Having taught in universities for the past 30 years, the assertions made in this article are spot on. As George Carlin said, the last thing that corporate managers and oligarchs want is a population capable of critical thinking. What most colleges and universities have devolved to is producing people who are just smart enough to operate the machines and manage the systems that make the corporations function, but not smart enough to ask why they are doing it in the first place. Education is now a means to fit people into their proper place in society in order to create even more economic wealth for the oligarchs, and to limit their awareness so that they stay in their place and do not make a fuss.
As a follow on to this article I highly recommend "Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life" by William Deresiewicz, https://billderesiewicz.com/books/excellent-sheep/
Less than 1% of the students that I taught were interested in challenging themselves intellectually, while 99% were in "passenger mode" doing just enough to get through. In fact, if one reviews sites such as LinkedIn, they are all about credentialing. Education has become a way to buy a credential that gets one a job, and the overarching goal has been forsaken for corporate greed: there is no learning for the sake of understanding or a focus on being able to speak in one's own voice. As travelers on this path, students become customers seeking to gain their credential with the absolute minimum of time, effort, and money. Just review a few of the marketing messages from the major universities and you will see that this has become the underlying theme.
It is time to cast off the corporate mindset that has infected education. What is needed is wisdom-based critical thinking supported by a transcendent awareness of the forces at play in the universe. Such an awareness would enable a deep connection to life on our planet, while at the same time grounding this awareness in practicalities necessary for survival and thriving. It would be a form of spiritual education that enables one to discern the truth and reflect authenticity in all realms of life.
As a former teacher from K-university I found the same thing happening in 2000.
Beavis and Butthead were the teachers back then.
Then came the computer and literacy was lost.
They go to school not to learn how to live but to learn how to make a living.
Education will no longer work as a 'pass' for good jobs for there are none.
Buying a diploma to get a job was a scam promoted by corporations and the employer class.
HR Departments in major corporations sought out a minimum bachelor.
No more.
With the destruction of education comes the destruction of the people themselves and as long as there is pop corn and Netflix I see little hope for education.
Right on!!!!! "....supported by a transcendent awareness of the forces at play in the universe.....deep connection to planetary life....survival practicalities.....thriving...discern truth....live authenticity....all realms. Yes! Yes! Yes! Corporate materialism flattens everything it touches. "cast off the corporate mindset that has INFECTED education."It has infected each of us....insidious....a major disease corrupting spirit, damaging heart. It fosters no Joie de Vivre! That of the Mind, Body, Soul!
I think that you describe reflects the current nature of what our society has become during the past 40 years. Yes, as you put it: "infected by the corporate mind set".
This direction of this shift was by design, to a great extent, but at the same time, I think that society and history follow the course of something like an amoeba: no central control, various forces at work, influencing the shifts and ultimate direction(Durkheim has a very good schema on this point, and on the incredibly consistent percentages in the range of people within a given society who tend toward ways of thought and sentiment).
But we are there: at the point of a world view that is essentially corporate, those 99% of the students are those that in a certain sense "well socialized".
I agree with what you say in your last paragraph, but I think that this will be the path of a certain limited number. And when this system breaks, as it almost certainly will, there will be the seeds of these ways of seeing, these alternatives.
I certainly do not agree with Trump's position on this issue. not at all. However, do we have to have, and repeatedly so, a degrading picture of Trump, and this time sitting on a toilet that's propped on the head of The Thinker with his ass hanging out taking a dump? Biden and neocon Blinken provided total support for this genocide. and no doubt gave a thumbs up to Israel to implement a genocide. I'm sure they knew their agenda beforehand since they are dependent on the US for supplying their weapons and providing political support, but did you see Biden or Blinken's ass anywhere? Hedges is very degrading when it comes to Trump. Greenwald covered this issue extremely well and of course was in total disagreement with Trump's position, but he was totally journalistic in his approach. Hedges has got an anti-Trump audience, but he would be no one to convince other people of how dangerous Trump's position is on this issue. It reflects a real bias which undermines what he has to say when it comes to Trump.
Did you feel that way when the Biden administration and it's neocon agenda gave the thumbs up to Israel to implement this genocide? They absolutely needed their approval before they turned Gaza into a killing field. The only difference is Biden interjected disapproval now and again to protect his administration from too much criticism, but of course they continued their supply of bombs. Most people, almost all died in Gaza under Biden's administration which should not be overlooked, and of course we no their is noting legal about a genocide under international law.
I am well aware how much the Biden administration sucked. I don’t like either party. They both work for the billionaires, not for us. They both support the genocide. They are both rotten to the core. That’s why I want a party for the working class.
The Vietnam protests of the 60s was not a time of unruly, uneducated and ungrateful individuals as I was taught in high school, but, as I learned from Chomsky years later, the Vietnam protests of the 60s were democracy at its best.
