October 12th, 1997

CLEVER LIES AND DISTRACTIONS
By Jackie Giuliano

Tobacco Firms "Settle" Flight Attendants' Suit.

Revised Species Protection Law Eases Farmers' Anxiety

"It's not the American land mines that are blowing up little children." State Department spokesman James P. Rubin after the announcement of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to American activist Jody Williams.

Air Quality Management District (AQMD) Plan Will Target Pollution in Poor Areas in Southern California

All these are issues from the front page of the Saturday, October 11, 1997 Los Angeles Times. At first, I was encouraged by this apparent onslaught of caring for our world. But as I read further and applied my knowledge and experience in these issues, I came to a different conclusion.

I don't buy it.

Here's what I discovered as I read further and thought carefully about the issues:

• The tobacco firms are settling with the flight attendants by agreeing to support research into their claims of ill-health from breathing cigarette smoke on aircraft. Not one dime of the $300 million will go to any flight attendant. Yet people are happy with this.
  
  
• California Governor Pete Wilson signed into law a weakening of the state's Endangered Species Act by making it OK for a farmer to accidentally kill an endangered species or plow up critical habitat. Upon reading one of the most biased articles I have seen in a long time, you get the impression that poor Mr. and Mrs. Small Farmer are living in fear that they will be put in jail for accidentally running over a kangaroo rat. But wait a minute - most of the farms in California are giant megafarms, run by multi-national corporations. This legislation seems to be really designed to make life easier for them and to open the way for endangered life forms to be killed if they get in the way of business.
  
  
• When you probe the land mine issue further, you learn that the U.S. is a major supplier of mines around the world.
  
  
• Is the AQMD finally acknowledging environmental racism and recognizing that Southern California industries are trashing our air, land, and water, especially that of the poor who live in the low-income neighborhoods around our refineries? Hardly. They are studying the issue to see if they can find a direct causal relationship between the toxics emitted by the industries and the incredible cancer rates in the poor communities that surround them. A lawyer for several major oil and aerospace companies said, "I think it is a fine idea. I expect that it will generally confirm that we have the cleanest industries in the country." And he is probably right. The way we practice science in our culture will probably result in a finding of "inconclusive," thereby exonerating the industries and discouraging costly lawsuits from the neighbors.
  
  Am I being cynical? Paranoid? Alarmist? I wish it could say yes, but I don't think so. I believe that many major corporations are very concerned - concerned that the American (and world) public is becoming more aware of the threats to their health and their environment. We are less willing to trust that those in power have our best interests in mind and, more and more, we are demanding that something be done.
  
  Those who govern us, who have most of the wealth, who have most of the property, and who run the corporate megadollar structure of our world amount to approximately 2% of the population. Those of us who are concerned outnumber them many thousands to one. The tack that those in power have taken to quiet us restless masses is to appear to respond to our fears while taking advantage of our lack of experience in taking care of ourselves.
  
  Our fears are so great and our desire to trust so desperate that it is relatively easy for us to be distracted by a promise or a claim or the passing of a law.
  
  But since the issues are always presented as complex, technical problems that require a panel of experts, a study phase, or a monitoring program, how can we be expected to judge the adequacy of the measures? Not only is our technical training inadequate, but our skills to think critically and carefully about issues are sorely lacking.
  
  When you learn about the way the educational system evolved that most of us went through, you can get some pretty interesting, and disturbing, clues about why we are so deficient in the ability to reason these puzzling issues out.
  
  Do we get our values and our understanding of what is important from school? Is that where we learn what is important and what is not? Unlikely. Neil Postman, in his 1995 book The End of Education, says that, "between the ages of three and eighteen, the average American youngster will see about 500,000 television commercials, which means that the television commercial is the single most substantial source of values to which the young are exposed."
  
  We have many teachers in life other than the teachers in schools. Our observations of the political system teach us much. Postman says that politics teach us mostly cynicism. Television teaches us much, mostly about consumerism and how the world is a crime-ridden, violent place in which to live (Since 1993, television news reporting of violent crime has risen 700%. The crime rate has not.). Our families teach us much. Sometimes they teach us good values, sometimes not. My family taught me how to be mistrustful of others, isolated, and I created a universe in which the basic belief is that my needs will never be met by another. Others have been more fortunate.
  
  Many of us went to school to learn how to make a life, says Postman. But what we actually got was how to make a living. That is a very different thing. The modern educational system evolved to supply the industrial and technological revolutions with factory workers, not to supply the masses with values and critical thinking skills. Getting a job became the end all and be all of education. If you had an education, you got a better job.
  
