Dear Friend and Reader:
Friday evening. I’ve just returned from my gig for the Yes Men, doing the Q & A session after the screening of The Yes Men Fix the World tonight in Hudson, New York. Basically, it’s a little teach-in, awareness-raising session after the film is over. When the boys get there they can; when they can’t, I do, if it’s vaguely possible. I think tonight was my fourth one of these; the first three were in Rhinebeck at Upstate Films, and I’ll be at TSL in Hudson Saturday and Sunday as well. (The screenings are at 5:30 pm.)
It’s interesting to actually have the conversation with people about what is wrong and what we can do about it, rather than complaining, or having the meeting on the Internet where we can’t actually see and hear each other. It reminds me how alienated we are from one another, on the particular theme of working together for a goal.
Sometimes I feel like nobody has even heard of it. A lot of times I have to hold the hands of my own staff and encourage them to call up the people they work with and talk to them; to confer on issues that would make their jobs easier. I know that part of my karma in this lifetime involves teaching people how to cooperate for a purpose they agree on. [If you want to get in on that karma and/or the closely realted piece about creative adventure, contact me, I am easy to find.]
And this, in turn, reminds me that one of the themes of this phase of world history, at least here in the capitalist Western world, is about conditioning people that life is all about “every man for himself.” There is no notion of the common good, something that used to be an idea we could talk about. Now if you propose however meekly that there might be a common good, you’re accused of being a socialist. This is the capitalist equivalent of being made to carry the Little Red Book and a picture of Chairman Mao everywhere you go. It is religion disguised as corporatist government.