Volume 2, number 6, June 2000 On Freedom of Choice Wake up to the sound of KSUA, KIAK, KROK, KRAP on your Panasonic, Sony, Timex, Philips snooze alarm clock cassette player radio with in-built radar detector. Then sit down for some Corn Flakes, Cheerios, Rice Krispies, Apple Jacks, Special K-Frosted Loopy Coco Fruit Puffs before heading for work in your 4x4, 3-ton Blazing Subdivision with hi-fi, CD stereo, CB radio, media center, swimming pool, of course fully loaded (the truck, that is, or it could be you--Miller, Miller Lite, Bud, Bud Lite, Jim Beam, Jim Beam Lite, etc.), and, whew! This is just the beginning of another day filled with the greatest gift bestowed upon us by consumer society: the freedom of choice! One should note, though, that the freedom of choice has been with us for a long time. Our pioneer ancestors were no strangers to it: "Should we shoot the native savages or give them smallpox-infected blankets?" ("Let's see what the Scriptures tell us...") It is not consumer culture that invented choice (though some corporations are trying to patent it, following the motto "if banks can make you pay for sneezing near an ATM machine, we should be able to cash in on something.") What consumer culture did do is revolutionize choice. Of course, we all know that revolutions change the world the same way playing musical chairs does (the music stopped, and it was the corrupt Czar and his nobles in the Power Chair, next time it was the corrupt Politburo and its party members, now it's corrupt elected leaders and their multinationals/mafias), so in our country the only real change is that we now have chosen to express ourselves with cluster bombs or military aid rather than bullets or blankets. I guess another change is our fervent belief in the power of choice. I recently heard a young woman on National Public Radio explain that Joan of Arc "was burnt at the stake partly because she chose to wear men's clothing." Forget geo-political battles and religion-drenched power games, Joan of Arc's downfall was due to her choice in clothing. Oh, had there just been stores like the Gap (the space between the teeth at your friendly shopping maul) back then to set her straight! It’s not just ol’ Joan who was burnt by choice, though. Every day perfectly normal citizens of our great country find themselves in aisle 98 or 75 or 86 of their local Wall-Safe-Meyer's store, looking at a zillion different types of laundry detergent while desperately trying to remember which detergents are the double-coupon-rebated, biodegradable, low-calorie, no-cholesterol ones that will add zest to your sex life. Finally, their brains short-circuit, and they run to buy a gun (which is becoming very hard to do with new draconian laws that require waiting periods and hard questions: "Hmmm... Are you really not a felon? Hmmm... You sure?... OK, whatever, here's your AK47")--and where it all ends, everyone knows. Suffice to say that no study of shooting sprees has ever denied a correlation between the killings and the killer's synapses overloading from being forced every day to make a thousand choices that had absolutely no bearing on anything important: would you like your coffee full-caf? Half-caf? Decaf? With milk? 2%? Nonfat? Soy milk? Rice milk? sugar? sweetener? flavoring? chilled? hot? a-little-spoon? a-big-one? a-plastic-one? spoon-on-the-side? spoon-in-the-coffee? And-buy-the-way-would-you-like-fries-with-that? And then we walk around proudly expounding on the lofty freedom our ability to choose provides us. This absurd connection to freedom reminds me of a conversation I had years ago in Brazil. My friend (disregarding the third-world maxim: "Never piss off an American, lest you find your country bombed or a particularly unpleasant dictator in power") said that the docile and compliant way Americans stand in lines at the post office is the epitome of un-freedom. He had a point--each Brazilian chooses an individual route to the post office counter, then they roll up their sleeves and go for it. The freedom to brawl in order to complete simple, routine transactions is something our forefathers somehow forgot to include in the Constitution (unless, of course, we shoot someone in the process, in which case it is covered by the Second Amendment). And then my friend looked at me like I was an alien when I ventured that there could be freedom from having to lose mental energy, physical energy, and teeth just to mail a birthday package to grandma. What he didn’t understand was that an orderly society can provide a freedom of the mind that is several orders of magnitude above that of using your elbows when you do your shopping. Unfortunately, in our country, people standing in line are just another captive audience for marketing and the potential for free thought is co-opted by choice. After the bright lights and colors, the huge $11.99 Sale signs (fine print: original price $12.01), the food packages that scream "fat free" (using the concept of freedom in its purest metaphysical form), and the unregulated use of organic labels, synonyms for sugar in ingredients lists, and celebrity and professional endorsements (if 9 out of 10 dentists really recommended the toothpaste, it would be stupid to advertise)... You finally get to the check-out line wondering if there’s a pun there as you feel you are about to check out yourself. But the pun is that there is more stuff to check out. You swirl around in consumer vertigo—lose 20 lbs in one day while stuffing your face, key-chain holder flashlights, soap opera news flashes, Mars bars, Nostradamus doomsday prophesies finally coming true, plastic razor blades, Coke, Satan’s septuplets unleashed in Iowa, Pepsi, Milky Ways, Ho-Hos, Ding-Dongs, come in, Uaaugh! Your eyes finally come to rest on a headline: "Elian Gonzales Sex Scandal." Elian, the latest quintessential story of freedom and choice in America. His mother died escaping the Fidel Castro-operated hell, and her last dying wish (as was related very reliably by Elian’s charitable and selfless Miami relatives through our ethical and responsible national media) was that Elian make it to freedom. She must have been ecstatic up there in heaven when Elian was taken in by his uncle, who used his freedom of choice to repeatedly drive intoxicated (and lost his license for much of the '90s), and his cousins, who used their freedom of choice to hold up tourists in Miami at knifepoint. And Elian, who, like all Cuban children had never known freedom ("But Mama, I don’t like wearing red socks." "Elian! Bite your tongue and do as Fidel says!") was clearly overwhelmed by the opportunity to live the life of a typical American child: daily gift showers, rubbing shoulders with New York Yankee pitchers, appearing on national television, and being offered $2 million to stay in the country. And then the choices: from among a multitude of toys and gadgets, Nikes or Reeboks, whether or not to go to school, which amusement park next, and the big one (heralded by our ethical and responsible national media): Fidel’s hell or freedom. If it weren’t for Janet Reno and her outdated ideas that a six-year-old should be with his father (don’t designer clothes, video games, cable TV, and the Disney corporation obviate the need for parents?), Elian would be endorsing some tire manufacturer ("Without Goodyear inner tubes, I’d never have made it to freedom!"), and living The Good Life. Why, even the gorge between our political extremists was bridged when Gore and Bush, both seeking the crucial Cuban vote, said Elian should stay. Oh, and that’s another choice we can look forward to soon. Will we vote for the guy who will claim to reform campaign finance but then do nothing or the guy who will claim to reform campaign finance but then do nothing? There won’t be much more choice with regards to military spending, corporate tax subsidies, bombing other countries, making serious educational reforms, or replacing all religions with the World Trade Organization. There might actually be some sort of choice in a few areas, like the environment, but we won’t know about them as our ethical and responsible corporate media will have filled our heads with in-depth reports about the tailors who make the candidates’ suits, their favorite recipes, which football team they support, their drug of choice and, with any luck, their illicit affairs. So there you have it--our world of freedom and choice in a nuthouse... Shell! Sorry, I meant "shell": Choose what you like as long as it’s of no real consequence and you continue to shell out your money to your life’s corporate sponsors.
| ||
 | | |
