Logan’s Run and burnout culture
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 10 minute read This is an excerpt from my chapter ‘The Woke Mind Virus.’ A Logan’s Run update on Yuppiedom Writing in Chicago magazine in 1980, Dan Rottenberg was the first to coin the term ‘Yuppies:’ ‘Something is occurring in Chicago … Some 20,000 new dwelling units have been built within two miles of the Loop over the past ten years to accommodate the rising tide of “Yuppies”—young urban professionals rebelling against the stodgy suburban lifestyles of their parents. The Yuppies seek neither comfort nor security, but stimulation, and they can find that only in the densest sections of the city.’[1] Moving forward to 2024, Damien Walter explores the 1970s science fiction classic Logan’s Run[2] as an allegory of today’s achievement culture: ‘Take a look around your bourgeois workplace, maybe it’s a tech start-up or a tech giant, a marketing agency or a media company, a Game Dev, a business consultancy; today even banks and accountancy firms run this way. Your office … looks like the primary colour set of 1970s sci-fi movie; there’s an unlimited supply of caffeinated energy drinks and probably a foosball table; your workplace looks more like a college dorm or a child’s day-care than like a workplace place, all to persuade you that you aren’t really at work, but this job eats every moment of your waking life and you never really sleep. If this is you, then congratulations you’re a member of the creative class and you’re among the elite. Everyone in your company is beautiful, well-dressed, young, oh-so-young. But think about this, where are the old people, is there anyone over 40 in your office? What did they do with the old people? You’ll find out when your life-clock begins to flash and you get the call to Carousel.’[3] Logan’s Run takes place in the year 2274; in a cluster of geodesic domes the remnants of human civilization live in a dome-enclosed city, run by a monolithic master computer that takes care of all aspects of life, including reproduction. The citizens live in a hedonistic utopia: no-one works or gets married; there are orgy rooms where people go to have sex and do drugs[4] but, to prevent overpopulation, all must undergo the rite of ‘Carrousel’ when they reach the age of 30; a ritual in which they are killed under the guise of being ‘renewed’ (as an infant in the city’s cloning facilities.) At birth, each is implanted with crystal in the palm of the left hand: their ‘life-clock.’ The crystal changes colour from white to yellow...
Cultural Marxist corporate bedfellows
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 8 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows on from Environmental, Social and Governance practices (ESGs.) Cultural Marxist corporate bedfellows So we’ve taken a look at the World Economic Forum and Stakeholder Capitalism. With that in mind let’s return to James Lindsay and his talk to the European Parliament. Many people have been confused about why ‘the woke Left’ is allied with the corporations, rather than with the working-class: Jake from Rattlesnake TV experienced a genuine a-ha moment: ‘That the corporations are now the friends, and this makes so much sense, because the Left used to be about fighting the billionaires and fighting the man, and the corporations, and the institutions man, but now they’re in bed with those very entities. ‘This is by design, they barely even disguise it these days, the corporations are their allies and they have absolutely zero regard for the working-class, but moreover it goes to show that this is an ideology that fundamentally preys on the weak and disenfranchised for survival. … But what I really got from that was the sinister nature of these ideas and how far intellectuals will go to win the ideological battle. ‘It’s designed to look at society and say who are the most downtrodden individuals that we can recruit for the revolution. They do not care about these people. It’s always been about the ideas. It’s always been about the revolution, and just as they ditched the working-class for the corporations, they will happily ditch the minorities for the next batch of revolutionaries.’[1] And so, the Marxists took on culture: ‘And so, they started to transform the culture industry, to sell racial, sexual, gender sexuality-based agitprop as though that were genuine culture, and so we get concepts like cultural appropriation, we get concepts like cultural relevance, cultural this, cultural that, cultural everything, and it’s all provided in pastiche, it’s all provided as a mockery of what’s really going on. And this evolved in America’s highly racialized context. And we ended up with Woke, a form of identity-based Marxism, a constellation of Marxist species.’[2] Lindsay says that LGBTQ+ and other ‘folk’ think of themselves as nations, … they all have flags, [and] they put them on your buildings like colonizers, … They think of themselves as occupying nations, bound together, … and seeking liberation from Western civilization.[3] ‘Now you know the theory is Marx, it’s just evolved into different species to attack the West at its weakest points, through our tolerance, through our acceptance, through our...
