Part of what makes Autumn so charming is its inherent self-reflective melancholy. Every fall I feel sad about pasts that I rarely think of at other times of the year. It's a sort of mourning for the absence of a specific pain--a pang at the realization that the once gripping, absorbing to-the-brim suffering has transformed itself into a vague and often absent-minded, undedicated nostalgia. So that's what this is.
Thanks to Eric for inviting me to post.
Hannah
what did you think would happen?
i)
I lean as close to your body
with my words as I can.
-Hafiz
I don’t know who took the photo with the despair
a flick of the wrist
and everything shifts
what I will take home
what will stay.
push forward
nothing’s good enough
we don’t even need a complete sentence
disconsolate,
stuck between apples, temperance—
sweet, tart and thin-skinned
all that space between provides
is space
ii)
I let time slide—
my grey Belief—
remember
remember when I was all
hardened gleam--
my body just moving?
Remember dirty jokes?
time don’t slide, dearie.
I was just dragging it behind me—
iii)
At the top of the park
golden sludge of traffic
nudges lights
across the black smear of road
toward your house--
this time is the same as that time
only
more beautiful.
To Beard or Not To Beard
People with beards have something to hide, or so the saying goes. I will not deny this for myself, but I might argue that some of them are actually revealing an essential truth about themselves rather than covering something up. In America, 1 in 10 men have beards, an ornamental preference that is often popularly associated with “letting yourself go” – think Al Gore after the 2000 election. I've heard it said that one doesn't choose to have a beard, one chooses not to. There are some men that don't have beard-growing in their genotype, but if they do, simply living creates one. It is not having one that requires action. Hence, perhaps, another common perception of the bearded – we're just lazy.
I've had a beard for most of my adult life. Allowing it to grow out started as a kind of internal psychological experiment combating my sense of vanity. (Then, as now, most people think I look better - more attractive, younger, and with more visible emotional affect - without hair on my face.) I was 22 at the time, single, and living in Portland. There were, and still are, lots of bearded men in Oregon. So, even though it was spring – a time when many winter beards were being shaved, trimmed, or cropped into stylish Van Dykes, burly goatees, slick “soul patches,” or mustaches (ironic and otherwise) – I didn't stand out very much spending a few months growing facial hair. One of the first things I noticed was that all the other men sporting beards stood out to me as if highlighted. I was somewhat dismayed that the majority of these men seemed either hopelessly geeky, unkempt and homeless, or mentally unstable. “Crazy” is another quality commonly associated with the bearded. This can pertain to the bushy-faced, living-in-a-shack-in-the-wilderness-Unibomber type, or the well-groomed-but-devious-looking-Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad type; either way, the cultural default is definitely the clean-shaven look and growing a beard typically puts one outside the mainstream.
The 20th century Armenian mystic philosopher, G. I. Gurdjieff, maintained that there exist certain beneficial cosmic vibrations, the influences of which can only be absorbed either by the hair on a man's face, or the hair on the top of the head when it is exceptionally long – the thicker gauge, specialized cilium of a beard acting like a fibrous antenna array for receiving these frequencies. In anatomy, the anterior-most area of the chin is called the mental point. Perhaps this is why stroking one’s beard is so helpful during active mentation, the manual tweaking of the array serving to fine-tune the signal as though adjusting the dial on a radio. Looking at a picture of Rasputin doing this, with his piercing gaze, black frock, and fingers encrusted with occult-symbol-emblazoned rings, hand entwined in his goaty mane, it does indeed seem he is receiving some esoteric, galactic transmission.
After living with a beard for some months, I observed another notable phenomenon. There seemed to be an inverse relationship between the length of my whiskers and the amount of attention I received from the opposite sex. The longer my beard, the less flirting I enjoyed, until eventually there were no more interested glances, no more unsolicited compliments, no more coy smiles. I may as well have been invisible. Well, not completely invisible, of course. The crazy-looking guys with the woolly, Grizzly Adams facial fuzz would still talk to me about their pet conspiracy theories, but that was not a trade I had intended to make. My burgeoning bristles did seem to mirror, however, an increasingly self-reflective phase I was entering.
That summer, I quit my job, moved into my rust red, '83 Honda Civic Wagon, and migrated a few hours south to work as a wildland firefighter. Surfing the couches of friends and family while I waited for an emergency page, I spent a lot of time walking in the woods, communing with the trees – they seem to accept beards. In fact, trees seem to accept everything: wind, rain, sun, fire, treehouses, chainsaws. I had few responsibilities and was able to simply hang out at my friend's cabin in rural Oregon, reading books and contemplating my navel. As the course hair on my face lengthened, it seemed I was watching human dramas unfold as a dispassionate observer, as though the beard were exponentially distancing me from the realm of human affairs with each increment of its wily, determined growth.
After spending a few months out on forest fires with nary a woman in site, however, my contentment with the stoic company of trees and gruff firefighters gave way to a desire for more intellectual and emotional interpersonal engagement. Thus, when fire season ended, and I returned to civilization, I showered, shaved the year-long Brillo pad off my face, and headed to the grocery store. As I moseyed through the produce section, appreciating the lush selection of kales, chards, and beets, a voice asked, “What's for dinner?” It belonged to a young woman with chocolate tresses and bright green eyes picking through the apples, Honeycrisp in hand. Her tone was warm and casual, as though we were two friends seeing each other in the produce isle by chance.
“Soup,” I replied.
Believing us to be strangers, I moved on. Perhaps she had me confused with someone else?
In the bulk isle, I located the roasted, salted cashews and spooned a few cups into a plastic bag. A redhead scooping dried Bing cherries into a small, brown bag next to me asked: “You like the salty ones I see?”
“I blend them in soup,” I said. “I don't have to add salt that way.”
At that, she simply performed a slow nod before putting the bag of cherries in her grocery basket and moving away from me towards the boxed cereals.
“Why are these women behaving so strangely towards me?” I wondered. Needless to say, I felt like a complete jackass when it finally hit me what was going on. In my defense, I had spent the better part of the last year being utterly ignored by the opposite sex – not to mention communing with trees, and they don't flirt much.
After experiencing the consequences of my self imposed isolation, the relative merits of looking one's sharpest, if for no other reason than for the purpose of attracting a mate, seemed perfectly clear. But how is it, exactly, that a beard can be an obstacle to this? Certainly, there are women that find beards attractive. They must have historically been a relatively small minority because, though the trends of fashion ebb and flow with the tides of history, men have been shaving for a long, long time – the oldest razors discovered by archaeologists date to 30,000 B.C.E. This is not to say that impressing women is the only reason men started shaving.
In ancient India long beards were venerated and associated with virility and potency; a common punishment for adultery was to publicly cut them off. Full, bushy beards were a symbol of wisdom and health in ancient Greece until Alexander the Great began requiring his soldiers to shave, believing that a beard compromised a soldier's defense in hand to hand combat. Then it was necessary that all the slaves, who were previously made to shave, grow out their stubble lest they be mistaken for their masters. Thus, a sea change in facial fashion was initiated among not only the Greeks but all the conquered lands of Alexander's empire. Some centuries later, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I of England, and Peter I of Russia, all laid a penalty for wearing a beard. Men wishing to keep their facial hair had to pay an annual tax for the privilege. Ultimately, however, when it comes to that perennial existential question - To beard or not to beard? - the most compelling logic seems to revolve around the multifarious dynamics of the human mating ritual.
Amish men maintain a clean shave until they marry, at which point their iconic facial ornamentation begins to take shape. I took a page out of the Amish play book in meeting my wife, Megan. Having been convinced of the necessity of shaving in order to attract a lady, I kept my face relatively free of stubble throughout the courting process. Once I was sure she wouldn't run away though, I started growing it out post-haste. When she was still my girlfriend, Megan nannied a two year-old named Ketchum. She came to visit me once in the store where I worked, and brought Ketchy along to introduce us. He took one look at me and started backing away, screaming, “NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!” – glistening snot running down his pink, cherubic face, already turning scarlet. He was inconsolable and Megan had to take him back to the car in order to calm him down. The same or a similar scene occurred whenever he saw me after that, even from afar. What did I do?
Ketchy was somewhat of a late bloomer with regard to oral communication. He didn't talk much and it was difficult to parse the meaning of what little he did say. When Megan asked why he felt so terrified of me, he would just answer, “No!” Megan had some hypotheses that revolved around his having an attachment to her that I somehow threatened because she loved me and I took attention away from him when the three of us were together. I was never convinced by these postulations, however, and it remained an enigma that haunted me for a long time. Why was he so terrified of me? What was my principle concern, anyway – his trauma, or something more self-absorbed? When I looked at the situation honestly, I had to admit it was my injured ego.
Small children and domesticated animals almost always like me; at worst, they pay no attention to me. Other people may think I’m weird, arrogant, mean, stupid, crude, or rude – all of which are true at times – but I can usually count on little kids and pets to see beyond my appearance and occasional egoistic outbursts to my essential character. Perhaps this is why I was so upset by Ketchy’s response – was he seeing my essence and reeling back in horror? Several years later, Megan called Ketchy's mother to get a reference for job. His mother said that when Ketchy started talking more, she asked him why he was so afraid of me. His reply?
The beard.
That was it? The beard? No creepy uncle with a similar appearance? No red-bearded bogey men that stalked his dreams?
Nope, he was just scared of the beard. There is actually a psychological condition in which people suffer from a pathological fear of beards called pogonophobia – Pogon meaning beard in ancient Greek – perhaps Ketchy was thusly afflicted.
I like having a beard, and I think most men that can grow them look better wearing one. I prefer to have a beard, but it doesn't bother me to shave it. In fact, I rather enjoy the cognitive dissonance and disorientation it causes my wife and some of our friends when I do shave. Without first telling my wife that I was going to, I completely shaved my face one Halloween. She walked into the bathroom, lost in thought, just as I finished the last stroke of the razor across my chin. I turned my head towards her right as she looked up. Barely stifling a scream, she jumped back, startled, arms jerking to her chest with instinctive protection. As her shock gave way to amazement, the look on her face became one of unbridled attraction – she thinks I look much cuter without facial hair.
It can be fun to play with masks and different identities – Megan says I look so different with a naked face that it feels like she's cheating when we kiss. A problem arises, however, when we believe we are these masks and cannot see ourselves apart from them. Considering one's appearance may be a necessary evil for the purpose of achieving certain strategic ends - getting a job, attracting a mate, etc. - and enjoying inhabiting a certain look can be healthy and fun. But is it ever appropriate to become fully identified with it? Is it wise to invest ourselves so completely in some identity that it becomes the basis upon which our emotional well-being and sense of self-esteem depend?
Perhaps people with beards really are hiding something – the same thing everyone is hiding: a deep down fear that who we really are is somehow not good or whole or complete enough and needs to be disguised. But good enough for whom? Why do so many of us feel like we have to shave or cake on make-up or behave a certain way to be accepted? What are we looking for or trying to achieve through all this manipulation? And why do we feel like we need the security of an authority figure outside of ourselves to tell us what's what? The answers to these questions go way beyond the simple explanations that often take the place of meaningful resolutions to our existential dilemmas – the unsatisfied-need-for-approval-from-mommy-and-daddy, faux-Freudian pop-psychologizing that gets bandied about so casually and erroneously, or the immature projections of such dynamics onto an anthropomorphized god, to name just a few.
What if there are no easy answers to fundamental questions – questions that often require a lifetime of experience, introspection and relationships to even begin to understand. Direct, intuitive, experiential knowledge, what the ancient Greeks called gnosis, the quality from which true authority flows, is the only security I know of; it can actually be felt when in the presence of someone possessing a high degree of it. When combined with genuine humility, this kind of authority spontaneously inspires trust and deference. Assumed authority, on the other hand – the kind that most of us are used to encountering – incites fear, resentment, and rebellion, even if only unconsciously. Many of us spend our whole lives chasing after some measure of the second kind, often without ever having experienced or even known about the first.
Gnosis cannot be bought, borrowed, or lost, and can only be achieved through actual experience. Because it transcends rational thinking, it simply cannot be communicated through words in normal discourse; it can only be hinted at, alluded to, or transmitted, through mediums such as art, music, and poetry, possibly even a touch, a look, a smile.
