I've come to the conclusion that people cannot see what is coming or indeed has already happened because they are isolated inside their homes with their goods and services. They have no reason to believe the world outside can and does affect them. Conditioning and physical environment will dominate reason every time, not to mention that it will absorb all mental and physical energies just dealing with day to day life with such materially focused lives. "Busy, busy, busy ... gotta pay the cable bill, get the car washed, haul the kids to to the swimming meet, mail the NetFlix disc back ..."
The average American honestly has no observable reason to doubt the world as it is presented to them through consumer conditioning and media. In that sense it is a spell. A state of consciousness.
"After all, the economy has never collapsed before, has it?" they ask themselves. "The stores are always stocked aren't they?" "I can just put this on the credit card until I get my tax refund. If it gets real bad I can refinance again."
And most of all, television advertising portrays an America where everything is OK. People have no idea how neurologically defenseless they are against the images television injects at the brain stem, and how it instantly becomes an operative reality, even though the conscious self says, "Yes, I know those are just actors and that is just an advertisement."
Unfortunately, the spell can only be broken by a dramatic change in physical environment and conditions. I suspect losing one's home and its attending spell inducing goods and services and being out on the street will do the trick.
On the other hand, I've watched people have to move back in with their parents, and ya know what? The spell continues!
Larger economic and political forces present themselves to captive consumers in much the same fashion that our human motions do to goldfish in a bowl. They can never be physically touched, and therefore are never exactly real. Sometimes they scare you, but always they have fed you. But ultimately, the consumer state goldlfish have absolutely no concept of anything beyond the few quarts of environment they are allowed by capitalism's sharks. And never will.
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