriented culture is exclusively a creation of the
advertising and marketing industry. But it is clear that the
advertising and marketing industry has had an important part in
creating that culture. The big corporations that spend millions on
advertising wouldn't be spending that kind of money without solid
proof that they were getting it back in increased sales. One member of
FC met a sales manager a couple of years ago who was frank enough to
tell him, "Our job is to make people buy things they don't want and
don't need." He then described how an untrained novice could present
people with the facts about a product, and make no sales at all, while
a trained and experienced professional salesman would make lots of
sales to the same people. This shows that people are manipulated into
buying things they don't really want.
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