...and yet we saw so many take off their bell bottoms and put on three piece suits and go for the brass rings of the future we are now living. So, were the protests world changing? I think the war was stopped, but we saw a portion of the people lay down and hide their heads, we saw people who continued to fight for the principles of the heart of the 60's movements and there were those who became the aggressors -- very likey the same percentages of what we see in play now. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Greed is as human as our compassion.
"we saw people who continued to fight for the principles of the heart of the 60's movements and there were those who became the aggressors"
Yes!
I recently cited (in another post in The Chris Hedges Report) an essay written by Paul Krassner, in a retrospective article in The Whole Earth Review/Co-Evolution Quarterly, on the occassion of the 20th Anniversary of the Whole Earth catalog.
His observation at that time was about this very phenomenon. And in it, Krassner cited other periods of social changes throughout history, and the consistency of the percentage of people who - at any time - are committed to justice and principles.
He put it at five percent.
I think that for the greater part of those at that time, it was fashion, following the zeitgeist, and the values not held deeply and personally. And so much of a reaction against the Viet Nam war, the threat of the draft that affected them and those they knew. To a great extent, at the end of the war, people just wanted to put it out of mind, and much went with that choice and turning.
In general people look back on the trappings, the obvious, (e.g Woodstock) but seem to forget the substantive aspects.
I looked through my box of those WER/CEQs l moldering in storage but haven't been able to that essay, there or online. But I remember that it was a beautiful little piece, and the idea stayed with me all of these years. It's interesting how cogent and prescient so much of what was in those quarterlies was. And how forgotten and ignored.
I discussed this with Paul Krassner in my Coffee House (Blind Justice on Thompkins's Square 1967), but he, too, like most of the men during that era was caught up in the aggression of it, which was rampant and hyped up during the Viet Nam War. Not many of us saw through that fight/flight/freeze, but a few did. The 5% issue isn't fixed; it's a matter of reducing the element of stable danger in a community that raises the threshold of responsiveness in populations and communities. Women didn't have much authority in the end of that period, as the fear and anger element was fanned. That's what ran the counterculture into a dead end: The males become reptiles, no longer dads and lovers.
It's very interesting that you talked with Paul Krassner about this.
"The 5% issue isn't fixed; it's a matter of reducing the element of stable danger in a community that raises the threshold of responsiveness in populations and communities." Yes, this makes sense.
And yes, the sexism was rampant, though in a different way than now, amid most of the counterculture movement. (Ouch, I just remembered the referencing of women at places like co-ops as "my old lady". Granted this was in a mill town and Portland, Oregon, not New York. But still, yeesh. The pictures come back to mind.)
(edit: And, I should keep in mind my own caution when speaking of the "counterculture": it is a question of which counterculture one is referring to. It was not a monolithic, uniform movement, it was comprised of many, many individuals with different concerns, often in conflict with one another. But the substantive portions all had in common their respective ideas of ways to work toward what they conceived of as a better society, which usually entailed a concern for social justice, and an idea of a higher purpose or goal than the prevailing society at the time. That concern sems pretty rare in mass society now, the culture of consumerism.)
I read some of your postings on your substack. Irrespective of whatever lies at the root of behavior, (levels of mammalian brain versus lizard brain),I think that what you posit describes very well the effects of violence and aggression on the functioning of individuals and societies.
-I personally simply can't speak meaningfully about the origins of mind, of consciousness, in humans or any other species, and so can't comment on the levels of brain.
As I stated elsewhere, I've been engaged in this level of reflection all my life, really. Plus I was born in September 1941, a couple of weeks after Bernie Sanders, a couple of days before Paul Simon and 10 days before Jesse Jackson--at the 'front edge' of the generation that benefitted from the brief period of optimism and free education. Independent thought was not yet 'managed' by spin.
I was at those demonstrations. Being very young, it was a new experience. I met older demonstrators, activists, so protesting the Viet Nam war was serious. One simply had to.
I agree with most of this, but I personally see the thing we call “DEI”
as a form of indoctrination as well. It’s social engineering, and all efforts of this sort strike me as wedges, imposed by hidden forces to create division, rather than encouraging true homogeneity and acceptance.
Having grown up long ago in the first days of what was then called ‘affirmative action’, I’ve grown skeptical of these efforts. The job of social harmony is a huge one, unbelievably complex. Just read Douglass Murray, quoting, (daring to quote, I might say), Martin Luther King. One is tempted to congratulate this seeming effort at ‘diversity and inclusion’, till you stop to think what MLK would have thought of a person who defends the killers of Hind Rajab.
None of this is to defend these Trumpian crimes, only to add perspective.
I think there is something in what you say Sera. I think the same of Black Lives Matter, that it was created to make more division, not less, and that it ensures that black people are even further away from true, ie economic, equality than ever.
Focusing on race and sex (I'm glad to see that Chris can use the word 'woman' without hesitation) doesn't help us to focus on the reality that the whole of human expression and creativity is available in all of us regardless of our category or 'identity'.
