We flow willingly through the transactional circuitry of the wealth economy like ghosts, optimistic and eerily cheerful, encountering one another through the hierarchical commodity affinity groups we call our peers, people who consume the same things we do, and have the same purchased identity and “lifestyle” we do.

We flow willingly through the transactional circuitry of the wealth economy like ghosts, optimistic and eerily cheerful, encountering one another through the hierarchical commodity affinity groups we call our peers, people who consume the same things we do, and have the same purchased identity and “lifestyle” we do.

Joe Bageant: The Iron Cheer of Empire

Echoes of Ghost in the Shell - read the whole thing.

(via rainbowhill)

Noam Chomsky refers to this concept as “the bewildered heard.”  They idea that we are so focused on our individuality that we are completely cut off from each other as humans and only care about the surface.  It’s something I see happening all the time.

But my favorite part of the essay is this:

But you won’t hear anyone complaining. America doesn’t like whiners. A whiner or a cynic is about the worst thing you can be in the land of gunpoint optimism. Foreigners often remark on the upbeat American personality. I assure them that our American corpocracy has its ways of pistol whipping or sedating its human assets into the appropriate level of cheeriness.

I feel this pressure all. the. time.

I get it from everyone I know. I get it from my wife. I get it from myself. No one like someone who challenges things.

On a side note: Rule number one on getting me to read something: compare it to Ghost in the Shell. ^_^