Sorry about the spelling all, but I hope you enjoy the content
~Sol~
Are we living in an Iron Cage?Long before I heard of Weber and his theories I grew up with this frightful visage looming over the prospect of coming history. What I did not understand was that my isnulated alternitive life had shelided me from what had already taken place within much of the world and that which was still marching steadily forward.
From McDonleds in Costa Rica to T.G.I. Friday's in Prauge the homonginzation of world culture continues. And it's stripping us of our basic humanty. Humans learn and grow primarly when they encounter something new, and our multinational corprate bearucries have been systimaticly rememoving all need for truely new experiences whever they find it. Consider, if you are able to go to the same restraunt and order the same thing in the same language on both sides of the ocaen and three continents without 'breaking a sweat' what kind of new oppertunites for learning does that provide? But it doesn't stop there, what happens to the 'consumer' (even the term it's self is an unfortunte capital/corprate margenlization) in the form of monochromatic experience and mediocir (at best) products. That is secondary to the effects on the working force. Those people who make whatever deep-fat-fried proten slab or plastic widget. They are treated increasingly as less valuable and more universally replaceable than even their product. Imagen for a moment that not only can anyone walking down the street in your country take your job but most people walking down the streets of some other contintent could do so as well. How deeply does it strip your cultural identiy when one of your primary rolls negates your sense of personal value, or indeed of the concept of you being a unique person. The degradation further continues as unions are destroyed or undercut in the multinational globelization within which we live and as oversight continues to mount. And there's the real rub, these beaurcratic National governing bodies, NGOs, and IGOs all have analysts who can (and do) tell them the truth... that people are not going to find this unnatural method of living conducive to happyness and thus are likely to object. Hence you see levels of military preeption abrod by our current Pax Amarican regime but much more subtily you see the national and internation oversight growing in areas such as civil liberties and econmics. Welfair is down, medical benifits are down, social security is failing, and fewer jobs offer any retirement and of those that do fewer offer one which is investment compensated for inflation to ensure a "living wage" after you leave the work force. We can (ironicly) turn to China for an example extream example of how this system is playing out. With a few elites benifiting deeply from the work of the masses and the specilists in key fields being romanced into colaberation by privlages and sweetheart deals. It is enough to make Marx and Engles spin in their graves. And then there's the oversight, the camras at every intersection in the U.K. and most cities with in the U.S.A. are just a couple of examples. The insertion of GPS into almost every cutting edge portable device (including cars in the case of OnStar) the surrender of Personal phone records for investigation without the justifications of charges or warrents. They also unwarrented (both in legal documents and in social justice) wire taps conducted by the present U.S. admisinstration. The FBI's "raptor" program which allows them to steal any prsonal e-mail (or other digital media transmitted via the world wide web) without warrent or comment. These are but examples of how the Panopticon is alive and well, as well as being a stark validation to the visions of people like George Orwell (1984) and Lois Lowry (The Giver) or perahps the more contemperary cenmia compostion Equlibreum (written and directed by Kurt Wimmer). To return to the point we must ask the qustion "why?", why is it that these massive buarcies invest so much in overwhelmingly massive oversight and intervention? Because they understand that from the frycook to the journist, from the cubicle to the campus, people would quickly manifest divergent (or as the burrcrats like to call them "devient") behvior patters if they were not in a consistant (perhaps even constant) state of apprenhenction over weather they are being watched and what reprisals this might bring. And make no mistake, when we live in a time where econmoic buracratic tycoons [George W. Bush, Dick Chaney for but two more prominten American examples] direct goverment buracrocy to arrest and detain forgen citizens for the precived intention of commiting a "crime" (not act for any sort which they admit, but intention) of comitting a crime (not a crime that is currently on any of our criminal or civil books, but excutivly decreed as a crime [See the C-Span Q&A regarding the Military tribunal legislation broadcast on 9/7/06]) and where the CIA holds people in undisclosed location engaging in unspecified "coersion" for unspecified lenghts of time [stie same C-Span broadcast as above]. A world in which Passports are "bugged" with tracking devices and National ID cards are on the horizon. A world where minute microchips are set in clothing, credit cards, and IDs for the sake of collecting market data without bother to ask any of the people for their oppinnions. In this world that fear of oversight and buracratic retaliation is a well founded one. In such a world George Orwell would say "caution becomes habbit and habbit becomes reflex and reflex becomes a way of life" and our current Phychologists and Nurobiologists would agree. In such a world as this I would say not only has Webers view of an Iron Cage come to pass, but the Bars are electrified.
