Photo credit: The Independent
The origins of the song, “Kumbaya, my Lord,” and of the title itself, are somewhat obscure. First recorded in 1926, some say it is of African origin, more likely in the African American spirituals in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. And, of course, a white folksong writer copyrighted it in 1939, claiming that he composed it in 1936, although it was already being sung in the African American Gullah Geechee culture before then.
Whatever its origins, it became a popular tune in the folk revival of the 1950s into the 1960s. It had originally expressed the need for both spiritual support and community in a world of tribulation. Then it became an expression of unity and struggling together in the ‘counter culture’ and the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s, before it faded into what many saw as naïve nostalgia.
Gradually “Kumbaya” came to be seen as a sissy’s refrain, or a Girl Scout song for singing around a campfire. It became a symbol of collective weakness for the increasingly toxic masculinity that steadily grew into the 21st century. Ridicule of perceived weakness became a watchword for the expression of the desire for power over others.
The present era has seen a clear trend of rising cultivation of economic domination and political violence. That pathology was recently epitomized when the fake president of the United States organized, then relished the display of the arrogance of violence and the thirst for blood sport in a series of seven MMA cage fights on the White House lawn to celebrate his eightieth birthday, at taxpayer expense.
That particularly crass event occurred not long after the ‘destroyer in chief’ bragged that he would annihilate an entire civilization as he erratically prosecuted a war on Iran. When it all went south, he then found it “boring.” He found himself trapped in the realization that his and Hegseth’s naïve but ruthless maximized bombing targets quickly designated by AI, without strategy or endgame, had lost them the war. This was not Venezuela. Their violent rhetoric and impulsive application of ‘air power’ failed the asymmetric warfare test, since they were both oblivious to the nature of the geopolitical landscape they ignored.
The repeated claims that a negotiated settlement proved false, even as the fake president claimed the latest deal would release frozen Iranian funds and that the Iranians would keep the Strait of Hormuz open without charging tolls, with a 300 billion dollar reconstruction package. One small problem: the Iranians have the upper hand and they are not about to help their tormentor escape the tramp he set for himself. The presumed ‘deal’ would release ten times as much frozen Iranian assets than Obama’s actual deal to restrain Iran’s nuclear development, which out of racist spite, Trump tore up.
Human Reality and the Culture of Domination
Contemporary dehumanized state and corporate-capitalist politics presumes that greed and domination are the forces that drive ‘economic progress.’ But for both, the goal is not the common good; instead it is the perpetual accumulation of capital by the financial-political elite, whose members consider themselves above it all. The financial elites claim to be the “job creators,” while they reduce labor costs by eliminating jobs via automated production processes, the off-shoring of labor to countries with starvation wages, and now by implementing AI in any way they can. Their hedge funds sweep up residential properties that homeowners lost due to the mortgage crisis of 2008 that their financial manipulations had caused.
They are “The Epstein Class.” What we must understand about its members is that they believe themselves to be superior beings, not subject to mere laws for the many. The lobbyists they paid for assured that congress wrote loopholes in the tax code to make that a reality. Their delusions are driven by both their fear of losing their extreme wealth, their obsession with gaining more, and their fundamental psychological insecurity expressed in those delusions.
So, in that sense we have a convergence of the culture of domination with the cultural claim by the international financial elites and its political agents that an economy driven by greed rather than priorities such as kindness, sharing, and human wellbeing, is the best path of human progress. Being on top of that corrupt system gives them comfort.
That, and the fundamental distortion of economic markets by relentless extraction and capital accumulation, has produced a global political economy that is deeply indifferent to human suffering and the degradation of Nature, while being driven by an ethic of exploitation and violence. The continuing acceleration of the concentration of wealth among the world’s ultra-elites, is the model for society that the Epstein Class insists upon.
How has that worked out for you? Well, of course it has worked out just fine for some, the one-percenters and their agents, anyway, as the billionaires collect a greater and greater share of the national income and wealth. But for the rest of us, not so much.
Many professionals and business owners do not yet feel the pain, but they will in the next few month as the convergence of supply-chain collapse due to the war on Iran and the emerging ‘Super El Niño’ oscillation causes severe economic disruptions around the world. The extreme levels of inequality that have recently arisen reflect the fundamental inhumanity of our political economy. Add in the reactions of Mother Nature, and we will experience escalating chaos.
The New Great Transformation We Need is Not Just Technical
Well, the subtitle of this essay may sound like overkill for society as a whole, but the risk of maiming and death is real, and not just in the octagon. Even though the ideology of the billionaire class still dominates politics, most regular people know that something is very wrong. The toxic water coming out of the faucets of those who live near new construction sites of those mega data centers appearing all over the nation, mostly in rural settings, is the object of rage and despair. So are the arbitrary firings of thousands of skilled professionals and other technical workers in the federal government who are not ideologues of the extremist autocrats.
The No Kings movement is an expression of the fear and loathing directed at the autocratic attempt of the MAGA instigators. The rise of the counter-ICE movement, especially in Minnesota, is a clear indication of the survival of community spirit and rejection of violence in America. Similar movements are popping up in various states.
So, we do have some evidence of a rise in rational objections to the insanity operating the Technosphere—the increasingly privatized corporate tech-state system of domination, surveillance, subjugation, and exploitation—at scale both here and abroad. Protests in the U.S. are reflected in similar actions in Europe. If the material/technological transformations necessary to stop the destruction and build an ecological civilization are to have a chance at being accomplished, then a fundamental transformation of the hierarchical culture of modernity—which incorporates that same obsession with dominating both Nature and humanity—will be necessary very soon.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 