The Chilian Miners

2010_10_17 The Chilean Miners

The Chilean Miners, all 33 of them, are above ground again and trying to adjust to their new-found fame. They were liberated from their temporary tomb in less than 24 hours and certainly must have felt reborn or at least that they had been given a second chance at life. They all wore dark glasses as they emerged from the depths to protect their eyes from the sun. The world marveled at their courage and survival and everyone doffed their hats at the ingenuity of the folks who saved them by knowing what had to done to get them out from the bowels of the earth.

The next chapter for them may prove more difficult than their incarceration in the mine. There are numerous pressures on them already, individually and as a group, as many journalists are clamoring for pictures and an interview. TV people want a piece of the action. There are movie and books deals to consider. Some Chilean millionaire has deposited $10,000 in every man’s bank account to help them through the first several weeks of freedom. The government has pledge to take of their health concerns for at least the next six months. They are wanted around the world, literally, as their story has become the story of the 21st century, certainly the best feel-good story that one can imagine. (In contrast, there was an underground explosion in a Chinese mine yesterday, with 16 miners killed, and the event wasn’t even reported on the news in China. Who cares about the loss of 16 individuals when your population is 1.4 billion people? ) But some other miners are beginning to feel the trauma of the ordeal and are beginning to experience nightmares. My guess would be that the end result of this post-rescue hoopla will be a situation that will eventually resemble the bad outcome experienced by so many Lottery winners. The miners won’t have the tools or the experience to handle the onslaught of their sudden fame. Nonetheless, there’s no denying that they did a remarkable thing, surviving like moles underground for 70 days, and the engineers that got them out were equally fantastic on their end of the deal. It will long be a heroic moment to remember.

I have been slowly working my way though Rifkin’s book THE EMPATHIC CIVILIZATION which I am convinced has to be regarded as an important book. It has a Grand Design and its intention are noble—to suggest there is still time to save humankind by embracing the notion of empathy as basic to the human condition. I have been reading the book in an on-again off-again fashion, knocking off 25 pages here and as few as 10 pages there. Currently I am up to page 365 and the section called “The Psychological Consciousness in a Postmodern Existential World.” What he had to say about the Romantic Era was interesting, specifically, it gave great impetus to the virtue of caring for others, as if they were the first Liberals on the scene in the West. Rifkin calls the era “a true revolution in the history of consciousness.”

I call the book a Grand Design because of the large amount of ground he covers, from the Ancient world to the present, all of it looked at from the dual perspective of empathy and entropy, the twins of human progress, like the positive and negative polarities of human reality, the generative contraries. As history has progressed empathy has played an increasingly important role in the development of civilization, and Rifkin now sees and affirms it as the answer to Global Consciousness in a world in crisis. That does make sense to me as I am the type who easily identifies with the pain and suffering of others, and it seems to me, that if that capacity was more wide spread, of reasonable depth, and totally authentic, we’d be a lot better off. But the crisis we are in, at least in this country, is the growing power of our corporate overlords…hell, I remember Saul Bellow before he died warning us that the individual was no longer the focus of our culture; the Corporation now was…and Norman Mailer used to refer to the U.S. as “Corporation Land,” as far back as the late sixties. Now things are even worse, with the recent CITIZENS UNITED Supreme Court decision which allows corporations to spend all they want on the candidates of their choice and they don’t have to declare the amounts or who they are. When you combine that decision with the anger and prejudice on the far right, and the likelihood that the Republicans are going to make significant gains in November, we are in deep shit. Now that they can buy politicians by the handful they are nearing the pinnacle of their power. It is difficult to image what could stop them. They can do pretty much what they want. They could have a lock on Congress by 2016, perhaps even earlier.

The next several years with be decisive in this consolidation of power. We have reached the point of wealth triumphant; a cabal of Multinational Corporations is ready to actually contemplate taking over, while maintaining a look of normality, a Congress full of empty suits that do their bidding while spouting patriotic gore in speeches written for them by clusters of bought specialists. With the masses in a state of perpetual ignorance, being continually fed the Big Lie and soothed by legalized pot and other illusory or pacifying chemicals. NFL football would be even more popular than it is today, even more of gladiator sport than it is today, and the entertainment industry would do its part to keep the masses tranquilize and cooperative. The rich and their minions would live in gated communities that are highly fortified within these ‘zones of exception,’ having all the pleasures and distractions the rich need to be content. Some form of Oligarchy would be in force, composed of CEOs of various corporations. They would represent the ruling class. Their job would be to establish a servile society, clusters of workers who would be kept docile and in line. The Military Establishment would of course be their right arm of the Ruling Class, the necessary enforcers and the institution that would have to recruit the fresh blood for the Armed Forces, which have the aura of an elite force. They would go along with the ruling Oligarchy because it would be to their benefit; it would bestow high social status. The media will be their spokesman too, and progressives will be the first group weeded out, perhaps jailed or otherwise suppressed.

I don’t see any way to stop this from happening.