Links for Friday, July 28
We live among predators, and we honor them.
The theme of this post is pathology. Specifically, the culture of psychopathology of modern capitalists.
The Psychopathology of Capitalism
What would you call someone, a neighbor perhaps, who murdered for money? If that person was a hit man (hit person?), you’d call him a pathological killer in the literal DSM sense.
Now, what if you knew that neighbor were richer than God, and the motive for murder was money? That he killed simply to increase what he had in excess? That he lived for the glory of having more than too much? You’d call that person a murderous monomaniac.
What would society do with that person? According to David Graeber, in the Inuit world, he’d be pushed off the ice when no one was looking. In our first-world civilized states, he’d (maybe) be arrested, convicted on evidence, and either killed or imprisoned for life.
But what if the killer is a corporation? Or to be more precise, a human like your neighbor, who acts under corporate color?
Consider the Ford Pinto:
Did you know that Ford Motor Co. in 1973 circulated a memo amongst senior management concluding in a cost-benefit analysis that it would be less [sic; means more expensive, as the link shows] expensive to alter production of autos known to be susceptible to firey explosions from leaking gas tanks than to pay victims for catastrophic burn injuries or deaths resulting from the defect? See www.autosafety.org/ford–pinto-costbenefit-memo [PDF].
See PDF Table 3 for the psychopathic part. The value of a life has a dollar value; nothing more.
These people are psychopathic killers if anyone is, but they suffer no penalty: no social disdain, no loss of wealth, no threat to their freedom or life. They’re never shamed; in fact, these corporate killers are praised in our culture for their ability to preserve what we cleverly call “shareholder value” (which really means “rich people’s wealth”).
How often have you heard “It’s just business” offered as excuse for horrible deeds?
We live among predators, and we honor them. Welcome to our world.
Links
Below, seven links for your pleasure, plus a musical treat. The first two links focus on the Writers’ and Actors’ Strike.
• 'M'Fers': Ron Perlman THREATENS Hollywood Execs (Breaking Points)
At the start of the clip, striking actor Ron Perlman is on video saying this (adult language alert):
The motherfucker who said, ‘We're going to keep this thing going until people start losing their houses and their apartments’ — Listen to me, motherfucker, there's a lot of ways to lose your house. Some of it is financial, some of it is karma, some of it is just figuring out who the fuck said that.
We know who said that, and where he fucking lives.
There's a lot of ways to lose your house. You wish that on people, you wish that families starve while you're making 27 fucking million dollars a year for creating nothing. Be careful, motherfucker. Be really careful. 'Cause that’s the kind of shit that stirs shit up.
Reminds me of the “extra-electoral solutions” we touched on here.
The rest of the clip shows a follow-up interview of Perlman, and it’s perfectly normal in tone and quite informative. But the opening is not to be missed.
File under “Shit that stirs shit up.”