Deer Hunting With Jesus

Corporations, government are dehumanizing us

Dear Joe,

After 56 years or so of watching the "powers that be" in operation, I have come to the conclusion that slowly, but surely, big corporations and the government are dehumanizing us.

I can recall a time when those who dealt with employee relationships were called "personnel departments and employees were referred to by name. The first step was to take away our names and give us "employee numbers", (under the guise of simplifying accounting procedures) so that we would no longer be thought of as a real person. Then it was to change the corporation department that deals with employees from the "personnel department" to the "human resources" department, which takes away our humanity altogether. With time and constant hearing of ourselves referred to in this manner we've come to accept it when we should be screaming at the top of our lungs against it. Even our media, whom I truly believe are on someone's propaganda payroll, refers to us in this manner.
Our government and the same media are now referring to servicemen as "boots on the ground" instead of soldiers who are "real" human beings with "real" lives. It has occurred to me that as long as they are allowed to refer to people as "human resources" and "boots on the ground" most of us will never think of them as real people, our next door neighbors or family members. When we start thinking in this manner it will be so easy to turn our heads and not to acknowledge the pain and sufferings of others because they will have become no more than a resource such as steel, plastics, oil, etc.

I am of the mind that this is deliberate on the part of government and corporate America. It's easier to destroy someone else's life if they have been dehumanized in this manner, and no one will object when we do actually become nothing more than a resource to the powers that be.

Now I'm not saying that the American public has not been complicit in this, because we certainly have been. We have behaved like sheep, not objecting to our dehumanization because we have been afraid of pissing off the boss and losing our jobs. (Can we all say ba-a-a-a-a-a?)

For some reason unbeknownst to me, we have allowed a non-human entity (I say non-human because quite frankly they don't act like they are human with the human qualities of compassion, and concern for others who are less fortunate) like corporate America to convince us that we can't possibly live without them. If they did not exist we wouldn't, couldn't survive as a society in general. It's strange how for several thousands of years humanity has done just that, survived without big corporations, but apparently no one told them that they couldn't. In short we have allowed them to get a stranglehold, and they are choking the life out of us.

I am strangely reminded of a tarot card that shows the figures of a naked male and female bedecked with horns on their heads, and chains around their necks. Above them is a figure that is supposed to represent Satan. Satan sits on a cube which is supposed to represent the material world to which the figures are tethered by their chains. The interesting part is that the ch ains around the figures necks are quite loose, and could be removed at will. However, there seems to be no "will" to do so. Instead of noticing that they are chained they are looking at one another and it appears to be that they are quite ignorant of their perilous situation.

I feel that we are for the most part, those loosely chained figures that are tethered to the material world but instead we are tethered to the material world of corporate America. We seem to be just as oblivious and ignorant of our own situation and slavery as those figures is. We could if we wished throw those chains off, but we don't seem to have the will to do so just as those figures seem not to have the will either.

Instead of exercising our own power, demanding our rights as human beings, and holding corporate America hostage during the financial crisis we handed over whatever they asked for on the premise that if we didn't they would collapse and we couldn't survive without them because we wouldn't have jobs. Small business would no longer be able to get loans and be able to employ (which they do the most of in this country not corporate America who mostly employs out of the country) and the whole economy would collapse. A premise that was one of their own inventions, by the way.

We as Americans need to wake up and smell the coffee, because if we don't do it voluntarily we will be forced to do so, and it won't be either pleasant or pretty

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2009/10/corporations-government.html

amen