Or sometimes, a beard.
-
I've had a beard for most of my adult life. Allowing it to grow out started as a kind of internal psychological experiment combating my sense of vanity. (Then, as now, most people think I look better - more attractive, younger, and with more visible emotional affect - without hair on my face.) I was 22 at the time, single, and living in Portland. There were, and still are, lots of bearded men in Oregon. So, even though it was spring – a time when many winter beards were being shaved, trimmed, or cropped into stylish Van Dykes, burly goatees, slick “soul patches,” or mustaches (ironic and otherwise) – I didn't stand out very much spending a few months growing facial hair. One of the first things I noticed was that all the other men sporting beards stood out to me as if highlighted. I was somewhat dismayed that the majority of these men seemed either hopelessly geeky, unkempt and homeless, or mentally unstable. “Crazy” is another quality commonly associated with the bearded. This can pertain to the bushy-faced, living-in-a-shack-in-the-wilderness-Unibomber type, or the well-groomed-but-devious-looking-Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad type; either way, the cultural default is definitely the clean-shaven look and growing a beard typically puts one outside the mainstream.
The 20th century Armenian mystic philosopher, G. I. Gurdjieff, maintained that there exist certain beneficial cosmic vibrations, the influences of which can only be absorbed either by the hair on a man's face, or the hair on the top of the head when it is exceptionally long – the thicker gauge, specialized cilium of a beard acting like a fibrous antenna array for receiving these frequencies. In anatomy, the anterior-most area of the chin is called the mental point. Perhaps this is why stroking one’s beard is so helpful during active mentation, the manual tweaking of the array serving to fine-tune the signal as though adjusting the dial on a radio. Looking at a picture of Rasputin doing this, with his piercing gaze, black frock, and fingers encrusted with occult-symbol-emblazoned rings, hand entwined in his goaty mane, it does indeed seem he is receiving some esoteric, galactic transmission.
After living with a beard for some months, I observed another notable phenomenon. There seemed to be an inverse relationship between the length of my whiskers and the amount of attention I received from the opposite sex. The longer my beard, the less flirting I enjoyed, until eventually there were no more interested glances, no more unsolicited compliments, no more coy smiles. I may as well have been invisible. Well, not completely invisible, of course. The crazy-looking guys with the woolly, Grizzly Adams facial fuzz would still talk to me about their pet conspiracy theories, but that was not a trade I had intended to make. My burgeoning bristles did seem to mirror, however, an increasingly self-reflective phase I was entering.
That summer, I quit my job, moved into my rust red, '83 Honda Civic Wagon, and migrated a few hours south to work as a wildland firefighter. Surfing the couches of friends and family while I waited for an emergency page, I spent a lot of time walking in the woods, communing with the trees – they seem to accept beards. In fact, trees seem to accept everything: wind, rain, sun, fire, treehouses, chainsaws. I had few responsibilities and was able to simply hang out at my friend's cabin in rural Oregon, reading books and contemplating my navel. As the course hair on my face lengthened, it seemed I was watching human dramas unfold as a dispassionate observer, as though the beard were exponentially distancing me from the realm of human affairs with each increment of its wily, determined growth.
After spending a few months out on forest fires with nary a woman in site, however, my contentment with the stoic company of trees and gruff firefighters gave way to a desire for more intellectual and emotional interpersonal engagement. Thus, when fire season ended, and I returned to civilization, I showered, shaved the year-long Brillo pad off my face, and headed to the grocery store. As I moseyed through the produce section, appreciating the lush selection of kales, chards, and beets, a voice asked, “What's for dinner?” It belonged to a young woman with chocolate tresses and bright green eyes picking through the apples, Honeycrisp in hand. Her tone was warm and casual, as though we were two friends seeing each other in the produce isle by chance.
“Soup,” I replied.
Believing us to be strangers, I moved on. Perhaps she had me confused with someone else?
In the bulk isle, I located the roasted, salted cashews and spooned a few cups into a plastic bag. A redhead scooping dried Bing cherries into a small, brown bag next to me asked: “You like the salty ones I see?”
“I blend them in soup,” I said. “I don't have to add salt that way.”
At that, she simply performed a slow nod before putting the bag of cherries in her grocery basket and moving away from me towards the boxed cereals.
“Why are these women behaving so strangely towards me?” I wondered. Needless to say, I felt like a complete jackass when it finally hit me what was going on. In my defense, I had spent the better part of the last year being utterly ignored by the opposite sex – not to mention communing with trees, and they don't flirt much.
After experiencing the consequences of my self imposed isolation, the relative merits of looking one's sharpest, if for no other reason than for the purpose of attracting a mate, seemed perfectly clear. But how is it, exactly, that a beard can be an obstacle to this? Certainly, there are women that find beards attractive. They must have historically been a relatively small minority because, though the trends of fashion ebb and flow with the tides of history, men have been shaving for a long, long time – the oldest razors discovered by archaeologists date to 30,000 B.C.E. This is not to say that impressing women is the only reason men started shaving.
In ancient India long beards were venerated and associated with virility and potency; a common punishment for adultery was to publicly cut them off. Full, bushy beards were a symbol of wisdom and health in ancient Greece until Alexander the Great began requiring his soldiers to shave, believing that a beard compromised a soldier's defense in hand to hand combat. Then it was necessary that all the slaves, who were previously made to shave, grow out their stubble lest they be mistaken for their masters. Thus, a sea change in facial fashion was initiated among not only the Greeks but all the conquered lands of Alexander's empire. Some centuries later, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I of England, and Peter I of Russia, all laid a penalty for wearing a beard. Men wishing to keep their facial hair had to pay an annual tax for the privilege. Ultimately, however, when it comes to that perennial existential question - To beard or not to beard? - the most compelling logic seems to revolve around the multifarious dynamics of the human mating ritual.
Amish men maintain a clean shave until they marry, at which point their iconic facial ornamentation begins to take shape. I took a page out of the Amish play book in meeting my wife, Megan. Having been convinced of the necessity of shaving in order to attract a lady, I kept my face relatively free of stubble throughout the courting process. Once I was sure she wouldn't run away though, I started growing it out post-haste. When she was still my girlfriend, Megan nannied a two year-old named Ketchum. She came to visit me once in the store where I worked, and brought Ketchy along to introduce us. He took one look at me and started backing away, screaming, “NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!” – glistening snot running down his pink, cherubic face, already turning scarlet. He was inconsolable and Megan had to take him back to the car in order to calm him down. The same or a similar scene occurred whenever he saw me after that, even from afar. What did I do?
Ketchy was somewhat of a late bloomer with regard to oral communication. He didn't talk much and it was difficult to parse the meaning of what little he did say. When Megan asked why he felt so terrified of me, he would just answer, “No!” Megan had some hypotheses that revolved around his having an attachment to her that I somehow threatened because she loved me and I took attention away from him when the three of us were together. I was never convinced by these postulations, however, and it remained an enigma that haunted me for a long time. Why was he so terrified of me? What was my principle concern, anyway – his trauma, or something more self-absorbed? When I looked at the situation honestly, I had to admit it was my injured ego.
Small children and domesticated animals almost always like me; at worst, they pay no attention to me. Other people may think I’m weird, arrogant, mean, stupid, crude, or rude – all of which are true at times – but I can usually count on little kids and pets to see beyond my appearance and occasional egoistic outbursts to my essential character. Perhaps this is why I was so upset by Ketchy’s response – was he seeing my essence and reeling back in horror? Several years later, Megan called Ketchy's mother to get a reference for job. His mother said that when Ketchy started talking more, she asked him why he was so afraid of me. His reply?
The beard.
That was it? The beard? No creepy uncle with a similar appearance? No red-bearded bogey men that stalked his dreams?
Nope, he was just scared of the beard. There is actually a psychological condition in which people suffer from a pathological fear of beards called pogonophobia – Pogon meaning beard in ancient Greek – perhaps Ketchy was thusly afflicted.
I like having a beard, and I think most men that can grow them look better wearing one. I prefer to have a beard, but it doesn't bother me to shave it. In fact, I rather enjoy the cognitive dissonance and disorientation it causes my wife and some of our friends when I do shave. Without first telling my wife that I was going to, I completely shaved my face one Halloween. She walked into the bathroom, lost in thought, just as I finished the last stroke of the razor across my chin. I turned my head towards her right as she looked up. Barely stifling a scream, she jumped back, startled, arms jerking to her chest with instinctive protection. As her shock gave way to amazement, the look on her face became one of unbridled attraction – she thinks I look much cuter without facial hair.
It can be fun to play with masks and different identities – Megan says I look so different with a naked face that it feels like she's cheating when we kiss. A problem arises, however, when we believe we are these masks and cannot see ourselves apart from them. Considering one's appearance may be a necessary evil for the purpose of achieving certain strategic ends - getting a job, attracting a mate, etc. - and enjoying inhabiting a certain look can be healthy and fun. But is it ever appropriate to become fully identified with it? Is it wise to invest ourselves so completely in some identity that it becomes the basis upon which our emotional well-being and sense of self-esteem depend?
Perhaps people with beards really are hiding something – the same thing everyone is hiding: a deep down fear that who we really are is somehow not good or whole or complete enough and needs to be disguised. But good enough for whom? Why do so many of us feel like we have to shave or cake on make-up or behave a certain way to be accepted? What are we looking for or trying to achieve through all this manipulation? And why do we feel like we need the security of an authority figure outside of ourselves to tell us what's what? The answers to these questions go way beyond the simple explanations that often take the place of meaningful resolutions to our existential dilemmas – the unsatisfied-need-for-approval-from-mommy-and-daddy, faux-Freudian pop-psychologizing that gets bandied about so casually and erroneously, or the immature projections of such dynamics onto an anthropomorphized god, to name just a few.
What if there are no easy answers to fundamental questions – questions that often require a lifetime of experience, introspection and relationships to even begin to understand. Direct, intuitive, experiential knowledge, what the ancient Greeks called gnosis, the quality from which true authority flows, is the only security I know of; it can actually be felt when in the presence of someone possessing a high degree of it. When combined with genuine humility, this kind of authority spontaneously inspires trust and deference. Assumed authority, on the other hand – the kind that most of us are used to encountering – incites fear, resentment, and rebellion, even if only unconsciously. Many of us spend our whole lives chasing after some measure of the second kind, often without ever having experienced or even known about the first.
Gnosis cannot be bought, borrowed, or lost, and can only be achieved through actual experience. Because it transcends rational thinking, it simply cannot be communicated through words in normal discourse; it can only be hinted at, alluded to, or transmitted, through mediums such as art, music, and poetry, possibly even a touch, a look, a smile.
Or sometimes, a beard.
-
The Technique of Globalization
Examining globalization through the lens of Ellul's Technological Society
In the movies “Terminator” and the “The Matrix,” a future is portrayed in which a global network of computerized machines, imbued with artificial intelligence, become self-aware and logically conclude that the greatest threat to their further existence is mankind –therefore humanity must be enslaved or destroyed. In these dystopian visions of the future, one can see many of the elements Jacques Ellul predicts in his prescient 1954 book The Technological Society. Without the intervention of human values to govern and constrain the growth and development of technique, he argues, it will eventually take over and eliminate or incorporate into its system every non-technical element, including us. “When technique enters into every area of life, including human,” he says, “it ceases to be external to man and becomes his very substance” (6).
At the beginning of the book, Ellul asserts “no social, human, or spiritual fact is so important as the fact of technique in the modern world. And yet no subject is so little understood” (3). He uses the term technique to signify the “totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency in every field of human activity” (xxv). It is logical, autonomous and progressive (in the sense that it develops naturally and of itself; in contrast with the modern, political understanding of progressive), and determinative to the degree to which humans refuse to consciously direct it in service of non-technical considerations like social justice, equality, and human rights. “Technique is nothing more than means and the ensemble of means” (19) – and means, he observes, are more important than the ends in modern society.
