My Awakening: How I came to see the Text
Jeffrey Ross, who teaches English at a College in Arizona, explains.
I have developed a frightening, yet powerful awareness. I now stand, mannequin-like, in the store window of life, grimly watching the Text-driven crowds shuffle down the sidewalk, drifting into the distance, subsiding into the horizon.
The Text was not in the beginning, but It came to be. Understanding the earliest incarnation of the Text is, well, difficult. Much like the Dao, the Text genesis is shrouded in mysterious and murky beginnings. Thick mists of time and space and conformity have glazed over its origins.
The Text has both oral and written traditions— examples can be seen in the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches stories of the 19th century—and heard in Sergeant Joe Friday’s voice on 1960’s episodes of Dragnet. Need a screen play to grasp the Text? Think, perhaps, of the late 1990’s American movie The Matrix. Or consider Jack Nicholson, angry and righteous, shouting, “You can’t handle the truth!” in A Few Good Men.
We quiver and skulk, skeletal and shadowy forms, powerless to exert our humanity—or our human wisdom—before the power of the Text.
The Text booms from men as they speak on cell phones, confident and bellicose, making the next big business deal, checking flight reservations, wooing the partisans, impressing the trapped and yet eerily interested bystanders.
The Text enjoys meetings and tabled decisions. Disney Cruise ships, Mp3 players, LED TV’s, Obama, Limbaugh, the Clintons, fish & chips, and Ralph Nader—all are nurtured by the Text.
I hear the Text on SpongeBob and in the Provost’s witticisms. The day care providers, the Harkins Movie ticket takers, the Fire Battalion Chief, the pool boy, the Democrat, the Iron Chef, Glen Beck, the BBC News, The Clash, the Foreign Legion—all pay homage and dues to the Text.
The Text destroyed GM and Chrysler and had begun devouring my soul, too.
I see a Chinchilla, running on his wheel, and see the Text Energy at work. His glazed eyes are focused on some vectored point in the future, past associate professor status, the second home, perhaps happy withdrawals from a retirement account. He has read the latest leadership book, can say “absolutely” with clear diction in conversation, and can’t wait to eat wings at Hooters during happy hour. “Whazup,” he grunts to the flip-flopped and T-shirted Chinchilla – the one with the shaved head-- in the cage next door…..
The ceiling-smashing females at the work place have (sadly) grasped the power of the Text and use the clipped speech forms common to the Text argot. They, too, have become slaves of the Text.
Henry Ford once imagined the assembly line. But now, the Text mass produces Fords.
Son of man, I hear the Text groaning horribly. The Text has convinced us that “chilling by the pool” and burning fatty sausages over mesquite wood and quaffing imported beer and Texting has some meaning beyond the commonplace…..
The Text has given us Super bowl commercials, Spring Break in Cancun, “Who Shot JR?,” limos to the prom, the Euro, frequent flier miles, American Idol, the Octomom, March Madness, steroids, teeth whiteners, shared governance, and Hummers.
What is the sum of all? The Text keeps a tally, and knows if you‘ve been naughty or nice. The sum of all is zed.
At the college, the Deans and Directors meet to celebrate the Text. The young Directors are giddy about the Text-given careers they have skewered. The aging Deans fearfully sense that the Text has replaced the text they once knew and ostensibly understood… and controlled. They are close to the truth.
The Text is alpha; the old texts are beta. The Text has eaten and digested Shakespeare, Mencken, Hardy, sociology, feminism, and calculus. Today’s menu includes Boethius, Hegel, Kant, Woolf, Sands, and Warhol.
The language of learning has been replaced by a droning buzz of the Text—the endless distillations of accountability, outcomes, market penetration, quality, training, partnering, customer service, succession planning, out reach, success vignettes, green buildings, delivery systems, upgrades, retention, kudos, and cosmos-stretching potlucks. (The Text loves potlucks—especially as an agenda item)
The Text has spread like May dandelions in the Colleges of Education.
The Text demands accountability but will not be accountable. The Text is not the Immanent Will, or the Divine Afflatus, or some Spiritus Mundi.