The Great Reset
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 10 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows on from The World Economic Forum. Involving ‘the youth’ It is interesting, though, how much the WEF carries the ‘performative’ spirit of Live Aid and has come, at times, to look to ‘the global youth’ for guidance: and how non-governmental organizations–which are typically voluntary groups or institutions with a social mission, operating independently from the government–have been increasingly participants at meetings: the rock star Bono, for instance, has been a regular invitee to the WEF since the mid-2000s. ‘The WEF has survived by adapting to the times. Following the surge of so-called anti-globalization protests in 1999, the Forum began to invite non-governmental organizations [NGOs] representing constituencies that were more frequently found in the streets protesting against meetings of the [World Trade Organisation (WTO,] [International Monetary Fund (IMF)] and Group of Seven. ’In the 2000 meeting at Davos, the Forum invited leaders from 15 NGOs to debate the heads of the WTO and the President of Mexico on the subject of globalization. The participation of NGOs and non-profit organizations has increased over time, and not without reason. According to a poll conducted on behalf of the WEF just prior to the 2011 meeting, while global trust in bankers, governments and business was significantly low, NGOs had the highest rate of trust among the public.[1] ‘In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last September, … Klaus Schwab, was asked about the prospects of “youth frustration over high levels of underemployment and unemployment” as expressed in the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements, noting that the Forum was frequently criticized for promoting policies and ideologies that contribute to those very problems. Schwab replied that the Forum tries “to have everybody in the boat.” … In reaction to the Occupy Wall Street movement, Schwab said, “We also try … to put more emphasis on integrating the youth into what we are doing.”[2] What is wrong with that, I hear you say? Well, nothing, except it has paved the way for what we see today: the emergence of Woke Capitalism and its totalitarian tendencies, as Ilan Kapoor argues in his essay ‘Humanitarian Heroes?’ ‘ … that celebrity humanitarian heroes help legitimate late liberal capitalism and global inequality. Their outwardly “altruistic” and “heroic” humanitarianism is belied by several accompaniments: its tendency to promote both the celebrity’s brand and the image of the “caring” (Western) nation; its entrenchment in a marketing and promotion machine that, willy-nilly, helps advance corporate capitalism and rationalizes the...
The World Economic Forum
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 10 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows on from the history of Cultural Marxism. The World Economic Forum Today, one of the foremost organisations which promotes a globalist—and more recently a woke—agenda is the World Economic Forum (WEF.) Headquartered in Geneva, and holding its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the WEF describes itself as ‘an international not-for-profit organization focused on promoting cooperation between the public and private sectors. Founded in 1971 by German economist Klaus Schwab, WEF seeks to foster a spirit of collaborative entrepreneurship to address global issues and shape governmental, industry, and social agendas.’[1] Since the adoption of its new manifesto in 2020, ‘ … [the] WEF is formally guided by stakeholder capitalism, which posits that a corporation should deliver value not only to shareholders but to all those who have a stake in the destiny of the company, including employees, society, and the planet. Its goals include a commitment to “improve the state of the world.”’[2] According to the Transnational Institute (TNI) think tank, the WEF ‘began in 1971 as the European Management Forum, … [then] changed its name in 1987 to the World Economic Forum after growing into an annual get together of global elites who promoted and profited off of the expansion of “global markets.” It is the gathering place for the titans of corporate and financial power.’’[3] The annual meetings at Davos ‘are a means to promote social connections between key global power players and national leaders along with the plutocratic class of corporate and financial oligarchs.’[4] The WEF has been ‘a consistent forum for advanced “networking” and deal-making between companies, occasional geopolitical announcements and agreements, and for the promotion of “global governance” in a world governed of global markets.’[5] TNI calls it ‘a socializing institution for the emerging global elite, globalization’s “Mafiocracy” of bankers, industrialists, oligarchs, technocrats and politicians. They promote common ideas and serve common interests: their own.’[6] Davos McKinsey and Company website says: ‘Davos, Switzerland, is where the World Economic Forum holds its annual meeting. Delegates from many sectors converge for several days of talks and meetings to address urgent global issues.’[7] ‘A highly curated selection of delegates from global business, government, civil society, media, and academia converges on this Swiss town to attend sessions designed to spark fruitful discussions around the most pressing issues of the day—and ultimately drive impact. But Davos isn’t just about the keynotes. The meeting is also famous for the networking and socializing that goes on in the corridors, side rooms, hotel...
