Western Prison of Mind

Possibly the worst part of Westernism is the onslaught of introduced, embraced and abandoned ideas. There is never a resting moment from the jostling that we are pestered with from sunup to sundown. Whether you want to go in the direction of Westernism or not is irrelevant. Thinking outside of it presents us with nonsense. There is no language inside Westernism to catalog what is outside of it.

As an empire, it’s impenetrable. All other concepts and ways of life are filtered through it, so that those of us inside of it have no hope of seeing anything more than shadows on a wall. Our narcissism prevents a true representation of anything “other” getting into our minds. We immediately recognize ourselves when we look outside at other faces – just as when we look at the distant stars, the only faces that are presented to us are our own.

There is not a thought that we think that gets us outside of the Big Brother prison. All of our thoughts are Western-filtered, and America is a model picture of this Western prison of the mind.

How can we think outside the only language we know?

The more artwork I look at, the more I see the fad in the fade-out scheme – so many wonderful ideas that are barely examined before the never-ending caucus race begins again. Ideas and artists are devoured, digested and reconstituted, all in a day’s work. We’re all bytes of information in a large Western server. It processes all of us in less time than heartbeats.

And yet, there are so many who are tired of feeling the Western hand on our collective pulses, but there is no avenue of escape that we might pursue. Every cry of foul is met with a sneer and a clever dig, “So you’re the different one and the rest of us are sheep, are we?”

That’s it right there.

I’m afraid there isn’t any other option than being a sheep, and I’m not sure that not wanting to be a sheep does one any good, but there it is. How do you change out of your sheep uniform when it’s all you have? I suppose the solution would be to run naked and embrace insanity, but that’s hardly a solution.

-Adbusters-Kami Galeana

Two ideologies that keep us going Economics, and Therapy.

"There are therapists throughout the country, and they’re very important, because they pick up the refuse of the economic-political system.

We have mental health clinics all over the nation, in every city and county. And they all produce pamphlets about how to deal with the problems of addiction, battered wives, childhood disorders. Someone has to pick these people up, and therapy does it. But therapy operates with an ideology – an individualistic, must-learn-to-cope ideology. The individual has to learn how to cope, and the therapist helps that person stay in control. This ideology is based on the idea of individual growth and potential.

Most schools of therapy share the idea that there’s an inner world that can be made to expand and grow, and that people are living short of their possibilities, and that they need help to… what she we call it? Fulfill their potential. Therapy has become a kind of individualistic, self-improvement philosophy, a romantic ideology that suggests each person can become fuller, better, wiser, richer, more effective.

I believe we now have two ideologies that run this country. One is economics, and the other is therapy. These are the basic, bottom-line beliefs that we return to in our private moments – these are what keeps us going.


Sy Safransky is the editor and publisher of The Sun Magazine. This is an excerpt from “Conversations with a Remarkable Man: Honoring the late James Hillman,” The Sun Magazine, by Sy Safransky, Scott London and Genie Zeiger."