The Red Caddy by Charles Bowden

Author:Charles Bowden [Bowden, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2018-06-23T04:00:00+00:00

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Never before in history have slaves been so well fed, thoroughly medicated, lavishly entertained—but we are all slaves nonetheless. Our debased popular culture—television, rock music, home video, processed food, mechanical recreation, wallboard architecture—is the culture of slaves. Furthermore, the whole grandiose structure is self-destructive: by enshrining the profit motive (power) as our guiding ideal, we encourage the intensive and accelerating consumption of land, air, water—the natural world—on which the structure depends for its continued existence. A house built on greed will not long endure. Whether it’s called capitalism or socialism makes little difference. Both of these oligarchic, militaristic, expansionistic, acquisitive, industrializing, and technocratic systems are driven by the same motives; both are self-destroying. Even without the accident of nuclear war, I predict that the military-industrial state will disappear from the surface of the earth within a century. That belief is the basis of my inherent optimism, the source of my hope for the coming restoration of a higher civilization: scattered human populations modest in number that live by fishing, hunting, food-gathering, small-scale farming, and ranching, that gather once a year in the ruins of abandoned cities for great festivals of moral, spiritual, artistic, and intellectual renewal, a people for whom wilderness is not a playground but their native home.

New dynasties will arise, new tyrants will appear—no doubt. But we must and we can resist such recurrent aberrations by keeping true to the earth and remaining loyal to our basic animal nature. Humans were free before the word freedom became necessary. Slavery is a cultural invention. Liberty is life: eros plus anarchos equals bios.

“Long live democracy. Two cheers for anarchy.”

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