Ellul sees the basis for the changes he predicts in social, economic and political phenomena, and we have seen many of those predictions born out in the phenomenon of globalization. Richard Falk, in his 1999 book Predatory Globalization, defines globalization partly as the “material developments that reflect the expansion of technological capabilities to a global scale,...the de-territorialization of these capabilities due to informatics and the Internet” (2), and the incremental realization of the neo-liberal ideal of “autonomous markets and facilitative states” (1). An important addition to this definition is the increasing integration and interdependence of economies and societies through networks of commercial and/or electronically mediated relationships, as well as the increase in migration and movement of people around the globe made possible by the decreased cost, and growth, of transportation networks.
The way in which globalization has developed and transformed our present civilization – socially, economically, and politically – reflects the dynamics Ellul outlines. His statement that “technique is in fact the consciousness of the mechanized world” (6), perfectly encapsulates the above dynamics if one inserts “globalization” in place of “the mechanized world.” Indeed, the economic and foreign policies of the worlds largest countries/economies, especially the US, have been shaped by the logic of technique – a dynamic that has allowed them to dominate the global economy. Once political and economic domination has been achieved – what Falk refers to as a dynamic of “global apartheid” (13) – technique demands that it be maintained or increased at any cost. Likewise, international and supranational bodies like the WTO, World Bank, IMF, etc., have institutionalized technique – i.e., the commercial and, in some instances, political factors of globalization – in such a way as to actually supersede the abilities of nations and grassroots organizations to effectively oppose them.
Technique may have been born with the machine, but it has become “almost completely independent of the machine”(Ellul 4). Thus, though technology as we habitually conceive of it today – in the form of computers, robotics, telecommunications, etc. – is a manifestation of technique, it is in reality only a fractional component of what it comprises. Efficiency is the clarion call of both technique and globalization. It may be greed that is the original inspiration for affecting that efficiency with respect to economic globalization, but it is nevertheless the defining characteristic of these phenomena. Ellul also talks about standardization as being a hallmark of technique. The desire among international and supranational bodies, such as the WTO, for more harmonization of regulations between countries is merely a reframing of the same technical impetus for standardization. It is in fact the rationality and autonomy of technique that shapes the agenda of policy-making bodies and necessarily compels them to adapt, change or eliminate laws and regulations in order to accommodate its progression.
Falk argues that it is necessary to make a “sharp distinction...between globalization-from-above and globalization-from-below” (7), by which he means the multifarious political/capital apparatuses of governments and corporations vs. collaborative – and in some cases transnational – grassroots social movements facilitated by global telecommunications and internet technologies. Where “predatory globalization has eroded, if not all together broken, the former social contract that was forged between state and society during the last century” (3), Falk sees these “globalization-from-below” organizations and state or regional governments guided by progressive ideals as the only elements capable of counterbalancing the juggernaut of the neo-liberal globalizing economic forces. It remains to be seen, however, whether these movements can effectively work against the top-down globalizing forces without having an understanding of the true nature of what they're fighting against – i.e., technique.
It is precisely at this point where Falk's and Ellul's analyses may diverge. In saying that “there is...nothing deterministic about globalization, with reference to either its idealogical content or its normative goals” (7), Falk may be trying to leave open the possibility that the development of transnational grassroots movements and/or regional governments like the European Union have the potential to exert the necessary check on the globalizing forces of technique, but he could just as easily be simply failing to recognize the technical dynamic that underlies the phenomenon of globalization and its essentially autonomous, deterministic nature. Though he concedes that “the historical flow of developments has generated some pronounced, and troubling, trends,” Falk's analysis seems devoid of an understanding of technique as Ellul has articulated it. Falk does however argue for waking up to our individual and collective responsibility to reign in the forces of globalization-from-above within the value-based bounds of “sustainable development, human rights, and cosmopolitan democracy” (8), just as Ellul advocated constraining technique within a similarly defined context of humane values.
There is an interesting point of conflict between economic globalization and technique in that capitalism can work against technique by limiting efficiency and the application of new proprietary techniques/technologies in order to increase profits. Ellul argues that “technique demands that everything it produces be brought into a domain that affects the public” (106). The practice of some corporations of buying up more efficient, and therefore competing, proprietary techniques or technology, and burying them, is antithetical to the furtherance of technique. Ultimately, however, not even capitalism, the former master, will be able to withstand the insidious advance of technique, heretofore capitalism's most powerful servant. It is possible that we are presently seeing the beginnings of this role reversal as evidenced by the recent worldwide economic crisis. More and more governments and supranational bodies are applying, or considering, techniques to manage global markets as a means of affecting greater stability – which can also be interpreted as a form of efficiency – thereby reigning in the “free” market under the yoke of regulation, which itself is a form of technique.
Ellul asserts that technique in the present epoch is characterized by rationality, artificiality, automatism, self-augmentation, monism, universalism, and autonomy. Technique is rational in that it reduces “facts, forces, phenomena, means, and instruments to the schema of logic.” It is artificial in that it “destroys, eliminates, or subordinates the natural world” (79). Automatism refers to that aspect of technique wherein the most efficient method must be selected and is therefore self-selecting, while self-augmentation refers to the dynamic of technique progressing without decisive human intervention – “the preceding technical situation alone is determinative” (90). Ellul argues that this progress is irreversible and tends to act in a geometric, or exponential, progression. He uses the term monism to signify the essential unity of characteristics that underlies the various separate techniques and to describe the dynamic of use as inseparable from being. Ellul's use of the word universalism represents both the increasing geographic reach or expansion of technique throughout the world – spread chiefly by means of commerce and war – and qualitative in that it penetrates into nearly every sphere of human activity – “intellectual, artistic, [and] moral” (130).
With respect to the characteristic of autonomy, Ellul says that “technique has become a reality in itself, self-sufficient, with its special laws and its own determinations” (134). This characteristic is exemplified in all the various self-correcting feedback mechanisms that use an array of sensors to relay information about the environment back to a decision-making device – whether it be a simple set of solenoid switches or the most sophisticated computer interfaces. Humans are only necessary in the equation for the purpose of maintaining these systems (and even then, for how much longer?). From climate-controlled buildings and ambient light-sensing window panes, to auto-pilot mechanisms, AI software and robotics, technology is increasingly becoming more and more “intelligent” and autonomous in its operations. This “progressive elimination of man from the circuit must inexorably continue” (Ellul 136).
Technique, and by extension globalization, requires the restraint and intervention of human values precisely because the above mentioned characteristics necessarily lead to the elimination or conversion of all non-technical elements into technical ones, creating what Ellul refers to as a “technical civilization.” He even goes so far as to state that “technique has taken over the whole of civilization” (128) – and here again it works just as well to supplant the word “globalization” for “technique” as there are few places of human activity in the world that remain minimally or totally unaffected by the phenomenon of globalization. In its inexorable, accelerating progress, the technique of globalization is eroding the barriers erected by states to control the flow of goods, services, people, and capital by politically, economically, and technologically integrating individuals and even whole societies. Falk's observation that the blind, amoral forces of globalization are subordinating states to economic markets, rendering them less and less able to provide for the basic welfare of their citizens, could just as easily have come out of Ellul's discussion of technique. One could say the same thing of Falk's entire book, which is essentially one long argument for the necessity of states to reassert the welfare and security of their citizens as a national interest more central than the growth of trade and finance.
It is Ellul, however, who paints the most compelling, and terrifying, picture of what will happen if we fail at this task:
Every conscious being today is walking the narrow ridge of a decision with regard to technique. He who maintains that he can escape it is either a hypocrite or unconscious. The autonomy of technique forbids the man of today to choose his destiny. ...In the past, when an individual entered into a conflict with society, he led a harsh and miserable life that required a vigor which either hardened or broke him. Today the concentration camp and death await him; technique cannot tolerate aberrant activities (140). Since heredity is full of chance, technique proposes to suppress it so as to engender the kind of men necessary for its ideal of service. The creation of the ideal man will soon be a simple technical operation. (Ellul 143)
The author makes it clear in the forward that his analysis only pertains to a course of events in which man “abdicates his responsibility with regard to values,” and that “if man does not pull himself together and assert himself (or if some other unpredictable but decisive phenomenon does not intervene), then things will go the way I describe”(xxxi). Here Ellul is presenting us with an impeccably well-reasoned argument for action, as well as a powerful motivation.
If technique “in itself leads to a certain amount of suffering and scourge” (Ellul 104), and it is advancing exponentially, we can most certainly expect to see an increase in the number and intensity of armed conflicts around the globe in the years to come. Falk echoes this point in his analysis of globalizations likely effects, citing the increasing prevalence of ethnic outbursts and religious extremism that in part result from the inability of states to cope with globalization. As he points out, the only significant political dissent against economic globalization comes from “ultranationalists” and ethnic or religious groups, as the traditional political affiliations have become subservient to increasingly omnipotent and amoral global economic interests. Thus far, the state governments have been very effective at containing or shutting down the various demonstrations and protests from grassroots organizations that oppose the more corporatist aspects of globalization and the economic policies of governments that support and perpetuate it.
The perennial fear of conspiracy theorists and paranoiacs everywhere of the formation and institutionalization of a totalitarian, one-world government is further justified by Ellul's analysis. It is easy to see how this could develop from the best of intentions under the altruistic guise of providing greater security and stability to a world riven by conflict and scarcity – it certainly wouldn't be sold to the public, or even conceived of by its proponents, as totalitarianism, but it could be in practice nothing else. If indeed, as Ellul contends, technique is in the process of taking over the world, if it “tends to be applied everywhere it can be...without discrimination” (Ellul 100), and if it “cannot be otherwise than totalitarian” (Ellul 125), then a totalitarian, one-world government is not only likely but inevitable.
With chilling logic, Ellul articulates the progression which stems from the application of police techniques and necessarily leads to “the transformation of the entire nation into a concentration camp” (100). It could be argued that these alarming claims are exaggerated and probably more the result of the collective psychological scars left by the Nazi practices during World War II than by disciplined reason. “Certainly,” one might object, “when we said with a single global voice 'Never again!' after 1945 we meant it, right? We are too advanced and evolved now to revert to that kind of fascist barbarism.” When these kind of objections are challenged with the examples of mass killings or outright genocides in China during the revolution, Pol Pot's Cambodia, 90's Rwanda or present day Darfur, the same people respond merely by adding the qualification that they meant it could never again happen in a Western democracy. Rounding up dissidents and putting them in prison or outdoor fenced enclosures after the administration of pepper spray and barrages of rubber bullets and tear gas was practiced during the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, and has become standard operating procedure ever since in the US, England and many other West European democracies. The point Ellul makes is that, when order is the highest value – and “[t]o deny this is to deny the whole course of modern times” (103) – it is a slippery, but logical slope, from the desire to maintain order to a populace under 24 hour surveillance and whose movements in and out of their region are tightly controlled; from “Now leaving the United States” and “Welcome to Canada,” to “Papers, please.”
Even though technique still requires the action and collaboration of humans to further itself, the diminishing necessity for this due to technological advance, combined with humanity's seemingly infinite capacity for delusion and self-deception, make it possible for technique to subordinate/enslave humans completely while they maintain the illusion of control over it. It is in this respect that the paranoid conspiracy theorists perhaps have the end correct but misunderstand the means. An inner circle of elite Illuminati may be the instruments of this global takeover but they are not the puppet masters they are made out to be – rather, it is the blind force of technique pulling the strings to affect its own perpetuation. Like an ethereal version of the Blob from the fifties horror classic, assimilating/eliminating anything and everything that opposes or even touches it, technique is an awesome force almost to subtle to notice.
We are indeed “conditioned...by technological society,” as Ellul contends (xxviii). I am a product of technique in so far as most of my life has been organized around the various techniques of bureaucratic institutions of government and education, and technology – television and mass media, video games, computers and the internet, etc. I cannot fundamentally separate myself from this milieu. Though I can survive without the technique of today as the foundational ground of my existence – for instance, if I were to live in the forest without modern conveniences – my entire personality and world view have been shaped and informed by technique. It is the context within which all of modern life takes place. Likewise globalization, being an outgrowth of technique, subsumes and consumes all non-globalized processes in the same way that Ellul talks about technique eliminating or converting into technique all non-technical phenomena. He also maintains that “the technical phenomenon cannot be broken down in such a way as to retain the good and reject the bad” (111). It is therefore meaningless to talk about utilizing the techniques we like and banning those we don't for, eventually, if they are necessary for technique as a whole to progress, technique will compel us to change our minds.
