15 thoughts on “Naomi Klein explans the Shock Doctrine”
hmm. I am intrigued – looks like I may need to read this. I like her. and the unusual (in today’s world) way the idea is being presented-and flipped fr. a seemingly ‘failed’ position. it gives it a quiet power. which resonates with me.
could be an interesting counterpart some other readings I have been doing including the classic From the Outside Looking In- Experiences in Barefoot Economics by Manfred Max Neef. this is definitely a different view of things, it is about practicing economics at a smaller, more human-scale. something I personally believe is relevant for the future..it explores the economics of development/project design and also the marginalization and poverty of people in a v. human way… it’s free too! I have the PDF but would have to hunt for the link..
anyway, back to Naomi and her smiling mouth- seriously I think because she is basically going on a monologue, with no back & forth, it is her way she is checking in with her interviewer/listener person. it looks like an attempt to connect in or engage periodically, as she is going on in quite a train of thought.
to me anyway.
I’m still down with the ‘state of intellectual.preparedness’ and having a plan ready chock full of ideas- that could work for anyone, no matter who you are. I’m feeling I need to prepare a new plan for my own life- even if it’s just for the rest of the year- I mean, who would have guessed 3 months ago I can’t eat my staple of leafy greens anymore or I would have to stop making goat cheese??
speaking of which. time for food
OUT
Hey Kyla, thanks for chiming in.
Yes it’s great about the Greens getting their first MP, finally. I’m looking forward to hearing Ms. May stir things up a bit in Parliament, keeping it real.
Shebear, I also share your pain, I know what a shock that can be! Glad you have the point of hope in your Green Party — we don’t even get to have a viable Green Party down here.
Regarding the smiling, Eric, thanks again for eliciting your friend’s comments, all of which sound quite plausible. The smile, I have to say, is much more than the mouth, it is the entire face, her eyes smile. She is very pretty to look at, yes…. but to me still it is a disturbing contrast, that smiling face and the contents of her speech. I am not comfortable with it. No offense meant to anyone.
Waterboarding was what led “us” to bin Laden. Oh good. If you believe it was so hard to find the man, you will also most likely believe waterboarding was justified in order to “find” him.
Amanda and Cmassy: thanks for sharing the pain. I’m find I’m vacillating between shock and outrage and a horrible sense of foreboding. It sure feels like the right wing agenda has found a comfy, cosy position here, on several levels of Government. Who’d have thought this could happen here. It began last Fall with the election of our city’s major. He’s privatizing everything in sight, with little or no consensus from his city council. Speaking with a sibling at the w/e, who lives in England, and they say it happening over there as well.
We’re in this together, as you say Amanda, and thank goodness to be able to share it with you guys — you who understand so well what this feels like.
Ugh.
But here’s one piece of excellent news, amid the doom and gloom. We elected North America’s first ever Green MP — Green Party leader Elizabeth May. She’s fantastic and will be a force to be reckoned with. She’s like the energizer bunny and a very dynamic speaker!
Okay re the question about smiling. I ran this past Christine Farber, an astute, sensitive and astrologically literate psychologist. Here is her reply.
Hey Eric –
What an interesting assignment you’ve just given me! It goes against my nature to comment on someone else’s psychological state, motivations, feelings etc without collaborating in some way with that person- in part because I’m well aware that we all see things through our own perspective, biases, and illusions (not that the person herself is necessarily able to speak the truth about their own psych state), and in part because I think it’s difficult for me to see myself as an authority on anything (despite my exact sun/ceres conjunction!). Having said that, I found myself both intrigued by and easily able to empathize with Naomi in the video, so I’ll speak from what I felt watching her/ imagining being her.
There are a few things I noticed:
1. On the surface level, she has a beautiful mouth on a beautiful face and a viewer’s eye might be drawn to this mouth more so than would otherwise be the case. Relatedly, her annunciation of words comes with very pronounced movement of her mouth & there seems to be a hint of a smile even when she’s not smiling (though she is clearly also smiling through much of this).
2. The smiles strike me as punctuation- she smiles when she’s emphasizing a point… and as communication. During the times in the video when she is smiling, it’s as though she’s saying, “Do you see what I mean?” or “Isn’t this interesting?” She strikes me as intellectually engaged with the material; and from an intellectual stance, she’s pleased with the topic and pleased with her own theories as well as, again, very interested, engaged, and her smile is expressing this pleasure and engagement. Where the emotional connection is/ goes is an interesting question- it does seem to be pretty absent here.