I also think that DEI may have deliberately produced absurdities in order to create the backlash we're now in- towards the far-right fascism. Neoliberalism set up the ball, all 'populist' Trump had to do was head it in. The right and left punches work for the same ends- the profits of BlackRock.
Speaking as a teacher, I know were society to steadfastly and highly prize and put necessary monies into education, its art and science and "best" practices, any discussion about race and gender would stem from curiosity about what difference does skin packaging and genitals make to the enrichment of living a meaningful life.
Yes, it will get worse but the situation you describe in education has been this way for decades.
Charter schools, vouchers, firing of teachers, firing of classified workers has been the norm as the union leaders earn over one half a million dollars.
It is the unions that must become active, the unions and their members must root out the fakes like Sean Fain and O'Brien that makes any union activity by members impossible.
Privatized education is one thing that people never talk about when speaking about Obama and the corporate donors.
Obama and his side kick Arnie Duncan did more harm to education than any administration since.
They served as butlers and servers to Wall St. and the privatize energy groups, many of them astro turf organizations.
Obama privatized education from pre-school to university, letting the thieves of for profit online colleges like Phoenix and so many more, go about their business without fear of oversight.
Charter schools, greased by Gates and the billionaire class went full bore under Obama.
Sure, Trump will worsen an already decrepit situation with further austerity, but it is capitalism that dictates the game now with public schools having been abandoned or privatized since 2008.
An educational system turned into a $650 billion dollar industry by the charlatans and hand-maidens of capitalism.
What particularly disturbs is that the "opposition"--the faint hearted/spirited Democratic Party --to the privatization of education and the dismantling of the Dept of Ed is resounding silence. Altogether skipping the opportunity to educate Americans about the bounty awarded the well being of the whole country through the "public"in school, public school. Bezos went to public school. Duke Ellington went to public school. Jonas Salk went to public school. Toni Morrison and Alice Walker went to public school. The Democrats, since Reagan, are Schumeresque mealy mouthed stand for nothing, fight for nothing, risk nothing patronizing explainers for the corporatized status quo. Not a one with any fire in the belly. Not a one who demonstrates by actions that they know an audacious loud statement - if not met in tone, energy, and power (emotional-intellectual)- lingers in the air to soak into the unconscious mind. Some decent Senators and Representatives ought to have such a conviction: "oh, so you think you are going to dismantle the People's Dept of Education?" Not over our dead bodies - Not over our live bodies"!!
I have wanted to figure out a way to alert teachers and parents to the curriculum distortions being promulgated by the Claremont Institute, to their plans for secondary and primary education. Making an abrupt turn, my son worked for a KIP school in Austin, TX, having originally been department chair at a high school in Chicago. His supervisor had no teaching experience and no background in literature and language. He was ordered to teach each piece of literature with a rubric. He called in despair to say, "Mom, I feel like I am going to work every day to murder poetry." He quit shortly thereafter.
For decades (centuries if we count slavery and Indian "schools") large forces in this country have seen advantage in having an ignorant population. How many Hedges can we count on, even as censured as they are.?
Yes Chris, ignorance is a resource, a tool, for authoritarian rule, which we always have had a measure of. It will take a long long time to claw back to even a "liberal" sensibility. It will take irreversible pain for generations, supported by docility, avoidance, comforting ignorance.
Howard Zinn's America: All true--and known and recognized by those of us who were counterculture activists during the 60s (not just acting out sexually and/or getting loaded.) Having had this level of awareness and not being an 'offender' locked in jail, how effectual have we been? Not at all. Even George Carlin's witty kind fell flat in the long run that's brought us to the place we find ourselves in 2025. I've spent since 1967 researching the causes of our species failure, which I could see taking place even then when I was associated with Dr. Humphrey Osmond, trying to get Tim Leary to stop blaring foolishness to the international press: Post WWII world culture has gone off the rails--and it was obvious to thoughtful people even then--going back to Orwell's essays and his last two books. Bertrand Russell did stop WWIII when he intervened directly in the Cuban Crisis, but he is largely unacknowledged for this, and his counsel didn't stem the racetide of insanity that still spins us toward a depthless cliff.
I am writing here to announce I've finally figured out what biologically accounts for our species self-destructiveness: Lack of oxytocin balance in our cultural mainstream of communication, going back to mass manipulation through mass media (films, radio, then later, television, now the internet and phones) has caused us, as a species, to cease to operate as mammalians. The generalized tapping into aggression--fear and dread--impacts male human beings directly to revert to acting from the primitive reptilian 'old brain' fight-flight-freeze impulses we all have. But males who are pulled off into this level of reaction aren't stimulated to generate the nurture and protect co-chemical (oxytocin) if they are locked into a survival struggle that endures and dominates them permanently. What's 'normal' in us, as mammals who must parent offspring for an extended period is that men are socialized to co-respond to oxytocin generated by kids and women. Beyond just getting laid and fathering their offspring, human fathers who are socialized to stay in family units want to nurture and provide for those they love. They want to interact, have fun, be tender and affectionate as well as sexual. A rattlesnake or salmon with coldblooded brains isn't 'touchy-feely' with its kids or loyal to its mate. Our human brain evolved to add the mammal-layer to what was a old cold-blooded outlook in the lifeform we became.
