Forward from June 2013: There are many things I regret about this article but its main point is something I still reuse a lot today. I've left it intact in its original form. If I could write it from scratch, it would probably be a better and more helpful article.
When you get into your $30,000 car, drive to The Cheesecake Factory, sit down to eat, have a pleasant conversation with the attractive waitress, then drive to the movie theater, get a bag of popcorn and watch Christopher Nolan's latest Batman movie, feel emotionally stimulated, come home five hours later feeling somewhat satisfied, write a post on your Facebook wall that contains some emotive exclaimation about what you thought of the movie, and doze in front of the television... Then you have effectively crawled under the comfort-building paw of the modern mechanical mother. And tonight millions of others like you enjoyed the fruits of the mechanical mother.
The mechanical mother is what gently keeps us from having any experiences of our own, experiences where we have to make decisions for ourselves. Oh sure, we make some small decisions when we're under the mother, like what to order off the menu, what movie to see, or what television channel to watch. But when we make these decisions, the worst that can happen to us is boredom or a lack of pleasurable stimulation. Little is at stake.
I call this the mechanical mother because it is both globalization and technology that has allowed a handful of decision makers on the planet (not merely in your country) to influence how so many of us spend our daily lives.
Whoever is in charge of The Cheesecake Factory, that guy and his team have shaped the menus, interior design, and attitudes of the waitresses so that when you went in there, you were being told what to do by him. And it was a high quality experience that he, or someone on his team, worked tirelessly to identify throughout his life in the food industry.
And the technology to shuttle so many ingredients onto that menu is directed by another guy, the factory farming guy. We've counted two teams so far.
Your car, the one you drove in, was designed by a legacy of hundreds of engineers, but again just a team of people holds the reigns on that car company. They did their best to get you to buy their car, and they succeeded. They got you. You got your car. Good for both you, so far.
Similarly for Nolan and his team, and the movie studio, and the television station staff, and the team of engineers at Facebook.
It would be different if we only used these tools at our disposal once in awhile, but are addicted. We spend every weeknight and weekend overdosing on whatever the mechanical mother has placed in our feeding trough.
This is a consumerism rant and not original. I have written about this before in much angrier tones before.
In this latest iteration of my rant, I have more respect for what the mechanical mother provides. Without her, so many of us would, in some sense, be more bored and underexperienced. The mechanical mother is such a smoothly running machine that even the poor people among us can afford to go out and have a good time.
Have you seen Christopher Nolan's movies? They are really good. Not all of us can afford to buy a private jet, fly it to our private island, and then go SCUBA diving in the nearby coral reef. So thank god that Nolan can give us something surprising. Have you tasted the food at The Cheesecake Factory? I haven't in a long time but its probably amazing.
But setting aside the issues of ability and relative poverty, there is something sinister and deprived about the mechanical mother. Let's begin our attack on it and see where we get.
The mechanical mother is providing imitation goods, and their quality is unknown. It is tweaked and fabricated. Christopher Nolan, honestly, doesn't know you and would probably have nothing but contempt for you if he spent 5 hours with you. The waitress at the restaurant really wants nothing to do with you; she would probably rather be doing something else with her girlfriends or boyfriend, but she has been told and trained to put on a smile, stay cheerful, and give you a pleasant experience. The people at the movie theater probably won't even try as hard as she did.
The handful (and I really do mean handful) of men and teams who run these industries do not sincerely care about you at all. They extract your money and, unlike you, can afford private jets, private islands, and SCUBA equipment. It is very possible that they don't need the mechanical mother at all - they may have their own sources of personal enjoyment with their freetime.
Thus, the mechanical mother is being run by people who are strong, independent, smart, and hard-working and they are taking full advantage of you in order to live their lives to their fullest. As they have no idea who you are, it is impossible for them to be sincerely invested in your well-being and growth. Every weekend and evening, when you come to nurse on the mechanical mother's mammary glands, you have no idea what is going to come out of there.