The history of Cultural Marxism
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 4 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows on from Critical Race Theory. Cultural Marxism Next, Lindsay goes into the history of the development of Cultural Marxism: we had a Russian Revolution in 1917 but the revolution did not spread to Europe: which confused the Marxists there. Antonio Gramsci:[1] founding member and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party, and George Lukacs: the Hungarian Marxist philosopher who published History and Class Consciousness[2] after the failure of the revolution in Hungary in 1919, wrote about what became Cultural Marxism:[3] ‘the idea that we have to enter the cultural institutions in order to change them from within, because Western culture has something about it that’s repelling socialism. So we have to go inside and change the culture to make it socialist.’[4] Cultural Marxism evolved out of economic Marxism, Lindsay says, ‘like a virus adapted to infect a new host.’ Marxist revolution had worked in agriculturally-driven feudal societies: it had taken over in Russia, and later in China: but when it came to actual capitalist nations there seemed to be a hurdle, because, as Max Horkheimer proposed, Marx was wrong about one thing: capitalism does not immiserate the worker, it allows him to build a better life. Horkheimer thought the Revolution wouldn’t happen with guns, but through cultural infiltration: ‘… rather it will happen incrementally, year by year, generation by generation. We will gradually infiltrate their educational institutions and their political offices, transforming them slowly into Marxist entities as we move towards universal egalitarianism. So I developed the critical theory because it is not possible to articulate the vision of a good society on the terms of the existing society, so critical Marxism criticizes the entirety of the existing society, everything is somehow needing to be subjected to Marxist conflict analysis.’[5] Several Germans from the Frankfurt School started to study this phenomenon in more depth and evolved the idea further: into what’s called Critical Theory. ‘Max Horkheimer first defined critical theory in his 1937 essay “Traditional and Critical Theory”, as a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only toward understanding or explaining it. Wanting to distinguish critical theory as a radical, emancipatory form of Marxist philosophy, Horkheimer critiqued both the model of science put forward by logical positivism, and what he and his colleagues saw as the covert positivism[6] and authoritarianism of orthodox Marxism and Communism.’[7] Thus, there evolved what’s called Critical Marxism: Horkenheim assumes that ‘the weak’ have no choice but to submit :...
Critical race theory
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 5 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows on from Woke as Maoism with American Characteristics. Whiteness as Property In 1993, James Lindsay explains, Cheryl Harris wrote a long article for the Harvard Law Review called ‘Whiteness as Property,’[1] in which she proposed that whiteness or white privilege constitutes a kind of cultural private property. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx said that communism could be summarized in a single sentence: ‘the abolition of private property.’ This is why critical race theory thinks whiteness must be abolished in order to have racial justice. Lindsay: ‘People who have access to this property are whites, or white adjacent, or they act white. … People without that are people of colour and they are oppressed by systemic racism. Systemic racism is enforced by an ideology of white supremacy. Instead of capitalism, if you think of whiteness as a form of cultural capital, white supremacy, as they define it, is identical to capitalism. ‘It’s not believing that white people are superior, it’s believing that white people have access to the control of society and should maintain that. Even if you don’t actually believe that, if you merely support that, you have adopted the ideology of white supremacy into your mind. And so, you have the exact same system. And the goal is to awaken a racial consciousness in people so that they will band together as a class and seize the means of cultural production, so that white cultural production is no longer the dominant mode. ‘I know in the UK, throughout Europe, I hear this question again and again, why on Earth is this very American phenomenon about slavery and so on, that doesn’t apply to our country, why is it popular here. It’s because it’s not about history at all, it’s not about slavery at all, those are excuses that they use. It’s about creating a class consciousness that’s against this form of property called whiteness, that’s against the dominant culture. That may just be a matter of fact, say if you’re in Europe, that’s why because it becomes a site by which people can come together, and they can channel resentment and try to claim power.’[2] Recapping James’ points, Jake says: that ‘Marxism transcends economics, and even transcends social theory, the theory of Marxism bears a religious-like structure that can be extrapolated across all domains of life. And he used the example of private property, which if taken literally means a physical asset but that idea can be extrapolated to the idea of whiteness as...