Frightened creatures fight to stay alive, to reproduce, to eliminate what lives around them that is seen potentially as threat. The myth and story of 'being human' is all metaphor for how we've learned to cultivate the nurturing and caring sides of our own natures over centuries in cultures that can be peaceful and cooperative. What happened is our intellect out paced our self understanding in the last few centuries, culminating in the generalized kind of fear that WWII exposed whole ethnic groups--the Jews--to the prospect of extinction, and the A-Bomb to the rest.
Here's the punchline: People like Noam Chomsky and other intellectuals, even they, were dropped into a level of fear that's make it necessary to exclude feelings from our science. 'Don't let emotions be a factor' is a factor. Freezing caring and the desire to nurture out of all our math and science work has made getting a PhD a work of drudgery, not one of love. We've come to discredit our deep caring motives as a threat to our survival--and it turns even women into reptiles if they want to be 'accepted' in the world where getting to breed and reproduce is all that matters.
If that sounds odd, just read a 19th Century respected textbook on philosophy. I personally saw through this, although I didn't have this clarity, in 1958, when James Dean's Rebel Without a Cause diagrammed the out-of-touchness in society. It was there to see. But we couldn't catch on to why we'd been shifted to behaving from the reptilian brainstem until we'd gained the insights we can have today. Medical science technology and warm-blooded perspective are both necessary to catch on to what's been 'running us' from below the level of our conscious choice. Once we trust our feeling-senses to lead our understanding to what does make sense, then we can fix this mess.
I suggest you listen to Pete Seeger's What Did You Learn in School Today. The public education system has always been the melting pot that took people from different cultures and molded them into one. Your anarchist view of education was taught to you in Grade School. It was a lie then. It is a lie now. Nothing has changed. Workers organizing is called totalitarianism. It is simply an expression of the neoliberalism at the heart of the declaration of independence.
“By the definition of its creators, the new Swedish school system is strictly utilitarian. It suggests the abandonment of the concept of education as something that makes the complete man and develops the individual. It appears to have the aim of producing, not independent citizens, but cogs in the society-machine. This is how Mrs Maj Bossom-Nordboe, a departmental chief at the Directorate of Schools, expresses it: 'Everything in our school system is practical. History has been cut down, because subjects of practical application, and especially those dealing with communication, are more important. Classical studies have been abolished, because they are unpractical and therefore unnecessary.'”
Or as Olof Palme put it: “You don't go to school to achieve anything personally, but to learn how to function as members of a group.” — Chapter 11, Education in the Service of Conditioning, The New Totalitarians, Roland Huntford, 1971
Trump's attack on education comes from the playbook of the Swedish Social Democrats. Sweden was an experimental country. The experiment was successful. The Swedish education model has been discreetly implemented throughout the West. The only downside, or perhaps the upside— if that was the point — is that the human material, as they called it, has no survival instinct.
Does Chris Hedges really think that flogging a dead horse is cruelty? US edumbification system has been on the downslide for at least good 40 years. It does not seem to be salvageable.
the roof angle incrementally steepens providing a perfect, unrestricted slide into the cesspool of totalitarianism; accomplishing a compliant citizenry of well-programed, fully psyopped, zombieized. AI'ed, de-humanized, heartless, robotic beings. fait accompli...
The impulse toward authoritarian conformity can come from the Left as easily as the Right. Woke ideology, and its enforcement mechanism of "cancel culture", is a prime example today. And historically, Stalinism and Maoism from the Left, were as bad as fascism from the Right.
Classical liberal arts, like fundamental science, askes tough questions and welcomes tough critiques. But parts of the liberal arts today have been taken over by woke ideology and the denial or politicization of good science in its quest for hegemony. This opened the door to Trump and the backlash from the Right.
I went to cheer at the "Stand Up for Science" rally at the Seattle Center (2000+ people crammed together, especially science students) but it was all finger pointing, with no calls for academics to ask themselves why DEI has gotten such a bad reputation - about how it has been used as a cover to impose a very illiberal woke ideology.
Having taught in universities for the past 30 years, the assertions made in this article are spot on. As George Carlin said, the last thing that corporate managers and oligarchs want is a population capable of critical thinking. What most colleges and universities have devolved to is producing people who are just smart enough to operate the machines and manage the systems that make the corporations function, but not smart enough to ask why they are doing it in the first place. Education is now a means to fit people into their proper place in society in order to create even more economic wealth for the oligarchs, and to limit their awareness so that they stay in their place and do not make a fuss.