Not only that, if you've been dependant on the mechanical mother since you were young (say, ten) then you are so mentally immature that it is unlikely that you have any power to decide whether you are being fed something healthy or unhealthy. You lack a compass of quality. You don't know what healthy is. You have no taste.
I do not think that the people in control of these industries seek to ruin us; remember, we aren't even enemies to them. We are technically their customers. What really happens is that you get an organic machine where they are taking a small risk on what they think the poor wants to eat, the poor either buying or not buying what was given, and then the administrators and their peers adjust the product. It's a rapid feedback circle. No one is really in charge. (Think about that: No one is in charge). No one holds responsibility for what is going on here. That's why I like to say that you don't know what kind of milk the mechanical mother is producing. It just so happens that I think the vast majority of it is bad, but that's not my current point. It may be bad or it may be good, but no one is in charge of it.
I like that I picked Nolan because I think he is at least a "real" artist who sincerely cares about his vision and who makes decisions not based on peers or customers, but by examining what is inside of him. That is, he has (somehow) developed taste so that he can predict, all by himself, what will feel good to others, simply because it feels good to him. But at the end of the day he's just making movies and even his taste is fallable.
Another problem with the mother is that it prevents us from making decisions on our own and it kind of keeps us sedated. That old quote about religion being the opium of the people, well the religion isn't Christianity anymore, something else has taken its place and it resembles the entertainment and refined food industry, but its still is very much an opium for us.
There was an article I read awhile ago about how we used to work tirelessly, and we'd force our kids to work tirelessly, and the mere act of surviving and stressing over bills (with the kids) used to be sufficient to give us our experience in life. That, plus a general tendency to work outside in nature more. We all got thrown into the division of labor model of work, which was way more boring, and which pushed us to expect even more reward out of our limited freetime, and this all set the stage for the consumption culture we're in now. Whereas we used to have identities based on our work, we now have identities based on our consumption. Striking.
When I go out and consume, I am more conscious of what is going on now. When I walk into any room, whether it be a store or hotel lobby, and I see that it is refined, polished, and professionally decorated; and when its not obvious to me who the sole owner of the room is, then my "mechanical mother" alarm goes off. I immediately identify the room as belonging to the mechanical mother and I know that I am in a place equally suited for 10 year olds.
I am not so enlightened as to tell the mechanical mother exactly how she's doing her job wrong, but what really angers me is how she doesn't trust me to do anything on my own. There comes a point where it feels like I'm being insulted, like she's not just trying to feed me, but she's trying to spit in my face. She grabs me by the shoulders with her thick, fat sweaty fingers, she begins to turn red in the face, she violently shakes me, and shouts "feel good, god damnit Michael! Smile, god damn you! Start feeling good! Please start feeling good! Please, please, please start feeling good! Are you having fun yet? How about now? Have fun please!"
And I want to quietly ask her why she is trying so hard to force me to feel good, and also can she please stop shouting at me.
Today's globalization, insofar as it is part of the mechanical mother, is more than bringing us closer together. It is the means by which the mother rounds up her children into an even closer-knit herd. So many enfeedbled kids are being rounded up and stuck together in a pacified herd unlike any that's ever existed.
Some other day I might talk about the religious message that the mechanical mother is feeding us (in the place of Christianity), or I'll talk more about the moral privileges of the handful of people who take part in controlling part of the mechanical mother. I should also talk about what it means to be American, and how I think that is a reasonable defense against the life-stealing nature of the mechanical mother. Finally, I should also talk about culture sometime again. It's been awhile since I talked about culture.
I think the mechanical mother used to be in the hands of private families (and probably sincerely cared about you back then), but has only started becoming powerful and anonymous with the rise of national identity, improved publication and circulation of writing, and finally mass entertainment.
I think the only hope we have is the same hope that we've always had, which is for leaders (like say, me, or god forbid both of us) to walk through the herd, pinch people awake, and do a better job of personally, instead of anonymously, loving people. A flesh and blood human being talking to you, giving you something to do, and rewarding you feels so much better and worth pleasing than an anonymous, mechanical mother.