  Even today, this belief system is as firmly rooted as any organized religion. In 1989, when I started teaching adults who had returned to specially designed universities to complete their undergraduate degrees, the majority of my students were women who were seeking self fulfillment for the first time in their lives. These women (and men) were coming back to school to fulfill a dream, to explore themselves, to understand themselves in the context of the universe and not just in the context of their jobs or their homes.
  
  The idea of capitalizing on this dream fulfillment thing caught on and the adult learner became a consumer market that had to be tapped. The advertising campaigns began and, sure enough, the American design of the educational system resurfaced. Now, ninety-eight percent of my students are in school for career advancement. Many are there because their employers are paying their way.
  
  But what kind of a public are our public (and many private) schools producing? Postman asks the question well.
  
  "What kind of public does it create? A conglomerate of self-indulgent consumers? Angry, soulless, directionless masses? Indifferent, confused citizens? Or a public imbued with confidence, a sense of purpose, a respect for learning, and tolerance?"
  
  The emphasis that school places on job skills instead of life skills has had a dramatic affect on the way we perceive ourselves and our world. First, we have been taught that our primary identity is supplied by our jobs. When you meet someone, invariably the question "What do you do" will be asked. Shouldn't we be asking "What do you like to do," or "What's important to you?" During a ten year period in my life when I changed my life work from exploring space as an engineer working for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to being a teacher, the identity crisis I faced was intense. Acquiring and enhancing new skills was easy. But finding a new identity was one of the most frightening things I have ever done.
  
  Having our jobs be our primary identities has made given us skewed priorities. We will sacrifice our own health and safety as well as relationships with our family and friends because we are too busy with work. Virtually any behavior can be justified if it is in the name of career advancement.
  
  Secondly, our education has taught us that America is a place for freedom and democracy. Postman says, "even the horrendous stories of the massacre of 'native' Americans, slavery, and the exploitation of 'coolie' labor could be told without condemning the ideas of democracy." This is a powerful realization that must be reflected upon. In school, we "learn" about the racism, sexism, and genocide carried out by American ideals and are taught to view them as little more than the growing pains of our society rather than as the atrocities that they are. Can the affect of this awareness be anything else but to create people who are desensitized to the pain of others and to justify that which is unconscionable?
  
  How can we say that we live in a democracy when presidential elections bring out barely 30 or 40 percent of the population and the winner gets little more than 50 percent of those votes? Do the math. This means that our President represents 15 to 20 percent of the people. This is not democracy. Yet the myth of democracy is firmly taught in school.
  
  Thirdly, school teaches us to worship what Postman says can only be called a series of gods. There are three basic gods that we are taught about: The god of Economic Utility, the god of Consumerism, and the god of Technology.
  
  Postman describes the god of Economic Utility as a passionless, cold, and severe one. This god says that if you pay attention in school, do your homework, get good grades on tests, and behave yourself, you will be rewarded with a job that payhs well. This god, Postman says, has as its "driving idea...that the purpose of schooling is to prepare children for competent entry into the economic life of a community."
  
  This point of view has had a devastating effect on our lives. It has taught that our sense of worth comes from our ability to secure material things.
  
  The god of Consumerism may be our most destructive influence. To this god, those who buy are good and successful, those who do not are evil and failures. In addition to preaching that you are what you do for a living, this god says that you are what you accumulate.
  
  The god of Technology may be the most insidious. This god teaches that information is everything. Yet we are supplied with very few tools to teach us what to do with all that information.
  
  Theodore Roszak speaks about this in The Cult of Information. "Like all cults, this one has the intention of enlisting mindless allegiance and acquiescence. People who have no clear idea of what they mean by information, or why they should want so much of it, are nonetheless prepared to believe that we live in an Information Age, which makes every computer around us what the relics of the True Cross were in the Age of Faith: emblems of salvation."
  
  What do we do with all this information in the U.S.? We have:
  • 260,000 billboards
    
  • 17,000 newspapers
    
  • 12,000 periodicals
    
  • 27,000 video outlets for renting tapes
    
  • 400 million television sets
    
  • over 500 million radios (not including those in cars)
    
  • 40,000 new book titles published every year
    
  • 41 million photographs taken
    
  • 60 billion pieces of advertising junk mail

  I ask people to ask themselves, as they fill their perceived need for information, "What of value does knowing this add to my life?"
  