The Text has commoditized us all—our behavior, our dreams, our vacations, our teaching, our homes, our degrees, our philosophy, our God, our politics, our core sense of being. The Text is not analog or kind.
Children of the Text know nothing but the Text (the whole Text, ma’am), and emerge from the digital Fields with glowing eyes and droid thoughts.
To Challenge the Text means certain social annihilation—perhaps being sent adrift, out to sea, on a melting iceberg. Yea, but whosoever would be a man must reject the Text—and suffer.
One day, I started seeing the Text— oddly enough, while wearing 3D glasses. I was in The Big Film House, preparing to watch a comic, pleasant Pixar movie with my family. The Text became visible to me—creepy as it sounds, I saw the Text in its munificent 3D glory up on the Blank Screen-- and then I began to see my world much differently.
I saw so many Chinchillas on treadmills. That moment, the switched flipped. That day, I started seeing the truth—and the truth was not Disneyland, or CNN, or Labor, or the college President’s speeches, or career paths, or big talk, or granite counter tops, or inflated titles
Suddenly, I pods were plugging into students. The Vice Presidents were players in a morosely scripted drama produced by the Stimulus Package. That towering big-wheeled Lexus owned the Dean! Blackboard Suite became the medium and the message. Credit cards were sliding people through the slots.
Horrible, horrible, horrible.
I am no Rasputin, no Dostoevsky, no Gladstone, no blue-eyed Poe. Not even a sadly reflective Chekov. I take no medications and drink only moderately. Quietly, the truth came to me—an ancient truth from before the ice ages, before the conifers.
The truth whispered time and mortality. The truth glorified self-closure, dignity, life, and social distance, honesty, freedom, and love. The truth is a tired mastodon breathing his last… And I could no longer follow the Text.
And I felt sorry for the legions who embrace the Text. They seem childlike and trusting in their love of Text. I now stand, mannequin-like, in the store window of my life, grimly watching the Text-driven crowds shuffle down the sidewalk, drifting in to the distance, subsiding into the horizon.
And I could not hurt them by publicly disavowing the Text.
COMMENTS (2)
From Richard Abernethy (20 Aug 09)
While I am reluctant to criticise a new contributor to "Hobgoblin", this piece seems to express an attitude which Marxist-Humanists have long rejected, that is, the old radical lament about the supposed "backwardness of the masses". The author's "awakening" appears to be a solitary experience, not influenced in any way by other people, who only appear as "legions who embrace the Text". So we seem to have a form of solipsism, with the author all alone in having any kind of individuality or critical consciousness. I trust this is not the author's real view of life, but I am going by the internal content of his "text". Those seemingly anonymous, conformist "legions" are actually real human individuals who think about world problems and have ideas of their own. An important element of our Marxist-Humanist tradition is that it seeks to recognise the reason inherent in ordinary people, especially (but not exclusively) those whose thought is often disregarded in capitalist society: workers, women, Black people and other ethnic minorities, and youth.
From Ian MacDonald (21 Aug 09)
I think the article is a well written description of the alienation within capitalism and specifically, people relating to each other as things ie social interaction being between commodities. I think it is useful that he makes links with aspects of popular culture I.e. the Matrix , and the quote from Jack Nicholson, "you can't handle the truth."
What Jeff does -which is something the rest of the Left totally fails to do, is describe how people are objectively and increasingly affected by the "text" of capitalism rather than the social bonds that hold potentially hold them together. And language is an important part of that process.
What Jeff does not do (and I don't think it's a problem) is look at the the subjective potential of people having real ideas and the potential of course to change the world, while at the same time as being affected by the "text". In other words it is necessary to look at how people are.in dialectical subjective-objectively relationship.
I can give what I think is a good example of the above . A union colleague of mine was arguing with me during a fierce debate on at issue at UNISON conference a couple of years ago (I've forgotten the issue) I decided to abstain, because I had not made my mind up. He replied by saying , "you think too much you should trust your instincts." Afterwards I sat down and explained over a beer that it was not necessarily good to trust instincts, because of the power of the "text" (that was not how I described it exactly ) and that it was better to rely on counter-intuitive thinking. You can still be a thinker of ideas but also at the same time be prey to the objective power of the text, as part of the "legions"
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