REVIEW:
Chris Hedges begins this lecture with a great quote, “In celebrity culture we destroy what we worship.” He goes onto describe the impact of corporatist structures on modern culture, properly identifying the pagan and idolatrous cornerstone of secular society today, an intellectualized materialism based on the same precepts and sensorial metaphysical underpinnings of all pagan societies before it, there is an applicable analogy here that marks a series of concepts not foreign from the dominant norms of Muslim societies and Muslim households as well. Unfortunately, the majority of us have long given up on the belief that Islam serves a greater social purpose. Instead, the shopping malls, complexes, and corporate advertising campaigns that represent the idols of consumerist culture so too represent an equivalent reality of the Muslim world. Therefore, much of what is said applies to Muslims and Muslim nations as well.
The principles underlying corporatist structures deem impossible any “greater good” from coming about. Free market adherents would argue that pursuit of selfish interest indirectly contributes to a greater good, but corporations are totalitarian and cannot produce anything productive for society other than profit; a axiom of principality that makes acquiring profit a religion and thereby reduces the human experience to financial gain. As institutions they swallow belief in a greater good and by their very underlying conceptions exist only to produce positive returns for shareholders and vested interests. Therefore, such institutions cannot act on any other principle regardless of the occasional good-intentioned individual found inside their corporate conclaves. Therefore, the lecture is about the byproduct of these principles on real human beings, about the corporatization of human beings.
The critical mind must realize that we have so-too corporatized the religion of Islam, over hundreds of years we have added and subtracted from the preserved message and principles included in the Quran. Defining our success based on the status we have attained, looking for conformal acceptance in a world of norms that contradict the tenants of our religion, and stuck in between a historical context of immigration for freedom of economic gain while oftentimes ignoring and feeling unaccountable for a reality of authoritarianism and oppression at home. It the sense of accountability to all of humanity that make non-Muslims like Chris Hedges important voices for us to hear.
The principles of Islam have been corporatized: Ramadan is now less about restraint than consumption, Hajj a voyage commoditized as part of the tourism industry, seeking knowledge a pathway to marketing one’s self in ways that guarantee acceptance by the mainstream but only if one is willing to necessarily ignore some of the most important concepts of Islam. The list goes on, but most remain ignorant and ill-concerned with standing up to this increasing reality and adoption of pagan concepts in the norms of our societies, As if we can so too, separate religion from state, we seek to maintain the ritualization of religion while ignoring the substance of simplicity in worldly dabbling in exchange for depth of contemplation and development of the soul and mind, something that is impossible when interacting with the corporate machine.
Hedges goes through the transformation of democratic society as ‘Inverted totalitarianism’ – represented by a massive public relations campaign as statist propaganda – Similarly, our monks and rabbis call to the same simple expression of purpose in life. The science of objectives of the shariah (ilm-maqaasid-al shariah) is adulterated in order to hearken the call to conformity to what has become normal in a secular world. The principle of maslaha (or seeking the greater good) is misunderstood and invoked by leaders to designate “the believers” as part and parcel participants in the corporatist model and mandating consent to the corporatist wars that just happen to be waged on Muslim soil these days via silence. It is this silence that is that is also part and parcel of what the corporate machine desires. American Islam increasingly represents the commoditization of our religion, a path of altering the tenets of Islam so that they are suitable to Western norms and desires while ignoring the very many problems of the contemporary order, the hypocrisy of the theorized values of western, secular society. In reality, this modern, “American Islam” is marketed in the same way Gap sells jeans manufactured in sweat shops to ignorant consumers. With the rhetoric of the powerful trying to convince people that the US is not at war with Islam, few realize that for that to be true they have got to create an Islam suitable to their needs, a version of our religion that accepts the same corporatist, pagan norms dominate our economies, that we accept despots and dictators loyal to multinational firms and preventing true freedom of choice and expression from asserting themselves in Muslim societies.
A quote that is particularly profound can be hear near the end. Hedges, who lost his job at the NY Times for speaking against the Iraq War at a college graduation ceremony explains,
“Totalitarianism, George Orwell pointed out is not so much an age of faith but an age of schizophrenia, a society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial, Orwell wrote. That is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud and force is soon all the elites will have left. We can march in Copenhagen, we can join Bill McKiven’s worldwide day of climate protests, we can compost in our backyard, and hang our laundry out to dry. We can write letters to our elected officials, and vote for Obama and chant ‘Yes We Can’, but the power elite is impervious to the charade of democratic participation. Power is in the hands of moral and intellectual trolls who are ruthlessly creating a system of neo-feudalism and killing the ecosystem that sustains life, and appealing to their better nature or seeking to influence the internal levels of power will no longer work. Yet, in the face of this catastrophe mass culture assures us that if we close our eyes, if we visualize what we want, if we have faith in ourselves, if we tell God that we believe in miracles, if we tap into our inner strength, if we grasp that we are truly exceptional, if we focus on happiness, our lives will be harmonious and complete. This cultural retreat into illusion, whether peddled by positive psychologists, Hollywood, Oprah or Christian preachers is a form of magical thinking. It turns worthless mortgages and debt into wealth. It turns the destruction of our manufacturing base into an opportunity for growth. It turns alienation and anxiety into a cheerful conformity, and it turns a nation that wages illegal wars, and administers offshore penal colonies where it administers torture into the greatest democracy on Earth.”
While we spend the majority of our time concentrating on separating ourselves from the kuffar, while at the same time imitating them in their blind ignorance and allegiance to the falsified notions and oppressive, dominant norms of the day. We would do better to recognize that we have adopted many of the same views. We would also do better were we to attempt to revive some of the critical thought and sensible critique that is evident in discussions like these. We need Muslim speakers, authors and activists that attempt to correlate the responsibility to act for justice and truth to a moral obligation mandatory on us all.
At one point Hedges says that, “America’s most dangerous enemies are not Islamic Radicals but those that sold us the perverted ideology of free market capitalism and globalization.” Likewise we suffer from an internal hypocrisy that seems to dominate the age. It is time we join the conversation and opposition to corporate globalization, but first we must seek to understand the principles that challenge its existence. They are the principles we read every time we pick up the Quran, the principles we glaze over and ignore as we separate knowledge from implementation. In conclusion, Mr. Hedges remarks about the importance of acting with a moral imperativeness that this system must be fought even if the outcome looks bleak… indeed this is the condition of humanity at large – the lacking sense of moral responsibility plagues us all. The sense of complacency and lack of courage to formulate alternatives and fight for the cause of justice haunts us as well. We should all become activists and voices like Chris Hedges, concerned and caring, yet rational and tactful in how approach the obstacles.
This video gets 4/5 stars and is definitely recommended. Feel free to comment about your own interpretations by clicking on the comment button below.
