permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

Mass deception:

"Most all of our society is the victim of a stupendously successful,
century-long effort of mass deception. The idea that organically certified
farming is making a significant difference is just one of the many myths.
More on that below, but first, let me sketch a more general, historical
picture - the necessary context.

The advent of mass communications and the arrival in the US of Freud's
kinsman Edward Bernays, both at the beginning of the 20th century, was a
fortuitous convergence for our rulers. Bernays showed industrialists how to
manufacture desire using psychology, and spread it via the growing media of
mass communication, and the first industry of mass deception was born,
known as advertising. It was so successful in ramping up consumption,
burning through resources at the fastest rate, and thereby maximizing
capitalist profits, that Bernays was engaged to apply his methods of mass
deception more generally to allow ruling strata to achieve near total
social control with rare use of force. Bernays taught ruling strata how to
use propaganda to, in Chomsky's words, manufacture consent to a social
system where most of the power lies in the hands of the few, by using a
psychologically sophisticated narrative to sell the myths of democracy,
free enterprise, free market, free trade, and free speech.

The result is that today most people are badly misled as to how our society
works and who its most powerful institutions serve. Government, media,
markets and the knowledge business itself are sufficiently under the
control of ruling strata that they serve primarily the interests of the
few. Hence government agencies serve the economic sectors that they are
supposed to regulate: the USDA serves industrial agriculture, not the
public interest. The historical record shows that it always has. The first
Secretary of Agriculture created the Pioneer seed company, which used
hybridization to take control of seeds away from farmers.

What is the reality regarding the present food system? Certified organic is
a joke, just another brand that agribusiness uses to more fully exploit the
discretionary consumption capacity of the gentrified market. Make oats into
the letter O, call them Cheerios (because they start your day with cheer),
then call them Honey Nut Organic O's to sell even more oats - at twice the
price. Moreover, this branding hardly makes a difference in the quality of
the US food system. 10% of US farms produce most of the food. These are the
biggest, foulest farms in the food economy. The same is true for organic -
the biggest, least sustainable certified organic farms produce the lion's
share of the organic food economy, thanks in large part to the NOP that
nationalized organic food miles. Worse, organic is a drop in the bucket: US
acres in farming is 844 million, certified organic acres is 5.4 million -
0.64% of the total farm economy (see below and also in attachment).

Think about that. After decades of the organic movement, certified organic
food is a tiny fraction of the US food economy, less than 1%. And
incessantly corrupted, at that, gradually eroding trust even in the
miniscule gentrified market that it serves. Not that agribusiness cares
that much for such a small market fraction.

None of the above is meant to lay blame on farmers, conventional or
organic, or on anyone who works for a more sustainable agriculture. But
when we falsely believe we are making much of a difference, or expect any
help in that effort from the government or any of its agencies, or any of
the other major institutions in our society, we are deluded, duped, in a
word, and the system will not change for the better as long as that mass
deception reigns supreme.

We have been taught to dismiss any attempt to lift the veil as 'conspiracy
theory', but knowledge about how things really work is available, not
secret, if one is willing to look beyond the sources the oligarchs daily
put before our eyes and ears. Education must start with an understanding of
the concentration of power that makes possible the control of institutions
and the success of indoctrination. The public is even misled about that,
although the information is readily available if one looks for it. The
public is aware that there is inequality, but the concentration of wealth
and power is orders of magnitude above what the average person thinks.

Those who try to lift the veil will be called names, suggesting they are
promoting some impossible future, and diverting attention from the real
question: how much of our conception of the present is myth. "

NPR:

"NPR, National Propaganda Radio, bravely soldiering on the business of
serving up the same garbage as the rest of the mass media while
masquerading as an alternative, thus misleading millions of politically
illiterate liberals into thinking they are hearing anything but fake news."



-- 
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared