Survival__ Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation - Charles George Smith [96]
This trap deepens with every State attempt to prod the over-indebted and over-indulged consumer (once a proud citizen, now nothing but a debt-serf "consumer") into further borrow-and-spend binges; like all alcoholic/addictive-type traps, this cycle of ever more extreme State stimulus-funded-by-debt campaigns has only one end-state: self-destruction.
11. Exemption from Free/Transparent Market Trap. As noted earlier, a key defense against erosion of the Plutocracy/State/high-castes' increasing shares of the national income is the Elites mechanism of "inoculating" themselves against disruptive market forces via the political construction of protected fiefdoms (public unions, no-bid contracts with parasite firms, etc.)
The trap is that as each Elite observes another Elites' success in dodging the market forces of change/risk/efficiency/productivity, then its own shrill lobbying efforts to strengthen its own protected fiefdom increase accordingly. The end-state of this process is the Elites' avoidance of market forces except as a facsimile promoted in officially sanctioned propaganda to persuade the middle class that the destruction of its own wealth and security was the result of "eternal laws" (the invisible hand, etc.) rather than from the transfer of risk from the Elites to the middle class taxpayers.
12. Derealization/Simulacrum Trap. I have attempted to describe the way in which authentic structures and systems are slowly replaced by simulacrum to protect an over-reaching State and Plutocracy from exposure and thus change. Coupled with derealization, the process of substituting simulacrum becomes more than a hollowing out: it becomes a trap.
In general, we can characterize the trap thusly: the more that citizens accept simulacra as authentic, the more their own internal experience of the world is derealized. As they try to repair the widening gap between what they experience intuitively and what the Plutocracy/Media/State project as what they should experience (what we call alienation), then the citizens will internalize this alienation as a result of their individual failings rather than the corruption of the power structures of our society and economy.
While Wikipedia defines derealization as a clinical term for a feeling of unreality, I am using it to describe the disconnect between what we experience and what the propaganda/marketing complex we live in tells us we should be experiencing.
One example of this is the explosion of obesity in the U.S. within the past 20 years. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data U.S. Obesity Trends 1985-2007, only 20 years ago a scant 8 states had obesity rates of 15% or more. As of 2007, only one state had obesity rates under 20%, and 30 states had rates of 25% or more. That is a dramatic, unprecedented demographic change in only one generation.
Here is a derealization/simulacrum trap. The unhealthy goods being marketed as "food" by the packaged food and fast-food industries are more accurately a simulacrum of nutrition wrapped around carefully engineered doses of powerful exciters of the deepest reward centers in our brains: fat, sugar and salt. In essence, the "food" being hyped and pitched 24/7 is the edible equivalent of crack cocaine.
For more on the science of obesity, please read The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by Dr. David Kessler.
How has food been derealized by a supremely profitable industry? Try to eat a package of cold French fries. I don't mean lukewarm, I mean hours old cold French fries. Needless to say, the appeal of the "chips" is now limited.
Our actual experience of eating fast food delights is masked by what we expect to experience. The happy-happy adverts and the physical setting of the fast-food outlet (hard bright lighting,