To the extent that I strive to develop my consciousness in a manner outside of technique, to cultivate non-technical values and considerations, I suppose I am engaged in an active struggle against the insidious but blind forces of both technique and globalization. Meditating, doing yoga (which is itself a sophisticated physical/psycho-spiritual technique), preferentially buying local or used goods, eschewing the majority of mass media products for more homegrown entertainment and leisure, and investing my energy in building community and relationships all seem antithetical to the impetus of economic globalization. They are modest forms of resistance but are perhaps my only means of affecting any control over the further encroachment of modern technique into my personal sphere. It could perhaps be argued that this is itself another technique I am affecting. But it is a means of technique in service of a non-technical end – does this constitute doing what Ellul admonishes us to? Can it be enough? That is a conversation I would very much like to have with him – and one we all need to have with each other.
Works Cited
Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1964.
Falk, Richard. Predatory Globalization: A Critique. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1999.
In the movies “Terminator” and the “The Matrix,” a future is portrayed in which a global network of computerized machines, imbued with artificial intelligence, become self-aware and logically conclude that the greatest threat to their further existence is mankind –therefore humanity must be enslaved or destroyed. In these dystopian visions of the future, one can see many of the elements Jacques Ellul predicts in his prescient 1954 book The Technological Society. Without the intervention of human values to govern and constrain the growth and development of technique, he argues, it will eventually take over and eliminate or incorporate into its system every non-technical element, including us. “When technique enters into every area of life, including human,” he says, “it ceases to be external to man and becomes his very substance” (6).
At the beginning of the book, Ellul asserts “no social, human, or spiritual fact is so important as the fact of technique in the modern world. And yet no subject is so little understood” (3). He uses the term technique to signify the “totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency in every field of human activity” (xxv). It is logical, autonomous and progressive (in the sense that it develops naturally and of itself; in contrast with the modern, political understanding of progressive), and determinative to the degree to which humans refuse to consciously direct it in service of non-technical considerations like social justice, equality, and human rights. “Technique is nothing more than means and the ensemble of means” (19) – and means, he observes, are more important than the ends in modern society.
Ellul sees the basis for the changes he predicts in social, economic and political phenomena, and we have seen many of those predictions born out in the phenomenon of globalization. Richard Falk, in his 1999 book Predatory Globalization, defines globalization partly as the “material developments that reflect the expansion of technological capabilities to a global scale,...the de-territorialization of these capabilities due to informatics and the Internet” (2), and the incremental realization of the neo-liberal ideal of “autonomous markets and facilitative states” (1). An important addition to this definition is the increasing integration and interdependence of economies and societies through networks of commercial and/or electronically mediated relationships, as well as the increase in migration and movement of people around the globe made possible by the decreased cost, and growth, of transportation networks.
The way in which globalization has developed and transformed our present civilization – socially, economically, and politically – reflects the dynamics Ellul outlines. His statement that “technique is in fact the consciousness of the mechanized world” (6), perfectly encapsulates the above dynamics if one inserts “globalization” in place of “the mechanized world.” Indeed, the economic and foreign policies of the worlds largest countries/economies, especially the US, have been shaped by the logic of technique – a dynamic that has allowed them to dominate the global economy. Once political and economic domination has been achieved – what Falk refers to as a dynamic of “global apartheid” (13) – technique demands that it be maintained or increased at any cost. Likewise, international and supranational bodies like the WTO, World Bank, IMF, etc., have institutionalized technique – i.e., the commercial and, in some instances, political factors of globalization – in such a way as to actually supersede the abilities of nations and grassroots organizations to effectively oppose them.
Technique may have been born with the machine, but it has become “almost completely independent of the machine”(Ellul 4). Thus, though technology as we habitually conceive of it today – in the form of computers, robotics, telecommunications, etc. – is a manifestation of technique, it is in reality only a fractional component of what it comprises. Efficiency is the clarion call of both technique and globalization. It may be greed that is the original inspiration for affecting that efficiency with respect to economic globalization, but it is nevertheless the defining characteristic of these phenomena. Ellul also talks about standardization as being a hallmark of technique. The desire among international and supranational bodies, such as the WTO, for more harmonization of regulations between countries is merely a reframing of the same technical impetus for standardization. It is in fact the rationality and autonomy of technique that shapes the agenda of policy-making bodies and necessarily compels them to adapt, change or eliminate laws and regulations in order to accommodate its progression.
Falk argues that it is necessary to make a “sharp distinction...between globalization-from-above and globalization-from-below” (7), by which he means the multifarious political/capital apparatuses of governments and corporations vs. collaborative – and in some cases transnational – grassroots social movements facilitated by global telecommunications and internet technologies. Where “predatory globalization has eroded, if not all together broken, the former social contract that was forged between state and society during the last century” (3), Falk sees these “globalization-from-below” organizations and state or regional governments guided by progressive ideals as the only elements capable of counterbalancing the juggernaut of the neo-liberal globalizing economic forces. It remains to be seen, however, whether these movements can effectively work against the top-down globalizing forces without having an understanding of the true nature of what they're fighting against – i.e., technique.
It is precisely at this point where Falk's and Ellul's analyses may diverge. In saying that “there is...nothing deterministic about globalization, with reference to either its idealogical content or its normative goals” (7), Falk may be trying to leave open the possibility that the development of transnational grassroots movements and/or regional governments like the European Union have the potential to exert the necessary check on the globalizing forces of technique, but he could just as easily be simply failing to recognize the technical dynamic that underlies the phenomenon of globalization and its essentially autonomous, deterministic nature. Though he concedes that “the historical flow of developments has generated some pronounced, and troubling, trends,” Falk's analysis seems devoid of an understanding of technique as Ellul has articulated it. Falk does however argue for waking up to our individual and collective responsibility to reign in the forces of globalization-from-above within the value-based bounds of “sustainable development, human rights, and cosmopolitan democracy” (8), just as Ellul advocated constraining technique within a similarly defined context of humane values.
There is an interesting point of conflict between economic globalization and technique in that capitalism can work against technique by limiting efficiency and the application of new proprietary techniques/technologies in order to increase profits. Ellul argues that “technique demands that everything it produces be brought into a domain that affects the public” (106). The practice of some corporations of buying up more efficient, and therefore competing, proprietary techniques or technology, and burying them, is antithetical to the furtherance of technique. Ultimately, however, not even capitalism, the former master, will be able to withstand the insidious advance of technique, heretofore capitalism's most powerful servant. It is possible that we are presently seeing the beginnings of this role reversal as evidenced by the recent worldwide economic crisis. More and more governments and supranational bodies are applying, or considering, techniques to manage global markets as a means of affecting greater stability – which can also be interpreted as a form of efficiency – thereby reigning in the “free” market under the yoke of regulation, which itself is a form of technique.
Ellul asserts that technique in the present epoch is characterized by rationality, artificiality, automatism, self-augmentation, monism, universalism, and autonomy. Technique is rational in that it reduces “facts, forces, phenomena, means, and instruments to the schema of logic.” It is artificial in that it “destroys, eliminates, or subordinates the natural world” (79). Automatism refers to that aspect of technique wherein the most efficient method must be selected and is therefore self-selecting, while self-augmentation refers to the dynamic of technique progressing without decisive human intervention – “the preceding technical situation alone is determinative” (90). Ellul argues that this progress is irreversible and tends to act in a geometric, or exponential, progression. He uses the term monism to signify the essential unity of characteristics that underlies the various separate techniques and to describe the dynamic of use as inseparable from being. Ellul's use of the word universalism represents both the increasing geographic reach or expansion of technique throughout the world – spread chiefly by means of commerce and war – and qualitative in that it penetrates into nearly every sphere of human activity – “intellectual, artistic, [and] moral” (130).
With respect to the characteristic of autonomy, Ellul says that “technique has become a reality in itself, self-sufficient, with its special laws and its own determinations” (134). This characteristic is exemplified in all the various self-correcting feedback mechanisms that use an array of sensors to relay information about the environment back to a decision-making device – whether it be a simple set of solenoid switches or the most sophisticated computer interfaces. Humans are only necessary in the equation for the purpose of maintaining these systems (and even then, for how much longer?). From climate-controlled buildings and ambient light-sensing window panes, to auto-pilot mechanisms, AI software and robotics, technology is increasingly becoming more and more “intelligent” and autonomous in its operations. This “progressive elimination of man from the circuit must inexorably continue” (Ellul 136).
Technique, and by extension globalization, requires the restraint and intervention of human values precisely because the above mentioned characteristics necessarily lead to the elimination or conversion of all non-technical elements into technical ones, creating what Ellul refers to as a “technical civilization.” He even goes so far as to state that “technique has taken over the whole of civilization” (128) – and here again it works just as well to supplant the word “globalization” for “technique” as there are few places of human activity in the world that remain minimally or totally unaffected by the phenomenon of globalization. In its inexorable, accelerating progress, the technique of globalization is eroding the barriers erected by states to control the flow of goods, services, people, and capital by politically, economically, and technologically integrating individuals and even whole societies. Falk's observation that the blind, amoral forces of globalization are subordinating states to economic markets, rendering them less and less able to provide for the basic welfare of their citizens, could just as easily have come out of Ellul's discussion of technique. One could say the same thing of Falk's entire book, which is essentially one long argument for the necessity of states to reassert the welfare and security of their citizens as a national interest more central than the growth of trade and finance.
It is Ellul, however, who paints the most compelling, and terrifying, picture of what will happen if we fail at this task:
Every conscious being today is walking the narrow ridge of a decision with regard to technique. He who maintains that he can escape it is either a hypocrite or unconscious. The autonomy of technique forbids the man of today to choose his destiny. ...In the past, when an individual entered into a conflict with society, he led a harsh and miserable life that required a vigor which either hardened or broke him. Today the concentration camp and death await him; technique cannot tolerate aberrant activities (140). Since heredity is full of chance, technique proposes to suppress it so as to engender the kind of men necessary for its ideal of service. The creation of the ideal man will soon be a simple technical operation. (Ellul 143)
The author makes it clear in the forward that his analysis only pertains to a course of events in which man “abdicates his responsibility with regard to values,” and that “if man does not pull himself together and assert himself (or if some other unpredictable but decisive phenomenon does not intervene), then things will go the way I describe”(xxxi). Here Ellul is presenting us with an impeccably well-reasoned argument for action, as well as a powerful motivation.
If technique “in itself leads to a certain amount of suffering and scourge” (Ellul 104), and it is advancing exponentially, we can most certainly expect to see an increase in the number and intensity of armed conflicts around the globe in the years to come. Falk echoes this point in his analysis of globalizations likely effects, citing the increasing prevalence of ethnic outbursts and religious extremism that in part result from the inability of states to cope with globalization. As he points out, the only significant political dissent against economic globalization comes from “ultranationalists” and ethnic or religious groups, as the traditional political affiliations have become subservient to increasingly omnipotent and amoral global economic interests. Thus far, the state governments have been very effective at containing or shutting down the various demonstrations and protests from grassroots organizations that oppose the more corporatist aspects of globalization and the economic policies of governments that support and perpetuate it.
The perennial fear of conspiracy theorists and paranoiacs everywhere of the formation and institutionalization of a totalitarian, one-world government is further justified by Ellul's analysis. It is easy to see how this could develop from the best of intentions under the altruistic guise of providing greater security and stability to a world riven by conflict and scarcity – it certainly wouldn't be sold to the public, or even conceived of by its proponents, as totalitarianism, but it could be in practice nothing else. If indeed, as Ellul contends, technique is in the process of taking over the world, if it “tends to be applied everywhere it can be...without discrimination” (Ellul 100), and if it “cannot be otherwise than totalitarian” (Ellul 125), then a totalitarian, one-world government is not only likely but inevitable.
With chilling logic, Ellul articulates the progression which stems from the application of police techniques and necessarily leads to “the transformation of the entire nation into a concentration camp” (100). It could be argued that these alarming claims are exaggerated and probably more the result of the collective psychological scars left by the Nazi practices during World War II than by disciplined reason. “Certainly,” one might object, “when we said with a single global voice 'Never again!' after 1945 we meant it, right? We are too advanced and evolved now to revert to that kind of fascist barbarism.” When these kind of objections are challenged with the examples of mass killings or outright genocides in China during the revolution, Pol Pot's Cambodia, 90's Rwanda or present day Darfur, the same people respond merely by adding the qualification that they meant it could never again happen in a Western democracy. Rounding up dissidents and putting them in prison or outdoor fenced enclosures after the administration of pepper spray and barrages of rubber bullets and tear gas was practiced during the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, and has become standard operating procedure ever since in the US, England and many other West European democracies. The point Ellul makes is that, when order is the highest value – and “[t]o deny this is to deny the whole course of modern times” (103) – it is a slippery, but logical slope, from the desire to maintain order to a populace under 24 hour surveillance and whose movements in and out of their region are tightly controlled; from “Now leaving the United States” and “Welcome to Canada,” to “Papers, please.”
Even though technique still requires the action and collaboration of humans to further itself, the diminishing necessity for this due to technological advance, combined with humanity's seemingly infinite capacity for delusion and self-deception, make it possible for technique to subordinate/enslave humans completely while they maintain the illusion of control over it. It is in this respect that the paranoid conspiracy theorists perhaps have the end correct but misunderstand the means. An inner circle of elite Illuminati may be the instruments of this global takeover but they are not the puppet masters they are made out to be – rather, it is the blind force of technique pulling the strings to affect its own perpetuation. Like an ethereal version of the Blob from the fifties horror classic, assimilating/eliminating anything and everything that opposes or even touches it, technique is an awesome force almost to subtle to notice.
We are indeed “conditioned...by technological society,” as Ellul contends (xxviii). I am a product of technique in so far as most of my life has been organized around the various techniques of bureaucratic institutions of government and education, and technology – television and mass media, video games, computers and the internet, etc. I cannot fundamentally separate myself from this milieu. Though I can survive without the technique of today as the foundational ground of my existence – for instance, if I were to live in the forest without modern conveniences – my entire personality and world view have been shaped and informed by technique. It is the context within which all of modern life takes place. Likewise globalization, being an outgrowth of technique, subsumes and consumes all non-globalized processes in the same way that Ellul talks about technique eliminating or converting into technique all non-technical phenomena. He also maintains that “the technical phenomenon cannot be broken down in such a way as to retain the good and reject the bad” (111). It is therefore meaningless to talk about utilizing the techniques we like and banning those we don't for, eventually, if they are necessary for technique as a whole to progress, technique will compel us to change our minds.
To the extent that I strive to develop my consciousness in a manner outside of technique, to cultivate non-technical values and considerations, I suppose I am engaged in an active struggle against the insidious but blind forces of both technique and globalization. Meditating, doing yoga (which is itself a sophisticated physical/psycho-spiritual technique), preferentially buying local or used goods, eschewing the majority of mass media products for more homegrown entertainment and leisure, and investing my energy in building community and relationships all seem antithetical to the impetus of economic globalization. They are modest forms of resistance but are perhaps my only means of affecting any control over the further encroachment of modern technique into my personal sphere. It could perhaps be argued that this is itself another technique I am affecting. But it is a means of technique in service of a non-technical end – does this constitute doing what Ellul admonishes us to? Can it be enough? That is a conversation I would very much like to have with him – and one we all need to have with each other.
Works Cited
Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1964.
Falk, Richard. Predatory Globalization: A Critique. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1999.
How Much Does Your Money Cost?
Have you ever wondered why college tuitions keep rising? It seems that the ‘higher’ in ‘higher education’ is increasingly referring to the cost of attaining it rather than the level of edification one can achieve by it. Or have you ever asked yourself why the prices of food, fuel, rent, and other costs of living continue to steadily increase even as wages remain virtually flat? Are these things really increasing in value or is there simply more demand for them? In ancient Rome, if you had a 1 oz. gold coin, you could buy the finest toga, a belt, and a nice pair of sandals (Fiat Empire). Today, if you have a 1 oz. gold coin, and you convert it into U.S. Federal Reserve notes (the paper dollars we use as cash), you could walk into almost any department store and buy a smart looking suit, a leather belt, and a fine pair of shoes; the same was true a hundred years ago as well. Why has gold retained its purchasing power but the dollar has not? The answers to many of these questions are relatively simple but not entirely obvious, especially since they involve an institution that one Congressman has called “more secretive than the CIA” (Mad Money).
Fluctuations in prices, or the value of any currency, are always a function of these factors: a change in the supply of, or demand for, goods and services or currency; a change in the money supply relative to the goods or services you can purchase with it; or some combination of these. The picture becomes somewhat more complex when stocks, bonds, derivatives, credit default swaps, etc., are introduced, however, the essential dynamic remains the same. Changes in supply and demand are relatively self-explanatory, but to understand how changes in the money supply are affected, we need to introduce ourselves to the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve system was created by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and was ostensibly a response to the Bank Panic of 1907 in which some of the large banks in New York called in loans and refused to make new loans, causing a chain reaction of bank runs and severe economic turmoil in the financial sector that then rippled out to the rest of the economy. But what, exactly, is the Federal Reserve System and why do we need it?
Technically speaking, the Federal Reserve System is a banking cartel formed by twelve central banks in partnership with the government for the purpose of regulating the money supply, interest rates, and credit – a cartel being any group of individuals, institutions, and/or businesses that join together in order to fix prices, limit competition, and regulate production of goods by the members (“cartel,” def. 2); OPEC, for example, is an oil cartel. The member banks own the Federal Reserve but are not allowed to sell their shares, nor vote for their board of governors, and are limited to a 6% dividend per year (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, FAQ). The US government’s role is to protect these large member banks from competition and to appoint the board of governors, who then select bankers and other business leaders to serve on the boards of directors of the member banks.
Some politicians and critical observers see this set-up as an unconstitutional, government sanctioned monopoly of currency by a cadre of independent banks. Others – generally the central banks themselves – argue that a system of central banks is necessary to prevent, or at least soften the blow of, the busts of the business cycle that inevitably follow the booms, because “money doesn’t manage itself” (The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco par 3). While it is true that federal statutes do not permit the use of anything other than Federal Reserve notes to pay debts or taxes, does that really constitute a monopoly on currency issuance? Congress may have abdicated its constitutionally mandated responsibility of creating the nations money supply to private central banks, but does that really mean the Federal Reserve System is unconstitutional? The answer to these questions, in a word, is yes.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 of the Constitution states: “The Congress shall have Power…To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin...” The Constitution does not give Congress the power or authority to transfer any powers granted under the Constitution to a private corporation and specifically states that "all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people”(12th amendment). It is as if an FBI agent asked a private citizen – someone not sworn in or hired by the Bureau – to take her gun and badge and do her job for her while she goes shopping. Instead of controlling the currency, as it is stated in the Constitution, Congress has handed over the power to create money to a cadre of private banking corporations. But how does the Federal Reserve “create” money? Doesn’t the US Mint issue our currency?
It all begins with Congress. Politicians pass legislation to spend money in their district or state because it helps get them re-elected. They generally don't like to raise taxes because that often gets them un-elected, so they borrow the budgetary shortfall from the Federal Reserve and this is mostly where the national debt comes from (Griffin 78). Borrowing money, however, doesn’t necessarily create money; if you borrow from someone that has money, the money supply hasn't grown, you have just moved money around from one person to another. So the Federal Reserve creates the money out of thin air by simply entering the transaction into a ledger sheet and “lending” it to the federal government, or other banks, plus interest (Griffin 95).
Now, if you or I did this it would be called counterfeiting or check fraud, but the Federal Reserve has an agreement with the US government to provide this service for a price; the price is interest and the result is the national debt. Each Federal Reserve note is essentially an I.O.U. – a promise to pay. Imagine that the bank loans you money by writing you a check made out to Cash for $20,000 but post-dated by one year. Instead of waiting a year to cash it, you buy a car with it, the dealership accepting it because it is a check from a reputable bank that “verifies” the funds are legitimate. The dealership can then take that check to the bank and get a series of checks for lesser amounts totaling $20,000, but also post-dated by a year, in order to pay their employees. This can go on and on so long as no one actually cashes in their checks, at which point it would become evident that the funds were never really there to begin with – a phenomenon that is presently occurring in our economy on a massive scale.
"When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover the check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check there is no bank deposit on which that check is drawn. When the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money."
But it doesn’t end there; if someone, say a federal employee, deposits a $1000 paycheck in a commercial bank, banking regulations dictated by the Federal Reserve stipulate that said bank can then loan out $9000, based on that $1000 dollars as reserves, in a process dubbed fractional reserve banking. Thus, $8000 dollars has just come into being as if out of a magician’s hat. When money is created in this way at a faster rate than the expansion of production and services in the economy, the result is inflation.
Inflation is effectively a reduction in purchasing power. When prices rise across the economy it is generally not because the intrinsic values of goods and services have increased, but rather that the value of the dollar has decreased. When there are more dollars in circulation, it requires more of them to buy the same number of things. That loss of purchasing power is value the consumer should have but it has been taken from them without their consent or even their knowing how, why, or by whom. Inflation therefore is a hidden tax, with no exemptions or deductions, that disproportionately and adversely affects the poor and the middle class; it is a direct result of having the power to create money out of nothing.
To the average person, with a relatively healthy dose of common sense but only a modest understanding of economics, creating money out of thin air may sound not only unsustainable, but like a scam of unimaginable scale and consequence. From the point of view of those receiving a dividend based on the amount of money generated in this way – the owners of the central banks – it is more likely viewed as the most lucrative and desirable business model possible. If the present System is actually unconstitutional, one might ask, how was Federal Reserve Act ever passed in the first place?
Historically, centralized banking has been extremely unpopular with many politicians because it concentrates so much power in the hands of bankers – people who are not elected officials and are therefore not beholden to act in a manner consistent with the public good. After the previously mentioned Bank Panic of 1907, however, a general consensus formed among most politicians that some kind of regulation of the banking system was necessary. As head of the commission set up to examine the issue, Senate Republican leader Nelson Aldrich helped author the Federal Reserve Act and ushered it through the legislature. Aldrich’s objectivity, however, was somewhat suspect because of his daughter's marriage to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Aldrich’s close association with J.P. Morgan, two of the most powerful and wealthy bankers in the world. The bill was passed December 22, 1913, after its staunchest opponents had already left Washington for the Christmas holiday thinking that it wouldn’t come up for a vote until the next years session (Griffin 67). One of those opponents was Senator Robert LaFollette, who once stated publicly that fifty men, comprising what many called the “money trust,” controlled the United States. When asked by reporters if this was true, a partner of J.P. Morgan, George F. Baker, replied that LaFollette was “absolutely in error. I know from personal knowledge that not more than eight men run this country” (Griffin 74).
Having understood this situation, many people have spoke out, decrying the unconstitutionality and seemingly criminal nature of the whole system. Louis T. McFadden, a Congressman from the early part of the 20th century who was Chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency for twelve years from 1920 -1931, stated:
Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are the United States government's institutions. They are not... They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign swindlers... The Federal Reserve banks are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen... Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its powers, but the truth is that the Federal Reserve System has usurped the government. It controls everything in congress and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will. (Congressional Record, 12595-12603)
If these were merely the musings of a lone, over-zealous Congressman, his scathing indictment could be more easily dismissed as the ravings of a rabid conspiracy theorist. When taken together with the testimony and opinion of some of the most brilliant and sober political and business leaders of the last hundred years, however, the picture becomes somewhat more disturbing. Indeed, some of the most vocal critics have been U.S. Presidents, among them Woodrow Wilson, who was duped into signing the Federal Reserve Act into law by representatives of the bankers behind the creation of the Federal Reserve. He remarked:
“I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men... no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”
James Garfield, 20th President of the United States put it thusly: “Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce... when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”
Not long after saying this in 1881, President Garfield was assassinated.