As a follow on to this article I highly recommend "Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life" by William Deresiewicz, https://billderesiewicz.com/books/excellent-sheep/
Less than 1% of the students that I taught were interested in challenging themselves intellectually, while 99% were in "passenger mode" doing just enough to get through. In fact, if one reviews sites such as LinkedIn, they are all about credentialing. Education has become a way to buy a credential that gets one a job, and the overarching goal has been forsaken for corporate greed: there is no learning for the sake of understanding or a focus on being able to speak in one's own voice. As travelers on this path, students become customers seeking to gain their credential with the absolute minimum of time, effort, and money. Just review a few of the marketing messages from the major universities and you will see that this has become the underlying theme.
It is time to cast off the corporate mindset that has infected education. What is needed is wisdom-based critical thinking supported by a transcendent awareness of the forces at play in the universe. Such an awareness would enable a deep connection to life on our planet, while at the same time grounding this awareness in practicalities necessary for survival and thriving. It would be a form of spiritual education that enables one to discern the truth and reflect authenticity in all realms of life.
As a former teacher from K-university I found the same thing happening in 2000.
Beavis and Butthead were the teachers back then.
Then came the computer and literacy was lost.
They go to school not to learn how to live but to learn how to make a living.
Education will no longer work as a 'pass' for good jobs for there are none.
Buying a diploma to get a job was a scam promoted by corporations and the employer class.
HR Departments in major corporations sought out a minimum bachelor.
No more.
With the destruction of education comes the destruction of the people themselves and as long as there is pop corn and Netflix I see little hope for education.
Right on!!!!! "....supported by a transcendent awareness of the forces at play in the universe.....deep connection to planetary life....survival practicalities.....thriving...discern truth....live authenticity....all realms. Yes! Yes! Yes! Corporate materialism flattens everything it touches. "cast off the corporate mindset that has INFECTED education."It has infected each of us....insidious....a major disease corrupting spirit, damaging heart. It fosters no Joie de Vivre! That of the Mind, Body, Soul!
I think that you describe reflects the current nature of what our society has become during the past 40 years. Yes, as you put it: "infected by the corporate mind set".
This direction of this shift was by design, to a great extent, but at the same time, I think that society and history follow the course of something like an amoeba: no central control, various forces at work, influencing the shifts and ultimate direction(Durkheim has a very good schema on this point, and on the incredibly consistent percentages in the range of people within a given society who tend toward ways of thought and sentiment).
But we are there: at the point of a world view that is essentially corporate, those 99% of the students are those that in a certain sense "well socialized".
I agree with what you say in your last paragraph, but I think that this will be the path of a certain limited number. And when this system breaks, as it almost certainly will, there will be the seeds of these ways of seeing, these alternatives.
zero
Yeah, but wouldn't that cut the gravy train off?
I certainly do not agree with Trump's position on this issue. not at all. However, do we have to have, and repeatedly so, a degrading picture of Trump, and this time sitting on a toilet that's propped on the head of The Thinker with his ass hanging out taking a dump? Biden and neocon Blinken provided total support for this genocide. and no doubt gave a thumbs up to Israel to implement a genocide. I'm sure they knew their agenda beforehand since they are dependent on the US for supplying their weapons and providing political support, but did you see Biden or Blinken's ass anywhere? Hedges is very degrading when it comes to Trump. Greenwald covered this issue extremely well and of course was in total disagreement with Trump's position, but he was totally journalistic in his approach. Hedges has got an anti-Trump audience, but he would be no one to convince other people of how dangerous Trump's position is on this issue. It reflects a real bias which undermines what he has to say when it comes to Trump.
Basically, you complaining that they're being mean to poor widdle Trump.
This made me cry. I am so scared for our future. We must fight back. Please everyone.
Did you feel that way when the Biden administration and it's neocon agenda gave the thumbs up to Israel to implement this genocide? They absolutely needed their approval before they turned Gaza into a killing field. The only difference is Biden interjected disapproval now and again to protect his administration from too much criticism, but of course they continued their supply of bombs. Most people, almost all died in Gaza under Biden's administration which should not be overlooked, and of course we no their is noting legal about a genocide under international law.
I am well aware how much the Biden administration sucked. I don’t like either party. They both work for the billionaires, not for us. They both support the genocide. They are both rotten to the core. That’s why I want a party for the working class.
zero
The Vietnam protests of the 60s was not a time of unruly, uneducated and ungrateful individuals as I was taught in high school, but, as I learned from Chomsky years later, the Vietnam protests of the 60s were democracy at its best.
...and yet we saw so many take off their bell bottoms and put on three piece suits and go for the brass rings of the future we are now living. So, were the protests world changing? I think the war was stopped, but we saw a portion of the people lay down and hide their heads, we saw people who continued to fight for the principles of the heart of the 60's movements and there were those who became the aggressors -- very likey the same percentages of what we see in play now. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Greed is as human as our compassion.