3. She’s clearly a great communicator (again, speaking of this in terms of an intellectual/ airy perspective). Her manner of communicating is flirtatious. I imagine that she learned something very early on in life about power, her power, being connected with charm. I would expect to see some connections among Merc/Gemini- Venus/Libra- Pluto/ Scorp in her natal chart; and maybe some emphasis on air. Underneath this is, likely, some insecurity around these same issues as is evidenced, I think, by the smiling punctuation which could be read not just as “Do you see what I’m saying?” but “Do you like me?… Am I proving my worth?” Not more or less than the average person experiences these insecurities, but it’s there.
4. Finally, I’d love to shut off the cameras and ask her what it was like to be in Iraq, and what she felt when she first read about shock therapy, and what it’s like for her to imagine that individuals still experience shock therapy and torture and that communities also experience forms of torture that she has probably seen first-hand. No intellectual theories allowed. Some pple are just uncomfortable with and unfamiliar with this realm. When one’s intellectual capacities are so dominant, emotional engagement can be one of the casualties- really through no fault of one’s own until the person is challenged to engage this realm and they choose to turn away….
C
Eric, thanks.
I do agree that she explains well and clearly at least a layer of how this whole shebang is being worked….. It’s good to have that info out there, in contrast to all the news articles telling “Americans” how “we” feel — seems every news article about the bin Laden killing starts off saying something like “after ten years of rage and frustration, Americans are jubilant and relieved……..”
which tells me the spin has been in place for this event for a while, the button got pushed and the words started cranking out, managing reality for folks who are so battered in their perceptions they don’t know what’s inside them.
sorry, rant of the morning…..
shebear13 – SHIT! I honestly hadn’t heard the news as everything has been about bin Laden.
Bad news indeed. I, too, thought Canada could come to its senses….
ooh — shebear, that’s some unfortunate political news. you and your canadian brothers & sisters have my sympathy/empathy. somehow i thought canada would manage to pick another candidate. guess we really are all in this together…
Thank you, I *really* needed to hear something like this, this morning as I nurse my Canadian political hangover.
So last night Mr. Harper’s dream was realized and he got elected with his first ever majority with a four year term to implement his right wing agenda, no holds barred. Frightening. Yet as demoralized as I feel right this moment I find I am able to draw again on Len’s advice from yesterday, on how to start reconciling polarized entities. I know I need to become much more engaged in this political process somehow. I can start by finding a way to help in the education of the wider community, by learning the necessary techniques on how *not* to succumb to Mr. Harper’s “shock doctrine.”
If we continue to see our political debates taking place only on some imagined battleground and continue to employ the divisive lingo of war, it only serves to continue the same old, same old. Younger people like my son and his crowd actively resist that redundant methodology outright. The time is ripe for us to draw from within and throw out seeds of new beginnings, seeds borne from daily practices such as meditating on the higher possibilities. Perhaps then we can begin realizing a society where people make conscious choices and step out of those ingrained, reactionary conditionings which perpetuate the futile, endless cycle of fear-mongering.
We could learn to be courageous and engage in extending empathy and compassion every single place we go; everywhere that we engage and converse with each other, knowing that by appealing to the hearts, minds and souls within the other, a truer connection finds fertile ground in which to plant and grow the new. A place where magic and miracles really *do* have the chance to come true.
Thanks, wandering_yeti for the link and Eric for posting this. In spite of the meaning of the smile and the war metaphors, her analysis does help make sense of the question of who benefits from disaster, war and other distabilizing large scale events. It does stretch credulity to suggest that man is the direct cause of most disasters or that all the critical current events are coordinated. Nonetheless, the awareness of the almost immediate and effective economic expoitation of Katrina, for instance, was evident to even a causual observer. The sense that we are being manipulated is very real. I appreciate this addition to the conversation.
Kyla, I’ll run that past a psychologist I know and tell you what she says.
Excellent. I’m right there with Burning River. Thanks for posting this.
I wish she would not smile when she talks of torture, though. I find that very odd.
so our ideas aren’t worthless! good to know.
I like her picking through the rubble to find the salient info, sometimes that is difficult when things are ‘spun’. OK, well sounds like we need a plan. to be ready! and a way to deliver the sound information (might be a pun there, not sure) in the face of chaos.
as a general thing, I dislike battle analogies. that fighting again. it makes me unpopular, in particular, with anyone who is “battling” disease, like cancer. although I have run in a lot of Race for the Cures, I really dislike the language being used there. it is spreading dis-harmony, and dis-ease in the body to be speaking like a war is going on within you.
just sayin’.
as for shock doctrine-
shock THIS ( you have to be here to see gesture, )
carry on.
peace.
