Recently I read George Orwell's original unpublished (some say suppressed) introduction to Animal Farm. In it he talks about how no one - and particularly the left - was willing to discuss the brutality of Stalin, because the Soviets were critical allies in the war effort, and the left was more or less head over heels in love with the possibilities presented by communism. But, more importantly he is talking about allowing a prevailing orthodoxy to remain unquestioned. Here is a quote. (I had to include the first sentence just because it is so descriptive of our current mass media)
The British press is extremely centralized, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."text
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http://home.iprimus.com.au/...]
The natural question that arises from this is, what are the unmentionable trousers of our time, and is it important to question our prevailing orthodoxy?
As much as I would like to leave that an open-ended question and hear what you think about it, - and I am interested in your thoughts - surprisingly, I also have an answer. It goes like this please sing along if you know the words.
The ever-expanding-market-driven-3%annual-growth-laz-a-fair-greed-is-good-dog-eating-dog-fixed-market-
captilist economy is killing us and most of the other forms of live here on this planet.
Here are a few examples:
· The United States is the weapons-are-us supermarket to the world. We sell more weapons annually then the next 14 weapons selling nations put together. We also give away and sell at deep discounts a whole bunch of used military equipment. Warfare is arguably the single most environmentally destructive practice that humans do, and I believe these weapons sales are a major contributor to it. See: [http://www.globalissues.org/...]
[http://www.fas.org/...]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/...]
· The US government has worked against almost every movement and government that has sprung up anywhere in the world that was dedicated to the betterment of it's citizenry, apparently in an effort to promote the business interests of our large corporations. It is not that the record doesn't exist of this behavior it just "does not do" to speak of it. From Iran's Mossadegh and Sukarno in Indonesia, Manley in Jamaica, Allende of Chile, and Arbenz of Guatemala, right on up through, Chavez in Venezuela and Aristide of Haiti, the story is very similar, although the reasons given vary, I believe Capitalism is at the heart of it. Search Wikipedia here is a start [http://en.wikipedia.org/...]
· The reasons cited by the Bush administration for not signing on to the Kyoto protocols were for the most part, that participating in these measures would be detrimental to US business interests. We are faced with one of the most life threatening events in human history and the immediate profits margins of the ultra wealthy few (and the need to keep our shell game economy afloat) are more important than the overall health of life on earth.
· We daily pour poisons in our soil and directly onto our food to create a temporary and unsustainable over abundance that gets dumped on foreign markets, (devastating their traditional farmers in the process) and ends up as subsidized corn syrup so we can super-size our children.
· We allow large corporations to "brand" our children with their products, using systems of indoctrination that connect to their lizard brain with sexually stereotyped titillation and ultra-violence. This market driven media uber-culture attempts to trump all the healthy values we want our children to carry with them into their future and the future of our society, in order to sell product and gain market share.
So there are five examples and of course there are many more that come easily to mind but that is probably enough for now.
So one wonders what was the consequence to a person in Victorian society, that dared to mention the emperors new trousers, and did naming the problem have a positive effect on sexism and sexual repression among their culture?