"we saw people who continued to fight for the principles of the heart of the 60's movements and there were those who became the aggressors"
Yes!
I recently cited (in another post in The Chris Hedges Report) an essay written by Paul Krassner, in a retrospective article in The Whole Earth Review/Co-Evolution Quarterly, on the occassion of the 20th Anniversary of the Whole Earth catalog.
His observation at that time was about this very phenomenon. And in it, Krassner cited other periods of social changes throughout history, and the consistency of the percentage of people who - at any time - are committed to justice and principles.
He put it at five percent.
I think that for the greater part of those at that time, it was fashion, following the zeitgeist, and the values not held deeply and personally. And so much of a reaction against the Viet Nam war, the threat of the draft that affected them and those they knew. To a great extent, at the end of the war, people just wanted to put it out of mind, and much went with that choice and turning.
In general people look back on the trappings, the obvious, (e.g Woodstock) but seem to forget the substantive aspects.
I looked through my box of those WER/CEQs l moldering in storage but haven't been able to that essay, there or online. But I remember that it was a beautiful little piece, and the idea stayed with me all of these years. It's interesting how cogent and prescient so much of what was in those quarterlies was. And how forgotten and ignored.
I discussed this with Paul Krassner in my Coffee House (Blind Justice on Thompkins's Square 1967), but he, too, like most of the men during that era was caught up in the aggression of it, which was rampant and hyped up during the Viet Nam War. Not many of us saw through that fight/flight/freeze, but a few did. The 5% issue isn't fixed; it's a matter of reducing the element of stable danger in a community that raises the threshold of responsiveness in populations and communities. Women didn't have much authority in the end of that period, as the fear and anger element was fanned. That's what ran the counterculture into a dead end: The males become reptiles, no longer dads and lovers.
It's very interesting that you talked with Paul Krassner about this.
"The 5% issue isn't fixed; it's a matter of reducing the element of stable danger in a community that raises the threshold of responsiveness in populations and communities." Yes, this makes sense.
And yes, the sexism was rampant, though in a different way than now, amid most of the counterculture movement. (Ouch, I just remembered the referencing of women at places like co-ops as "my old lady". Granted this was in a mill town and Portland, Oregon, not New York. But still, yeesh. The pictures come back to mind.)
(edit: And, I should keep in mind my own caution when speaking of the "counterculture": it is a question of which counterculture one is referring to. It was not a monolithic, uniform movement, it was comprised of many, many individuals with different concerns, often in conflict with one another. But the substantive portions all had in common their respective ideas of ways to work toward what they conceived of as a better society, which usually entailed a concern for social justice, and an idea of a higher purpose or goal than the prevailing society at the time. That concern sems pretty rare in mass society now, the culture of consumerism.)
I read some of your postings on your substack. Irrespective of whatever lies at the root of behavior, (levels of mammalian brain versus lizard brain),I think that what you posit describes very well the effects of violence and aggression on the functioning of individuals and societies.
-I personally simply can't speak meaningfully about the origins of mind, of consciousness, in humans or any other species, and so can't comment on the levels of brain.
As I stated elsewhere, I've been engaged in this level of reflection all my life, really. Plus I was born in September 1941, a couple of weeks after Bernie Sanders, a couple of days before Paul Simon and 10 days before Jesse Jackson--at the 'front edge' of the generation that benefitted from the brief period of optimism and free education. Independent thought was not yet 'managed' by spin.
I was at those demonstrations. Being very young, it was a new experience. I met older demonstrators, activists, so protesting the Viet Nam war was serious. One simply had to.
5% is so painfully low -- but maybe that's all it really was or is -- Committment requires blinders ensuring movement in a consistent direction.
It seems about the right percentage to me, unfortunately.
Blinders or the ability to live with the discomfort of seeing the direction of things moving in the way of folly, up to the point of horror.
And to hold those values in the face of the contradiction and difficulty,
I agree with most of this, but I personally see the thing we call “DEI”
as a form of indoctrination as well. It’s social engineering, and all efforts of this sort strike me as wedges, imposed by hidden forces to create division, rather than encouraging true homogeneity and acceptance.
Having grown up long ago in the first days of what was then called ‘affirmative action’, I’ve grown skeptical of these efforts. The job of social harmony is a huge one, unbelievably complex. Just read Douglass Murray, quoting, (daring to quote, I might say), Martin Luther King. One is tempted to congratulate this seeming effort at ‘diversity and inclusion’, till you stop to think what MLK would have thought of a person who defends the killers of Hind Rajab.
None of this is to defend these Trumpian crimes, only to add perspective.
I think there is something in what you say Sera. I think the same of Black Lives Matter, that it was created to make more division, not less, and that it ensures that black people are even further away from true, ie economic, equality than ever.
Focusing on race and sex (I'm glad to see that Chris can use the word 'woman' without hesitation) doesn't help us to focus on the reality that the whole of human expression and creativity is available in all of us regardless of our category or 'identity'.
