The Matrix

My friend Joe Bageant has been living in exile down in Belize for a little while. His most recent essay is a thoughtful (and very, very funny) indictment of American consumer culture and its lack of sustainability. Unfortunately, Americans are not known for their selfless nor are they prone to naval gazing, which explains why the Dalai Lama quipped a few years ago that Americans had “perfected Samsara”. All of our electronic diversions and digital entertainment have left us bloated and lethargic, in a state of complete delusion and almost willful ignorance about the dangers posed by a rapidly increasing world population and dwindling resources. Here’s Joe:

“Mainly though, aware Americans are watching and waiting for someone else to make an important move. Guts are nonexistent in Americans these days, programmed out of us during the posh captivity of the "cheap oil fiesta" that drove our grotesque and brief civilization. Still, if ever there were a time to show some guts, it's now. Not by protesting ­ -- which has become a security state supervised liberal pussy sport -- but by giving up the material life, the consumer life. Damned near all of it. Including all those leftie and alternative books from Amazon -- sitting on our asses reading and drinking green tea just because we can afford to is just another type of inaction and consumerism. It's the only real act of protest possible by the prisoners of our consumption driven monolith. True, you'll be just one iPodless and carless little guy throwing a single stone at the United States of Jabba the Hutt. But assuming you're still capable of any kind of life after the stellazine mind conditioning we've all been administered for past 40 years, I've got folding cash that says you will own your life in a way that seemed previously impossible. Hanging onto or chasing the bling is over with anyway, as dead as the economy. The Olive Garden and Circuit City are still open, true, but only because the hair and nails still grow on Jabba's corpse. Would somebody please quit pretending he's alive and yank the feeding tube?”

Yanking the feeding tube. A great visual that conjures up images of Neo in the Matrix after he swallowed the red pill.. We are all like little Neos, safely wrapped in our cocoons being pumped full of food while our warmth and humanity is being harvested to feed our machine overlords. Except in our reality our overlords aren’t machines (unless you consider the system of international capitalism to be a machine), our overlords are our own greed and complacency. Unless enough of us wake up and swallow the red pill, our planet is fucked and all of us along with it.