Outstanding analysis. Very helpful insight in her conclusion. Thnx, bro.
hmm. I am intrigued – looks like I may need to read this. I like her. and the unusual (in today’s world) way the idea is being presented-and flipped fr. a seemingly ‘failed’ position. it gives it a quiet power. which resonates with me.
could be an interesting counterpart some other readings I have been doing including the classic From the Outside Looking In- Experiences in Barefoot Economics by Manfred Max Neef. this is definitely a different view of things, it is about practicing economics at a smaller, more human-scale. something I personally believe is relevant for the future..it explores the economics of development/project design and also the marginalization and poverty of people in a v. human way… it’s free too! I have the PDF but would have to hunt for the link..
anyway, back to Naomi and her smiling mouth- seriously I think because she is basically going on a monologue, with no back & forth, it is her way she is checking in with her interviewer/listener person. it looks like an attempt to connect in or engage periodically, as she is going on in quite a train of thought.
to me anyway.
I’m still down with the ‘state of intellectual.preparedness’ and having a plan ready chock full of ideas- that could work for anyone, no matter who you are. I’m feeling I need to prepare a new plan for my own life- even if it’s just for the rest of the year- I mean, who would have guessed 3 months ago I can’t eat my staple of leafy greens anymore or I would have to stop making goat cheese??
speaking of which. time for food
OUT
Hey Kyla, thanks for chiming in.
Yes it’s great about the Greens getting their first MP, finally. I’m looking forward to hearing Ms. May stir things up a bit in Parliament, keeping it real.
Shebear, I also share your pain, I know what a shock that can be! Glad you have the point of hope in your Green Party — we don’t even get to have a viable Green Party down here.
Regarding the smiling, Eric, thanks again for eliciting your friend’s comments, all of which sound quite plausible. The smile, I have to say, is much more than the mouth, it is the entire face, her eyes smile. She is very pretty to look at, yes…. but to me still it is a disturbing contrast, that smiling face and the contents of her speech. I am not comfortable with it. No offense meant to anyone.
We are being systematically inured to torture, though, I believe. Here is the next move in the dance:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42880435/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/
Waterboarding was what led “us” to bin Laden. Oh good. If you believe it was so hard to find the man, you will also most likely believe waterboarding was justified in order to “find” him.
Amanda and Cmassy: thanks for sharing the pain. I’m find I’m vacillating between shock and outrage and a horrible sense of foreboding. It sure feels like the right wing agenda has found a comfy, cosy position here, on several levels of Government. Who’d have thought this could happen here. It began last Fall with the election of our city’s major. He’s privatizing everything in sight, with little or no consensus from his city council. Speaking with a sibling at the w/e, who lives in England, and they say it happening over there as well.
We’re in this together, as you say Amanda, and thank goodness to be able to share it with you guys — you who understand so well what this feels like.
Ugh.
But here’s one piece of excellent news, amid the doom and gloom. We elected North America’s first ever Green MP — Green Party leader Elizabeth May. She’s fantastic and will be a force to be reckoned with. She’s like the energizer bunny and a very dynamic speaker!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/may/03/canada-green-elizabeth-may-victory
(plus she was born in the U.S.!)
Okay re the question about smiling. I ran this past Christine Farber, an astute, sensitive and astrologically literate psychologist. Here is her reply.
Hey Eric –
What an interesting assignment you’ve just given me! It goes against my nature to comment on someone else’s psychological state, motivations, feelings etc without collaborating in some way with that person- in part because I’m well aware that we all see things through our own perspective, biases, and illusions (not that the person herself is necessarily able to speak the truth about their own psych state), and in part because I think it’s difficult for me to see myself as an authority on anything (despite my exact sun/ceres conjunction!). Having said that, I found myself both intrigued by and easily able to empathize with Naomi in the video, so I’ll speak from what I felt watching her/ imagining being her.
There are a few things I noticed:
1. On the surface level, she has a beautiful mouth on a beautiful face and a viewer’s eye might be drawn to this mouth more so than would otherwise be the case. Relatedly, her annunciation of words comes with very pronounced movement of her mouth & there seems to be a hint of a smile even when she’s not smiling (though she is clearly also smiling through much of this).
2. The smiles strike me as punctuation- she smiles when she’s emphasizing a point… and as communication. During the times in the video when she is smiling, it’s as though she’s saying, “Do you see what I mean?” or “Isn’t this interesting?” She strikes me as intellectually engaged with the material; and from an intellectual stance, she’s pleased with the topic and pleased with her own theories as well as, again, very interested, engaged, and her smile is expressing this pleasure and engagement. Where the emotional connection is/ goes is an interesting question- it does seem to be pretty absent here.
