Underneath the Mythology

The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor

Our Institutions

The Yes Men are culture jammers who, posing as World Trade Organization officials, presented the “WTO’s plan” for global trade to a roomful of academics. It involved recycling food products in order to reuse their nutrients, and in a simple process convert the waste back into food for third world countries. One woman said she was from a so called third world country, and she was offended. Another man said, “You’re talking about recycling sh-t.”

On the twentieth anniversary of the Bhopal Disaster, the Yes Men appeared on BBC World News, posing as representatives of Dow Chemical. After accepting full responsibility for the disaster, they promised that Dow would invest $12 billion to pay for medical care for those affected, clean up the site, and fund research to look into the hazards of other Dow products and prevent similar accidents. The real Dow Chemical rushed out a press release within hours, denying the statements.

In culture jamming, the basic idea is to shock the unconscious thought process one undergoes while receiving an institutional message, such as authority programming, logos and advertisement, and other branding messages. The Dow Chemical idea works because it forces us to confront our ideas about how institutions could or should function, and how they actually do. What do we expect from our institutions, and what could we? The WTO piece shows us how far authority can go. Deftly aping officialspeak, the performers slowly push the audience farther and farther, revealing increasingly outlandish perspectives on humanity, until finally, the people cry foul.

Driven by want, and prompted by envy

Folklore of the American Celebrity

The Founding Fathers were the first American Celebrities, and their images and personas continue to move units in the commercial and political spheres today. Inseparable from them are institutionalized racism and Manifest Destiny-era ideas of self-righteousness and entitlement, which permeated the roots of American property law and the Constitution.

In 1915, the American Celebrity had changed. Early that year, The Birth of a Nation debuted to soaring reviews and box office records. Arnold would say Americans look to a single event, a sudden birth of a nation. Perhaps, but surely new heroes are born. In 1915, industry was transforming the world, and men like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were public figures of the day. Teddy Roosevelt’s U.S. didn’t want conflict hurting production, and it would take two years after the sinking of the Lusitania for the U.S. to enter the war. Conflict persisted domestically, in large part spurred on by proliferations of new ideologies, but still underpinned with old ones. The film, Birth of a Nation, was a veritable celebration of racism, violence, and supremacism.

Hyper-exploitation

Give us your poor, your tired

Without institutional support, racism is bad for business. Business owners don’t want their train conductors wasting time checking people’s race if they don’t have to. But that doesn’t mean people can or will forget about it. Arnold says new organizations rise to fill the gaps left by an older order. Hyper-exploitation today “happens” to be racist; 40% of Hispanics over 25 do not have a high school diploma, and the same percentage of prisoners in the U.S. are Black. But that’s a coincidence. New York recently raised $260 million by requiring citizens to purchase new license plates, which were made by prisoners paid $0.42 an hour. The overlap of crime, poverty, education deprivation and lack of job opportunities with race isn’t inevitable. It’s the clear result of actions spurred by words and propelled by ideologies ingrained within the institutions of our country.

The Taney court was and is very much vilified, and probably with good reason. But perhaps Taney the individual is really a victim, merely the personification of an institution charged with jealously guarding a mythological power structure. In Dred Scot, the Taney Court, after pages of exasperatingly explaining how Blacks are historically inferior, rests finally on the authority of the Constitution. Look, it says. Racism is part of our ethos, our creed, our mythology. Its in our courts, its in our laws, its in our constitution of nationhood. And he was right, it was. The deepest underpinnings of American property law stem from racism. No other principle of the law applied quite the same if you were determined to be Black, Hispanic, Native American, Chinese - anything not “white.”

Things long past which come to us only in books

Statesmen today, like priests of the past, search for universal truth

But racism is over. People will start declaring it soon. Look at Obama, Sotomayor. New heroes, new mythology. In the end, Arnold submits to the customs of the tribe. Progress cannot be made without a progression of the mythology. But there’s something deeper than creeds and folklore. It’s the same thing which, for Frank, will never allow the law to be free of legal magic. It’s the human element which both constrains and frees us.

Arnold admits that new organizations fill old roles. Progression of mythology takes place atop a foundation of stable underpinnings. Old roots wither and break or grow and prosper as the cultural landscape of the nation shifts, but veritable trunks still exist. Archetypes present continuing motifs from which fresh perspectives can carve new ideas, but the tumultuousness of creeds and mythologies throughout history have more in common than not. An authority exercises control, while an institution that embodies it simultaneously provides justification. This is Rome, this is the Catholic Church, the British Empire. This is how the Native Americans lost their land and Blacks became slaves. Like Taney, the individual is lost in the unconsciousness of the institution, but can choose to perpetuate it or not. Humanity is always the common element, and it will continue to check authority and underpin the mythology. It should not be allowed, however, to be appropriated as the personification of a justifying institution, and therefore become malleable to authority, as has been done with Kings and other Chieftains in countless societies, and with Corporations, Courts and the People in our own.

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Quotes

"Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions ... The appropriation of herds and flocks which introduced an inequality of fortune was that which first gave rise to regular government. Till there be property there can be no government, the very end of which is to secure wealth, and to defend the rich from the poor" - Adam Smith

"The origins of property rights in the United States are rooted in racial domination... The hyper-exploitation of Black labor was accomplished by treating Black people themselves as objects of property. Race and property were thus conflated by establishing a form of property contingent on race -only Blacks were subjugated as slaves and treated as property. Similarly, the conquest, removal, and extermination of Native American life and culture were ratified by conferring and acknowledging the property rights of whites in Native American land. Only white possession and occupation of land was validated and therefore privileged as a basis for property rights." - Cheryl Harris

"Since every history book is a 'conjectural reconstruction of the past' Pirenne concludes that, due to the differences among historians, 'history is a conjectural science, or in other words, a subjective science.' 'How,' asked the English historian Froude, 'can we talk of a science in things long past which come to us only in books?'" - Jerome Frank