And President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a letter written Nov. 21, 1933 to Colonel E. Mandell House commented: "The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.”
A few educated and courageous members of the present Congress have even offered legislation, such as the Federal Reserve Abolition Act, (H.R. 2755, 2007), that would begin to transition our nation away from a fiat currency based on nothing but faith in the government and controlled by a monopoly of private banking interests, to an open market system in which currencies backed by precious metals, commodities, or any other unit of actual productivity that could compete for consumer confidence and utility. As it stands, Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution states that: “No State shall…coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debt.” This article has never been changed and is still the law of the land, so using currencies backed by gold and silver should still be allowed, yet our unconstitutional central bank monopoly will not permit it.
It may be reasonably asked, “What could I possibly do about this situation? I am only one person.” It is often true that, acting alone, we as individuals are powerless to affect meaningful change in a system so enormous that beneath it we are dwarfed into irrelevance; yet if we become an educated and motivated population unified in opposition to a shared destiny of modern serfdom, we can accomplish this monumental task. Paul Grignon, producer of the film “Money as Debt,” suggests that asking these four questions is pivotal to resolving this issue:
- “Why do governments choose to borrow money from private banks at interest when governments could create all the interest-free money they need themselves?
- Why create money as debt at all? Why not create money that circulates permanently and doesn't have to be perpetually re-borrowed in interest?
- How can a money system, dependent on perpetual growth, be used to build a sustainable economy? Perpetual growth and sustainability are fundamentally incompatible.
- What is it about our current system that makes it totally dependent on perpetual growth? What needs to be changed to allow the creation of a sustainable economy?”
Thus, we should educate ourselves and each other about these issues, demanding change from our representatives in government, and not electing those that do not share our outrage and concern. We can also begin to use gold, silver and other commodities in trade and business amongst ourselves, in this way subverting the Federal Reserves stranglehold on real money. The control of money belongs in the hands of the people and if we do not take responsibility for it, we will continue to get the economy and the government we deserve.
“...if you want to remain slaves of the bankers and pay for the costs of your own slavery, let them continue to create money and control the nation’s credit.”
"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws."
"We are completely dependant on the commercial banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit... We are absolutely without a permanent money system.... It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon... our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon."
"Paper is poverty,... it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself."
Fiat Empire. Dir. James Jaeger. 2006. Online:
Griffin, G. Edward. The Creature from Jekyll Island. American Media, 1998.
Jefferson’s Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank:1791. Yale Law School. 2008.
Mad Money. U.S. Representative Paul, Ron. Television, CNBC. Dec. 14, 2007.
"cartel." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2008. Merriam-Webster Online. 20 October 2008
The Federal Reserve. Wikiprotest, July 24, 2007.
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco website, 2008. <>
"The Federal Reserve bank buys government bonds without one penny..."
Fluctuations in prices, or the value of any currency, are always a function of these factors: a change in the supply of, or demand for, goods and services or currency; a change in the money supply relative to the goods or services you can purchase with it; or some combination of these. The picture becomes somewhat more complex when stocks, bonds, derivatives, credit default swaps, etc., are introduced, however, the essential dynamic remains the same. Changes in supply and demand are relatively self-explanatory, but to understand how changes in the money supply are affected, we need to introduce ourselves to the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve system was created by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and was ostensibly a response to the Bank Panic of 1907 in which some of the large banks in New York called in loans and refused to make new loans, causing a chain reaction of bank runs and severe economic turmoil in the financial sector that then rippled out to the rest of the economy. But what, exactly, is the Federal Reserve System and why do we need it?
Technically speaking, the Federal Reserve System is a banking cartel formed by twelve central banks in partnership with the government for the purpose of regulating the money supply, interest rates, and credit – a cartel being any group of individuals, institutions, and/or businesses that join together in order to fix prices, limit competition, and regulate production of goods by the members (“cartel,” def. 2); OPEC, for example, is an oil cartel. The member banks own the Federal Reserve but are not allowed to sell their shares, nor vote for their board of governors, and are limited to a 6% dividend per year (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, FAQ). The US government’s role is to protect these large member banks from competition and to appoint the board of governors, who then select bankers and other business leaders to serve on the boards of directors of the member banks.
Some politicians and critical observers see this set-up as an unconstitutional, government sanctioned monopoly of currency by a cadre of independent banks. Others – generally the central banks themselves – argue that a system of central banks is necessary to prevent, or at least soften the blow of, the busts of the business cycle that inevitably follow the booms, because “money doesn’t manage itself” (The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco par 3). While it is true that federal statutes do not permit the use of anything other than Federal Reserve notes to pay debts or taxes, does that really constitute a monopoly on currency issuance? Congress may have abdicated its constitutionally mandated responsibility of creating the nations money supply to private central banks, but does that really mean the Federal Reserve System is unconstitutional? The answer to these questions, in a word, is yes.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 of the Constitution states: “The Congress shall have Power…To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin...” The Constitution does not give Congress the power or authority to transfer any powers granted under the Constitution to a private corporation and specifically states that "all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people”(12th amendment). It is as if an FBI agent asked a private citizen – someone not sworn in or hired by the Bureau – to take her gun and badge and do her job for her while she goes shopping. Instead of controlling the currency, as it is stated in the Constitution, Congress has handed over the power to create money to a cadre of private banking corporations. But how does the Federal Reserve “create” money? Doesn’t the US Mint issue our currency?
It all begins with Congress. Politicians pass legislation to spend money in their district or state because it helps get them re-elected. They generally don't like to raise taxes because that often gets them un-elected, so they borrow the budgetary shortfall from the Federal Reserve and this is mostly where the national debt comes from (Griffin 78). Borrowing money, however, doesn’t necessarily create money; if you borrow from someone that has money, the money supply hasn't grown, you have just moved money around from one person to another. So the Federal Reserve creates the money out of thin air by simply entering the transaction into a ledger sheet and “lending” it to the federal government, or other banks, plus interest (Griffin 95).
Now, if you or I did this it would be called counterfeiting or check fraud, but the Federal Reserve has an agreement with the US government to provide this service for a price; the price is interest and the result is the national debt. Each Federal Reserve note is essentially an I.O.U. – a promise to pay. Imagine that the bank loans you money by writing you a check made out to Cash for $20,000 but post-dated by one year. Instead of waiting a year to cash it, you buy a car with it, the dealership accepting it because it is a check from a reputable bank that “verifies” the funds are legitimate. The dealership can then take that check to the bank and get a series of checks for lesser amounts totaling $20,000, but also post-dated by a year, in order to pay their employees. This can go on and on so long as no one actually cashes in their checks, at which point it would become evident that the funds were never really there to begin with – a phenomenon that is presently occurring in our economy on a massive scale.
"When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover the check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check there is no bank deposit on which that check is drawn. When the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money."
- Putting it Simply, Boston Federal Reserve Bank
But it doesn’t end there; if someone, say a federal employee, deposits a $1000 paycheck in a commercial bank, banking regulations dictated by the Federal Reserve stipulate that said bank can then loan out $9000, based on that $1000 dollars as reserves, in a process dubbed fractional reserve banking. Thus, $8000 dollars has just come into being as if out of a magician’s hat. When money is created in this way at a faster rate than the expansion of production and services in the economy, the result is inflation.
Inflation is effectively a reduction in purchasing power. When prices rise across the economy it is generally not because the intrinsic values of goods and services have increased, but rather that the value of the dollar has decreased. When there are more dollars in circulation, it requires more of them to buy the same number of things. That loss of purchasing power is value the consumer should have but it has been taken from them without their consent or even their knowing how, why, or by whom. Inflation therefore is a hidden tax, with no exemptions or deductions, that disproportionately and adversely affects the poor and the middle class; it is a direct result of having the power to create money out of nothing.
To the average person, with a relatively healthy dose of common sense but only a modest understanding of economics, creating money out of thin air may sound not only unsustainable, but like a scam of unimaginable scale and consequence. From the point of view of those receiving a dividend based on the amount of money generated in this way – the owners of the central banks – it is more likely viewed as the most lucrative and desirable business model possible. If the present System is actually unconstitutional, one might ask, how was Federal Reserve Act ever passed in the first place?
Historically, centralized banking has been extremely unpopular with many politicians because it concentrates so much power in the hands of bankers – people who are not elected officials and are therefore not beholden to act in a manner consistent with the public good. After the previously mentioned Bank Panic of 1907, however, a general consensus formed among most politicians that some kind of regulation of the banking system was necessary. As head of the commission set up to examine the issue, Senate Republican leader Nelson Aldrich helped author the Federal Reserve Act and ushered it through the legislature. Aldrich’s objectivity, however, was somewhat suspect because of his daughter's marriage to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Aldrich’s close association with J.P. Morgan, two of the most powerful and wealthy bankers in the world. The bill was passed December 22, 1913, after its staunchest opponents had already left Washington for the Christmas holiday thinking that it wouldn’t come up for a vote until the next years session (Griffin 67). One of those opponents was Senator Robert LaFollette, who once stated publicly that fifty men, comprising what many called the “money trust,” controlled the United States. When asked by reporters if this was true, a partner of J.P. Morgan, George F. Baker, replied that LaFollette was “absolutely in error. I know from personal knowledge that not more than eight men run this country” (Griffin 74).
Having understood this situation, many people have spoke out, decrying the unconstitutionality and seemingly criminal nature of the whole system. Louis T. McFadden, a Congressman from the early part of the 20th century who was Chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency for twelve years from 1920 -1931, stated:
Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are the United States government's institutions. They are not... They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign swindlers... The Federal Reserve banks are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen... Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its powers, but the truth is that the Federal Reserve System has usurped the government. It controls everything in congress and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will. (Congressional Record, 12595-12603)
If these were merely the musings of a lone, over-zealous Congressman, his scathing indictment could be more easily dismissed as the ravings of a rabid conspiracy theorist. When taken together with the testimony and opinion of some of the most brilliant and sober political and business leaders of the last hundred years, however, the picture becomes somewhat more disturbing. Indeed, some of the most vocal critics have been U.S. Presidents, among them Woodrow Wilson, who was duped into signing the Federal Reserve Act into law by representatives of the bankers behind the creation of the Federal Reserve. He remarked:
“I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men... no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”
James Garfield, 20th President of the United States put it thusly: “Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce... when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”
Not long after saying this in 1881, President Garfield was assassinated.
And President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a letter written Nov. 21, 1933 to Colonel E. Mandell House commented: "The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.”
A few educated and courageous members of the present Congress have even offered legislation, such as the Federal Reserve Abolition Act, (H.R. 2755, 2007), that would begin to transition our nation away from a fiat currency based on nothing but faith in the government and controlled by a monopoly of private banking interests, to an open market system in which currencies backed by precious metals, commodities, or any other unit of actual productivity that could compete for consumer confidence and utility. As it stands, Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution states that: “No State shall…coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debt.” This article has never been changed and is still the law of the land, so using currencies backed by gold and silver should still be allowed, yet our unconstitutional central bank monopoly will not permit it.
It may be reasonably asked, “What could I possibly do about this situation? I am only one person.” It is often true that, acting alone, we as individuals are powerless to affect meaningful change in a system so enormous that beneath it we are dwarfed into irrelevance; yet if we become an educated and motivated population unified in opposition to a shared destiny of modern serfdom, we can accomplish this monumental task. Paul Grignon, producer of the film “Money as Debt,” suggests that asking these four questions is pivotal to resolving this issue:
- “Why do governments choose to borrow money from private banks at interest when governments could create all the interest-free money they need themselves?
- Why create money as debt at all? Why not create money that circulates permanently and doesn't have to be perpetually re-borrowed in interest?
- How can a money system, dependent on perpetual growth, be used to build a sustainable economy? Perpetual growth and sustainability are fundamentally incompatible.
- What is it about our current system that makes it totally dependent on perpetual growth? What needs to be changed to allow the creation of a sustainable economy?”
