We live in a toxic world. Some areas of our environment (such as the Aral Sea of Kazakhstan) have already reached peak toxicity. International politics is a culturally toxic minefield. Public education is filled with toxic ideologies. The average diet is plagued with nutritionally toxic practices meant to curb toxically inspired appetites. The banking sector is drowning in toxic debt.

 

But, the real toxic debt this world and, in particular, the next generation faces, is not the exclusive result of irresponsible loans made to individuals by banking corporations. Rather, it is the toxic load left to the next generation in a social landfill covered over with propaganda and deception. For instance, public relations agendas have buried truth beneath unforgettable slogans and catchy jingles. They excel at making us feel that bucking the status quo of popular consumption would throw us into the category of hayseed, redneck ignoramuses. Largely bent on associating consumption with sophistication, some public relations firms, known as propagandists in earlier decades, have perfected the art of making those that refuse to buy the products they promote feel unworthy of even the most basic of human rights.  

 

What are the products public relations firms promote? They are debt-ridden paradigms that indenture us to carnal addictions. In this vein, entertainment has nearly become an inalienable right on a par with "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and in need of a constitutional amendment. Nutrition has fallen prey to the nano-manipulation of our taste buds. Work has become a "social responsibility" instead of a life-centered ethos. Public education is laced with social agendas that defy nature and demonize God. Healthcare has become, arguably, the world's biggest business venture, a venture promoted by unsustainable industrial ambitions, pleasure addiction, and product-driven nutritional suicide.

 

All toxic debt, no matter its hue, depends on the withholding of vital information and its substitution with propaganda. This is how industries are able to continue to pollute the earth we all share. This is how the banking corporations got into such serious trouble. This is how public education has so successfully substituted the memorization of government sanctioned "facts" for the objective, thorough, and rational consideration of truth. This is how government sanctioned healthcare and agricultural industries have created an addictive niche for themselves whereby the objectives they pursue cause the problems they were created and appointed to cure.

 

The toxic debt we have left to the next generation is a whole system built around the deceptions that make our contemporary lives more enjoyable. Under this deception, we don't need to know how precarious the economy really is, we just need money or credit enough to feed our contemporary consumer addiction. We don't need to know the facts of history -- we just need to know what our favorite TV personalities have to say about contemporary issues. We don't really need to understand nutritional principles of health, we just need to know if our infirmity is curable, if our doctor can make us feel better for awhile, and if Medicaid will pay the bills. We don't need to know if current agricultural practices are sterilizing the land, we just need to know if there is enough soil-nutrient-content remaining to satisfy our appetites until we die.

 

 

This whole idea, that 'new is always better', in modern society, is principally based on the work, views, and efforts of one man, Edward Bernays, who is widely known as the father of "Public Relations." In his view, following the evolutionary thinking of Darwin and the revolutionary conclusions of Sigmund Freud, mankind is largely subject to the influences of animal instincts and lusts. According to this perspective, given the right stimulus, we can be manipulated, herded like cattle, through the social-engineering hoops of moneyed power brokers. All that need happen to bring this about is that we are convinced of two things -- that 'new' is always better and that things make us happy.

 

Immersed in this happy deception, producers make the things that keep consumers happy, public relations firms (privately owned and government supported) create the slogans that make consumers unhappy with what they've just bought, and the tension between satisfaction and dissatisfaction keeps both industry and their public relations firms in business. The person that gains the least from this 'happy' arrangement is the general consumer who is perpetually broke and unhappy.

 

What does public relations have to do with toxic debt? Public relations firms largely promote and, thereby, fuel the industry that generates toxic debt. No matter what it is, a bigger and better vegetable, a more effective drug, a better educational system, more productive seed, more accessible loans and credit, they all share one thing in common. The alleged and largely unproven risks of the "old" are surmounted by the largely untested benefits of the "new." Meanwhile, the immediate and long-term risks of new products remain temporarily free from the menacing encumbrance of damaging facts that only wisdom and time can reveal.

 

Propaganda and our pursuit of the holy grail of consumerism, 'perpetually unprecedented growth', allow us to turn a blind eye to the toxic load that such kamikaze industry thrusts upon a largely duped and unsuspecting population. But this is a temporary euphoria. When the toxic load reaches critical mass, and the system built on deception can no longer sustain itself, out of necessity, the system will be forced into one of only a few options. Either it will increase the public load of deception and debt in order to stave off the inevitable, or it will launch itself into the convenient and temporarily lucrative distractions of war, or it will have to bow the knee to truth and resign itself to looking foolish.

 

But the greater question for me is not, "How will the system contend with the inevitable?" Rather, "How should we contend with the response of the system?" Whatever their response, there are a few principles that I believe should guide our actions. First of all, we must remember that the greater part of the future does not belong to us but to our children and to our children's children. What amount of toxic debt can you ethically saddle your children with? Secondly, what is truly, and as comprehensively as possible, God honoring? If it does not honor God, it ought not be enjoined liberally, if at all. Thirdly, how does it affect my neighbor? If it does not protect their interests, they have a right to be concerned and I have a responsibility to heed and seek to alleviate those concerns even as I would want them to do for me.

 

If the system, as it appears, chooses to ignore or delay the inevitable with debt and deception, I have an ethical responsibility to live an alternatively viable lifestyle. If the system thrusts itself into another unnecessary war, I have an ethical responsibility to promote the universal value of life. If the system chooses to bow the knee to truth, and resigns itself to the humility it deserves, I have an ethical responsibility to commend its humility and passion for truth, to support the reform it seeks to pursue, and to encourage the necessary reforms it has chosen not to impede.

 

Toxic debt is always a generational problem. It was neither created nor can it be wholly resolved by only one generation of mankind. No amount of optimism or popular appeal will ever change the fact that you can't spend your way out of debt. You've got to work your way out of debt. To an aging workforce, increasingly dependent on the next generation to pay their medical bills, in an economy that is offering fewer jobs to increasingly under qualified professionals, this is bad news. To retire the toxic debt of this and future generations will require the commitment of this and future generations. In this respect, casting a generational vision for a more holistically responsible future is a pursuit that this generation cannot afford to set aside.

 

Michael Hennen