Today marks the annual American version of the Bacchanalia; arguably the most important of our National Holidays: Super Bowl Sunday. Unlike the way that most holidays are observed in the US, Super Bowl Sunday doesn't even pretend to be some solemn display of patriotism or religious belief: it is an open expression of everything that Postmodern America truly venerates: celebrity worship; consumerism; the winner-take-all. success-at-any-price philosophy of life; manufactured drama and controversy---in short, it's a day when all Americans can take pride in Trash Culture.
Trash Culture has become our defining national characteristic: it permeates most of our day-to-day lives. Our whole national ethos is one big marketing campaign wherein both our national and individual characters are stamped with various brands carefully sold and packaged by Madison Avenue shylocks and Hollywood Media moguls along with the ominous, unspoken threat that not going with the flow can have serious consequences.
Ostensibly, the Super Bowl is the NFL Championship game; but in reality things like sportsmanship, teamwork, and strategy play very little part in the whole extravaganza. Like statesmanship in politics; justice in our court system; truth in our schools; information in our media---these are all quaint terms that are spoken occasionally to pretend that anything that goes on in our institutions have the slightest moral justification for their existence.
In fact, ethics and moral justification are also largely sham terms today. These are things that nobody ever thinks about; it's just accepted that ethical principles are whatever anybody in authority says they are and whatever 'public opinion' agrees that they are. Invariably, defining one's ethics by such standards leads to the self-righteous, black-and-white thinking that become so characteristic of Postmodern America. In such a society, the personal becomes political and non-conformity effectually becomes criminal. We saw during the Scamdemic how this was translated into actual policy; but we've been seeing it for a long time already in Cancel Culture, speech codes, elastic definitions of sexual impropriety, etc.
Such cultures invariably micromanage us down to the personal level and those who don't conform are treated as enemies. What's worse, those who shape these acceptable social norms are forever swinging from one extreme to the other; and unfortunately there's never any shortage of certain persons who crave power and would love nothing more than exercise it. Hatred and Revenge often factor into such personalities, and such people are literally capable of anything. They see enemies all around them, and no level of destruction is enough for them to satisfy the demons within themselves.
We can see how sham-extravaganzas like the Super Bowl are mere symbolic expressions of our degenerated culture; but it has its parallels throughout our society in general; like the old proverb Art Imitates Life. The superficiality of the whole spectacle, its sheer pointlessness and stupidity; its glorification of success and force: all of these things reflect what we are as a society. It's reflected in the governments we elect, the corporations we serve, the religions that we follow, the schools we attend, the laws we make, and how our lives in general are conducted within the communities in which we live.
As a society, we are in desperate need of some collective soul-searching. We need to start asking ourselves some pointed questions about the direction that our culture is going and how we can change it to something better. It starts when we start listening to the still small voice of our own conscience and stop listening to the Noise Machine surrounding us.
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