Thus, we should educate ourselves and each other about these issues, demanding change from our representatives in government, and not electing those that do not share our outrage and concern. We can also begin to use gold, silver and other commodities in trade and business amongst ourselves, in this way subverting the Federal Reserves stranglehold on real money. The control of money belongs in the hands of the people and if we do not take responsibility for it, we will continue to get the economy and the government we deserve.
Quotes About the Federal Reserve and Banking
“...if you want to remain slaves of the bankers and pay for the costs of your own slavery, let them continue to create money and control the nation’s credit.”
- Sir Josiah Stamp
"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws."
-Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”- Henry Ford
"We are completely dependant on the commercial banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit... We are absolutely without a permanent money system.... It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon... our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon."
- Robert H. Hamphill,
Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank
Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank
"Paper is poverty,... it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself."
-Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1788
"From now on, depressions will be scientifically created."- Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Sr.,
1913, upon learning of the passage of the Federal Reserve Act.
1913, upon learning of the passage of the Federal Reserve Act.
Works Cited
Fiat Empire. Dir. James Jaeger. 2006. Online:
Griffin, G. Edward. The Creature from Jekyll Island. American Media, 1998.
Jefferson’s Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank:1791. Yale Law School. 2008.
Mad Money. U.S. Representative Paul, Ron. Television, CNBC. Dec. 14, 2007.
"cartel." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2008. Merriam-Webster Online. 20 October 2008
The Federal Reserve. Wikiprotest, July 24, 2007.
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco website, 2008. <>
More Quotes
"The Federal Reserve bank buys government bonds without one penny..."
- Congressman Wright Patman,
Congressional Record, Sept 30, 1941
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.“Congressional Record, Sept 30, 1941
- Thomas Jefferson, 1802
"Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States."- United States Senator Barry Goldwater
“The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That board administers a finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. That system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money. This (Federal Reserve) Act establishes the most gigantic trust on Earth. When the president signs this bill, the invisible governments by the monetary power will be legalized. The people may not know it immediately but the day of reckoning is only a few years removed, the worst legislatives crime of the ages perpetrated by this banking bill.”- Charles A. Lindbergh, Representative, MN
Dying to Feel Better
Do you ever feel lonely...tired...sad? You may be depressed and in need of medication. How do I know? In 1997, the Food and Drug Administration relaxed guidelines that regulate how pharmaceutical companies can advertise, resulting in an escalating stream of television commercials that are almost impossible to avoid or ignore. It is unlikely that one could watch any significant amount of TV without seeing several ads for prescription medications - everything from Allegra to Zyrtec.
Using the “carrot and stick” of sex and fear is the most widely used tool of the trade in modern advertising; except in the most gratuitous ads, they are so ubiquitous as to be almost completely taken for granted by the viewing public. Some Viagra ads, for example, openly and directly address one of the most compelling male insecurities - sexual impotence. Ads for Axe Body Spray are notoriously over-the-top in their lascivious and fantastical depictions of otherwise hopelessly socially-challenged young men instantaneously becoming the objects of beautiful, statuesque women immediately upon anointing themselves with Axe products. Though eschewing the sex component of the equation, an ad for Effexor nevertheless uses emotionally exploitative language and pictures to prey on human anxieties, pushing the drug on vulnerable people. Commercials for cars, breakfast cereals, body sprays, and other products may employ psychologically manipulative words and imagery as well, but those employed by television ads for prescription drugs have the nasty distinction of increasing the incidence of iatrogenic death. ("Iatrogenesis" being the term used for inadvertently induced adverse side effects or complications, including death, which result from medical treatment or diagnostic procedures performed by a physician or surgeon.)
Every successful ad campaign requires effective “branding.” Branding works by creating an association in the mind of consumers between the particular product being sold and its intended use, the image it projects, or feeling it produces – an association so strong that, in the case of some brands, such as Kleenex, Jacuzzi, Q-Tip, Google, etc., the name actually becomes synonymous with an entire class of products. This phenomenon was well demonstrated by a British study that used four different treatment groups to determine the effectiveness of a popular painkiller. Each group received one of four pills: a widely advertised, or “branded,” aspirin; the same drug in plain packaging; a branded placebo; or an unbranded placebo tablet. The study found that aspirin worked better than placebo, but even more interesting was that branding was more effective in pain relief for both the real drug and the placebo (Greider 112).
In a commercial for Axe Body Spray, a buxom woman in a skimpy, red string-bikini seems to be on the prowl, hunting for some as-yet unseen prey, while an epic and vaguely operatic score sets the mood. Running in slow motion through the woods, breasts bobbing, she is gradually joined by hundreds of attractive, similarly endowed and ravenous, bikini-clad young women. The hundreds become thousands, streaming over hills and scrambling down craggy outcroppings of rock. From the sea, still more thousands surge toward the shore, swimming through the surf. As the music crescendos, the horde begins converging on the beach where a scrawny, twenty-something male is shown spraying cans of Axe body spray, double-fisted and gleefully, all over his torso. The shot pans out before we can see what fate befalls the women's quarry, as a seductive, Australian-accented, female voice admonishes the viewer, “Spray more, Get more” – these words appear on the screen with “The Axe Effect” underneath (Axe Body Spray Ad).
Implying that the women were whipped into a feral frenzy of insatiable desire by the scent of the young man's Axe body spray, it is somewhat obvious that the ad is self-consciously intended to be over-the-top. No one but the most immature or mentally delayed person could rationally expect to achieve similar results from using this product. Yet the ad is effective precisely because the seductive quality of the imagery largely affects the subconscious, sub-rational parts of the consumer's psyche, which is the driving force behind many purchases. Thus, the product becomes linked, or branded, with the promise of sexual fulfillment and gratification. If the ad were to be taken at face value and the product delivered the results depicted, perhaps Axe body spray would be responsible for even more deaths than prescription medications.
An ad for Effexor is much more subdued. The scene is set by the opening shot of the turbulent surface of a lake in the fading light of dusk, while melancholy piano music plunks along. The metered, tenor voice of the narrator asks the viewer, “Do you feel alone?” As the view switches to a forest scene and an out-of-focus person walks away from the camera, the narrator continues, “Do you feel like everyone is far away from you?” Switch to a profile shot of a solitary, white daisy, waving in front of a watery background. “You could be depressed,” the voice offers as the scene changes to an empty picnic table. “Ask your doctor about the all new Effexor, because feeling alone,” switch to the out-of-focus back of someone sitting alone by the water, “might not be normal.” Product face and logo appear, “Effexor, the feel better solution” (Effexor Ad).
While the allure of this ad is definitely not sex, it is using specific language, tone, and imagery to create a depressive resonance, even among those who are not clinically depressed - so much so that many people may ask their doctors to prescribe an unnecessary drug for treatment of experiential phenomena that are not the results of disease states. Apart from being used for the very real conditions of clinical depression and anxiety for which it is approved, this ad for Effexor seems to suggest that even these relatively mild range of emotions are actually symptoms we should seek to mitigate with a powerful, and potentially dangerous, prescription drug.
Television advertising reaches the widest consumer audience of any medium, and sales of the prescription drugs most heavily marketed on television have seen the most dramatic rise. Now factor in that, more often than not, patients get the prescriptions for which they ask, and it is easy to see why spending on direct-to-consumer advertising, or DTC, increased almost tenfold from $266 million in 1994 to $2.6 billion in 2001 (Greider 88). The majority of that increase took place in the area of television ads (More Prescription Drug par 5). The dramatic rise in spending is reflected in the record profits being raked in by big pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical industry argues that consumers of their products, and the public in general, have profited also with increased well-being and quality of life. Yet when the numbers are tallied, this becomes a rather dubious assertion.
As fantastic and unlikely as it sounds, a conservative estimate of how many people die every year from biomedical intervention in the United States is equivalent to six jumbo-jets full of passengers, crashing with no survivors, every day for a year (Null 3). At 783,936 a year, iatrogenic death nosed out heart disease at 699,697, and cancer at 553,251, to make it the number one killer in America in 2001 (Null 2). Of those deaths, 106,000 were the result of “reactions to properly prescribed and administered medications” that occurred after being hospitalized. When the 80,000 deaths caused by “improperly prescribed or administered medication” are added, “adverse drug events become the number-three leading cause of death in this country” (Strand 8). Only a fraction of iatrogenic events are ever reported and these numbers are conservative estimates. The actual numbers for iatrogenic deaths are probably much higher and on the rise (Null 3). Thanks to ads for prescription drugs like Effexor, more and more people are “asking their doctors” about them.
In the words of Larry D. Sasich of Public Citizen, a non-profit health research group, pharmaceutical ads have one purpose: "to drive patients into doctors' offices and ask for drugs by brand name”(Belkin par 14). An FDA survey found that patients asking for a specific brand name got the prescription they asked for 75 percent of the time (Aikin 17). One consequence of branding in pharmaceuticals is that the branded drugs get associated with feeling better, looking better, performing better, in the same way as do cars, clothes, or body sprays. A major difference is that drugs, even when properly prescribed, have a significantly higher chance of killing you.
Pharmaceutical companies often argue that DTC ads for prescription drugs educate the public, creating a more informed and therefore empowered consumer. They point out that millions of Americans go undiagnosed for a whole host of diseases and serious health conditions like depression and high blood pressure – estimating that for every million men who asked for a Viagra prescription, their doctors found that 30,000 had untreated diabetes, 140,000 had untreated high blood pressure, and 50,000 had untreated heart disease (Belkin par 9). Still more people, however, are visiting their doctor because a television commercial has convinced them that they may need medications when they actually do not. There is sufficient evidence to prove that the ads are working – both to educate consumers, and to persuade an increasingly neurotic public that there is something wrong with them. Proponents argue the ads are a public service; detractors see DTC ads as unethical, dangerous and a practice we should ban like the rest of the world (except for New Zealand, an ignominious distinction).
Yet the figures for iatrogenic deaths quoted above linger like a host of specters, imploring us to re-examine the way we practice medicine in this country, as well as why and how we commercialize it. Some radical public interest groups have suggested that all emotionally manipulative television advertisements, not just those for prescription drugs, should be outlawed for many of the same reasons already listed. Though there may be compelling arguments for this point of view, clearly some ads are more dangerous to public health than others. Vioxx, after all, is estimated by some to have killed over 60,000 people – as many as the number of US service men that died in the Vietnam War (Herper par 4). Though the Axe ads may be repugnant to some, and also have far-reaching and serious negative social implications - sexual and physical violence against women, body image issues, to name just a few - it is doubtful that anyone could claim that body sprays are equally lethal.
Yes, television commercials can educate the public, and responsibly administered pharmaceuticals help millions, but at what cost? When biomedical intervention is the leading cause of death, and ads for prescription medications invite consumers to take powerful drugs for practically any reason at all, it is time to accept that our health care system is broken and the commercial culture that drives it is steering us towards a very steep precipice. No doubt we shall soon see marketing for Effexe, the prescription pill that changes body chemistry such that pores emit cologne, or Axfexxor, the anti-depressant medicated body spray, which yields mood elevating effects for everyone within range of its odor. At that point, all bets are off for the future of our species.
Many people - usually those inhabiting the so-called "first-world" countries - are experiencing a downward spiral of neurosis, hypochondria and declining health. To move away from such a trend towards something more healthy and sustainable, we need to understand that making good choices is seldom just an issue of discerning right form wrong but is more often than not a matter of choosing between what is right and what's easy.
Perhaps if we begin to disengage from the cannibalistic consumerism that is slowly turning us into a race of zombie-sheep – we might be more able to take care of ourselves and each other, as both a means of preventative medicine, and as a recognition that we as individuals are solely responsible for our health. Then we might have more time, energy, and peace of mind to actually be able to enjoy life, medication-free.
I'm not suggesting that the answer to our collective and individual problems will simply disappear overnight because we start thinking positively and hugging each other more often (though that wouldn't hurt). Rather I am asserting that the decision remains open for each of us to abdicate responsibility for our well-being to the multifarious commercial-industrial interests of our consumerist society, or take it back into our own hands, seeking the help of physicians when necessary, but also by consuming wholesome foods in place of unnecessary products, exercising our bodies instead of our credit cards, and caring for one another – as if our lives depended on it.