  So, how can we become more discriminating thinkers? Here are some thoughts:

  • Realize that you may not have been given the tools to successfully wade through all the complex, mumbo-jumbo out there. Seek help.
    
    
  • Ask questions. Probe assumptions. This is probably the easiest thing to do immediately. Ask "why" and "how" and "where did you hear that" and "how do you know that?"
    
    
  • Hold yourself strictly accountable for what you say. Don't even tell a friend about something you "heard about" unless you know where you heard it. This is a very important step in keeping your mind and heart open. Say what you mean and mean what you say.
    
    
  • Reject stereotypes. Watch your language. Don't participate in the assumptions of our culture that continue to isolate us from each other. Don't say things like "women love to shop" or "men love sports." Don't accept any of the assumptions that are often made about Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, Jews, or whoever. When you hear someone say "oh you know them, they are so lazy" when referring to some other culture, STOP THEM. Tell them that such a statement is inappropriate and unfounded. If you listen and laugh, you are participating.
    
    
  • Don't watch the television news AT ALL. There is nothing you can gain from it. Nothing.
    
    
  • Seek alternative information sources. Seek out alternative bookstores in your community. Resist patronizing the large chain bookstores. Visit an alternative bookstore and then visit the book superstore. Notice the difference in the type of books carried. Reflect on the effects that such selective book offerings in the superstores have on the public. What if everyone knew about alternative bookstores and their selections? Visit a women's bookstore in your community. Reflect upon how has the world been affected because our perception of the universe has been documented from an almost exclusively white male perspective.
    
    

  • Examine your spending habits. Think carefully about what you need versus what you think you want. Are you spending to fill an emotional need, because you've been denied something you thought you deserved at work, or because you are angry or sad? Think about this very carefully. We are supporting the corporate regimes that are trashing our society. We buy their stuff. Participate in The Media Foundation's "Buy Nothing Day" on November 28, 1997, the day after Thanksgiving and the biggest retail shopping day of the year.
    
    It is easy to get discouraged, to feel overwhelmed. But if you realize that the choices you make in what you buy and what you eat can have such a dramatic affect on the world, you can get quite a bit of power back. If you realize how easy it can be to smile at someone or to help someone in need, you will start to see that the answers to our dilemmas lie not in legislation or politics, but in our hearts. Just figure out what you want to be remembered for and what is important to you. Then, do everything in your power to make them come true.
    
    To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
    To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
    and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
    and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
    -- Wendell Berry
    
    I love the dark hours of my being.
    My mind deepens into them.
    There I can find, as in old letters,
    the days of my life, already lived,
    and held like a legend, and understood.
    
    Then, knowing comes: I can open
    to another life that's wide and timeless.
    
    So I am sometimes like a tree
    rustling over a gravesite
    and making real the dream
    of the one its living roots
    embrace:
    
    a dream once lost
    among the sorrows and songs.
    -- Rainer Maria Rilke
    (translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)
    
    RESOURCES
    
    1. For an on-line version of the Los Angeles Times, visit http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/track.pl/Welcome-80.html?id=863287309-5&
    
    3. A number of web sites exist about Neil Postman's work. Try http://www.channel-zero.com/issue1/postman.html
    
    4. For help overcoming consumerism, visit http://www.hooked.net:80/users/verdant/index.htm and the Media Foundation at http://www.adbusters.org./main.html
    
    5. An outstanding alternative bookstore in Southern California is the Midnight Special in Santa Monica. Borders, a giant book superstore, set up shop a block away. Visit Midnight Special and link to other alternative bookstores at http://www2.msbooks.com/msbooks/homepage.html
    
    6. Sisterhood Bookstore in Los Angeles is one of the finest women's bookstores. Visit their web site at http://books.Sisterhood.com/sisterhood/home.html. Borders built a superstore right across the street from them!
    
    7. Read about a holistic view of life by Fritjof Capra at http://www.geocities.com/~combusem/CAPRA1.HTM
    
    {Jackie Giuliano can be found thinking about his November 1 wedding in Venice, California. He is a Professor of Environmental Studies for Antioch University, Los Angeles, the University of Phoenix, and the Union Institute College of Undergraduate Studies. He is also the Educational Outreach Manager for the Ice and Fire Preprojects, a NASA program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to send space probes to Jupiter's moon Europa, the planet Pluto, and the Sun. Please send your comments, ideas, and visions to him at jackieg@jps.net}.