Outis wrote:Basic tenants of Americanism, shaping its ideal citizen Homo Americanus:
1] Open-Markets: free-flow of goods & services, i.e., globalism. All is reduced to a product to be sold and purchased on the markets, including identity, gender, love, culture, etc.; no divisive boundaries will be tolerated, because they are bad for business.
2] Open Borders: free-flow of human resources – an end of ethnicity and nationalism. Humans are another product and service to be sold and purchased on the open markets – modern wage slavery. Nothing to prevent mixing and synthesizing, i.e., diluting, disarming.
3] Individualism: ego-centered. Promoting and prescribing a future man entirely void of a past exceeding the moment of his birth, i.e., lacking a genetically inherited identity – nature. Man is presented as a tabula rasa; entirely a product of nurturing – socioeconomically determined; a resource, a product of ongoing socioeconomic supply/demand dynamics, entirely malleable (fabricated); subjective and subjected to the effects of intersubjective socioeconomic environments, i.e., a modern civilization with no dominant culture. Individuals judged exclusively by their performances within this supply/demand market dynamic, viz., consuming/producing; measured monetarily, via their marketability, popularity, etc.; a man’s utility, marketability, determining his market-value (appreciation).
4] Messianism: ‘freedom,’ replacing salvation myths, via a messianic icon/idol which has been abstracted into credit codes, e.g., money, implying a liberation from the past – inheritance; liberation from physical identifiers, viz., liberated from natural identifiers (genetic markers), the tangible, the physical, the body as past made present; compensating for the loss of a past with the promise of an imminent techno-utopian future – replacing paradise, and its allusions to a beyond space/time eternal bliss, with futurism; a multifariously singular one-god replaced by the conception of a diversified one-humanity; god-creator of oneness replaced by universal order, manifesting an individuated creation of its singularity – an extension of divine will; “will to power” redefined as universal fatalism determining inevitable outcomes that must be positively affirmed, i.e., faith in divine benevolence – individuals acting as divine agencies nullifying injustices, prejudices, bigotry, cruelty, hatred etc.; healing, correcting the world {tikkun olam}, progressively moving towards divine completion (perfection) within which all injustices are justified and all suffering is meaningful.
No alternative systems will be tolerated. Americanism will become emulated globally. All alternatives will be abandoned, or converted to products, fashions, and trends, to be recycled and sold on the open markets – reduced to semiotics.
America presents itself as an agency of salvation, via monetary relief from nature’s “inhumane injustices” – a pragmatic application of either/or binaries as its sacred codes, e.g., either all mankind will be saved from its past, from itself, or all mankind will be doomed to an eternity in an earthly hell, i.e., Armageddon.
5] Futurism/Techno-Utopianism: (akin of the Italian art movement) – focus of presence in a perpetual present; absorbed by an eternally imminent future, with no inhibiting past to limit all forms of idealized projections forward, and forever onward – eternal hope is maintained as a constant ‘yet to become’ which can never disappoint because it could never be; individuality reduced to a noetic singularity – entirely theoretical and abstract, created socioeconomically. [Postmodernism]
A seductive idea if you keep in mind accumulating unfit mutations burdening the common man with failures he cannot fully understand – finding relief in accusations against an evil external agency, preventing the full realization of a promised ideal.
6] Pragmatism: even at the cost of reason and integrity – what works is true, what fails to produce a desired outcome is useless, ergo untrue. Hedonism is presented as a validating criterion for judging and choosing varied subjective perspectives.
Americanism uses materialism – access to goods & services – as a measure of man’s highest objectives, ergo freedoms, viz., salvation, liberty, is validated by access to multiple varieties of goods & services; ‘pursuit of happiness’ becomes a guiding principle determining an individual’s assessment of truth, e.g., if it does not add to the potential for attaining happiness – defined as comfort, safety, pleasure etc. – it is false and useless, if it does it is true and useful.
‘Happiness’ is defined as the gratification of needs/desires that can only be evaluated through access to goods & services; ergo, more access to goods and services is a pragmatic measure of contentment; available pleasure options measuring a man’s happiness.
Truth is reduced to human psychology where unreason often usurps reason. As such, if the irrational produces desirable effects, then it is “true.”
7] More is best: antithesis to the minimalist Stoic mantra “less is more”; gluttony & greed are a virtue not a vice – perpetual economic growth used as a measure of progress; quantities over qualities.
In the either/or binary model, asceticism is defined in accordance with Abrahamic worldviews, viz., it is an end in itself. Contraposed to this definition of asceticism, is Americanism’s superfluity, as an end in itself.
‘Less is more,’ rationalizes its antithesis, ‘more is better,’ i.e., gluttony, greed, promiscuity, any form of excess becomes a basic measure of freedom and happiness; ‘progress’ becomes a perpetual movement towards greater quantities, even at the expense of lowering qualities. Markets must be continuously growing, wealth increasing, goods and services moving, because this is the only way to practically measure truth and happiness.
8] No Biological/Natural Identifiers: nothing that causes human divisions and prevents the free-flow of resources, including human resources, will be tolerated.
All identifiers will be products to be recycled on the open markets.
Identity is reduced to another product of socioeconomic dynamics – socially constructed. Physical presence is concealed, or dismissed as superficial – another shell to be replaced by manmade shells (garments) or surgically modified to reflect fashion trends. The body is but another product to be bought and sold, determining market prices (values).
9] Diversity: code for the absence of biodiversity – negation of racial, ethnic, cultural diversity; pseudo-diversity, where everything is reduced to a manmade construct; consumer diversity. Only two political options, representing a singular ideal, but dozens of gender options – and soft-drink, and restaurant, and fashion, and musical options. Culture condensed to a disposable garment one can put on and then take off, replacing it with another.
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[§Monologue: Word Wars]