Woke as Maoism with American characteristics
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 7 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows on from Ideas without a Ground. James Lindsay European Parliament talk James Lindsay, author of Cynical Theories and Race Marxism– recently gave a talk at the European Parliament on Woke Ideology, which Jake from Rattlesnake TV comments on in his YouTube video James Lindsay SHATTERS Woke Ideology: EU Parliament Speech.[1] Lindsay’s thesis is as follows: He says Woke is supposed to advance equity in Europe, and he presents the definition of equity written by a man named George Frederickson: ‘an administered political economy in which shares are adjusted so that citizens are made equal’[2] and asks if it sounds like a definition of anything else we’ve ever heard of, like socialism. ‘They’re going to administer an economy to make shares equal.’[3] ‘The only difference between equity and socialism is the type of property that they redistribute, the type of shares they’re going to redistribute, social and cultural capital in addition to economic and material capital and so this is my thesis: when we say what is woke, woke is Maoism with American characteristics. If I might borrow from Mao himself, who said to his philosophy was Marxism Leninism with Chinese characteristics, which means woke is Marxism and it’s a very provocative statement. It’s something you will certainly hear. It is not that it is different, and the professors and the philosophers will spend a large amount of time explaining to you why no, no, it’s about economics when it’s Marxism.’[4] Lindsay claims that Woke is no different from Marxism: he says that when we study animals we classify them at different levels: the cat is at the level of genus, but within that genus are all the different species of cat: lions, tigers, leopards and so on, suggesting that: ‘If we think of Marxism as a genus of ideological thought, the classical economic Marxism is a species, radical feminism is a species in this same genus, critical race theory is a genus, or sorry, a species in this genus. Queer theory is a species in this genus, postcolonial theory that’s plaguing Europe is a species in this genus, and they have something that binds them together called intersectionality, that makes them treat it as if they are all one thing, but the logic is Marxist.’[5] Jake provides context: ‘Karl Marx was a 19th century philosopher who wrote The Communist Manifesto and Das Capital and his work obviously inspired the revolutions led by Vladimir Lenin, Chairman Mao, Pol Pot and more. …’ ‘… the idea of...
Ideas without a ground
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 7 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows on from The Academic Mindset. Ungrounded ideas I think that all academics do know—on some deep level within their souls—that their academic objectivity is of limited value: in the sense all ideas are useless without ‘a ground’. What I mean is that—respecting the Law of Conditionality—no idea exists in a vacuum. The idea that they do is a dangerous idea in itself—to imagine that ideas can live in a self-referential world of their own (without consequences) itself has negative consequences: ideas must always be tested by their actual effect on the world. Marxism is a good example: it is based on a simple, appealing, idea about economics: Marxism seeks to explain social phenomena within any given society by analysing the material conditions and economic activities required to fulfil human material needs. It assumes that the form of economic organisation, or mode of production, influences all other social phenomena, including broader social relations, political institutions, legal systems, cultural systems, aesthetics and ideologies. These social relations and the economic system form a base and superstructure. As forces of production (i.e. technology) improve, existing forms of organizing production become obsolete and hinder further progress. Karl Marx wrote: “At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution.”[1] ‘These inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society which are, in turn, fought out at the level of class struggle.[2] Under the capitalist mode of production, this struggle materializes between the minority who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie) and the vast majority of the population who produce goods and services (the proletariat). Starting with the conjectural premise that social change occurs due to the struggle between different classes within society who contradict one another, a Marxist would conclude that capitalism exploits and oppresses the proletariat; therefore, capitalism will inevitably lead to a proletarian revolution. In a socialist society, private property—as the means of production—would be replaced by cooperative ownership. A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits but on the criteria of satisfying human needs—that is, production for use.’[3] We can see how, within the confines of its own argument, much...