Aikin, Kathryn, PhD J. United States of America. Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communications. Food and Drug Administration. 13 Jan. 2003. 29 July 2006.
Axe Body Spray Ad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnmDhr_ZnSI.
Belkin, Lisa. "Prime Time Pushers." Mother Jones Magazine Mar.-Apr. 2001. 28 July 2006.
Effexor Ad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gSD5bK1Zgo.
Greider, Katharine. The Big Fix: How the Pharmaceutical Industry Rips Off American Consumers. 1st ed. New York: Public Affairs, 2003.
Herper, Mathew. “David Graham On The Vioxx Verdict.” Forbes Online. Aug. 18, 2008.
"More Prescription Drug Ads on TV." Harvard Gazette 21 Feb. 2002. 29 July 2006.
Null, Gary, PhD, Dean, Carolyn, Md Nd, Feldman, Martin, Md, Rasio, Debora, Md and Smith, Dorothy, PhD. Death by Medicine. Nutrition Institute of America. 2003. 28 July 2006.
Strand, Ray, Md D. Death by Prescription: the Shocking Truth Behind an Overmedicated Nation. 1st ed. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003.
-
Using the “carrot and stick” of sex and fear is the most widely used tool of the trade in modern advertising; except in the most gratuitous ads, they are so ubiquitous as to be almost completely taken for granted by the viewing public. Some Viagra ads, for example, openly and directly address one of the most compelling male insecurities - sexual impotence. Ads for Axe Body Spray are notoriously over-the-top in their lascivious and fantastical depictions of otherwise hopelessly socially-challenged young men instantaneously becoming the objects of beautiful, statuesque women immediately upon anointing themselves with Axe products. Though eschewing the sex component of the equation, an ad for Effexor nevertheless uses emotionally exploitative language and pictures to prey on human anxieties, pushing the drug on vulnerable people. Commercials for cars, breakfast cereals, body sprays, and other products may employ psychologically manipulative words and imagery as well, but those employed by television ads for prescription drugs have the nasty distinction of increasing the incidence of iatrogenic death. ("Iatrogenesis" being the term used for inadvertently induced adverse side effects or complications, including death, which result from medical treatment or diagnostic procedures performed by a physician or surgeon.)
Every successful ad campaign requires effective “branding.” Branding works by creating an association in the mind of consumers between the particular product being sold and its intended use, the image it projects, or feeling it produces – an association so strong that, in the case of some brands, such as Kleenex, Jacuzzi, Q-Tip, Google, etc., the name actually becomes synonymous with an entire class of products. This phenomenon was well demonstrated by a British study that used four different treatment groups to determine the effectiveness of a popular painkiller. Each group received one of four pills: a widely advertised, or “branded,” aspirin; the same drug in plain packaging; a branded placebo; or an unbranded placebo tablet. The study found that aspirin worked better than placebo, but even more interesting was that branding was more effective in pain relief for both the real drug and the placebo (Greider 112).
In a commercial for Axe Body Spray, a buxom woman in a skimpy, red string-bikini seems to be on the prowl, hunting for some as-yet unseen prey, while an epic and vaguely operatic score sets the mood. Running in slow motion through the woods, breasts bobbing, she is gradually joined by hundreds of attractive, similarly endowed and ravenous, bikini-clad young women. The hundreds become thousands, streaming over hills and scrambling down craggy outcroppings of rock. From the sea, still more thousands surge toward the shore, swimming through the surf. As the music crescendos, the horde begins converging on the beach where a scrawny, twenty-something male is shown spraying cans of Axe body spray, double-fisted and gleefully, all over his torso. The shot pans out before we can see what fate befalls the women's quarry, as a seductive, Australian-accented, female voice admonishes the viewer, “Spray more, Get more” – these words appear on the screen with “The Axe Effect” underneath (Axe Body Spray Ad).
Implying that the women were whipped into a feral frenzy of insatiable desire by the scent of the young man's Axe body spray, it is somewhat obvious that the ad is self-consciously intended to be over-the-top. No one but the most immature or mentally delayed person could rationally expect to achieve similar results from using this product. Yet the ad is effective precisely because the seductive quality of the imagery largely affects the subconscious, sub-rational parts of the consumer's psyche, which is the driving force behind many purchases. Thus, the product becomes linked, or branded, with the promise of sexual fulfillment and gratification. If the ad were to be taken at face value and the product delivered the results depicted, perhaps Axe body spray would be responsible for even more deaths than prescription medications.
An ad for Effexor is much more subdued. The scene is set by the opening shot of the turbulent surface of a lake in the fading light of dusk, while melancholy piano music plunks along. The metered, tenor voice of the narrator asks the viewer, “Do you feel alone?” As the view switches to a forest scene and an out-of-focus person walks away from the camera, the narrator continues, “Do you feel like everyone is far away from you?” Switch to a profile shot of a solitary, white daisy, waving in front of a watery background. “You could be depressed,” the voice offers as the scene changes to an empty picnic table. “Ask your doctor about the all new Effexor, because feeling alone,” switch to the out-of-focus back of someone sitting alone by the water, “might not be normal.” Product face and logo appear, “Effexor, the feel better solution” (Effexor Ad).
While the allure of this ad is definitely not sex, it is using specific language, tone, and imagery to create a depressive resonance, even among those who are not clinically depressed - so much so that many people may ask their doctors to prescribe an unnecessary drug for treatment of experiential phenomena that are not the results of disease states. Apart from being used for the very real conditions of clinical depression and anxiety for which it is approved, this ad for Effexor seems to suggest that even these relatively mild range of emotions are actually symptoms we should seek to mitigate with a powerful, and potentially dangerous, prescription drug.
Television advertising reaches the widest consumer audience of any medium, and sales of the prescription drugs most heavily marketed on television have seen the most dramatic rise. Now factor in that, more often than not, patients get the prescriptions for which they ask, and it is easy to see why spending on direct-to-consumer advertising, or DTC, increased almost tenfold from $266 million in 1994 to $2.6 billion in 2001 (Greider 88). The majority of that increase took place in the area of television ads (More Prescription Drug par 5). The dramatic rise in spending is reflected in the record profits being raked in by big pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical industry argues that consumers of their products, and the public in general, have profited also with increased well-being and quality of life. Yet when the numbers are tallied, this becomes a rather dubious assertion.
As fantastic and unlikely as it sounds, a conservative estimate of how many people die every year from biomedical intervention in the United States is equivalent to six jumbo-jets full of passengers, crashing with no survivors, every day for a year (Null 3). At 783,936 a year, iatrogenic death nosed out heart disease at 699,697, and cancer at 553,251, to make it the number one killer in America in 2001 (Null 2). Of those deaths, 106,000 were the result of “reactions to properly prescribed and administered medications” that occurred after being hospitalized. When the 80,000 deaths caused by “improperly prescribed or administered medication” are added, “adverse drug events become the number-three leading cause of death in this country” (Strand 8). Only a fraction of iatrogenic events are ever reported and these numbers are conservative estimates. The actual numbers for iatrogenic deaths are probably much higher and on the rise (Null 3). Thanks to ads for prescription drugs like Effexor, more and more people are “asking their doctors” about them.
In the words of Larry D. Sasich of Public Citizen, a non-profit health research group, pharmaceutical ads have one purpose: "to drive patients into doctors' offices and ask for drugs by brand name”(Belkin par 14). An FDA survey found that patients asking for a specific brand name got the prescription they asked for 75 percent of the time (Aikin 17). One consequence of branding in pharmaceuticals is that the branded drugs get associated with feeling better, looking better, performing better, in the same way as do cars, clothes, or body sprays. A major difference is that drugs, even when properly prescribed, have a significantly higher chance of killing you.
Pharmaceutical companies often argue that DTC ads for prescription drugs educate the public, creating a more informed and therefore empowered consumer. They point out that millions of Americans go undiagnosed for a whole host of diseases and serious health conditions like depression and high blood pressure – estimating that for every million men who asked for a Viagra prescription, their doctors found that 30,000 had untreated diabetes, 140,000 had untreated high blood pressure, and 50,000 had untreated heart disease (Belkin par 9). Still more people, however, are visiting their doctor because a television commercial has convinced them that they may need medications when they actually do not. There is sufficient evidence to prove that the ads are working – both to educate consumers, and to persuade an increasingly neurotic public that there is something wrong with them. Proponents argue the ads are a public service; detractors see DTC ads as unethical, dangerous and a practice we should ban like the rest of the world (except for New Zealand, an ignominious distinction).
Yet the figures for iatrogenic deaths quoted above linger like a host of specters, imploring us to re-examine the way we practice medicine in this country, as well as why and how we commercialize it. Some radical public interest groups have suggested that all emotionally manipulative television advertisements, not just those for prescription drugs, should be outlawed for many of the same reasons already listed. Though there may be compelling arguments for this point of view, clearly some ads are more dangerous to public health than others. Vioxx, after all, is estimated by some to have killed over 60,000 people – as many as the number of US service men that died in the Vietnam War (Herper par 4). Though the Axe ads may be repugnant to some, and also have far-reaching and serious negative social implications - sexual and physical violence against women, body image issues, to name just a few - it is doubtful that anyone could claim that body sprays are equally lethal.
Yes, television commercials can educate the public, and responsibly administered pharmaceuticals help millions, but at what cost? When biomedical intervention is the leading cause of death, and ads for prescription medications invite consumers to take powerful drugs for practically any reason at all, it is time to accept that our health care system is broken and the commercial culture that drives it is steering us towards a very steep precipice. No doubt we shall soon see marketing for Effexe, the prescription pill that changes body chemistry such that pores emit cologne, or Axfexxor, the anti-depressant medicated body spray, which yields mood elevating effects for everyone within range of its odor. At that point, all bets are off for the future of our species.
Many people - usually those inhabiting the so-called "first-world" countries - are experiencing a downward spiral of neurosis, hypochondria and declining health. To move away from such a trend towards something more healthy and sustainable, we need to understand that making good choices is seldom just an issue of discerning right form wrong but is more often than not a matter of choosing between what is right and what's easy.
Perhaps if we begin to disengage from the cannibalistic consumerism that is slowly turning us into a race of zombie-sheep – we might be more able to take care of ourselves and each other, as both a means of preventative medicine, and as a recognition that we as individuals are solely responsible for our health. Then we might have more time, energy, and peace of mind to actually be able to enjoy life, medication-free.
I'm not suggesting that the answer to our collective and individual problems will simply disappear overnight because we start thinking positively and hugging each other more often (though that wouldn't hurt). Rather I am asserting that the decision remains open for each of us to abdicate responsibility for our well-being to the multifarious commercial-industrial interests of our consumerist society, or take it back into our own hands, seeking the help of physicians when necessary, but also by consuming wholesome foods in place of unnecessary products, exercising our bodies instead of our credit cards, and caring for one another – as if our lives depended on it.
Works Cited
Aikin, Kathryn, PhD J. United States of America. Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communications. Food and Drug Administration. 13 Jan. 2003. 29 July 2006
Axe Body Spray Ad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnmDhr_ZnSI.
Belkin, Lisa. "Prime Time Pushers." Mother Jones Magazine Mar.-Apr. 2001. 28 July 2006
Effexor Ad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gSD5bK1Zgo
Greider, Katharine. The Big Fix: How the Pharmaceutical Industry Rips Off American Consumers. 1st ed. New York: Public Affairs, 2003.
Herper, Mathew. “David Graham On The Vioxx Verdict.” Forbes Online. Aug. 18, 2008.
"More Prescription Drug Ads on TV." Harvard Gazette 21 Feb. 2002. 29 July 2006
Null, Gary, PhD, Dean, Carolyn, Md Nd, Feldman, Martin, Md, Rasio, Debora, Md and Smith, Dorothy, PhD. Death by Medicine. Nutrition Institute of America. 2003. 28 July 2006
Strand, Ray, Md D. Death by Prescription: the Shocking Truth Behind an Overmedicated Nation. 1st ed. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003.
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