3. She’s clearly a great communicator (again, speaking of this in terms of an intellectual/ airy perspective). Her manner of communicating is flirtatious. I imagine that she learned something very early on in life about power, her power, being connected with charm. I would expect to see some connections among Merc/Gemini- Venus/Libra- Pluto/ Scorp in her natal chart; and maybe some emphasis on air. Underneath this is, likely, some insecurity around these same issues as is evidenced, I think, by the smiling punctuation which could be read not just as “Do you see what I’m saying?” but “Do you like me?… Am I proving my worth?” Not more or less than the average person experiences these insecurities, but it’s there.
4. Finally, I’d love to shut off the cameras and ask her what it was like to be in Iraq, and what she felt when she first read about shock therapy, and what it’s like for her to imagine that individuals still experience shock therapy and torture and that communities also experience forms of torture that she has probably seen first-hand. No intellectual theories allowed. Some pple are just uncomfortable with and unfamiliar with this realm. When one’s intellectual capacities are so dominant, emotional engagement can be one of the casualties- really through no fault of one’s own until the person is challenged to engage this realm and they choose to turn away….
C
Eric, thanks.
I do agree that she explains well and clearly at least a layer of how this whole shebang is being worked….. It’s good to have that info out there, in contrast to all the news articles telling “Americans” how “we” feel — seems every news article about the bin Laden killing starts off saying something like “after ten years of rage and frustration, Americans are jubilant and relieved……..”
which tells me the spin has been in place for this event for a while, the button got pushed and the words started cranking out, managing reality for folks who are so battered in their perceptions they don’t know what’s inside them.
sorry, rant of the morning…..
shebear13 – SHIT! I honestly hadn’t heard the news as everything has been about bin Laden.
Bad news indeed. I, too, thought Canada could come to its senses….
ooh — shebear, that’s some unfortunate political news. you and your canadian brothers & sisters have my sympathy/empathy. somehow i thought canada would manage to pick another candidate. guess we really are all in this together…
Thank you, I *really* needed to hear something like this, this morning as I nurse my Canadian political hangover.
So last night Mr. Harper’s dream was realized and he got elected with his first ever majority with a four year term to implement his right wing agenda, no holds barred. Frightening. Yet as demoralized as I feel right this moment I find I am able to draw again on Len’s advice from yesterday, on how to start reconciling polarized entities. I know I need to become much more engaged in this political process somehow. I can start by finding a way to help in the education of the wider community, by learning the necessary techniques on how *not* to succumb to Mr. Harper’s “shock doctrine.”
If we continue to see our political debates taking place only on some imagined battleground and continue to employ the divisive lingo of war, it only serves to continue the same old, same old. Younger people like my son and his crowd actively resist that redundant methodology outright. The time is ripe for us to draw from within and throw out seeds of new beginnings, seeds borne from daily practices such as meditating on the higher possibilities. Perhaps then we can begin realizing a society where people make conscious choices and step out of those ingrained, reactionary conditionings which perpetuate the futile, endless cycle of fear-mongering.
We could learn to be courageous and engage in extending empathy and compassion every single place we go; everywhere that we engage and converse with each other, knowing that by appealing to the hearts, minds and souls within the other, a truer connection finds fertile ground in which to plant and grow the new. A place where magic and miracles really *do* have the chance to come true.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woJEV8048ps
Thanks, wandering_yeti for the link and Eric for posting this. In spite of the meaning of the smile and the war metaphors, her analysis does help make sense of the question of who benefits from disaster, war and other distabilizing large scale events. It does stretch credulity to suggest that man is the direct cause of most disasters or that all the critical current events are coordinated. Nonetheless, the awareness of the almost immediate and effective economic expoitation of Katrina, for instance, was evident to even a causual observer. The sense that we are being manipulated is very real. I appreciate this addition to the conversation.
Kyla, I’ll run that past a psychologist I know and tell you what she says.
Excellent. I’m right there with Burning River. Thanks for posting this.
I wish she would not smile when she talks of torture, though. I find that very odd.
so our ideas aren’t worthless! good to know.
I like her picking through the rubble to find the salient info, sometimes that is difficult when things are ‘spun’. OK, well sounds like we need a plan. to be ready! and a way to deliver the sound information (might be a pun there, not sure) in the face of chaos.
as a general thing, I dislike battle analogies. that fighting again. it makes me unpopular, in particular, with anyone who is “battling” disease, like cancer. although I have run in a lot of Race for the Cures, I really dislike the language being used there. it is spreading dis-harmony, and dis-ease in the body to be speaking like a war is going on within you.
just sayin’.
as for shock doctrine-
shock THIS ( you have to be here to see gesture, )
carry on.
peace.
Outstanding analysis. Very helpful insight in her conclusion. Thnx, bro.