I also think that DEI may have deliberately produced absurdities in order to create the backlash we're now in- towards the far-right fascism. Neoliberalism set up the ball, all 'populist' Trump had to do was head it in. The right and left punches work for the same ends- the profits of BlackRock.
Speaking as a teacher, I know were society to steadfastly and highly prize and put necessary monies into education, its art and science and "best" practices, any discussion about race and gender would stem from curiosity about what difference does skin packaging and genitals make to the enrichment of living a meaningful life.
It's not so much the possession of skin and genitals, it's the way they can be interlocked, that is more interesting.
Yes, it will get worse but the situation you describe in education has been this way for decades.
Charter schools, vouchers, firing of teachers, firing of classified workers has been the norm as the union leaders earn over one half a million dollars.
It is the unions that must become active, the unions and their members must root out the fakes like Sean Fain and O'Brien that makes any union activity by members impossible.
Privatized education is one thing that people never talk about when speaking about Obama and the corporate donors.
Obama and his side kick Arnie Duncan did more harm to education than any administration since.
They served as butlers and servers to Wall St. and the privatize energy groups, many of them astro turf organizations.
Obama privatized education from pre-school to university, letting the thieves of for profit online colleges like Phoenix and so many more, go about their business without fear of oversight.
Charter schools, greased by Gates and the billionaire class went full bore under Obama.
Sure, Trump will worsen an already decrepit situation with further austerity, but it is capitalism that dictates the game now with public schools having been abandoned or privatized since 2008.
An educational system turned into a $650 billion dollar industry by the charlatans and hand-maidens of capitalism.
"Historically and Politically Illiterate". We could put that on the dollar bill.
What particularly disturbs is that the "opposition"--the faint hearted/spirited Democratic Party --to the privatization of education and the dismantling of the Dept of Ed is resounding silence. Altogether skipping the opportunity to educate Americans about the bounty awarded the well being of the whole country through the "public"in school, public school. Bezos went to public school. Duke Ellington went to public school. Jonas Salk went to public school. Toni Morrison and Alice Walker went to public school. The Democrats, since Reagan, are Schumeresque mealy mouthed stand for nothing, fight for nothing, risk nothing patronizing explainers for the corporatized status quo. Not a one with any fire in the belly. Not a one who demonstrates by actions that they know an audacious loud statement - if not met in tone, energy, and power (emotional-intellectual)- lingers in the air to soak into the unconscious mind. Some decent Senators and Representatives ought to have such a conviction: "oh, so you think you are going to dismantle the People's Dept of Education?" Not over our dead bodies - Not over our live bodies"!!
I have wanted to figure out a way to alert teachers and parents to the curriculum distortions being promulgated by the Claremont Institute, to their plans for secondary and primary education. Making an abrupt turn, my son worked for a KIP school in Austin, TX, having originally been department chair at a high school in Chicago. His supervisor had no teaching experience and no background in literature and language. He was ordered to teach each piece of literature with a rubric. He called in despair to say, "Mom, I feel like I am going to work every day to murder poetry." He quit shortly thereafter.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2009/08/24/obama-and-duncan-s-education-policy-like-bush-s-only-worse/
Charter schools were a trojan horse for full on privatization which Trump will deliver with some form of voucher.
All begun under Obama.
For decades (centuries if we count slavery and Indian "schools") large forces in this country have seen advantage in having an ignorant population. How many Hedges can we count on, even as censured as they are.?
Yes Chris, ignorance is a resource, a tool, for authoritarian rule, which we always have had a measure of. It will take a long long time to claw back to even a "liberal" sensibility. It will take irreversible pain for generations, supported by docility, avoidance, comforting ignorance.
“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”
— Voltaire
Yep.
Howard Zinn's America: All true--and known and recognized by those of us who were counterculture activists during the 60s (not just acting out sexually and/or getting loaded.) Having had this level of awareness and not being an 'offender' locked in jail, how effectual have we been? Not at all. Even George Carlin's witty kind fell flat in the long run that's brought us to the place we find ourselves in 2025. I've spent since 1967 researching the causes of our species failure, which I could see taking place even then when I was associated with Dr. Humphrey Osmond, trying to get Tim Leary to stop blaring foolishness to the international press: Post WWII world culture has gone off the rails--and it was obvious to thoughtful people even then--going back to Orwell's essays and his last two books. Bertrand Russell did stop WWIII when he intervened directly in the Cuban Crisis, but he is largely unacknowledged for this, and his counsel didn't stem the racetide of insanity that still spins us toward a depthless cliff.
