The Only Worthwhile Western Culture Is That Which Opposes The Western Empire

Reading by Tim Foley:

The only worthwhile “western culture” in modern times is culture which rejects and opposes the dystopian nature of western civilization and the abuses of the western empire.

Western civilization is what’s bombing Iran. It’s what’s strangling Cuba. It’s what’s torching Lebanon. It’s what’s exterminating Palestine. It’s what stole Venezuela. It’s what’s plundering the labor and resources of the global south. It’s what’s keeping the systems in place which are killing our ecosystem and driving us closer to nuclear armageddon.

There is no sane and truthful position to have toward all this but vehement rejection.

Westerners — particularly white westerners in nations with colonialist histories like the United States and Australia — often struggle to find their cultural moorings. It can be difficult to find an authentic position from which to express art and take your stand as a personality when you feel culturally rootless and historically ungrounded. It causes a kind of dissonance with our lives that can haunt us until we die.

The best way to resolve this dissonance is to take your stand in opposition to the perverse society into which you were born. Express from the standpoint of resistance to this horrifying nightmare civilization that is fueled by human blood.

We live in a sick and intensely mind-controlled dystopia where everything is fake and stupid. Mainstream culture is a nonstop celebration of the vapid and inane. The movies glorify cops and soldiers. The music exalts capitalism, consumerism, egotism and frivolity. The products are made by wage slaves and the fuel is obtained by war. The food is designed to reap profits rather than to nourish. The news media is designed to propagandize rather than to inform.

It’s a disgusting civilization, to be honest. The more you learn about it, the more repulsive it becomes.

How could anyone relate to the human experience from inside this hellscape in a truth-based way, except by opposition? The only way to participate in “western culture” is to help create a new kind of culture which stands squarely in opposition to it.

As Terence McKenna once said, “We have to create culture. Don’t watch TV. Don’t read magazines. Don’t even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow… Reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”

The only way to create culture with sincerity in this dystopia is by forcefully rejecting its fraudulence and abusiveness, and embracing revolution and resistance. To do anything else is to give tacit approval to the horrific nature of this civilization, and it will always ring a bit hollow and dissonant, because it is ignoring the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room is the unacceptable depravity and deceit that’s going on all around us.

So if you want to make art, make revolutionary art. If you want to express yourself, express your defiance of the western empire. Oppose the wars. Oppose the militarism. Oppose the capitalism, the imperialism, the ecocide, the injustice, the tyranny.

That’s the only way to be authentic in an inauthentic society.

_________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Adobe Stock.