"Bunny: It is slavery! Or maybe it's genocide. Or maybe it's predatory capitalism. All supreme forms of violence. The system is such an extreme form of violence, and it's successfully being hidden via ideology. Hidden with nothing but a mental construct! I mean, that's a powerful statement. Think of how you get 300 million Americans to totally blank out on colonialism and genocide. If that's not ideology I don't know what is."
extract (see below) The Matrix
"I often tell our students that I suspect permaculture design hasn't changed the world (turned the destructo-culture into a perma-culture) yet because we are still very stuck in using its treasure-chest of very powerful tools, principles, ethics, etc. to design mostly just physical landscapes. That is without a shadow of a doubt very brilliant work, but it is still only moving along at level 9 - 5 on the systems intervention scale, more recently edging onto 2 and 3 with the Transition Movement, but neither are rattling even slightly level 1 ... The mindset or paradigm out of which the system arises (despite all the talk of paradigm change). It needs Permaculture Artists to do that, and for all of us to figure out how to design with myths.." Stella
And here are some examples!
in Ismael by Daniel Quinn suggests our society is the way it is because of a profoundly ingrained myth or cultural story we are all compelled to play out .. and that we have to change that myth before things can really change, structurally (mental structures being the most fundamental of those).
in the documentary The End of Suburbia it is suggested that the dramatic rise in consumerism that has so sharply characterized industrial society was made possible by cheap oil, but fuelled (mentally) by a myth: the Story of the American Dream.
Projects like the Pinky Show (a brilliant design for a culture-changing eco-business) are very skillfully designing with the landscapes of myth. ... in a similar way to another genioused culture-changing group: Reverend Billy's Church of Life After Shopping
In David Korten's book, "The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community," and in his latest work, "Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth." he reflects on the importance of "story"...
extract - on The Matrix (a Pinky dialogue):
Callie: Yeah... there's a few things that I don't like about this film. Like there's a lot of violence that's not necessary to the film but... You know, I guess that's how they pull people in. People just think it's an action movie, yeah?
Bunny: Really? I kind of like the violence.
Kim: Bunny always likes the violence. [ laughter ]
Bunny: No, I mean - okay, it's a little true [ laughter ] - but what I meant was in this movie I thought the violence was meaningful. It raises a lot of important questions. For example the movie would not have made sense without the violence. Actually, the movie is about violence, and it's about freedom from that violence. It's about absolute control, domination, exploitation, dispossession. I mean, think about it - we don't see the fields except for that very short scene, but we gotta remember that the fields are always there. They're actually the unseen backdrop that is the reason for the whole movie.
Morpheus to Neo: ...There are fields, endless fields, where human beings are no longer born. We are grown. For the longest time I wouldn't believe it, and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watch them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living. And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this. [ Morpheus holds up a battery ]
Seriously, how is that not violent?
Kim: It's sort of like slavery.
Bunny: It is slavery! Or maybe it's genocide. Or maybe it's predatory capitalism. All supreme forms of violence. The system is such an extreme form of violence, and it's successfully being hidden via ideology. Hidden with nothing but a mental construct! I mean, that's a powerful statement. Think of how you get 300 million Americans to totally blank out on colonialism and genocide. If that's not ideology I don't know what is.
So one of the ways I was looking at the violence in this movie was just in terms of demonstrating how powerful ideology can be - enormous history, enormous reality (or whatever you want to call it) and still, near-total effacement via ideology. And in opposition to this then we have the violence connected to struggle and liberation. I'm not suggesting that violence is the best way to change society. Far from it. But let's be real, there are times where violence is an option.
Pinky: We disagree on this all the time.
Bunny: Yeah, we do. But here's something that I think we at least agree with each other, correct me if I'm wrong. Whenever you're going to try to transform society for the better, you'd better be ready to fight...