I am writing here to announce I've finally figured out what biologically accounts for our species self-destructiveness: Lack of oxytocin balance in our cultural mainstream of communication, going back to mass manipulation through mass media (films, radio, then later, television, now the internet and phones) has caused us, as a species, to cease to operate as mammalians. The generalized tapping into aggression--fear and dread--impacts male human beings directly to revert to acting from the primitive reptilian 'old brain' fight-flight-freeze impulses we all have. But males who are pulled off into this level of reaction aren't stimulated to generate the nurture and protect co-chemical (oxytocin) if they are locked into a survival struggle that endures and dominates them permanently. What's 'normal' in us, as mammals who must parent offspring for an extended period is that men are socialized to co-respond to oxytocin generated by kids and women. Beyond just getting laid and fathering their offspring, human fathers who are socialized to stay in family units want to nurture and provide for those they love. They want to interact, have fun, be tender and affectionate as well as sexual. A rattlesnake or salmon with coldblooded brains isn't 'touchy-feely' with its kids or loyal to its mate. Our human brain evolved to add the mammal-layer to what was a old cold-blooded outlook in the lifeform we became.
Frightened creatures fight to stay alive, to reproduce, to eliminate what lives around them that is seen potentially as threat. The myth and story of 'being human' is all metaphor for how we've learned to cultivate the nurturing and caring sides of our own natures over centuries in cultures that can be peaceful and cooperative. What happened is our intellect out paced our self understanding in the last few centuries, culminating in the generalized kind of fear that WWII exposed whole ethnic groups--the Jews--to the prospect of extinction, and the A-Bomb to the rest.
Here's the punchline: People like Noam Chomsky and other intellectuals, even they, were dropped into a level of fear that's make it necessary to exclude feelings from our science. 'Don't let emotions be a factor' is a factor. Freezing caring and the desire to nurture out of all our math and science work has made getting a PhD a work of drudgery, not one of love. We've come to discredit our deep caring motives as a threat to our survival--and it turns even women into reptiles if they want to be 'accepted' in the world where getting to breed and reproduce is all that matters.
If that sounds odd, just read a 19th Century respected textbook on philosophy. I personally saw through this, although I didn't have this clarity, in 1958, when James Dean's Rebel Without a Cause diagrammed the out-of-touchness in society. It was there to see. But we couldn't catch on to why we'd been shifted to behaving from the reptilian brainstem until we'd gained the insights we can have today. Medical science technology and warm-blooded perspective are both necessary to catch on to what's been 'running us' from below the level of our conscious choice. Once we trust our feeling-senses to lead our understanding to what does make sense, then we can fix this mess.
I suggest you listen to Pete Seeger's What Did You Learn in School Today. The public education system has always been the melting pot that took people from different cultures and molded them into one. Your anarchist view of education was taught to you in Grade School. It was a lie then. It is a lie now. Nothing has changed. Workers organizing is called totalitarianism. It is simply an expression of the neoliberalism at the heart of the declaration of independence.
“By the definition of its creators, the new Swedish school system is strictly utilitarian. It suggests the abandonment of the concept of education as something that makes the complete man and develops the individual. It appears to have the aim of producing, not independent citizens, but cogs in the society-machine. This is how Mrs Maj Bossom-Nordboe, a departmental chief at the Directorate of Schools, expresses it: 'Everything in our school system is practical. History has been cut down, because subjects of practical application, and especially those dealing with communication, are more important. Classical studies have been abolished, because they are unpractical and therefore unnecessary.'”
Or as Olof Palme put it: “You don't go to school to achieve anything personally, but to learn how to function as members of a group.” — Chapter 11, Education in the Service of Conditioning, The New Totalitarians, Roland Huntford, 1971
https://archive.org/details/TheNewTotalitarians/mode/2up
Trump's attack on education comes from the playbook of the Swedish Social Democrats. Sweden was an experimental country. The experiment was successful. The Swedish education model has been discreetly implemented throughout the West. The only downside, or perhaps the upside— if that was the point — is that the human material, as they called it, has no survival instinct.
Does Chris Hedges really think that flogging a dead horse is cruelty? US edumbification system has been on the downslide for at least good 40 years. It does not seem to be salvageable.
the roof angle incrementally steepens providing a perfect, unrestricted slide into the cesspool of totalitarianism; accomplishing a compliant citizenry of well-programed, fully psyopped, zombieized. AI'ed, de-humanized, heartless, robotic beings. fait accompli...
The impulse toward authoritarian conformity can come from the Left as easily as the Right. Woke ideology, and its enforcement mechanism of "cancel culture", is a prime example today. And historically, Stalinism and Maoism from the Left, were as bad as fascism from the Right.
Classical liberal arts, like fundamental science, askes tough questions and welcomes tough critiques. But parts of the liberal arts today have been taken over by woke ideology and the denial or politicization of good science in its quest for hegemony. This opened the door to Trump and the backlash from the Right.
I went to cheer at the "Stand Up for Science" rally at the Seattle Center (2000+ people crammed together, especially science students) but it was all finger pointing, with no calls for academics to ask themselves why DEI has gotten such a bad reputation - about how it has been used as a cover to impose a very illiberal woke ideology.