The Average Man

Sunday, September 30, 2007

NAOMI KLEIN IS SHOCKING



I always have the best of intentions when placing events in my calendar, but when the day actually arrives, I tend to be rather lazy and plop down in front of the TV instead. On Saturday, however, I went against my nature and attended the Naomi Klein lecture at Victoria Hall in conjunction with the Santa Barbara Book & Author Festival. I have to say that Ms. Klein's talk was truly one of the most educational and powerful discussions I've heard in a long time, and I'm so happy that I went. For those of you who don't know, Naomi Klein is on tour right now to promote her new book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. To be honest, I hadn't even heard of it before last night, but you can bet I'm going to run over to to the local book store and pick up a copy.

Those of us who who have made an attempt to keep informed on global and political affairs over the years were told many things in the lecture we've heard before: Bush used our fear after 9/11, for example, as an excuse to attack Iraq. Yep, knew it. But the amazing thing about Naomi Klein's work is her ability to put these kinds of events in a larger historical context. I'm almost afraid to attempt a summary of her speech for fear of leaving something out. But it's important, so I'll give it a shot. In a nutshell, I came away with these overarching themes:

1) When people are in shock (physical, emotional, and/or economical), they revert to a childlike state. In a sense, they lose their "story" or their "narrative."

2) Governments know this about humanity, so they take advantage of people in this state by giving them a new story. In other words, they can sort of "reboot" them.

3) This tactic can be used on individuals (i.e. torture) or whole societies.

4) Governments often use shock to push through the privatization of government functions and the chipping away of civil liberties. When people are in shock, they want someone to take care of them, so they don't question things they would normally have a problem with.

5) A perfect example of this phenomenon is 9/11. Americans as a whole were in shock after that event, so the government was able reboot us. The expressions "pre-9/11 thinking" and "everything you thought you knew before was wrong" came out of this mind-set. This is the new story they gave us. We were told that we had to let go of our rights as Americans, and being in this childlike state, we said okay.

6) This is nothing new; governments have been doing it for years. They can cause the shock or simply take advantage of it.

7) The king of neo-con economic thinking is Milton Friedman, and he has a famous expression that "you never have real changes unless you have a time of crisis." The extreme privatization of government functions in Iraq and New Orleans were allowed to occur as a direct result of our state of shock.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but better you just read the book. Or at the very least, watch the above short film made by Klein and Alfonso CuarĂ³n (he directed Harry Potter boys and girls)!

In conclusion, I'd like to leave you with my favorite Naomi Klein quote ...

We lost [the battle of ideas] because we were crushed. Sometimes we were crushed by army tanks, and sometimes we were crushed by think tanks. And by think tanks I mean the people who are paid to think by the makers of tanks.

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18 Comments:

At 5:19 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I won a Bank of America Science award... a sort of competitive debate thing... as a High School senior. Went to the semi-finals, won them. But in the finals, the question we debated was the Energy Crisis (this was the 1970's).

I argued that nothing could change unless their was a huge crisis.

The judges hated my argument and I lost. But in my heart I've always felt I got it right... the debate winner argued for informed government incrementalism. Well, even the government knows that only a crisis can be used...

 
At 7:08 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It is amazing, looking back at history, to see how easily people were / are manipulated. My opinion of humanity goes lower every year.

 
At 7:51 AM, Blogger SantaBarbarian said...

It was an amazing presentation. I'm still numb from the reality of the situation...and with more news of the quite possible War on IRAN

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tory2007/story/0,,2180555,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

it is sinking in that we are, well, f**ked.

 
At 9:20 AM, Blogger TheAverageMan said...

No, we're not. :) Did you watch the whole short film? At the end, she says "The best way to resist shock is to know what is happening to you and why."

Knowing we're being manipulated means it this technique will eventually no longer work.

 
At 10:56 AM, Blogger SantaBarbarian said...

Well...Average Man.

I did watch the whole clip. I paid attention to the entire lecture. But, I watch people. And, seeing what I see out there "offline", there is no way in hades we can "educate" folks away from their soma'd comfort zone. Most people can't even recognize that they are being manipulated by advertising let alone "the dark side" (if you will.)

 
At 1:24 PM, Blogger TheAverageMan said...

I think minds can be changed, it just seems like it takes forever to happen. Even a generation sometimes -- our parents grew up in a world with "colored" drinking fountains, restaurants, buses, etc. which seems appalling and even ridiculous to most people now. Then there can be sudden shifts too, like what's happened with global warming in the last year or so. Who knows? We Americans like to be blissfully ignorant, but we also hate being taken advantage of and lied to.

And we all like cookies! Mmmm.... cookie.

 
At 4:11 PM, Blogger Trekking Left said...

Addendum: Read this great post by Arianna Huffington ==> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/new-books-by-alan-greensp_b_65860.html

 
At 9:25 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I read Klein's "Fences and Windows" a couple of years ago and loved it -- haven't read any other book that resonated as much, not in years. So when I heard she was coming to speak here in SB, I marked the calendar excitedly. I showed up at VHT about 7:50, and the usher told me I was about the 150th-200th person to get turned away, every seat was full.
So, in a way, that's pretty encouraging, isn't it? Hundreds of Santa Barbarians turned out to listen to NK. I have no idea how we're going to turn this around, because the corporations have us by the cojones, and they're not letting go. But still. I'm encouraged that so many other people also wanted to go!

 
At 9:44 AM, Blogger Trekking Left said...

Yes, that is encouraging. If enough of us listen to people like her, then maybe there's hope.

Sorry you didn't get in.

 
At 1:05 PM, Blogger Trekking Left said...

Another Addendum: Read this great post by John Cusack ==> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-cusack/calling-things-what-they-_b_66532.html

 
At 7:25 PM, Blogger jqb said...

No, we're not. :) Did you watch the whole short film? At the end, she says "The best way to resist shock is to know what is happening to you and why."

Knowing we're being manipulated means it this technique will eventually no longer work.


Uh, sure, after the oceans rise 20 ft and society has collapsed due to exhaustion of easy oil, people will come to their senses.

 
At 7:35 PM, Blogger jqb said...

"Yes, that is encouraging. If enough of us listen to people like her, then maybe there's hope."

The best you have is "maybe there's hope" and yet you say Cookie Jill is wrong? I couldn't get in to see Daniel Ellsberg at the Vic a while back -- were you saying "maybe there's hope" back then? Maybe there was hope that we were going to end the war in Iraq. Maybe there's hope we won't bomb Iran. Maybe there's hope that corporate capitalism will fade away because "we also hate being taken advantage of and lied to". Yeah, we'll show them how serious we are -- we'll hope that things get better, maybe.

 
At 7:42 PM, Blogger jqb said...

"Read this great post by Arianna Huffington"

"great" is now a synonym for "blatantly obvious"? When are we going to move beyond pointing out the myriad ways in which we've been screwed and thinking that we've actually achieved something by doing so?

 
At 8:59 PM, Blogger TheAverageMan said...

Okay, let's. What do you suggest we do?

 
At 1:02 AM, Blogger jqb said...

Saying "Ok, let's" isn't the same as doing it. The fact is that we aren't past that.

 
At 8:16 AM, Blogger TheAverageMan said...

No, I meant that I agree, let's do something instead of just pointing out what's wrong. So what do you suggest we do?

 
At 10:28 AM, Blogger Trekking Left said...

Man, jqb, you're snarky today. How about naming something I've said here that isn't pointless and wrong.

 
At 4:06 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good for people to know.

 

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