The Industrial Culture of America: Assimilation of an Automaton Populace
Uploaded by WWu777 on Jun 27, 2005
The Industrial Culture of America:
Assimilation of an Automaton Populace
(vs. the rich cultural, freedom of expression of Europe)
Introduction
For those interested in hearing a broad educated well-traveled viewpoint, I've written this essay to explain why I am dissatisfied and unfulfilled with life in America, feeling like a fish out of water, and find areas like Europe much more fulfilling and satisfying. The following lists only some of my complaints and the factors at stake.
The industrial culture's stagnation of mind and soul
The problem with mainstream life in America is that there is basically nothing to expand your mind or soul, like there is in Europe in plenty. On the average, not much good or bad happens; time just passes and life is wasted in mind-numbing mechanistic routine in conformity to the industrial culture of mass production and consumerism, which perpetuate the stability and expansion of the industrial forces that dominate the country, which also seek to make the rest of the world a part of it. Let's elaborate on some of the factors at work.
Although America tries to pretend to be a multi-cultural melting pot of diversity, to appease its many ethnic groups, in reality there is no real culture in America (notwithstanding a few exceptions, e.g. San Francisco, New Orleans), at least not by the standards of the rest of the world. It's basically a giant "industrial culture", a "national machine" of mass production and consumption, seeking to globalize the world, and make all in its path fit into mechanistic structures designed to stabilize, preserve and perpetuate the forces that run it. Its sole aim and function being of mass production for profit.
Even foreign immigrants who come here lose their culture, as they become immersed and "assimilated" into the gigantic industrial culture of modern day America. Those who "assimilate" into the industrial culture are rewarded with a mechanistic automated life of non-expression and overconsumption (in foods and material luxuries), while those who don't are labeled as misfits and losers, who will be left behind in the "rat race".
Those with a strong need for self-expression often feel suffocated in corporate America, instead becoming starving artists, actors, musicians, small business owners, hippies, or living some other poor Bohemian lifestyle, as a fish out of water. Thus, while America boasts freedom politically and legally, there is no true freedom of the SOUL, something much...