PANEM ET CIRCENSES

by Erik Valencic

It is always best to learn from the old masters. Therefore: when barbarian invasions up north, disobedient provinces in the east, growing political anarchy and in the end christianity started threatening the uniformity of the Roman Empire, the aristocratic elite in Rome first of all feared for its thrones and privileged social status. As the result, the most eminent building of all time was built in Rome - Flavius's amphitheatre. The Caesar didn't set up the amphitheatre merely to find favor in the peoples eyes, he did it out of fear from his own people going vitiate as well and separating his head from his body in a quick procedure. The manipulation with the amphitheatre succeeded completely. As 45,000 people viewed gladiator combats and [let's call them] duels between lions and christians every second day, those 45,000 people did not have time to think about problems that faced the Empire and about who was to blame for the critical situation.

The people gave up political awareness for depraved entertainment, while the Caesar became an abstract figure, the ruler who brings bread and circuses to his people. The people of Rome probably never felt happier and more nonchalant, but they had never depended more on the Caesar's authority. Meanwhile the Empire was slowly, but steadily, disintegrating. And one day it was gone. Just like the old aristocratic elite that set up the amphitheatre. Today we are - supposedly - more civilized. Are we really?

First thing we have to understand is that today we live in a new, global and above all much more complex empire, which we can rightfully call the Capitalist Empire. One of its characteristics is that the older forms of regime are vastly disappearing, or they are submitting to the international economic and monetary institutions - such as WTO, NAFTA, IMF, CEFTA, World Bank, European Community, etc. No empire in history had as many safety and supporting columns as this new world order has produced.

But nevertheless, all these international capitalist institutions cannot extend the new world order and at the same time ensure a certain amount of stability inside of their Empire. On the contrary. After the tragic events in Argentina and the ongoing Enron affair in the United States of America, we witness a complete demoralization of this once celebrated, ideological paradigm, which presented the very essence of empire - that capitalism equals democracy. In the modern provinces, called the Third World, this paradigm never existed in one way or the other. This automatically resulted in the rising of various movements for impartial globalization. These movements soon and successfully expanded from places like the poor Mexican tablelands of Chiapas and the sugarcane fields in India to all over the Empire. The symbolic turning point for many was the huge rebellion against the imperialist structure - the WTO summit in Seattle in 1999.

The new world order therefore isn't only confronted with the economic recession, it also faces a crisis of existential importance, that is why it recourses more and more to its repressive and manipulative instruments. The latter are based on already tested and most effective methods of stultifying and subordination of the masses - namely, the old Roman recipe of "bread and circuses".

The new world order has installed countless, connected social structures that operate according to the pattern of manipulation of the masses. We call them media corporations. They operate 24 hours a day and serve us the biggest nonsense a human mind (relatively speaking) can think of. When referring to "cheap opiates for brains" we must specially expose idiotic American talk shows, mostly because they have preserved all the component elements of the Roman gladiator fights: they have gladiators, who verbally slaughter themselves in front of cameras just for our bare amusement, they have the audience, that hasn't evolved mentally in last 2000 years and finally, they have their own "little caesars" who decide with a stretched out thumb who is the "winner" [metaphorically speaking, of course, since it's hard to say which of the participants has proven to be a bigger idiot] and therefore worthy of the public's benevolence..

Television is losing, if it has not already lost, its primary task of informing and is now quickly transforming into a business service of cheap and depraved entertainment, which comes to us in the form of stupid talk shows, low-priced soap operas, TV dramas, slimy teenage serials and of course, pop culture. Thus we are the witnesses of the formation of a very confused generation in the modern West - the generation of grown up Teletubbies and Harry Potters. This is a generation of consumers, who live in a fictitious symbiosis with artificial and more and more virtual environment, and, every day that goes by, depend more on this environment, which has little to do with reality. Industry of entertainment is merely a manipulative construct of a modern world order and at the utmost leads into political apathy, which leads into ignorance, and ignorance always leads into slavery, or in the best case into subordination.

History therefore repeats itself. While the Empire slowly, but steadily, crumbles under the weight of its own mistakes, while the social distinctions between the rich and the poor vastly increase, while there are revolutions going on in the modern provinces and while imperialist wars are promoted as 'endless justice' the manipulated masses in the so-called "civilized West" cry only for bread and circuses. Till it goes, it goes. Panem et circenses!

–  Erik Valencic