James Der Derian: Chaos, Illusions and the Search for Meaning
click here to see additional images uploaded by James Der Derian
Sorry about the delayed response, but I’ve found it hard, time- and head-wise, to step back into this interpretive community after spending the last week shooting the return of the 1/25th Marines (New England reservists who spent the last 7 months in one of more dangerous places on the planet, Al Anbar province), whom we’ve been filming for the last year as part of a documentary, ‘The Culture of War’ (some outtakes attached). Getting up close to the war machine has its dangers (I’ve seen many an embed go native), but it also has its virtues (hearing a two-star general tell you where he’d like to stick all the neocons). And you do get a more variegated view of war, certainly more than the NYTimes, but also more than I’ve recently been scanning in these online exchanges.
So my first intervention goes after a para that I suspect Loretta purposely (and provocatively) made ‘target-rich’:
"Young unemployed Americans, from poor and middle class areas, are joining the army because they have no other way to earn a living (see the stats from www.nationalpriorities.com). They are the soldiers who fight in Iraq. Secularization has been replaced by a rising tide of ‘cheap spirituality’ from New Age gurus to Christian fundamentalism. Islam, a solid monotheistic religion, is on the rise everywhere in the West with numbers of converts increasing in all European countries. Advance in communication and technology, in particular the internet, foster physical isolation, people do not socialized as they did before, thus the idea to gather en masse to demonstrate against the establishment is not so appealing as it was in the past. Attitude towards politics is marked by disillusion, politicians are all corrupted, opposition is lead by comedians (see Michael Moore) as if politics was a joke, people who are unable to project an alternative strategy, to put have a vision of how the future should be."
If it were only so simple. To be sure socio-economics play a role, an important role, in why people join the army and other military services. But in my interviews with soldiers and marines, the break is about even in why they joined up: between seeking opportunity and, for want of a better work, ‘meaning’ for/in their life. Patriotism figures, but in a minor key to the main song I heard: my life is messed up, my country needs me, and the military offers a solution to the problem. Perhaps ‘cheap’ spirituality, satire, and reality TV aren’t cutting it in the meaning department. But as someone who always thought counter-simulations were a better (faster) political tactic than (but not to the exclusion of) ‘truth-telling’, and since I’d rather stock up and deploy weapons of mass whimsy and mass online swarming now rather than wait for that ever-pending moment of mass opposition, I much prefer my John Stewart to Noam Chomsky (pace Hugo the Exorcist).
> James Der Derian