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Dis-civilization and its contents

By Owen Paine on Friday February 16, 2007 05:29 PM

Let's forget the reality of our planet-wide means-of-living mangler -- the transnational corporations that really make us hated -- and focus instead on its appearance in the minds of cultivated merit-classers as a "clash of civilizations."

Well, come to think of it, maybe it is one. The piece of us that's cutting into the rest of the world's hide 24/7 -- maybe that really is our civilization: our monster from the collective id, our beautiful novelty machine, our ten thousand points of hyper-innovational, by all means availible, insistently iconoclastical-- in short our Faustian imperative to kaizen every fucking thing in our way. It's as if we have an unconditional license for new kicks, new highs, no insights, no majesties -- all marketable, of course, all new ways to construct our latest neat notion of a better self.

We do this by slum-clearing all in our way. We build on the rubble we make out of everyone elses' souls. And then, what else -- we're surprised, and hurt, deeply hurt, when this makes our progressive enlightened caring altruistic fun culture seem poisonous to all other civilizations.

We are profane to all sacred ways, even our own of three minutes ago, and we go about the globe doing "decent" violence in the name of a genteel free-for-all indecency.

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