The second dhyana
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 7 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 10 and follows on from The First Dhyana. Rapture Second dhyana Each remaining dhyana is a development of the first dhyana; involving a further withdrawal from concern with sensory experience; a deeper involvement with skilfulness; and a signal that a certain process is complete. The main change from the first to the second dhyana are that thought disappears and is replaced by a state of lucidity or in Pali pasada (Sanskrit: prasada), and the monk’s predominant experience is now rapture. ‘Furthermore, with the subsiding of initial thought and sustained thought, the meditator enters into and abides in the second dhyana, which is accompanied by internal peace, (lucid) confidence (pasada)[1] and unification of the mind,[2] is free from initial thought and sustained thought, and is filled with the rapture and happiness born of concentration.’[3] The Nyingmapa Buddhist School talks about three kinds of faith;[4] lucid confidence or pasada (sometimes called inspired or vivid faith), longing or eager faith; and the deep (trusting) confidence that comes when we feel a thing is completely reliable. “While confident faith in the three jewels, from the heart’s depth, once their blessings and extraordinary qualities are understood.” [5] In other words, faith or confidence-trust has a cognitive aspect; a volitional aspect; and a deeply emotional aspect. Of these, the second dhyana is concerned with cognitive conviction; we understand how things work, and what we need to do. Ratnaguna illustrates the quality of pasada in an image. He says that when we first arrive on retreat, it can be difficult to take in the world around us; we are still somewhat preoccupied with whatever we have been doing before the retreat; perhaps we feel regret over some of the things that we have done and this weighs on our conscience. But as we practice meditation in the following days, slowly purifying our mental states, after a few days we might walk out of the shrine room and the world looks amazing. Having purified our karma and clarified our thinking, we experience pasada. We see another person, and bang. ‘It is as if you’ve never seen this person before; they are completely new to you; fresh. … Like in the springtime you get these leaves don’t you, these tiny little baby leaves that are this incredible colour green, and they are so fresh and innocent and pure you can’t believe it, and you think, how did that happen, incredible.’[6] Image by anncapictures on Pixabay. The rapture and happiness that arises in the first dhyana does so...
American Empire in decline
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 7 minute read This excerpt is taken from the Introduction and follows on from my history. The New World Order Having outlined something of my history, I am going to turn now more to the present, and to the increasing chaos, suffering and insecurity that seems to be enveloping much of the world. Kondratieff Waves The title of this book—‘The Western Gulag’—inexplicably popped into my head just after 9/11: I had read The Kondratieff Waves[1] sometime in the 1980s and was fascinated by the idea of economic cycles in human history; Nikolai Kondratieff was the Russian economist who had advanced the idea that industrial economies go through ‘long waves’ of growth and decline: the length of cycle is up for debate, but by studying the wholesale prices, interest rates, wages, and production he identified a pattern of 40-60 year-long waves, going back as far as 1790. The West had been in an economic up-cycle since the Second World War and, if Kondratieff was correct, was due for a downturn; I must have spent around twenty years waiting for this downturn to happen. David Murrin and the American Empire David Murrin is a global forecaster who wrote a fascinating book Breaking the Code of History[2] in 2010, which expanded on a thesis he had produced in 2002 that all empires go through five phases. 1) Regionalisation 2) Ascension to Empire 3) Maturity 4) Overextension 5) Decline and Legacy.[3] Read blog post. He saw 9/11 as a watershed moment and the beginning of the decline phase of the American empire and has made successful predictions[4] about the progress of that decline phase since. I do remember at the time of 9/11 seeing an article that talked about the end of the American Empire.[5] Read article. Obviously, the fall of the twin towers was a shock, however, it is instructive to compare the tone of an American news discussion on the day before the attack[6] with a similar one today; the 2001 newscast is conversational and human, whereas today’s newscasts have an air of tightness, desperation–and at times, incoherence–as if news media is no longer clear what its purpose is. According to Murrin the Maturity phase of the American Empire lasted from 1945 to its peak around 1972,[7] at which there begins the Overextension phase. ‘There is a pause where the empire becomes highly integrative and tolerant, because at the core people have huge amounts of wealth. They are stable, they have probably separated themselves from...
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